Monday, February 26
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Episode Two
Episode Two of my Joe The Pro series is out.
HERE
There are a few more poker jokes than the first, so it doesnt' have as much a general appeal, but I hope you guys like it.
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Wednesday, February 21
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Kids
If Jack Bauer had a baby with Veronica Mars they would have the most resourceful child in the world. But I don't mean the actors, Kiefer and Kristen because they would just have a blonde child that would probably enter show business. Yet I don't mean the characters either because they don't actually exist. I guess what I really mean is for the writers responsible for both shows to have an orgy and the love child would grow up and write a television series about a resourceful character -- Anyways, that's how I heard MacGyver was written.
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Thursday, February 15
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Morals
Online interpretations of your morals. I think I scored a 38 percent. All the circumstances mattered to me (18 percent) except scale (100%). To me, telling me 10 people or 1000 people die is not important -- I need to know who those 10 are. Is that wrong?
Go HERE. Took about 10 minutes of click question/answer and 3 minutes reading the results.
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Wednesday, February 14
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Week One California
The one amazing thing about where I'm staying is the Vietnamese food. Since the places are cleaner, my uncles say the food rivals, even surpasses Vietnam. When I left, my father asked me to do one thing, enjoy the food for him.
The reason is because the Vietnamese community here is large.
Whole blocks have nothing but Vietnamese buildings and waves of Vietnamese people. Most of my extended family is also in this area and whenever I'm here I wonder how different a person I would be if we came and lived here instead of Canada. You understand how some decisions in life are not life altering, but I know the fact that I got sick and we had to leave for Canada instead of our intended USA destination was. But let me add that I'm happy we lived in Canada and I'm glad we never lived here -- although I'm almost sure the California me would have said the same thing.
I think if I lived here I would be a lot more talkative. My dad's side is the reserved, talk behind your back people and my mother's side is the loud, say it to your face people. As a result, I'd like to think that I'm the best of both: in your face reserved.
The other day my mom led me into a trap. I was watching Veronica Mars Season 1 on my laptop when she poked her head in the room and told me that my aunt wanted to see me (hadn't seen her for years). What I didn't know was my mom and her sisters (she's got like 8 million of them) had been planning my future for me for the past half hour. When I arrived into the kitchen with the unsuspecting obedient nephew smile they laid on me a lecture like I had never experienced before. As I said, my mom's side is talkative and in your face. I knew this yet I wasn't prepared for what happened. Imagine your typical machine gun lecture, but layered on top of one another. Like I had three totally separate lectures hitting me with no regard to connect with one another. It was like they all knew what they were going to say to me and when I arrived, a silent alarm bell went off and someone pressed play on all of them and cranked the volume to full.
I just kept shifting my eyes to and fro smiling and was wondering, don't they notice that they're all talking at the same time over top of each other? Like one was telling me a story about her past experience, another was telling about the virtues of teaching young children and another was telling me how taking breaks are bad. I guess the good thing was, the lecture went three times as fast.
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Wednesday, February 7
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California Day One
I just came back from the nursing home with my mom and I still feel a little light headed and sick to my stomach.
Earlier this morning my uncle took me to what was a Vietnamese version of Hooters, skinny girls wearing nothing but silicon and perfume. The only difference was that this place had no shame in being what it was. Hooters dresses it up, acting almost as if it were a family restaurant, while this place had the sleazy dark lit, smokey atmosphere of a upper middle class strip club. It made me regret not checking out a maid cafe in Japan while I was there to see how that compared.
My mom had gone to visit my grandmother first, the reason why we flew down almost instantly after hearing the news of her health. After the cafe and eating pho, I went to the nursing home. Walking inside I felt what I feel must be similar to clausterphobia. I couldn't breath too well and my chest felt heavy. I began feeling depressed and felt out of my body, watching myself lose control of myself. When I got to the door of my grandma I felt the disorientation people feel when drugs wear off. I was standing by her door and afraid to go inside. When I did finally go inside my grandma was on her side, so frail looking I was afraid that standing beside her would cause her to pass away. She had tubes running all over her body and in her nose and my mom was by her side rubbing her hands and telling story after story. I looked at her and i saw her as she could have been when she was young, taking care of my mother just like how my mother took care of me. My mother started tearing up and suddenly it was my mother in the bed and I was telling my mother about my life, but it had this sense of hopelessness in the telling, kind of like how someone continuing to do CPR on someone already gone. I'm telling her that I have a family now and everyone is happy and so forth, but it felt like the story came too late.
I couldn't wait to get out of there and I felt guilty for feeling that way.
UPDATE:It's a few hours later and I feel even worse now. My mom is so shaken. She had that experience that I felt. I guess I knew what she was thinking and had the same thought as her. She remembered back to how her mother used to comb her hair and sew her clothes and now she's breaths away from dying. But like even at the state she was, she was so careful in telling me how she wanted to stay longer, how she didn't want to leave her mother and go back because her mother cared for her so much. She was careful because she knows that all I want to do is go home and it was almost as if she was asking my permission to stay and I felt like such a spoiled brat. Then she was talking about how she will miss me again this year for New Year's when I'm at home with the family and if she stayed here for her mother and I was like, "mom, I'll be here with you too." Anyways, I'm still holding back tears because I want to be strong for my mom, but it's so difficult because I keep putting myself in her shoes and it's painful and emotional.
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Monday, February 5
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Joe The Pro
This has been my little hobby for the past three days. I think I will continue to make more because it was fun making it.
Joe The Pro - video powered by Metacafe
UPDATE: I posted this on a two poker forums. My favourite player's forum and a snobby poker forum. No responses from the snobby players but ton from my favourite players forum. GO DANIEL!
Also, I got some bad news about my grandma so I have to take an emergency flight tomorrow to California for a week.
Also to update the Japan bank thing: No luck at all. I have to mail them a wire transfer request now as an alternative option.
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Friday, February 2
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We're Closed
My father's patients remind me of gremlins. Not the cute furry star of the movie, but his slimy yellow toothed kin.
There are several times when we must close and lock the office door. One time is if we're eating lunch inside or another is when we close up. As I'm munching on a sandwich or finishing putting away files the gremlins will start clawing at the door. I hear their fingernails scratching the paint right off the surface. Then their fingers slide in through the mail slot. I'm not joking about this stuff. Sometimes I just see a lone hand, but on occassion I'll see a pair of eyes behind the fingers.
"Let us in. Please. We're sick. Let us in!"
They start calling the office at this point when they realize their fingers can't reach the door knob through the mail slot and then it's a game of what else they can say to convince my father to see them.
(insert traffic excuse, city name from which they traveled from or insane pain felt)
Yesterday a lady phoned and said that she's fainted on the floor by the doorstep.
"Joe, let that person in, she fainted."
I opened the door and she looked healthier than I do, and she bounced in like a cheerleader on opening night.
She didn't even bother fake looking groggy once we opened the door.
It's as though the gremlins believe that deception is a figure of speech. She won the second the lock unbolted.
Gremlins.
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Thursday, February 1
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Working at my father's
My father's patients and Vietnamese people in general have no reservations at making comments about appearance.
Ever so often I'll get mistakened for my older brother. Today a lady came in and asked, "Why are you so skinny now? What happened? You used to be good looking."
I can sign a contract stating that at least once a day I will be ask if I eat food.
Last week after I told someone that I, contrary to my looks, do indeed eat food, was asked, "Then, you take E?"
Yes, all I eat everyay is a handful of E, after my jog but before I self induce vomiting.
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