Ode to a Si Bak

I found out late last Wednesday that my kung fu si bak, Taky, had a heart attack on the preceeding Sunday and had to spend Wednesday on the operating table undergoing a quadruple bypass surgery. I think it was a little bit of a shock to everybody; he's one of the most amazing people I've ever met, really kind and a genuinely kindred spirit. He's also shorter than I am and can throw a man twice his size across the room, which makes him truly my hero; I've spent so long thinking that I and my stubby legs could never amount to anything remarkable, at least in terms of the martial arts. Taky, however, has proven me wrong, and has welcomed chubby little old me into his kung fu family with open arms. I would appreciate it if everyone would keep him in your thoughts and prayers: he's doing well and coming home from the hospital today, but he's in for a long recovery.

Ryan and Stephen went over a few days ago and completely redid si bak's room, laid all new carpet and everything, which I think was so sweet. I just hope that he's not so surprised he has another heart attack...

Strange Happenings

Adventures abound of late in the Emerald City, where early yesterday afternoon a man ran into our car - with himself - in the middle of the block on a congested road in the center of the U-district. We were in the turn lane, John driving and I in the passenger's seat, when all of a sudden a face and a hand cracked the windshield inches in front of me. He flew backward and hit his head on the pavement. He was trying to sprint across one of the busiest roads in Seattle in the middle of the block in really heavy traffic, and -um - he hit us. We think he must have been high or something because the minute the cops showed up he split down a side alley, leaving a trail of blood that was dripping from a golf-ball sized lump in the back of his head. We were lucky, though, that no one was more seriously hurt. The worst damage of all was sustained by the car; the windshield has a crack shaped like an arm and the side mirror was ripped off when he slammed into us.

Easily one of the creepiest, strangest things I've seen in a long time.

A Disclaimer

[The owner of this blog apologizes profusely for the gross, absurd, and utterly uncultured use of emoticons (i.e. :-) :-P :-S) in the title of the following post. She in no way condones the use of said emoticons, and begs you not to fill your e-mails with them when you write.]

Thank God for Student Loans :-P

It's here again: the three-weeks-til-finals-I'm-going-to-pull-my-hair-out time of the quarter. I go through this every single quarter, too. Right about this time I start wondering why I do this to myself, because, let's be honest, who deserves this kind of stress? Sometimes I wonder if there really exists, in some other possible world (to use the philosophical term), a place where people actually live on more than PB&J and don't have to pull all-nighters twice a week. And while we're on the subject, are there really people who speak Chinese? Fluently? And, more importantly, are there really people who understand it? If I hadn't seen and heard it for myself I'm not sure I'd believe it. Sometimes I still don't.

So the only thing I can say - and I can't believe I'm saying it - is thank heavens for the ridiculous amount of my student loans. It's at these times, when I swear up and down that I'm going to drop out of school and go find me a paper cup (v. the styrofoam; I'd even be environmentally responsible as a bum) and a nice street corner, that they come in handy: quite frankly, I can't afford to drop out of school. I just owe too stinking much money, and there's no way I could make the payments on a salary from McDonald's. (Not that I'd work there anyway; it's kind of an exaggeration for the sake of rhetoric.) So I guess this is a classic example of how your worst curse can be your biggest blessing.

Of course, ask me again when I'm finishing grad school and you may hear a far less good-natured opinion...

My Friend the Scarecrow

So the mood in Seattle, and especially in the U-district, has been decidedly somber of late, owing in part to John Kerry's loss of the election and the sudden and constant onslaught of midterms. I remember a day not so long gone when they were called midterms because they were in the middle of the term. Now I can't seem to be rid of them, even though I'm only taking three classes. I feel as though I'm in some creepy episode of the Twilight Zone. You know, the one where you just keep taking tests and taking tests and taking tests...

In the quest to cheer myself up I found myself stumbling into Scarecrow Video, this gigantic video store in Seattle that specializes in indie and foreign flicks. I am now officially in a perpetual state of bliss. They have more Chinese movies and bad Hong Kong kung fu flicks than I could watch in ten years, literally just walls and walls of them. I'll never be bored again.

Pixar Rules

So, as Johnny promised (without consulting me first, incidentally, which I think was a plot to coerce me into posting something), I will now say something about "The Incredibles." I don't know why he couldn't just do it - he saw it with me and I'm pretty sure that there wasn't anything that I noticed and he didn't - but I guess until he gets a little more confidence in his writing ability (like that'll happen; what, a programmer write?) I'm going to have to pick up the proverbial slack. I guess it helps that I'm only literally the biggest Pixar fan that ever did walk the face of the earth...

In short, um, Pixar rules. This movie was so cool. Kind of a generic cliche of a description, but it works so well for this one. I've been waiting for over a year to see it, and boy howdy was it worth the wait. The animation was amazing and the story cute (if not entirely cartoonish). Incidentally, this is also my one and only complaint about the movie: half the time I didn't even feel like I was watching a cartoon. It was more like a spinoff (is that one word or two?) of Spiderman or something. I think they're just trying to confuse us; with more live-action movies using computer graphics and computer animation looking more and more like live action, how are we supposed to know which direction is up anymore? It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

I'm more excited than ever now to see what Pixar will do with itself once it's shed the restrictive yolk of the Disney empire (Pixar's next film, "Cars," is slated to be its last under Mickey Mouse's domineering demands) and struck out on its own.