Days of My Life

This is a post that I had started in August/ September 2015, shortly after I returned from camp (see below). I had begun to summarize my Asia trip at the bottom of the post, and then closed out of the draft window, opting to sleep, telling myself that I'd continue and finish it the next time. It is now July 2016, and the only update to this piece are the added pictures. Everything else to come later, in a separate post... Before I start with what I've been wanting to write, let me tell you this: if you are considering broiling/ boiling vegetables with coconut oil, don't do it. Or if you really want to, use only a tiny bit of the oil, because it certainly is strong. The last few months have been a true blessing, for lack of a brief description. However, since I rarely lack a brief description, here's a skeleton of what I feel fortunate enough to deem a blessing. I'll start backwards chronologically: Camp Ronald McDonald . It's truly the best life decis...

Frequently, it occurs to me how little immigrant parents know--and I don't mean that in any negative way. Knowing little of the English language and little about American culture, they assimilate how they can, and what they see is what they absorb and subsequently "know." For instance, until last year, my family had never had a dog--or any pet, for that matter, other than the occasional goldfish we scored from carnivals at Alpine Park. The only kind of dog that we ever "regularly" came in contact with was a distant (but not really, because she lives in El Sereno, which is adjacent to where we live) relative's guard dog, a German shepherd of whom I was stupidly afraid. A little over 1.5 years ago, my dad began contemplating getting a dog; then it became getting a guard dog; and then, of course, it became "getting the dog that 'mumu' [Cantonese translation for a non-blood related grandmother] has." At some point, he found out from mumu the na...

Isn't it crazy? When I was younger, I couldn't wait to be twenty-something years old, because I knew these would be the prime years. I assumed I'd know everything there is to know about life by this strange, odd age of 24 (okay, more even than odd). Now here I am, a few weeks past my 24th birthday, without a clue about the adult things that I've been hearing about and should do or start doing, the adult things described with words and numbers I never thought to string together as a child: "Are utilities included in the rent?"  "Is 750 square feet big enough?" "401K." "Make a budget." While I'm getting more involved in the adult life I had long pined for, I admit that a part of me wants to stay at home, where I know I don't have to cook my own meals and can even make requests here and there, where I can assume that if the laundry hamper is overflowing, someone else (i.e. Mom) will likely take care of it, where I am...

During the drive up to Napa yesterday, Sherry and I saw something incredible. We had been on the 5 for several hours, zooming down the California-drought yellow bush-lined freeway, and had just gotten onto the 55-mph limit CA-12 West highway. While I was disappointed by the considerably decreased speed limit and the intermittently one-lane road, I was also extremely fascinated by the scenery. Here I was, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the glorious way the mid-afternoon winter sun shone on the body of water to my left, when all of a sudden I glanced over at Sherry to make commentary--what we both saw next was something I'll remember for a long time coming. Ahead, a little to the right, a huge swarm of small black birds--and I mean SWARM--was flying all together, and suddenly, flocks began to come out of that swarm. One after another, these flocks pirouetted out of the group in S-shapes, like a hurdle of ballet dancers breaking into their choreographed formation. Each flock exited neatly...

I feel that a humongous chunk of my life is missing from this blog. The last post was from June--maybe even May--after I started my (no longer) new job. Now, three--four, maybe even five--months later, I feel also at a loss for words to describe those months. I had started a post several weeks ago, and an hour into writing, got distracted and left that window open on my computer for two weeks, only to finally close it out later, admitting defeat to laziness in tandem with busy-ness. It isn't that I've forgotten details about my monthlong travels through Asia or my weeklong experience at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times. It's that, after so much time has passed, all of wanderlust-ful, awe-inspired ooh's and ahh's of travel and all of the magical, heartwarming moments of camp have passed. While I can still imagine particular encounters and occurrences, it's hard to trigger or evoke the precise emotions I felt or expressions with which I reacted--the very things...

After having used a MacBook instead of my PC for the past three weeks, returning to the latter seems strangely foreign. And I'm pretty sure that, from lack of usage, several of my keys have gone "numb." I know no other way to concisely describe it--these keys are now much harder to press (it is taking an insane amount of effort to type all of the s 's and periods hereby) than they have ever been. And I keep pressing the "ALT" button, thinking it's the "Command" one when really, I mean to go three keys over to "CTRL." When I first started using the Mac for work, I told myself that I would never lose sight of my Toshiba. But alas, my fingers have lost the familiarity. Still, my loyalty to and preference for PC remains (for now). Prior to finally starting this, I was thinking up a storm--lighting, thunder, and all--of ideas, anecdotes, and jokes to share. You would have been delighted--because obviously, my posts could evoke nothing ot...

"Please let tomorrow be a nice, warm, sunny day. In Jesus's name we pray, Amen." That's how I ended every prayer, every night when I was a child. And almost every day turned out to be a "nice, warm, sunny" one, so I thought God must have been real. At some point, I got suspicious, so from time to time, I purposely skipped that part (and felt guilty about it because I wasn't doing the world the favor of asking for good weather); and for the most part, each of those days still turned out to be exactly the way I otherwise prayed. Down the road, I wised up and realized that in Southern California, the bulk of the year consists of "nice, warm, sunny days." This anecdote does not represent my shift away from prayer. It's just something that crossed my mind earlier while hoping for good running weather for tomorrow's La Jolla Half Marathon. We have to be at the shuttle to get to Del Mar by 5:30 a.m. yet I am still awake, attending to my ur...