This morning yielded epic confusion. Just last night, I had gone for a run in rather warm temperate weather (suffering the respiratory slings and arrows of outrageous Colorado altitude and a 4 week sabbatical from aerobic activity).

And I woke up to 4 inches of snow. Absolutely phenomenal.

Labels: confusion, hamlet, snow

Spring Break ladies and gentlemen.

The original plan for this post was some nostalgic trip down the first-year-of-college-memory-lane, but after reading three notes about that exact topic while Facebook stalking this morning, I’ve decided to rethink my plan of action.

Instead of months whizzing by I’ll comment on the exact opposite-- painful seconds that stretch themselves into hours. Gut wrenching, stomach twisting moments that just make you want to squirm like you were fast asleep and some sick sick individual opened the morning blinds and yanked your warm primary-color-truck-blanket away.

As the story goes, one of my best friends back home, Seerat, was slated to depart to Costa Rica for a mission trip one hour after my flight back to Colorado was set to land. Refusing to surrender to the idea of not being reunited for another two months, the master plan was to pray for no delays, dash off of the plane, and somehow make it to her gate before she departed. Amazingly enough, my United Airlines flight actually arrived early. Nonetheless, Murphy’s Law kicked into gear and my plane was stuck behind another occupying our gate.

The direct quote was that, “The plane ahead of us needs a few more minutes to realign its inertials…”

What the hell are inertials? And why couldn’t they just be good little inertials, and align like all of the other inertials just for tonight? As I was delayed for 20 minutes, mere feet away from a destination I had flown hundreds of miles to grasp, I just sat there, impatiently, torturously rocking back and forth as if I’d been holding a bathroom run for days.

However, all turned out peachy keen. Post-inertial-realignment, I raced into the terminal en route to gate B27 where Seerat’s plane was slated to take off from. In the midst of my commotion I most definitely ran right past her. After calling and realizing we had dashed right past one another to the opposite gates, I spotted her fifty meters away, threw my backpack to the side and in classic Hugh Grant chick flick fashion, I subtly braced as she jumped into my arms at full speed.

I was finally home.

Labels: airport, inertials, reunited

I was studying some Engineering 45 with David, Simon, and Hillary the other day and in a desperate struggle to discover a blog-worthy topic David started me on the topic of meeting someone that reminds you of a past acquaintance. I’m not sure if it’s more than the average individual, but I remind people of … other people… a lot. This week I’ve reminded someone of a friend back home, another of a cooler version of his brother, another of her current long distance boyfriend. In short, I’m basically everywhere.

Really, I do have a fear that I will meet someone exactly like me. Everyone wants to be special… just like everyone else. My mother tells me I’m unique but that’s little comfort. It just bends back to this sibling-rivalry inducing manifestation of owning at least one thing in this world. When all else fails you can find comfort in the fact that whatever faults you may possess they can be shaped into your individuality (good thing, I’m way more awesome than my brother as well.)

It wouldn’t be all fun and games to meet your clone. Sure you may think, “Ooh, the most-perfectest friend ever, we will like the same foods, play the same games, watch the same movies… Ooh!” Yeah, but no. A perfect mirror image of myself would be nothing more than a thunder stealing, parade raining, words out of my mouth taking, dream crusher. A product so horrible, a product solely designed to perfectly compete with me on every level just pushing you with his pudgy index finger into the ground like the little jackass in the third grade who would steal your newly sharpened pencils just to break off the tips and call you a mommy-loving-pansy if you told.

It’s even made it to the point that if I spot an individual that I feel might be the perfect Kevin replication I shudder in fear, and automatically add Johnny Jerkhole to my mental hate-mail address book. I’m such a fan of complementary friends. People of the exact opposite in nature with just the right core values the same. People that stretch your imagination, people that make you grow and open you up.

But to be perfectly honest, I’m really exaggerating. All of you prepubescent identity-searching teenagers reading today’s blog shouldn’t take the previous words to heart. The truth is, if you can’t beat that thunder stealing, parade raining, words out of your mouth stealing, dream crusher, join him. Join him, and fuse into one super-self that emanates your (Insert Name Here)-ness to the umpteenth level, rendering you invincibly awesome. You may be afraid during the onset, it’s like a rival gang of hoodlums cruising on your turf, totally understandable. But how many times has hatred of rival hoodlum gangs and barricading individuals from entering your space ever worked?

My Engineering 45 professor today told me a story about some warlord who attempted to invade India 16 times, and finally succeeded on the 17^th try. Entirely random? Yes. Historically correct? Questionable. But, Chaos Theory man. Ian from the first Jurassic Park said it best as he describes nature’s innate ability to utterly own our futile attempts to block out our surroundings.

So the lesson is simple. Clones may seem scary. And they are. But they’re not all bad. Unless they’re the bad kind.

Labels: clones, fear, rivals

I guess it's about time I share this with my blogging world. The population of my hometown, and more or less 11,000 people on Google Video have stumbled on this. What started as a last minute birthday present for my older brother conceived in all it's juvenile, idiotic, awesome beauty at 1am on a lonely Saturday night... still is a perfect juvenile, idiotic, awesome representation of me. Love it, hate it, laugh at it, laugh at me, all is welcome.

That's me. Wearing pants contrary to popular belief.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1118859171031199390&q=kiwimonk&hl=en

A few summers ago I embarked on this epic summer camp to Tarragona, Spain for a Spanish Language Immersion camp that really my mother simply found online and without hesitation signed me up for. The intense “numa-numa” song dancing, crazy roommate butterfly knife wielding, insane bull fighting stories can be saved for another time. But I can vividly remember, waiting at the airport with my parents, scared out of my freaking mind prior to takeoff, pushing some Panda-Express Chinese food around in my white carton before boarding the plane. To ease my anxiety I of course grabbed a Fortune Cookie hoping that it would say, “Your summer camp in Spain will be incredibly awesome and you will fall in love with the girl of your dreams.”

It didn’t.

But as I ate the cookie before opening the fortune (of course) I slowly unwrapped the cheap white paper to read in red capital letters,

“NEVER LET AN OPPORTUNITY PASS YOU BY. Your lucky numbers are….”

Cheesy, and generic as it may have been, I proceeded to have the time of my life in Spain with that attitude and if you open my wallet I still have that fortune to this day.

I’m not bothered by many things. Apart from holding the door for people without a nod to signify my existence, I’m an easy going guy. But what kills me, what scrunches my stomach into knots, what makes me fidget like a little school boy who has had to go to the bathroom for the past hour but can’t because he has no more of Mrs. Lewis’ damn yellow paper bathroom passes left, is knowing I missed a golden opportunity--a chance for knowledge, a chance for growth, a chance for opening doors, a chance for having an incredible experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jumping into every house window I hear a party emanating from, and I’ve turned down plenty of joyous nights to relish in some much needed studying, but if I know my time hasn’t been spent well, it gets to me.

It’s what pains me the most but it’s essentially what makes me tick. I wake up every morning knowing that every one of my choices directly affects my route and shapes that of others. Just sometimes, it remains difficult to sleep if I don’t choose well.

Maybe I should just read more fortune cookies…

Labels: carpe diem, fortune cookie

Awkward conversations are like imminent train-wrecks.

It’s a vicious cycle. It starts like any run of the mill day at the local deadly railroad crossing—an amiable hello, a gesture towards conversation. And before you know it the trains are approaching from opposite directions and you’re this innocent 7-year-old in pink frog-print footsie pajamas and swimming arm floaties (of course) standing on the tracks looking each way back and forth frantically.

Left. Right. Left. Oh my God Right again.

You start trying to think of some elaborate plan to stop the catastrophic occurrence, some witty statement, some leading question, and by the time you realize that you’ve been reincarnated into a toddler standing alone in embarrassing PJ’s and obstreperous swim gear, you have no freaking clue how to save not only yourself but the desperate passengers along for the ride. The world is on your shoulders and then you hit the comprehension wall once again as you suddenly realize that in the midst of pitiful ponderings to prevent disaster, you’ve committed the worst mistake—you haven’t listened at all to what your friend had to say. The trains come barreling full speed with only the slightest flinch on the breaks from your futile attempts at saving this sorry excuse for human interaction and instead of an erupting collision it’s something worse.

Awkward silence.

Well, now I that I said it, I guess it’s not that bad.

Labels: awkward, conversations

The infamous Dane Cook, comedian and ridiculous human being, put it best when he proclaimed to a live audience, “Any man would turn down sex to be part of a heist.”

I thought about this recently. It was one of those fleeting moments just before falling asleep when I predicted my mind would be cluttered with various worries but instead my brain found it advantageous to become preoccupied with the prospect of masterminding an epic heist. Stemming a little bit from my previously detailed dream, (infiltrating the Forbidden City to prove my innocence to the emperor’s hot daughter) apart from the whole spending chunks of my life in prison, being a criminal would be awesome.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the smash and grab 7-11 doofus, I’m talking Sean-Connery-smooth intellectually and physically agile Rico Suave of the crime world--someone smooth, someone adaptive, someone brilliantly staggering from every angle of cool imaginable.

Of course I would have to follow through with 3 heists. The first would take intricate planning to assemble my crew of elite, ethnically diverse, fine tuned individuals. We would all have code names. They wouldn’t be treated as code names though, they’d be seen as nicknames with that code name awesomeness attached in passing--names like Wheelman, Locks, Jinx, Jerome… And we’d have to talk incredibly quickly in almost an entire set of inside jokes so each seemed almost like brother who could understand you even when you mumbled some incoherent sound while shoving food down your mouth.

I digress, but we’d obviously have to succeed in our first mission. Without a hitch, we’d engage in an elaborate scheme of diversions, and diversion diversions pulling off our perfectly orchestrated heist like a well choreographed dance. We’d steal something valuable and tangible, like a large diamond or priceless carved head-mask perhaps.

As would definitely follow, during the second heist someone would be found a traitor who we’d leave for the cops and of course in the third heist we’d be caught. Not because of a slip up, but because of the dude who was a traitor snitching on us my posse would be caught. However, miraculously my team of the world’s finest would eventually find an elaborate governmental loop hole letting us escape with millions hiding in some foreign bank account.

And that would be that. Honestly, is it really any competition at all? Sex, or a year long ungodly righteous adventure of moderately dangerous escapades accompanied by the most talented deceivers in bodily existence as well as millions in a Swiss account?

Decision? I think not.

Labels: criminal, dane cook, heist

I was entertaining a long awaited romantic dinner with Aditi tonight. After gorging on Pad Thai and en route to a shared donut-chocolate milk combo dessert, the conversation turned to the fact that I continually see myself as if I’m still in the 7^th grade. It’s most definitely true.

It’s odd. Age is a completely relative concept to me. Take my brother, Jeff for instance. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I am entirely convinced that my 24 year old big bro is still a sophomore in high school. Something about those times, the idea that he was genetically designed to provide advice about topics that always end up appearing trivial when I look back upon them. Before it was a crippling fear about entering Middle School and getting shoved in a locker, then it was learning how to trick people into believing I could dance at Freshman Homecoming, and now it’s transitioning into the college realm--My stresses inevitably end up seeming frivolous yet my brother was there to guide me through them as if they were some life-changing obstacle.

My good friends are undoubtedly all still stuck in the 7^th grade with me. The idea of finding the most inexplicable mouth-watering spine-tingling uncontrollably-jump-for-joying elation in linking 4 Slip & Slides together doesn’t exactly seem like a collegiate norm (well, maybe.) This Tuesday I turned 19 and it was the first year since the third grade that I didn’t spend the night with 7 of my guy friends eating mom’s casserole, playing video games, and engaging in cut-throat no-holds-bar tag games of “Go-Home Stay-Home” in my backyard.

I’m a big kid, and in some senses I intend to remain that way. At times I feel that maturity is some cultural creation produced by teenage girls to belittle prepubescent boys (at least that’s my excuse). Maturity comes with understanding and experience. Maturity comes with the basic yet evasively complex comprehension that there are in fact other people in this world that fight through an entirely unique set of goals, triumphs, and failures. It sure as hell isn’t measured on a scale of what I do in my spare time.

Some people are mother-types, you know the feeling. It’s easy to spot when you’re around them. Some are teachers, some are brothers, some are leaders, and some just have that deeply rooted giggly childish life-loving attitude that finds a way to shine at least the tiniest bit in all situations. I’m not saying I’ll always be stuck in a perpetual adolescent hormonal mood swing, it’s just a part of myself and an integral quality of all the people I surround myself with. And I hope it doesn’t leave anytime soon.

With a sigh, Aditi replied with the thought that she felt like she’ll always be in the 3rd grade. There’s absolutely, undeniably, most definitely nothing wrong with that.

My mom signed me up for Piano lessons when I was 4. It was expected, my brother had been playing piano since inside the womb and it just seemed fitting that I would follow suit. In all honesty, I didn’t really have the traditional Asian kid piano prodigy experience.

I never had the metronome driven Piano teacher Nazi. I only practiced about 15 minutes before my weekly lesson… But I fended pretty well, I’ve had the pleasure of playing through the pages of the classical staples— Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”, Bach’s “Solfeggietto.” It wasn’t until senior year that I finally started appreciating tickling the ivories. A shame really but what can I say.

I sat down in the music rooms today and spent some time with the piano. There’s something about making music rooted in your own passion—a lesson so many realized so early, a lesson that took me 19 years (actually to the date) to realize. Getting lost in the sounds, losing yourself in the movement of the keys under your fingers as if they were an extension of your body moving under reflex, it’s something I wish I had always relished in.

I plan to get back into it, nothing too unrealistic, just a half hour here and there with a new appreciation for the opportunity I’ve always had. Hopefully, I’ll have space for a keyboard in my room next year wherever I end up. Maybe Taylor and I will finally be able to start that 80s cover band…

Exhibit A:

*ring ring*

Me: “Harrow?”

Brother: “So uh… I need you to measure your head circumference for me. And your address to send the birthday package from Israel.”

It’s been awhile.

Like a real man, I attempted to maintain a written journal for a short period of time. I got into one of those modes, “Yeah, I’ll totally write in here all the time, like everyday… that way I’ll basically have a record of my entire life.” Nevertheless, the next time I flipped it open I looked at the previous entry’s date and saw that it was over a year old… Yeah…. That worked out.

But I still maintain a kind of pseudo-digital-journal on my computer. I have a feeling that’s why blogging didn’t seem like too much of a stretch for me. On a whim every now and then I’d feel it necessary to write (type) some words down. From pre-summer-camp butterflies to swarming mind infesting worries about my 7^th grade crushes there are some quality works in there. The first brilliant piece dates back to Christmas 1998.

“December98

This is my first day on my journal. The day started out kinda scary because it was my first day of basketball camp. It was OK. A little sad because everybody on my scrimmage team was pretty bad. I guess their parents found out that they were bad so they sent them to this camp. When I came home I played Zelda. I feel a little bit mad at my brother because he won’t let me play. He says I play too much. Well I have to, to get past something. Jeff just asks me and gets help and gets farther. David came over today. We made a sledding course. It was cool. We built it on the gravel driveway. Then we played Blitz. Here I am now typing my journal.”

Don’t act like you’re not impressed. The excerpt really does speak for itself and honestly not much has changed. Except I don’t play basketball anymore, but I still get pissed off at Jeff when he gets ahead of me in Zelda. Ass.

In all honesty, that’s really the first time I’ve let anyone read my coveted piece of literary artwork and hopefully they’ll be more rich passages to come. I’ve been off the blogging circuit for a few days now. As Taylor put it so eloquently, the last week or so was “action-packed” -- filled with all types of academic awesome. But I’m back for the time being. Starting now I’ll blog every day, that way I’ll have an online chronological record of my entire college life…

Nah.