Tag: dialogue

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personal

Brighten

Location: 15:00 yest, taking these pics
Mood: hella beat
Music: wanna bathe you in the light of day

Seagull standing on Brighton Beach

Started the day talking myself outta one parking ticket but not the other. Stupid parking/driving rules.

Heard that before Brooklyn became parta NYC in 1898, it was like the 11th largest city in the nation or somethin like that.

Gotta believe it cause I got crazy lost out there today. Ended up on Brighton Beach where every street seems to be named Brighton.

This empty parking spot came up on my left so I figured it was a sign and pulled in.

Stepped out and stood on the beach looking at the blue sky. Thought to myself that my city’s really got it all. Snapped a coupla pics and slid back into my car for 90 minutes of traffic to go 19 miles. My day got better brightened after that.

Rushed home to spend my night with my girl for the first time in a while. Not exactly as I hoped.

Check that. NYC’s got it all cept for reasonable driving and parking. Sides that, we got it all.

Seagull swooping down in Brighton Beach

Him: This is different, I really like her.
Me: You always say that, and you always really like them.
Him: Come on, this’s different. Few people ever do what we did. (pause) OK, you did but besides you…
Me: Everybody thinks their thing’s special. Maybe it is, but give it time to find out.

There’re plentya times people think something’s something, but turns out to be a whole lotta nuthin.

Girl sitting by herself on a park bench in Brighton Beach

YASYCTAI: Go to another parta town y’always said you’d go to. (120 mins/1 pt)

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personal

Not out to hurt nobody

Location: 18:00 yest, finishing the appetizer in LI
Mood: sympathetic
Music: Hey Abigail, I know your day has been hell

My friend’s having a bad day so I rang her. Wanted to tell her that daylight comes after the dark. Didn’t get the chance. It’s not a platitude, just simple truth. Hopefully she still reads me.

———-

Her:…left of the overpass. There’s usually parking there.
Me: Got it. Oh and it’s a trestle not an overpass cause it’s for a train not car. Just thought y’should know…
Brother: (muttering in passenger seat) It’s troubling that you know that.
My brother came to visit me over the weekend so gave him the keys to my apartment. I’ve three doors and never lock the third one. But for some inexplicable reason, locked it.

So the poor guy was outside in the cold at 5AM for two hours. He called WM who insisted on driving in from across the river, to drop him off at the ‘rents. Took about an hour.

Both said it wasn’t a big deal. They’re just too nice t’get mad at me. S’ok, I’m mad at myself.

———-

Her: Long Island? Why are you taking a class in Long Island?
Me: They have a steak dinner afterward.
Her: You’re going all the way out to Long Island just for that?
Me: Did y’not hear what I said? They have a steak dinner afterward.
Her: But it’s all the way out…
Me: (slowly) Steak…dinner.

YASYCTAI: Learn the difference between a dash, an em-dash, an en-dash, & a hyphen – note that y’may be a huge nerd. (60 mins/1 pt)
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personal

Support

The clock in front of Lincoln Center

KG Betty called me tonight from Korea to tell me the news.

Me: $50,000?! How big is something like that?
Her: Three carats.
Me: Jeez! Considering how short you are, y’should just wear it around your neck. Like Flavor Flav.

OK, I didn’t say the Flavor Flav line, but I totally wanted to.

———-

Different conversation with a different woman.

Her: Did your parents support your decisions growing up?
Me: Well, not so much during the 80s, 90s and 2000s. (pause) But I’m hoping this year’ll be different.
Her: (pause then laughter)

They’ve actually always been mostly supportive of the truly questionable decisions my siblings and I’ve made in our past. Which is not to say they weren’t typical in some respects, like our education, but they gave us a good amount of latitude. For that, I’m grateful.

My pastor once said that everything in our lives can be traced back to being born to the parents we were born to. That’s so true – imagine your life if you were born to a Somalian farmer or a North Korean soldier.

My brother called me recently in the middle of the night. Apparently, my dad got lost. The thing is, he doesn’t get lost. He just doesn’t. Especially not in near home.

It’s a small thing, yeah. But it bothers me greatly.

Me: Y’ok?
Him: Me? Don’t worry, I’m fine. I just got a little…confused.
Me: (pause) Hey, I’m gonna come home for dinner this weekend.
Him: Oh, that’s great! I’ll cook.
Me: (slowly) Yeah, sounds great…

Location: inside all day
Mood: guilty
Music: You and me got so much to prove (Spotify)

Categories
personal

Public Service Announcement 2009

How to learn a foreign language as an adult

Workmen fixing an escalator in a metro station in Washington DC

For those of you that speak geek: Spent the last 96 hours figuring out why I only got three clear QAM channels – turns out a weak signal and a kinked coax cable will waste four days of your life.

Picked up a signal amplifier, and some new cable and now I’m in business.

Knee-deep in cables, chili and rum. It’s the only way for a geek to spend Labor Day

———-

Speaking of speaking in a foreign language, Federico Fellini once said that, “A different language is a different vision of life.”

As promised and as a supplement to last year.

One of the things about being Chinese-American is that a vast majority of my friends are at least bilingual. Heartgirl and KG Betty speak several.

Me? Was always crappy at languages. My French teacher gave me a good grade for the effort. Hate pity so decided to learn how to be a good language student in college. Didn’t work.

Funny thing’s that the guy that teaches me how to break people’s arms also told me how to learn a language way back when.

Part 1 – from R. Dreifuss (doctoral candidate at Columbia U. and general bad-ass)

See, he said, they always teach language the wrong way in school. Every language’s has the same things, the same patterns. Once you learn the patterns, you just need the words to go into that pattern.

Once you have the patterns down, you need only learn the vocabulary that goes into the patterns.

English: “(noun) is better than (noun).”
German: “(noun) ist besser als (noun).”
Mandarin: “(noun) bi (noun) hao.”English: “Rum is better than beer.”
German: “Rum ist besser als Bier.”
Mandarin: “Rum bi beer hao.”

 

Part Two – From Barry Farber

Believe, truly believe, that language isn’t the words you read/write. It’s the words you hear/say.

Take the word Knife.

We say, nigh-feh but it’s supposed to sound like, ka-ni-fee – cause that’s how it’s spelled. Put it another way, the letters k-n-i-f-e just makes a picture that prompts us to say nigh-feh.

More eloquently, the written word is merely the symbolic representation of the language – it is not the language itself.

So stop learning how to read/write and concentrate on learning how to communicate.

I’m illiterate in Chinese, German, and, if you read this blog, English. Doesn’t matter. You understand what I’m trying to say. Which brings me to…

 

Part Three – From me/NLP

Language isn’t what y’say. It’s what the listener hears.

If you want to learn a language, pick up the Pimsleur series and supplement it with the Living Language series six months after you’ve started the Pimsleur series.

Good luck.
Viel Glueck.
Jia yo.

Man, all of this talk about rum…

Location: my front room
Mood: rum-obsessed
Music: Pour rentrer dans les soirées célib à 30 ans

Categories
personal

Twilight Heat

Location: my new Montreal Apartment, cleaning and unpacking. The Montreal movers I hired did a grat job, so my work is almost done.
Mood: contented
Music: “Come down now,” but we’ll stay I’ve tried my best to leave


Her: So what did the guy choose?

My mind plays movies and television shows for me all of time cause, probably like you, I was raised by the cathode ray as much as anything else.

William Shatner was in this episode of the Twilight Zone where he was on his honeymoon but was afraid to leave cause a mechanical doll kept telling them they couldn’t. And he got it in his head that it was right.

Thought about that this week and that scene in Heat where the lead can get it all – the girl, the money, the life, everything – if only he’d leave his old life behind. Just walk away from everything. But a need to equalize something kept pulling him to stay.

The woman that stole all of my coin was seen this past week in NYC.

And like that mechanical doll, the Devil rang me up and told me what I had to do.

Told him that I just wanted to walk away from it all and he said I couldn’t.

Do you know, exactly, what a billion is? A billion is a thousand million or 1,000,000,000. Lehman brothers lost 613,000,000,000 dollars. Kinda puts my six-figures to shame.

Then again, it was my six-figures. One does get tired of having just chili and rum for dinner all of time.

It’s just the cards I’ve been dealt. And sometimes, y’gotta take your cards and let fate deal with the resta it all.

Don’t let anyone fool you, everything comes at a price. And, I’ve learned, if you let a thought bounce around in your head long enough, it’ll drive you mad. Quite literally. Better to let it go.

Besides, who’re we kidding? I love having chili and rum for dinner.

Me: He went back and shot the guy.
Her: (waiting) And? Then what happened?
Me: He lost everything he wanted – everything he really wanted.
Her: I don’t think it’s worth it.
Me: (smiling) Yeah, me neither.


YASYCTAI: Isn’t it hard to let things go. But y’gotta sometimes. For your own sanity. (apparently 36 years/3 pts)

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personal

More Cowboys

Me on a toy

 

Me: Hey, step outside with me for a sec.
Him: Sure. What’s up?
Me: Just wanted to say thanks. When I was going through my breakup, thoughta what you told me about your divorce. How you came back one day to find an empty house. Was nice knowing that you survived the blow.
Him: (grinning) Glad I could help.
Me: Y’know, actually hoped it was you she was seeing behind my back. (laughing) Least you’re a decent fella, a successful lawyer and not half-bad looking.
Him: (laughing) Com’on, I think our ladies’re waiting.

Now, where were we?

A while back, wrote about cowboys. Seems every seven years, you lose more than half of your friends. The person you think of as your best friend only has a 30% chance of staying in that role.

One guy that made the cut was my buddy Steel; he got hitched in Central Park this past weekend. Appetizers included whole lobsters. That was the appetizer. Need to get invited to more weddings like that.

Steel’s like all of my good friends. Never really see them; we don’t interact much. But he knows that I’m onea the few people in the world he can always count on and vice versa. We’re different races but the same people.

That’s one of the main things about the Jaycee Dugard case makes me ill. Cause in addition to all of the sick things she had to go through – and they were seriously sick – she didn’t have her people. She didn’t have a family or friends. Real ones, I mean. What a terribly lonely way to go through life. Couldn’t sleep causa it.

Yet another reason, think I’m blessed – our dumb luck.

Speaking of blessed, thanks for the concern but said I was coming back, didn’t I?

If you read me, gotta think that there’s a good chance you’re onea my people too, yeah? Let’s face it, this is hardly an interesting blog and I’m not a scantily clad chick. But I suppose you read cause something I say makes sense to you.

Ergo, we gotta stick together.

Clumsy, geeky, optimistic dreamers’re rarer than y’might think in this world.

Lobster in Central Park!
Steel getting married

Location: 16:00 yest, my kitchen floor, scrubbing
Mood: concerned
Music: Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

Categories
personal

The SOOR

A basketball court on a NYC rooftop

Me: Realized why I don’t wear flip-flops out. Think it’s cause when I was a kid, used to and then when the other kids tried to beat me up, couldn’t run away fast enough.
Her: (immediately) Oh don’t worry, I’ll protect you now.
Went drinking with Nadi and Paul at his pad this past Saturday. Quite something when you start drinking at 5PM and call it a night at 10.

Things have been pretty good these days; clients’re slowly coming out of the woodwork. Been busy lately, not so must busy with coin production so much as busy with preparation for coin production.

Eh, tomayto, tomahto…

———-

Him: Gonna have the talk with her today, wish us luck.

Got no fewer than four friends that’ve had the SOOR (Status Of Our Relationship) talk.

Two got their walking papers, one got conditional employment, one got a permanent position – though, really, all good relationships’re temp-to-perm at some point, yeah?

Think maybe that’s why I was upset with onea my friends. Cause I felt like he already filled the position with some imaginary person and was just stringing the contestant along. But he says he wasn’t and he’s an honest fellow.

Frank Sinatra had this song I heard once where he said something like, doesn’t matter if you’re the dumper or the dumpee, sucks either way. Or not.

———-

Me: Can’t do it, my finger’s broken.
Him: (rolling eyes) Somethings always broken on you…

Lost my health insurance. This means no wrestling for me for now.

Still gonna fence though – grown men stabbing each other with pointy things, what could go wrong there?

Location: apparently Dante’s eighth circle
Mood: goodness, so hot
Music: been looking for something else. Duel it
YASYCTAI: Help me find that Frank Sinatra song! (60 mins/1 pt)

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personal

No, not that Matthew Perry…

Location: 14:00 yest, melting at 14th Street
Mood: still #@$@#$@# hot
Music: Callin all nations To put it on the line

Police cars near the PATH station in downtown NYC
Her: Cruise’s a good actor. I mean, when he plays a character, he’s that character. Not like…like Claire Danes or Matthew Perry, who just play themselves every time.

Obviously I’m a history nerd in addition to being a tech one. It’s the truest expression of egalitarianism, cause people do the same thing over and over regardless of race, creed or religion.

People’re people, world around. And people’re not sane, world around.

People think that Asia didn’t have guns way back then. They did. The Japanese has it as far back as the 16th Century but they pretty much banned it around the 17th century. Which woulda been great except fast forward to March 31, 1854, when Matthew Perry (not that Matthew Perry) sailed into Japan with a crapton of guns.

Last Thursday, the Hiroshima mayor backed Obama’s call to get ridda all nuclear bombs by 2020. Which would be great if everyone was sane. They’re not.

Scarier is that these not sane people find each other and toss their not sane ideas back and forth. 1970’s Cambodia, 1930’s Germany, Saudi Arabia, North Korea – these’re whole countries with people not operating with a full deck at the helm.

Look I’m a pacifist. But the problem with most people is that they think, “Well, I wouldn’t do that.” That’s a dangerous thing to think. Cause most people don’t do what you’d do – they do what they’d do.

———-

Finally feels like August in the big city; I need a slip-n-slide like below.
Cannot wait for the fall…

YASYCTAI: Have you been in the water yet this summer? Y’gotta…(40 mins/0.5 pts)

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personal

Beautiful plans

Trying to be better

woolworth building, solitary man

 

Him: Ran into your ex the other day…she didn’t really want to talk about what happened with you two.
Me: Don’t blame her – wasn’t our best moment, if you will.
Him: You don’t hate her?
Me: (thinking) Put it this way – if you were a 31 year-old chick in a happy, stable, relationship, would you throw it all away on some meaningless flings? In other words, how much of a ______ would I have to be for her to do that? Wasn’t our best moment. Wasn’t my best moment. But I’m trying to be better.

Her: He and I were married 10 years. Now we’re not. I had all these plans…
Me: Yeah, you had all these beautiful plans. Now you gotta come up with new ones. And you will. Right now, y’think of them every minute yeah? But in a while, it’ll be every other minute. Then it’ll be every other hour. One day you’ll realize, y’didn’t think of them, or him, all day. Then someday months’ll go by when you don’t think of them.
Her: I can’t imagine that…
Me: That’s what I thought.

Since I’m probably older than you, two random thinks I’ve learned:

———-

Had a condo board meeting today. Tried several times to resign as president. Nope. It’s like being in the mafia. Damn that Asian work ethic…

Location: 20:00, yest, leather couch on 73rd
Mood: still hot
Music: I was following though with my beautiful plans

Categories
personal

DC Fat Darrell

 

Skip the first 30 seconds.

Weird thing was that I wrote a short story about a decade ago about a fairy godmother that I swear I told him about. But his version and mine’re vastly different.

Lemme know whatcha think.

Subway metro in Washington DC

Got a call at 1AM the other night from the girlie that I chatted to on a Gramercy stoop. She said I was one of the only people she trusted not to screw her over. Took that to heart and stayed awake to talk to her.

Her: So what do I do about him?
Me: Look, we all got this map of the world in our heads. And emotional pain happens when your reality doesn’t match your map. It’s like if you expect Broadway to be somewhere cause the map says so, but it’s not. So you’re thinking, WTH?
Her: So what do I do?
Me: (sighing) Y’only got three choices: change your map, change your reality or keep crying.
Downtown skyline

Question: What’s the only mammal that can’t jump?

Went to a house party on a roof the other night. Something about the NYC skyline y’can’t get elsewhere. But went to DC afterward anyway.

DC was nice. Hot. Very hot. Spent mosta the time in the museums: Natural History and American History. Place was packed; kinda gives y’hope about the future if the museums’re packed, yeah?

Managed to score a suite at the GWU Inn; had a view of Watergate. Ugly as sin.

The room was a suite cause it had a stove and fridge, meaning that we loaded up at the Trader’s Joe around the way. Then, on the way back, stopped off at Rutgers to get a Fat Darrell.

View from room to Watergate

Felt like a tubster so wrestled today. If one’s 36 with a broken middle finger, injured neck, and tennis elbow, you’d think one’d not wrestle with 20-year olds at 99% humidity.

Then again, making good choices isn’t my thing.

Anywho, a client finally called me today. Heading upstate tomorrow to try to make some scratch.

Oh, and…elephant.

Rutgers Fat Darrell

 

Location: 12:00, getting pinned on 27th
Mood: hot
Music: let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France