one last time, Billy

Billy Mays
(July 20, 1958 – June 28, 2009)

after hearing the news, i figured i should do my good part and include my own little tribute to the late, great pitchman, Billy Mays.

most of you who might read this and are not familiar with American advertising won't really know who this is; but for millions of us simple stupid folk (and especially for us late-nite american tv-viewers) Billy Mays was a staple figure in countless commercials that would appear for years to come, always trying to get us to buy that Oxi-Clean crap, and later on dozens of other products that he was more than eager to sell. boisterous vocals, sky-blue shirts, and his savvy showman skills, this guy was more american than apple pie, with more energy than a barrel of caffeinated monkeys.

but i gotta admit: this guy could really sell stuff. he had enough chops and charisma to make any product look good, and its no surprise that he became a household name. after i saw Anthony Sullivan appear on the scene, i already suspected a little friendly rivalry between a pair of pitchmen, each one competing to see who could out-sell the other. and i wasn't surprised at all when they decided to make a show together, aptly titled "Pitchmen", a great series that will now end prematurely with Billy's untimely passing. Sullivan himself even had heartfelt thoughts expressing how much he will miss his business partner and best friend:

{quoted from the wikipedia article on Anthony Sullivan}

~ During the special "Pitchman: A Tribute to Billy Mays" Sullivan broke down in tears as he talked about his former partner and best friend saying "I don't even want to try and pretend to fill Billy's shoes, he's my best friend, he's like a brother. What's next for me is I have pull myself together, I have to pull the crew together, I gotta be strong and we gotta go on. You lit up my life. You lit up my life from the minute I met you, from the first time we worked together. I loved watching you work, I'm gonna miss you so much buddy. I'm gonna miss you saying 'Hi Billy Mays here!' You don't know how much I'm going to miss that. You're like a brother to me, man. I love you, rest in peace." ~


Billy Mays was good at what he did. he was good people. and now the the U.S. mourns the loss of another beloved individual in the world.

i could just imagine him entering the pearly gates upstairs, perhaps it would be the first thing God will hear when he invites him into heaven: "hi, Billy Mays here!"



rest in peace, brother. you will be missed.

a phoenix entry

alright, its time to resurrect things around here....haven't placed a blog entry here since i was still in Tokyo, and it seems fitting i should start putting more thoughts into this site. i might even be able to use it for purposes i haven't conceived of yet.

just a brief couple of things....been in a period of transition ever since i arrived back home. i feel like that burned out hero from the old-school NES game, Faxanadu: when he arrives back at the elf town of Eolis, this text pops up and he says, "i came home to find everything gone, the walls crumbling, and the town deserted. i wonder what happen...."

well, my hometown is surely not crumbling [yet], but i do have to ask--just what the hell happen? swine flu, bad recession, shops out of business, and people losing jobs....soon this place will turn into Eolis for all i know, perhaps those stupid one-eyed monsters hopping around on 2 legs will start showing up as well, lol~~

anyways, the transition continues. i've been home for a few months, and i hate it like hell. my best friend whom i finally reconnected with after so long, well she suddenly doesn't feel like writing to me anymore, and i have no idea why. i was recently diagnosed with a mild form of bipolar disorder, the clinical term for it would be 'cyclothymia'....now i'm on doctor's prescription of "happy pills" which may or may not have much of an effect. and i'm currently in that irritating, stagnant position where i'm not employed but still need money.

good news is that my taiwanese friend is now my so-called business partner, and helping her to create a website for her marketing company is keeping me productive each day. maybe too productive since i'm spending all of my time now writing HTML tags, creating page files, and reading up on CSS and Javascript....all without taking a single college course on the subject, lol!

i'm also making final preparations on my new apartment, located in Bellingham, WA. a much better town by any standard, and also the location of the college i will be attending soon, Western Washington University. that will surely make up for lost time and expense after my disappointing tenure at TUJ. so in just a few months, i will have a new home, a new school, and new adventures to look forward to~~

moving to bellingham will not only make me happier, but also the town and college campus are inspiring beyond words! everytime i make visits there, ideas just collide together like sliding glaciers ~ i really can't wait to get settled in there, and perhaps this will be my chance to surely finish arts and writings that are begging to be completed. its been nice as well to meet a couple new online friends, discussing new ideas, finding alternative perspectives, and generally making idle conversation. rather invigorating too, helps keep inner strength with the flow of those happy little endorphines in my sluggish brain.

...however....nobody could ever replace my kindred spirit......i really miss her right now......

the web design is opening up new project ideas, including the creating of a new venture with a fellow acquaintance from Friendster. also i've been contemplating new uses for certain webpages i still have, notably Elftown which i might convert into a showcase site for the art concept i wanted to create: jungle punk. more on that later.

thats most of it for now. i'm excited about my impending move to B'ham, with a new place to live and a new college that i certainly will graduate from in the near future. i'm feeling little lost without my best friend at the moment; but i can only pray she is doing well and is having a good time with her own studies as well. i'm striving to become a successful person so that i may someday visit her in Malaysia soon.

i made a promise to her, and as God is my witness i intend to keep it.

old friendships, and new blessings.

adventures past, and future goals.

moving from one place to another, and always fighting forward.

as they like to say, "c'est la vie". as i like to say, "life is funny".
i just hope it will be more promising in the near future.

for the love of lingua

past, present, and future sometimes intertwine in some interesting ways when we think about things we learned or figured out years ago, then match it with our current abilities as adults when we become wiser, more sophisticated, and keen into the natural phenomena of this world.

so i wished to share this thought here.


Japanese is an overly complicated language. i would have to say of all the foreign languages i've encountered or tried to learn, Japanese has got to be the most difficult way of communicating simple things to people. 10 years ago i completed coursework in German, which was the 1st official foreign language i ever studied and learned to speak with a small bit of fluency. i'm currently taking Chinese so i've understood a bit of Mandarin now by studying the language on a full-time basis. i've also taken a course in Korean as well as practiced with Korean friends back home, and by interacting with other individuals in my life such as online acquaintances, friends at local shopping malls, and immigrant coworkers i've even picked up words in other lesser known languages: Khmer (Cambodian) -- Malay & Indonesian -- Tagalog (Cebuano mostly) -- Cantonese -- Vietnamese -- Thai -- and even a few European languages like Spanish, Italian, & French.

not a huge surprise when you consider where i grew up. i lived my whole life in one place mostly, the beautiful and artistic state of Washington (yes there are actually 2 different Washington's, one is the capital city in DC, however the much better one is my home state...like i say all the time, west coast is the best coast hehe). in my opinion, WA is perhaps the most liberal, open-minded, and multi-cultural place in all the United States, especially the western side of the state where my hometowns are located (i'll talk about the virtues of WA in another entry). living where i did you simply get used to all the different ethnic groups that decided to mingle all in one place: i lived just down the street from a Ukrainian family; ran into Africans all the time; met a Taiwanese friend just by striking up a conversation on the bus; and had pleasant chats with folks that were either from Europe, Australia, or Southeast Asia. sometimes all in a single day!

so it comes as no surprise to me when i found myself just picking up words and phrases in other people's native tongues. i thought it was fun to be able to speak words so strange and alien to your own reckoning, to understand someone who spoke differently, to know their thoughts and to tell them your thoughts in return. i've always had a weird interest in foreign language, like it was some kind of doorway to a world of of pure knowledge, a key that allowed you to unlock mysteries of distant places simply by the power of words. it fascinates me to a great extent....
and its not just limited to speaking: occasionally i like to dabble in other lexicons as well. i really dislike math--however i'm strangely attracted to number theory. why? mathematics is all about using numbers to figure out amounts and computations, whereas number theory uses numbers and digits as meanings to find answers, patterns, and sometimes hidden messages. yes, messages in the numbers. math is all about calculation; number theory is about communication. and that communication is no different than the secret to learning a new language: you simply learn the words [or digits], you figure out the rules, and then you can speak the lingua, things become in your mind and you comprehend the ideas and thoughts of others as they speak to you.

there are other languages of nature that we often don't consider ways of speaking; yet they speak to us all the time. the language of music is a perfect example, as billions of us human beings find our solace, our comfort, our inspirations, and our closest companions in the music we like to listen to the most. the vocalist uses his lyrics as well as his passions and spirit to communicate his/her message to the audience, and musicians themselves convey their own thoughts, dreams, and energy into the notes and sounds they produce from their instruments. all of this is very obvious to the casual listener of course, but have you ever really taken a moment and tried to hear what the music says as well as how it sounds? there is language in those chords and harmonies, a lingua that speaks of pain or pleasure, sights and visions, landscapes of the most beautiful cascades in softest colors, or the hellish nightmares of demonic impulses and depraved cravings for the darkness.
the language of music is also related as a bigger whole, in the way all forms of art speak to the souls in each one of us. visual arts, performing arts, graphic arts, literary arts.....all different methods of conveying thoughts or philosophies, or simply the deepest desire to express a feeling or belief to those who would strain their eyes to see the messages concealed in the swirling patterns or obscure images in the canvas or screen.

in a way, language is a discovery. briefly glancing at an article i read online, it also has been explained by previous scientists that its a facet of human nature to develop communication between each one of us as a species. so for us to speak a language, it is because we are naturally adept at doing so.

awake in a dream

i don't believe in coincidences; but i do believe in serendipity.

what is it about fate that brings two people together? is there a substantiated connection between the images we see all the time in our dreams and events that play out in the waking world? the link between the mind's eye and God's hand -- the idea protrudes quite often when i experience such links between the conscious and subsconscious realm.

¤ ¤ ¤

two weeks ago, i had an intriguing dream. and like many times before, my dearest best friend was in it ^^ (not unusual of course, i dream about her a lot hehe)

the dream took place in the late evening on a riverbank, or seaside beach; i can't recall exactly becuz the details did not make much sense logically. the waters spread toward the horizon in one direction, disappearing over the edge of the earth, where the sky filled with the jeweled lights of millions of stars. a full moon as bright as a crystal beam was shining on the land, but the ground on which it shone was covered in a fine powder of freshly fallen snow. a waterway separated one side of the snowy landscape from an embankment on the opposite side, and some distance away from the water's edge on all sides was the treeline of a thick forest, a sprawling mass of woods filled with trees whose bark was a deep blue color.
i found myself waking up there on one side of the beach, near a small grove of trees which were not blue, but instead were entirely formed out of some sort of white ice. i noticed i had been resting in a patch of snow, and as i stood up to shake off the excess powder, i discovered that i was a wolf with light gray-colored fur all around. just as any animal does by its nature, the first thing that came to mind was wash my fur a few times so i gave my front paws a couple licks, scratched my ear a moment, then licked the side of my waist to get an itch out.
of course this is a dream, but i really can't explain why i was a wolf. never really done that before in my dreams.

i sat up on my haunches and noticed in the distance, there was a figure running toward me. as it got closer, i saw that it was my best friend, only she remained in her human form, and even in my dream her appearance was incredibly beautiful! she was running barefoot through the snow drifts, but it wasn't very deep so did not hinder her progress any, and yet she didn't seem to feel any cold at all. as she walked toward me, i saw her dressed in nothing more than a white gown of some material i cannot identify in real-world terms: it looked soft and ethereal, framing her figure very nicely with long embroidered sleeves that stretched just to her fingers. the gown flowed around her legs and trailed behind her while shining from an array of translucent gemstones covering her body everywhere, which shined with a white light reflected from moon above. aside from the deep violet hue of the darkened sky and the blue shade of the woods in the distance, everything seemed like it was bathed in white colors. i never dream in that color very often.

my best friend in her gossamer white gown didn't say a word, only crept closer to where i was sitting. in my wolfen state, i simply sat and stared back at her, not really knowning what to do at that moment. my friend came up to me, bent down and crouched to her knees, and then simply and warmly gave me a hug with my head perched on one shoulder. and during that time, i don't know how but after the dream had ended i remember waking up with the most heartfelt feeling i ever had, i really don't know how to explain what the sensation was like....even in the context of the dream my best friend was hugging me as if wolf and girl had known each other all our lives and were separated by vast distances, only to be reunited there on those snowy banks of a mysterious waterway. i think i recall closing my wolf eyes as she embraced me, and i couldn't help but let a single tear escape, letting it slowly slide down my muzzle.

just then there was a commotion off to one side, and my best friend turned to see what it was. i did the same and perked my wolf ears up to listen, only hearing a subtle rustling in the frozen bushes. my sense became alert and without warning i dashed away from my friend for a moment to investigate the clearing ahead. my best friend only waited on that spot for me to return, watching vigilently as if she was a wolf herself, and only saw a glimpse of my shadow once or twice. after losing track of whatever it was, i finally left the clearing and headed back to my best friend, now standing in the snow with her hands clasped together. i don't know why this happen next, but suddenly i felt my whole body grow larger and as my arms, legs, and body stretched out to double in size, my fur also turned in to a dark black color. my best friend seemed to understand already what she was supposed to do: she hopped on my back and from there i gently trotted into the nearby woods, to disappear in the midst of those blue bark trees carrying my best friend with me.

from there the dream ended.

a batch of questions naturally comes to my mind: just what the hell was all that supposed to mean? did it have any sort of meaning to begin with? why did those particular images be included in the dream? what will my best friend think of it if she reads this?....

i can assume a lot of things by reading into my own idle thoughts, of course. and normally i would have thought nothing much of my dreams, unless a significant connection arises.

two days ago....

i was watching online the music video for Evanescence's single "Call Me When You're Sober"~

it was awhile ago that i saw it last, and oddly enough i wasn't even searching for it that evening when i watched it again (it just showed up in the 'related videos' listing, but i wasn't watching music vid's at the time.....i thought it was odd, cuz i was merely searching for vid's to adult swim bump tracks, that has nothing to do with rock or Evanenescence!)

and i never realized it before....but in that video, Amy Lee sits next to a gray hound, possibly a husky dog i couldn't tell right away....but the dog looked rather "wolf-like" in appearance i thought~~

the connection? Amy Lee is my best friend's all-time fave singer.

i had that dream 2 weeks ago. i saw the video only couple days ago, and yes i have seen it once or twice before but i don't remember any visuals at all. seeing the dog in the video instantly brought back those details of the dream i had, which is the reason for this journal entry.

like i mention at the beginning i don't believe in coincidences. there are just too many of those occurrances i've seen in life to be brushed aside as insignificant. the winds of fate have been blowing strongly too, i can almost feel that sense of connection within the grander scheme of things in the world. whatever it means, it must have a significance for me to take into consideration; i just wish i knew what action i should perform in order to take advantage of that energy in some way.

i wonder what my best friend would say regarding this ~~

recollections ~ part 2

this entry is a continuation of the previous writing.

¤ 2008 ¤

the initiation of a year that followed many months of triumphs and tragedies. every year that begins anew i always have this expectation of greatness that is to come. i suppose you can say its my hopeful side emerging thru the holiday, as if New Year's Eve holds some kind of magical power to reciprocate all the bad fortune of the previous 12 months into good fortunes on the way in the next annual term. New Year's also happens to be one of my most favored holidays becuz of the fact that it must be witnessed by staying up until midnight to watch it all go down. i can almost imagine the turn of the year as a creature who only becomes visible for a split second to make that invisible jump across a barrier that separates time itself, and every time this creature makes the jump it transforms into something totally new and different. its that hope i hold everytime the holiday approaches, that soon as the year begins there will be new and different things i get to receive.

and 2008 certainly did not disappoint!

one of the mysteries in life i find is how good and bad fortune can oftentimes strike simultaneously. just how does a person deal with such circumstances? how is the human heart capable of surviving profound moments that tug at your soul which are both positive and negative? to go from one end of the spectrum to the other quick as lightning and just as shocking.....

those words refer to the 2nd week of the new year. just 5 days apart from each other my family experienced a birth AND death in the family.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

the death came from our long-cherished and beloved family member: our pet cat, Nayla.

she was 13 yrs old.

pic taken about 7 months before she died

Kiki, as we liked to call her, was a female mixed breed of American short-hair & manx feline, and it was her manx breed that explained her stubby tail (i know it looks weird in the photo, yes her tail was only that long at about 5in ). she was special for a variety of reasons: as well as having a stub tail, her facial fur color was unique in that she always had that black "eye patch" on one eye

what really made her special, she was the only cat we ever got to know who had an expressive personality--so much so that it was hard not to think of her as family.
~~her eating habits coincided with our meal times
~~she hated being outdoors for long when it was cold outside (usually kiki wanted back inside after 10min or so)
~~she also hated being alone, each night cuddling up with someone in their bed to sleep right on top of them, favoring my parents mostly, they were always having to wake up in the dead of sleep to move her off the bed :P or if everybody left a room altogether, kiki would follow everybody to regroup wherever they moved to
~~and the one lesson that everybody in my family learned is NEVER TOUCH HER BELLY, TAIL, OR PAWS....doing so would guarantee her giving you a bloodletting. kiki was extremely sensitive around those areas and if you even stuck your finger anywhere close (most especially her belly) she would instantly give you a claw, a bite, and a malevolent hiss; myself i was slashed rather deeply more than a few times for getting on her bad side by accident--my sis Kel went even further however by testing to see just how pissed off kiki could get....let me tell ya, Hell hath no fury like kiki scorned lol! in the process my sis would receive a bloody mauling before kiki finally got so angry she would run off somewhere else in frustration~~
but to my sis, well Kel is tougher than galvanized nails, so for her it was rather funny to watch the cat get worked up, hehe~
but for all her faults, we really loved kiki a lot. (^_^)

it was her moody personality as well as feline affection that consequently made us think she was part of the family. and for 13 yrs she was apart of our lives even when she was a nuisance or burden. i guess unconditional love really means that to us when we remember how much we cared about kiki regardless of a scratch here or there....

and then one day, during the winter of 2006-07, kiki started vomiting for no reason. when she started vomiting a week apart, we took her to the vet who only gave a preliminary treatment and some medicines to help with her stomach. that didn't work when we saw she continued to vomit once every 24hrs. things were getting so bad that almost every room in my house had been puked on by the poor cat, and we even started laying out newspapers in each room at certain key points knowing kiki would return later in the same spot to throw up again.
thats when we took her to a larger vet hospital in a different town. and there we finally got our answer: kiki was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

despite that she was a pet, kiki was also family, and this news was devastating. but there was a glimmer of hope when the vet claimed he could remove the cancerous tumor in her belly. we gave the doc the go-ahead for the surgery, but at the cost of $3,000 it was an expense my family was not ready to afford. nonetheless, kiki's life was worth it we decided, and after she recovered for a day at the hospital we took her home. but the doc had warned us there might be a chance the tumor may return since it was definitely a metasticized cancer. the surgery did prolonge her life but for how long we could not tell at that time.

we got our answer when kiki again became sick later in '07 just prior to the new year. just a few occasions with her vomiting like before, but it was not as serious. so we figured it must have been her usual habit of eating something bad for her (kiki had a nasty liking to eat grass sometimes). but in the very first week of 2008, once again kiki was giving us alarms when she suddenly stopped eating altogether. no more vomit since kiki was basically starving herself and her behavior was very unusual: she even refused to drink any liquids, no milk, no tuna juice, not even water. couple days later we found ourselves at the vet hospital once again. and this time the prognosis is not so good: kiki had a distended belly which was filling up with fluid rapidly. it might have been the same cancer come back again, but if that turned out to be true the operation would have been even more expensive than before. and if they fixed her up again, kiki would only become sick again in another few months. and the cycle would repeat, over and over.
and thats when we realized a decision must be made. spend thousands of dollars to spare kiki's life? only to do it again later?

kiki was suffering. and the surgeries were only prolonging her pain, and ours too when all you can do is sit there and watch her suffer each time she became ill. we finally had to make the decision that it was time to say goodbye to kiki....so she could rest at peace and no longer be in pain anymore.

Jan. 7, 2008.....that evening we said goodbye for the last time to kiki, our family member, our friend. i remember watching my father meet us late at the hospital, and when my mother broke the decision to him the first thing he did was call my sister Emmy, who was the rightful owner of kiki in the beginning. listening to Emmy start sobbing over the phone, my father could do nothing except produce tears of his own.

that is my most vivid memory of that dire evening. it was the 1st time ever in the 28 years that i've been alive, that i had ever witnessed my father cry.

so it was that after tears were shed by all of us, and one final hug and kiss given to kiki. i was the 1st to leave, there was simply nothing more i could in that room for sure. i walked out to the lobby, and this part i also remember very strongly for some reason: i recall walking to the window near the office exit, and the receptionist at the front desk happened to have a radio turned on. the song that was playing at that exact moment just so happened to be one of my favorite classic rock songs, America's "Ventura Highway" (i'm a big fan of the classic rock band America, btw). with a leftover tear every now and then, i felt compelled even then to feel the positive & artistic mood of that song, and even in my emotional state of mind something urged me into that mood, and i started singing that song as it played. i knew the lyrics actually well, i'd been hearing that song on one of my online playlists for many nights before that. so while my parents were bidding one final grief-stricken farewell to kiki behind closed doors, i was in the lobby of a vet hospital singing Ventura Highway.

my parents finally exited, and i could see the acceptance in their faces. after signing a few forms, they made preparations with the receptionist for a plaster cast to be made of kiki's pawprint which they would send to us a couple weeks later. we left the hospital one family member short, and 10min later we knew kiki was being given the euthanasia and she would be dead.


{....pause.....rest in peace.....}

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

just 5 days after kiki passed away,
a birth came in the form of my sister Emmy's baby girl, Hannah

the week of Jan. 7 was a meltdown. my poor parents had no time to collect their thoughts before leaving on a plane to visit my sister Emmy who was pregnant and due to give birth any day. that left me with a 2-story house all to myself....but i was in a fractured mental state and leaving me by myself in a lonely, empty house with only my melancholy mind to keep me company....that set the stage for bad events to follow. i was disgruntled with school since classmates were treating me with disrespectfully during that time, and a recent online friend i met was suddenly not around for several days. i was skipping classes once in awhile, just didn't have the care anymore. and during that week, i decided to spend an entire evening drinking what was left of a bottle of sake while watching violent movies like Robocop, laughing hysterically at certain times, crying uncontrollably at other times. i think wednesday night was the worst moment, particularly when i somehow staggered to the phone and called my father while quite intoxicated (having sipped way too much sake beforehand) and during the course of the conversation i may have mentioned wanting to kill myself, at which point my father became vehemently angry almost to the point of dropping everything and taking the first flight back home just to make sure i would not do anything drastic to myself. my parents were already incredibly pissed off becuz of a majorly stupid error my other sister did that got her involved with a heftly load of car trouble at some dumbass dealership in Las Vegas. my father considers used car salesmen as the most evil, retched, cursed people on the face of this planet and he hates dealerships as if they were the 7th level of Hell.
well, my father was already in an aggravating state of affairs when he just witnessed the pet cat die, only to take a stressful flight down to Nevada to see his daughter have her very first baby (and the first grandchild of the family)....then you take my poor father who is already mixed with a billion emotions and stick him right in the middle of a legal squabble with a used car dealership, the very thing he hates more than anything in this world.....and then you have me, who calls him up during all of that turmoil, only i'm fucking drunk and talking like a dumbshit and acting suicidal over the phone.....

when i look back on all of that, i am absolutely amazed at my father's great strength and willpower. i'm shocked beyond belief that he didn't have an aneurism right then and there.

nevertheless, i came to my senses even in the sake-induced stupor i was in. i reassured my dad i was ok, i was simply drinking too much sake and so i wanted to rest for the nite. with the legal thing still simmering but out of the way, my parents then concentrated on my sis Emmy as they took her to the hospital in Las Vegas just couple minutes from her home. while i waited patiently at home a thousand miles away, it wasn't until the weekend that i got the call: Emmy gave birth to a beautiful baby girl!! Jan. 12, 2008 ~~ in one split second, my sis became a momma, my parents turned into "grandparents" and i suddenly found myself as an uncle for the 1st time in our lives! for my sister, and maybe for all of us as well, it would begin a new chapter as she officially started her own family.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

needless to say, January was a turbulent month. the events of that fateful week even overshadowed more casual moments that would have been the focus of our attention, namely my great-aunt's birthday. on Jan. 7 of that year, my great-aunt Elvira, my father's mother's sister, turned the ripe old age of 101 years old. i could write an entire chapter devoted to the life and times of Alvy as we like to call her, who was born in Seattle in the year 1907. she was just 5 yrs of age when the Titanic sank, and she witnessed every single major war of the 20th century as well as all the most prominent of historical achievements in the decades to follow. she lived long before TV, Internet, and computers were even established -- and even today her memory still retains a bit of sharpness for certain events if you ask her about them. as i write this entry, it is now 2009 and again my great-aunt Alvy survives another year, turning 102 and still just as cantankerous as she ever was. however, even for her it seems '08 was just as momentous as it was for my family.

Alvy, metaphorically, is one tough biscotti of a lady. she is the daughter of my great-grandmother Mariannina D'Ambrosio, a direct immigrant of Italy who with the rest of the D'Ambrosios came over to the US from the small hamlet village of Torcellia Peligna, a town north of Torino as my relatives once explained. that alone gives me a heritage i'm proud to announce to anyone, especially since i can claim direct descendancy to northern Italians (for those fans of the Godfather series, good to know i'm not Sicillian haha!). during the more candid conversations i sometimes had with my dad, he even related to me some secrets of the past i never knew before, such as my own father even dabbled (or tried to anyway) in wine-making in their backyard; needless to say it proved futile when all they could do was make rotten grapes. however Alvy and her family were prodigious cooks as it turned out, and apparently i learned that some of their relatives owned vineyards in Italy and produced some rather decent juice on occasion! the only regret i have in my life is that i wish i could have met my great-grandmother Mariannina (or Baka as my relatives always called her) before she passed away the same year i was born. regardless i learned quite a lot about my family history and heritage during my formative years as my aunts and uncles told stories of their own childhood and the experiences they had growing up in a family that was half-Italian and half-German (my dad's father's side of the family was German descent, however my German ancestors arrived to the US at least 2 generations before D'Ambrosio family came). as an elderly lady, i like to think Alvy had a great life, living primarily in the same place for almost half of her life, the house that i got to know so well during Christmas gatherings and Thanksgiving holiday when the families would get together. the incredible amount of adventurous and hilarious tales that occurred during these moments i will have to detail in a later entry, as the stories themselves are like right out of a Patrick F. McManus storybook~~

something about Alvy stirs a great deal of pride for me as i look at her own circumstances. she was married to a cantankerous old sailor chap named Howard, a man of many idiosyncracies himself who smoked a chain of cigars, spoke in a guttural tone of sarcasm, and really knew his way around a kitchen. but after his passing away, the family always held concern for Alvy, if she was to get along by herself in that old house in Seattle. she survived a break-in by strangers, a beating by a psychotic caretaker, and even a dangerous fall down the basement stairwell, all of those incidents only within the last decade when Alvy was in her 90's....and to this day she still thrives with a decent amount of health for her age as well as her usual disposition that we know and love. perhaps God really did forget about her, and instead made her a living saint to provide the families with something to look up to and be inspired by. all i know for sure is that Alvy is 102 now, obviously the longest living member of our family; and she's still alive and kicking to this day!

...to be continued in part 3...

recollections ~ part 1

this is a blog with an intended purpose, since the idea came to me little while ago. most of my writings here have been more off-the-wall, just passages within my mind that suddenly come to me. but this is different; this idea came when i noticed the particular date that was approaching.

~ Jan. 7 ~

nothing special to anybody else, just another date on the calendar. but i still remember events that transpired around that day just 1 year ago. and that brings me to this entry since it is now 1 year later. a time to recap on a past maelstrom of adventures, experiences, and emotions, most of which i'm trying hard to remember, others i will never be able to forget. there are even a plethora of things i remember leading up to the beginning of 08' which was more than a year ago, and since i have never detailed much of that online i decided to include those events here as a sort of prologue, if you will~

back then i didn't even have an account here at blogspot; any journal entries i made i hardly did online since i had left my writersco account blank for a long time. i was still active with Elftown mostly in the drawing department when i could make a simple doodle and upload it there for no real intent other than to be creative somehow. i moved most of my writings from WC to ET to consolidate everything in one place, nice and organized. i was more active at Friendster or Myspace, and for the time being that was my online persona in totality. at that time, when i needed to jot down ideas or scribblings of any kind i was merely taking notebooks and packs of moleskin cahiers with me to my favorite sanctuary, Cafe Michaels, where i could have pleasant conversation with the barista Jee-yun , drink a really good latte (sometimes at discount since Jee-yun was my good friend) and play around with her 5yr-old son Brandon.

this was also a period 9 months into my best friend's vanishing....i learned later that it was her time of solace, but vicariously it was also solace for me as well, a time i felt most alone in the world regardless of friends and family at my side. oddly enough, as i write this entry tonight i happen to be listening to the album by Army Of Anyone, a set of tracks that has indelibly stamped a certain set of emotions within me everytime i hear the songs being played. the music isn't necessarily connected in anyway except for the pure and simple fact that i had bought the CD just prior to the very last msg i received from her. that fateful night so long ago. and strangely enough as i write down about my best friend & kindred spirit, the song that just so happens to be playing right now is track 6 "disappear" (not kidding, it really is the song in my player as i write these words...)

even to this day, there is one song from that album that i simply cannot listen to at all for various reasons.....
track 07 "stop look and listen"

everytime i hear it i break down uncontrollably in tears: the immense sadness of the song itself is enough to put any stolid person into a deeply melancholy state....but add to that the pain of loss and confusion and uncertainty for the girl i gave my love to. which just coincided with the timing of buying that album....i tried to stay strong for her, i didn't want the loss to affect me, but listening to that album for several days along with nobody to really comfort me during those times.....her last msg to me was on the night of April 16, 2007 (i checked my yahoo archive for the date), and after a week of trying to summon all the inner strength i could to stay resilient, i finally just broke down.
spent an entire night hysterically sobbing in lament.....my mother finally came to my room and could only give me a hug to calm me down, hard as it was to do......

{...pause....reflect....}



so 9 months later...

life continued as it should. struggling as i did to keep my sanity, i hobbled and limped and fought to discover any pieces of life worth living for week by week, keeping the memory and feelings alive of the girl who was my one true love in this world. my only wish for the past is that she could have still been around to share in the incredible events that were to follow. in a sense i was Aragorn to her Arwen at that time, two souls who were cast apart from each other not so much by her doing or mine but by circumstances that left us cascading in alternate directions. and just like Aragorn, i became Strider....watching the world thru shaded eyes and feeling comfortable only amongst my secret places and hidden hovels, making friends who came and went, but never relenquishing my heart-felt desire for my Arwen so far away.
[there is a happy ending, that she once again returned to be my best friend after such a long time of separation.....a sensation of happiness, joy, and absolute harmony that i thank God for....]

[

and i______i still
love her as__ much then
as i do now and more so
with each passing day
& with each msg
i'm grateful to
receive
from
her
!
]

i should mention that at the same time i bought Army Of Anyone CD, i also picked up the 1st Candiria album i could find at that time, what doesn't kill you...will only make you stronger and for several months afterward Candiria was all i listened to, well, that and Tool's latest CD "10,000 days" was constantly in my CD player as well, naturally hehe~~

video for tr.3 called "blood", one of my fave's from this album

the aforementioned events are regarding the month of December '07, and this is something i've been meaning to write down in a blog entry for a very long time! that one particular week was to be something permanently etched in my memory banks for years to come as being the most event-filled period of days that was ever to befall on me ~ here's the gist of what happened in just 7 days time: went on field trip with classmates ^^ attended a Tool concert \m/ participated in Shinto ceremony @_@ and conducted a court hearing with that goddamn motherfucking curse of a business, the Washington State Dept. of Licensing >:(
oh yea, did i forget to mention it was Christmas time?

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

the field trip was just a simple excursion, yet it was also a great opportunity for me to go with a group of students from the Japanese class to see the Asian shopping district in Seattle, and for the 1st time since i've been a resident i finally got to see the Uwajimaya store, which was very nice! a cool place to buy Asian items and foods, and i particularly liked the idea that the store catered to other cultures not just Japanese ~ related to this was an event just a few days later when i visited the Shinto shrine in Granite Falls (which is just a mere 15min drive from my house, never even knew a shrine was up there before!)

the shrine itself as well as the peaceful bend of the river where its situated is all very beautiful and serene, and it really depicts the natural harmony that kami-no-michi teaches in its mythology. i suppose it was all intentional by the kannagara guji himself, Rev. Koichi Barrish, who built the shrine himself and also i read that he is recorded as being the very 1st ever non-Japanese person to be inducted as a shrine priest. very cool!
but i wasn't there that day in Dec. for history, hehe ~~ i was there for the annual festival that Shinto celebrates in wintertime called Omotchitsuki, the "rice-cake pounding" festival they host at the shrine every year. that was definitely a fun and interesting day-- it started out with the oharae, or purification ritual inside the shrine: this is something which i definitely recommend even if you're not a practicing shintoist, since it really does give you a sense of calm peace of mind and cleansing of the soul as if the okami-sama themselves come out of the realm to bestow good fortune and spiritual healing right to you. the powerful but benevolent energy from the ritual can really be felt too, as the priest reads sacred words from a scroll while attendants started banging away on huge taiko drums~
after the oharae, the festival begins as the congregation of people move outside into the biting cold with cups of hot genmaicha (for those who dont know what that is, green tea with toasted rice) and they wait as a Japanese motchi master begins the pounding! while an attendant kept smashing away at a pile of freshly steamed rice in the trunk's bowl, the master stood before a hollowed-out tree trunk and with deft hands reached in to fold and knead the sticky dough of rice into a bulbous mass of white & tasty goodness while throwing short handfuls of water now and again ~~ the tricky part seemed to be preventing his hands from getting smashed right along with the rice!! so there i watched, the master folding the dough , then the mallet smashing it flat, master fold it, mallet smash it, 1, 2, 1, 2....it was strange but exciting to watch while standing in the freezing cold air sipping hot tea to warm my bones~~

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

however, for sure the pinnacle of that week's events, and probably the greatest & most awe-inspiring ending to a year of triumphs and tragedies, that came from an event i never EVER expected to see in my lifetime and certainly not within my hometown....

¤ TOOL ¤

...in concert...

oh - my - god -

camera footage of fan recording Tool as they played "46 &2"
Dec. 4 2007 in Everett Events Center
yep i was present that night, somewhere in the floor section
i must have been standing somewhere behind this guy's camera
an absolutely unforgettable evening!!

there is so many details i could describe about that evening....however i've decided that since this blog is already long enough i will transcribe all my notes from that night into my next entry, including the thoughts rumbling thru my head that nite just before they start the show and my humble playlist of the actual songs they performed (which i was trying to write in pitch darkness, so my scribbles on the page are kinda funny to look at when i saw it in the light later hehe)

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

then comes the evil of something that i didn't expect to see again, a curse of 2 years prior.....the cranium-splitting headache of a legal battle....thats the only reason i was involved with those of sons of bitches at the WA state DOL! 2 years after i considered their absurd case dead and over with, it comes back to haunt my family like a pestilent plague just waiting to kill us all slowly and painfully. it starts with a letter (in old days in midwest they used to call it "red letters" and "black letters" cuz the envelopes would arrive in a certain color and as soon as you see it you already know its good news or bad news / well this bullshit with the DOL certainly qualifies as a black letter)
in the letter i'm getting threatened by the DOL that they will revoke my driver's license, maybe even give me huge penalty fee and possible jail time all becuz of a stupid glitch in their system telling me that i'm STILL responsible for a car that i sold to some dipshit 2 yrs ago who got drunk, wrecked the car, and left it somewhere, but the car is still in my name so WA state law says go after last person on record who owned the stupid piece of shit: ME


when i read this, i wanted to go down there to Olympia where the DOL main office and just kill every one of those bastards ~~ 2 yrs ago my family and i already wasted $1,300 of money and lot of precious time we didn't have to prove that i was not the owner of that goddamn car anymore! TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO WE SETTLED THIS!!! and yet this issue with the fucking car still wouldn't die....so despite a relaxing summer of '07 i was once again being hassled by the legal system for something i had no fault in.
great. wonderful. thanks for nothing, assholes.
...june, the letter came...july, we file appeal to gather the evidence to ONCE AGAIN prove non-ownership...august, appeal gets received by DOL...september, appeal gets DENIED, which means we wasted another 2 weeks of efforts and money and time, so another black letter comes if we wish to do court hearing...november, letter comes for the date of the hearing, but thankfully i got to do it all by phone...

back to that fateful month of December. 6 months after all this shit started up again with the DOL, i find myself on the phone in a live conference call with a judge, a witness, and somebody in Olympia taping it all for legal processes. for the 1st time in my life i'm truly scared about the possibility of a bad outcome from all of this.....however, as the call progressed, the judge asked me simple questions, and even the witness guy (it was an Asian man who had his car hit by the drunk shithead but he moved out of state) he was very kind and considerate of my circumstance, even as i never met him before! by the time the call ended, and the judge said they would mail me their decision on the matter i was feeling little better having come to the end result of a nightmare 2 years old. whatever the decision turned out to be, it would go on the permanent record and so whether good or bad after that day the nightmare would end officialy becuz once on the DOL's record as case closed it would never be able to affect me again.

so 2 days after omotchitsuki....5 days after the Tool concert....several days past the nice field trip....and just a week before Xmas holiday.... one last letter arrives from the DOL. it's their decision based on my testimony and the circumstances and evidence we presented to them beforehand.

the decision:

§ i am NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE §

we all breathed a massive sigh of relief, happiness, and joy. the case was now officially dead and closed forever. and it would never return. from that point forward, my family and myself only refer to that piece of shit Ford Taurus as "the car we don't speak of"

and if i ever get my hands on that motherfucker we sold the car to who got drunk and crashed the goddamn thing without ever getting it licensed in his name, i will summon unto him a hellish torture of pain and suffering the likes of which would make the Devil himself grimace in disgust......
right before i have him beheaded, disembowled, and quartered by my own hands~~~

with the case settled, and my family now in a more upbeat mood to celebrate the holidays with much more enthusiasm, the very night we got the "red" letter my family went out and had a nice dinner at a delectable italian eatery, and later that night i must have had the 1st real peaceful sleep of my life up to that point.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

one week later, it was New Year's Eve; and that is how 2008 began.

...to be continued in part 2...

the joy luck club is rubbing off on me somewhat

write. all the time. that is what they tell me, and strangely enough its really a great excercise of sorts. even when i'm not correct about anything i compose, it still has an uplifting feeling to create words on a page.

i felt that just the other evening, when i suddenly pulled a huge entry for one of my online journals out of a mixed bag of rambling thoughts. how odd that something like that should appear at the forefront, a simple idea i was just mentioning briefly to a friend one evening, and next thing i know i was contemplating what that idea really meant to me. and there i started, with an entry that was very much inexplicably crafted, from some level of conscious that i cannot discern its origins. and here i am again, simply doing a small bit of "page practice". yea, thats what i'm gonna call it from now on: page practice, an excercise of the fingers and a tweaking of the brain muscles to get words to paper as much as i possibly can.

if i am a writer of any merit (to which a few individuals have attested but i find it hard to agree with) then it just stands to reason that i should always be in a mode to write something, anything, no matter how terrible or misleading or incorrect or presumptuous or oddly surreal or however bad or incoherent it may be. thats not really the point. especially when i know for certain that i have the tools of revision at my disposal for a later time when i can return to these musings and chop away all the useless bits leaving behind only good written material to work with. just write, that is really the key focus with literature in any form, be it poetry or short stories or vignettes or novellas, doesn't matter.

also, i think i'm starting to enjoy the work of amy tan. why, i'm not sure; its been stemming from this introduction to her work since i was required by my english course to read the joy luck club. that is really a stretch of interest since i was never a fan before, regardless that i have known about that book for years now. but even though this was originally supposed to be an assignment, i started enjoying the stories of the novel, it has some sort of unexplainable charm and carries with it a warm sense of feeling and authenticity which i found myself taking part in as i read the novel end to end. i even related to several of the instances in the story regarding the human eccentricities of family and relatives as they gather for subsequent meetings or dinner banquets, something i enjoy very much. i love a good feast, and i feel comfortable in the presence of loved ones, and even if they are only friends without blood relation it still gives me a sense of belonging. i guess novels really can be a world to escape in, all depending on how much of an emotional connection i can establish with what i'm reading.

amy tan is a beautiful writer and not simply based on pulchritudiny; her writings are very personal i feel, and unedited in a way, released from her mind unfiltered for the world to see for themselves. and i just learned through a biography page that she is afflicted with Lyme disease, which tugs at my heart a little to know of someone with such good literary talents being stricken down by the evils of life, how someone like her who does not seem to deserve any misfortune have to deal with the burdens of illness in her life, a debilitating sickness for some but according to her biography she is going through an effective therapy. and even though i do not know her at all, certainly we have never met in life or ever will i think, i already feel an empathy for her situation. is that an emotion i experience through a literary outlet? do i feel for her simply because i am an aspiring author whereas she is an established one? or do i feel for her because i admire her work as a mere fan? or maybe i'm just a natural empath?

once again i'm confounded by latest mysteries. but i suppose that is the real stuff of life, to be presented with marvels of discovery and to feel those reactions within us as we look at something outside of ourselves and realize we love things more than we ever thought we would. i might be starting to become a fan of tan's work, and perhaps i should take a look at her other books as well, they are indeed of interest following my passions with asian culture. but it does not necessarily stop there; i have been meaning to check out a different anthology of works, one more poignant and historically significant i would assume since it has much more of a literary impact on the chinese culture especially: that would be the romance of the 3 kingdoms, a story presented in a long format which is something my best friend Aki loves to read (any interest of my kindred spirit is something i desire readily to explore, since it tends to become undiscovered treasures that i later find most promising). and of course any other books i can't readily mention at this time because i'm not thinking of them, however there will be further reading down the road i suspect.

bravo to you, amy tan. you're doing wonderful things as a writer and a survivor.

and now, i shift my focus to my own scribblings and random acts of writing. there is still the objective of bland written material needed to complete schoolworks, but in a paradoxical way i might be able to find just a modicum of enjoyment if i approach those same assigments with the attitude of a writer who just likes to write words on pages. will that technique work for me i wonder?

only one way to find out....