Nintendo Word Play

This year was the first time that I spent the entirety of the winter vacation at my apartment in Wakuya (except for a short trip down to Tokyo). Part of me wanted to experience the events that occur leading up to and after New Year’s Day in Japan. The other part couldn’t afford another trip abroad after going back to California twice this year. I figured I would do some snowboarding, catch-up on some movies and animes that I had been meaning to watch, do some general maintenance on the nerd-front, and prepare materials for the next term of school.

The reduced hours at work and less responsibilities in the town was a welcome relief but I wasn’t expecting the almost complete exodus of foreigners during the winter holiday. And I wasn’t expecting to work on Christmas Day, although in a country that celebrates Christmas almost like I would celebrate Valentine’s, I wasn’t missing much. On the topic of holidays, the celebrations of New Year’s and Christmas in Japan mirrors America if you were looking through a circus mirror that flipped everything. Christmas in Japan is spent eating Christmas cake with your date / significant other, while New Years is spent cleaning, watching TV, and eating with the family.

As the snow drifted fromt heavens, dumping loads of snow that this area hasn’t seen for a long time, I realized that I would be alone on New Years with a sudden attack of a one day, debilitating malaise. And so I laid in bed until the strength came back, too tired to call for help, and too cold and dangerous to go driving in the heavy snow.

Despite the isolation and sickness, things weren’t so bad. I did a lot of catching up on movies, replaced the hard drive on my laptop, and finished my English Point Card system for motivating my beleaguered students. And I got a White New Years … that I would have to shovel away for the first time in my life.

Next winter vacation, I’m going somewhere warm and populated with people.

As you can tell, the site is under a bit of construction. I’ve upgraded WordPress so I could use the new nifty iPhone app in hopes that I’ll write more. As you can tell the CSS is a bit wonky and I’m going to change the theme a bit, maybe add some colors or something.

And all this construction is going to start during Winter Vacation. When everyone near and dear to me is leaving for home and the road, I’ll be hard at work finishing my check list of do’s and don’ts for the end of the year and next year. There’s quite a few things on my plate, including hard-drive upgrades, apartment makeovers, snowboarding, and boxing training, while excluding things such as laziness and debauchery. Hope it’ll all be finished so I can have a great and productive 2010. See everyone then.

Happy Holidays.

Never learned how to play an instrument. Coordinated dance routines are embarrassingly awkward for everyone around me (as the Sparrow team must be aware of). Imposed time constraints always have made me uncomfortable, someone else’s drum beat scares the tiddlywinks out of me. Ask me to dance freely though and I’m all game, freestyled movements will explode in cacophony and the transitional beats keep me on the hot tempo or mellowed out on the deep bass beats.

Yet I’m going to try to learn to play an instrument or sing a solo in front of an audience before I leave this musical little island where everyone can play an instrument and you’re the outsider if you can’t seem to manage a good karaoke session or keep a beat on the taiko.

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“I let her get away again, that same “her” that has been haunting me since time became affixed to a calendar”.

I’ve never been good with timing. Always danced to the beat that I have in my own head. Sometimes its on point and its meshed with the things and people around me but for the most part, its just doing its own thing, wandering off and frolicking about without a care about anything else.

And there have been so many times that I’ve missed a beat on those instances where timing was so crucial. So many times that I “uprocked” when I should have been “waltzing”, so many right turns to right turns and foots bruised by careless trampling. If I could sum up most of human history’s woes, I would peg it to “bad timing” (and to that effect my own personal history).

Sometimes the bad timing can’t be helped, just the unfortunate collisions of the universe taking its course and other times its my inability or lack of motivation to take a step forward. And its those non-movements, that lack of inertia, that has slowly been building into a mountain of regrets for me. And before I can overcome that obstacle I have to careen down that slippery slope. Amen.

It’s starting again. The restlessness, the ambivalent feelings, the lost of control. My mind is racing again and my body is slowly starting to fall apart. Its been a long time since I’ve felt this way, back to a time 10 years ago when I started my endeavors in college. Back when my thoughts and emotions kept me up at night, stirring and agonizing in the darkness.

And now its back. Life has changed drastically for me. I’ve thrust myself into a new land, into the body of a young man, and the life of a wandering mercenary again. New friends, new experiences, new hobbies, and a somewhat new way of reacting to life. And so maybe this insomnia comes from that dreaded feeling, that feeling of being lost again. Not on an island, but amongst old emotions, buried secrets, and new adventures. (I think turning 28 has done some things to me).

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I’ve been having crazy dreams again. All the dreams have the same general theme and its a cue that I need to act on something within me. My subconscious, dream life is reaching out for a concrete solution to a problem that I wished didn’t exist. And some remedies come with too much cost, or at least to me.

Pham told me once “you don’t just like change, you love it and need it”.

And she’s right. As much as I’ve always wanted a life of stability and permanance, in the end my spirit or will or whatever drives me wants to see the walls around me crumble. In destruction, I am reborn and I can shed away the pain and regrets of the past. I can reinvent myself with the hindsight of someone seeing their own death. I can step away from my self-image and deconstruct what’s gives me passion and what drives me crazy.

And that change happens without my control. A “hurricane” that just envelopes me and I stand in the center waiting for the pieces to fall. The fragments that survive, I pick up and make the most of them. The broken ones I leave for the street sweepers. 2007 was a year of hurricanes, and global warming has tended to accelerate them.

So I’ll keep moving, staying in flux and hope that I burn out sooner than later. Brahma can’t always return from the dance of Shiva, and nor can I.

All the guests are gone. The extra blankets and pillows tucked back into the closet. Dishes and empty bottles left on the counter waiting to be cleaned and recycled. No more drives out to LA for party’s, chicken and waffle, and the beach. All the food tours are finished, the extra calories I’ll use as potential energy for upcoming days.

Back to my life, back to sorting out the mess . Back to training for a 1/2 marathon, with only four days left and illnesses to fight off. Back to just surviving because now that’s all I can do for this race and this life.

Thanks for all the good times, thanks for the moments and memories that will be burned in my heart as well as my stomach. It was a great Holiday month for me. I was “hardly working” so I was working hard at having fun.

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Got a new camera for Christmas. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted pictures on the blog or on Flickr. And since my greatest moments are always punctuated with great food, I’ll show you the food that made this holiday a success.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Day sobering up lunch with some “sober” bean before that.

Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle

Japanese Kana agrees that this is the best ramen in the world

La Palma Chicken Pie Shop, where time has stayed still since the 60s

Bunch of goof balls at my beloved Littlebean

Today is the official start of the National Novel Writing Month. Write 175 pages, 50,000 words by midnight of November 30th. Can I do it? We’ll see, I’ve always been about quantity in food but not so much in words, and NaNoWriMo is about a reckless abandon of craft for crap. Let’s see if I can do it. Mayhaps I’ll write my trashy romance novel that I’ve always dreamt of writing or that cutting expose on the rough streets of Orange County.

What are you going to write about?

I’ve been drinking a lot of Vietnamese coffee lately, partly because I love the sweet taste of condensed milk, partly because I need the wake up jolt, and partly because I’m addicted to stimulants.

My coffee of choice is from Banh Mi Che Cali, the little sandwich chain that pales in grandeur of Lee’s but makes up for it in cheaper prices and a more authentic feel and taste. Its the cheapest in town and the little sandwich shops are in all the right places.

On this particular day, while in line waiting to order my coffee, I watched as an older Vietnamese gentleman (and I say that loosely of all older Vietnamese men) ordered a Vietnamese coffee (cafe sua da) and some loaves of bread. When he received his caramel colored concoction he turns to the sandwich lady and said “Can I get sugar on this”. I smiled, surprised by his sweet-tooth inclination and watched as the sandwich lady double checked the request, smiling through her pent up laughter as she puts a spoonful of sugar on an already sweet drink. I smile at the sandwich lady and walk out with coffee in hand. Its the start of a new day and I need a jolt of life and hit of sweet tooth-decaying goodness (but not as tooth-decaying as that Vietnamese gentleman’s).

Dear Readers,

I’ve been gone for awhile and don’t really have an excuse… Um except that work and life had been wearing my creative brain down. And the longer I didn’t post, the harder it became to make a post. I wanted to see how long I could go on without being present on the Interweb. I wanted to see how long it would take before you cried out for my return (Thanks John). And I was just waiting for things to settle down once again.

Work has returned to a normal pace, slowed to the point where I can think clearly again. Its scary to think that I lost a few months of my brain from mental stress and physical abuse (sports). 

I’ll make the time once again to let you in on my life.

Sincerely,

Bob Nguyen

P.S. Let everyone know that I’m still alive.

I hung out with my brother this weekend in Oakland. We had some catching up to do so he decided to do it over fish burritos. We cruised over to 23rd and Fruitvale, a couple of lunch trucks parked on the corner, a man selling blankets and pillows nearby. On the ride I was upset at my brother for being insensitive, unthinking to his friend and his own brother. Things just never change.

We ordered the burritos, I was text messaging. Next thing I know my brother says “Hey Bob, watch out!”. Guys behind are arguing, pushing, being thugs. Lots of posturing and gesturing, bumping of chests but nothing real until I see the “steel” flashed. A gun was waved, cocked and I was transfixed in the moment, flew years back to a rougher times when this happened all the time in my own “hood”. I watched and knew everything would be okay.

We hid behind the taco truck, not wanting to leave. We were mad, that gang violence always hurts the innocent. In this case two brothers, hungry from struggling, might lose their burritos. The cops came, two guys ran out and were put on the asphalt. Like a movie it all unwound: more cars came, the street was blocked, the bad guys got away. We got our burritos.

“Hey should we eat these in your truck or somewhere else” Thien asked. I only knew one reply. “No, we’re already in the eye of the storm, nothing’s going to hurt us here”. We sat and ate, the burritos weren’t very good. The fish wasn’t crispy and the sour cream overpowered what little flavors the rest of the ingredients could muster up. We talked about another incidence that happened years ago to us and then we drove back, under concrete bridges and over dimly lit train tracks.