arthurzgtw's Xanga

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:41:36 GMT

MOVING

I'm moving to L.A.

How's that for breaking the four month ice? Kink kink.

Sadly, will also be moving to Wordpress. I think I've had enough of the banner up top.

Visit devurb.wordpress.com for future updates and hot dates.

Jumpa lagi.

AUTOPILOT

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:07:40 GMT

I got my feet on the ground
And I don't go to sleep to dream
- Fiona Apple, Sleep to Dream

It happens sometimes, dreaming on the road.

I'd walk from A to D, only to arrive at D without a clue that I'd blown by B and C. Sometimes it's a good book. Other times it's an inspired story idea, pong-pong-pong-ing furiously behind my eyes. I think and dream, and have no idea what I encountered along the way.

But what's a little more cause for concern, is how I drive and dream.

Quite a few times, I'd drive from A to L, only to stop at the red light at L and wonder--hard--if I had stopped at the lights back at E, G, H, and K.

It seems that familiarity breeds the autopilot in me. There is space for me to, well, space out, think about weekends, think about naps, think about everything else other than the road. My eyes glassy, my legs no less jaded. And yet I cruise and inch along just fine, not scoring points on bicyclists or encouraging fender benders. It's just the jolt at L, and sometimes the chill running down the spine, that overcomes me. I get distracted easily. (It remains to be seen if I distract easily.)

Other people do it too, thankfully. Feffer drove me home this evening.

He almost didn't. He made to go straight at the traffic light outside my block.

"I think you turn here," I said.

"Oh!" And he promptly turned a sharp right. "Sorry, spaced out a little there. Was just gonna keep going down Forbes."

"So'right."

"Shoot. I was supposed to turn left, wasn't I?

Ah, God is funny. I know what dejavus are, but what to describe these spacing outs? Dejas?

What is a little more freaky than autopilot driving, is recommending Bowling for Columbine to Amy's friend the night before the Virginia Tech massacre.

I was driving from A to L that day, fully aware of every point in between. 22? Must be dreaming. 33? Bloody hell. It's no dream.

HAIRY DAY

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:52:33 GMT

Hard to find space and thoughts to blog these days.

Part of it is because I'm not very writer-ly. Writers are those disciplined bots who make time to blog at least one post a day, at most five blogs at one time. No wait -- writers are those who simply love seeing words printed on any surface. Or those fail at life when compared by their parents to their siblings in corporate law, medicine, or a Korean pastoral position. I've too much ebb and flow in my spirit to be properly bloggerly.

The other part is that change is in the air. It may still be many months and a thousand miles away (bugger, winter is still here), but think of me as a gopher standing very, very still in the prairie, feeling tiny ripples in the air as a baby sneezes softly in China. Trying to work on some personal writings, as well as a website for my church.

Easter came and went without much fanfare. No public holiday either, which made me pine for home. In Malaysia, we get nearly 15 holidays, depending whether you live in KL or not. Here in the States, there's a barren stretch between New Year's Day and Memorial Day (May 30). Nations could fall and Web 3.0 could be here before I see the end of May.

Another plus in a Malaysian holiday is that I could be gorging myself with muruku, kuih raya, or pineapple tarts. Here, I pick delicately at a slice of Easter Ham. Yay. Salted meat. But it was very gracious of Karen and Tom to spontaneously invite me to their family dinner in the first place; a last-minute guest could make things no worse if you already have three kids and a baby at (and under) the table.

Other than the remarkable nature of Easter Sunday itself, another thing I found equally remarkable are the hairdo's on every other black girl in church.

I used to think Chinese girls back home were serious about their hair. Straighten lah, layer lah, color lah, shea butter lah, etc. O-oh no. Black girls blow them away.

Not only are they serious about the audacity and awe-factor of their hair styles, but also in the frequency at which they switch from one do to another.

For example, I came into youth group one day and saw that Gica had short hair in place of her usual ponytail.

"Nice cut," I said. She smiled at me and said nothing.

Next week, same time same place, and her hair had resurrected into a frumpy phoenix.

Crystal, a smart girl in her senior year, had her hair in a bun one day, a frizzy 'Starship trooper helmet' look the next, and -- hey, surprise -- the day after, she had sculptured it into something I can best describe as a volatile bird nest.

I've learned not to compliment them on their hair again, because I've lost all sense of what is real and what is not. There's some wicked styling (and maybe some wig action) going on around here, and they start young. African American women are proud of their hair, and go through ingenious ways of making art out them, instead of resorting to haircuts.

I think they look gorgeous. I've not done anything to my hair since the New Year. Should I exercise my ownership over it and go for a Son Goku look?

Maybe when Memorial Day swings around. If ever.

TSO GOOD, TSO BAD

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:14:52 GMT

I took a half-day at work today to drive out to Lancaster. It's been a while since I was last here, but I didn't protest when Amy greeted me warmly with a 'welcome home'. Beautiful day, beautiful turnpike, beautiful lady.

Voluntary mush-factor aside, as I was saying, I took a half-day. I celebrated coming back to bustling Oakland by aching to both live AND work within the city--and buying my first lunch food in a while. (I don't believe in driving a total of 6-miles at lunchtime to get an Arby's Melt.)

I got one of my favorite comfort foods: General Tso's chicken.

Comfort in the sense that you eat it when you're really really sad--or when you leave work early on Friday to shove all the mess to the unsuspecting dude in the cube next door.

I ate half of it; portions of 'Chinese' food in the US are generally such that you can eat till you're full and yet give away enough to relieve world hunger in 12 nations. Orient Express has the best General Tso's in Oakland. I felt gross and happy.

I thought of bagging it for the 4-hour drive. But General Tso's came with rice, not in a wrap.

Oh my. A General Tso's burrito. What am I doing in a cube?

I figured it would be tricky to manoveur chicken and rice into my mouth even with cruise control. Not to mention dangerous.

So I ate it all in one sitting. I devoured the entire box. I was horrified.

I felt like I had eaten General Tso himself.

It probably raised my heart terror level to RED, compared to an estimated YELLOW for eating with two hands on the road.

Saturday plans changed from Philly, to DC, to NYC. I'll be watching the Lion King show. If I do 20,000 stomach crunches during the show, I might be able to lower the threat level down to ORANGE.

And then wait to be king.

SPRING, LIKE A CHILD

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:32:28 GMT

You know it's spring when:

Doors to coffeeshops are wide open and the clientele spills out obstrusively onto the sidewalk.

It's warm outside, and freezing inside the house.

You bump into some 'toddlers on church' jokes on someone's blog (in this case, Maria).

~
3-year-old Reese:
"Our Father, Who does art in heaven,*
Harold is His name.
Amen."

~
After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied:
"That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you guys."

~
One particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets, as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."

~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they were on the way to church service, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"
One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping."

~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
"If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said:
"Ryan, you be Jesus!"

~
A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.
"He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said:
"Did God throw him back down?"

~
A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said,
"Would you like to say the blessing?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
"Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said:
"Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"

~
I don't know if these were all authentically or fictionally composed, but here are some real-life funnies with some local Pittsburgh moms:

MAYA: [very seriously] Mommy, I think I know what I'm going to give up for Lent.
SERINA: [surprised] What's that, honey?
MAYA: Salt. I'm going to give up salt.
SERINA: Wow. I know how much you love salt. Sounds like you thought about that for awhile.
MAYA: Yes, I did. But this means I can't have eggs, because I can't eat eggs without salt.
SERINA: Well, suppose you tried eggs with just pepper and herbs? It would still taste yummy.
MAYA: [thinks and thinks and thinks]
MAYA: Yeah. Lots of pepper, though. But not cayenne. Just black.
SERINA: [nods solemnly]

And,

Jonathan: "I know why Isaac died."
Heather [thinking she'd like to know]: "You do? "
Jonathan: "It's because his body stopped working."

Directly after the above:

Jonathan: "If Jesus didn't die on the cross..."
Mommy thinks: we'd still be dead in our sins...we wouldn't be reconciled to God...
Jonathan: "...then he could die on the ground."

<melts>

FORCE? WHAT FORCE?

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:05:00 GMT

I first heard about the Amazing Grace movie on the radio to work one day. It went a little something like this:

"Welcome to the morning show with Gary and Beth!"
"As we mentioned earlier, here's the scoop on movies opening this weekend."
"There Norbit! (HAHAHA)... I'm so there!"
"And the Number 23! (wooOOOoo)... Can't miss this one."
"And Wild Hogs! (SNORTSNORTSNORT)"
"Oh, and there's one more film opening as well..."
"There is?"
"It's called Amazing Grace."
"What's that?"
"Uh, a film about the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. A more serious film, if you like."
"I see... and now, on to live traffic conditions!"

-_-

I watched Amazing Grace two weeks ago with Amy and Jess. It was great (dare I say anything less?) watch. Coming on the tail of The Inconvenient Truth's win at the Oscars, this is another film for thought. Do watch it.

The movie give a context to the conception of the farmous Amazing Grace tune so ubiquitous to us nowadays that we could mindlessly sing it in lieu of Happy Birthday when blowing out the cake. In fact, one of the best lines of the film also appears in the song:

"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved"

Amazing (no pun intended). Think about it.

One slight drawback of the film though is that it might impress upon some people that slavery had been abolished two centuries ago and today we can clink our glasses to toast the good and holy fight that Wilberforce had championed. Evil has been squashed and the world is shining with love and justice.

Fact is, National Geographic estimates that there are 27 million slaves in the world today.

WHAT?

What more dare I say? We need to open our ears more.

And the cases aren't strange to our ears either:

"Living in a rural tribe in Southeast Asia, Elizabeth was offered work abroad at a restaurant to help her family's finances. As this arrangement is common, the family trusted a friend who set up her travel. Instead, she was taken to Thailand, where she was locked in a brothel and forced to service multiple men every day.

She became a slave in the "sex tourism" industry, a term referring to men, often child molesters from the West, who vacation where they can take advantage of lax, inept or corrupt law enforcement." (from previous link)

International Justice Mission (IJM) is one of the (Wilber)forces today in the fight to abolish modern day slavery. Gary Haugen, the president, is a fellow whose writings helped push me to reconcile my faith with the real world of social injustice--what does it really mean when we pray in the Lord's Prayer, Your Kingdom Come?

These are the few people today who know what being a Biblical Christian in our modern context really means (1) (2). They are the ones whose association with the Church goes way beyond warming pews and dropping change into expensive copper tithe pans and making sure we confess our past week's sins before going out for Sunday brunch. They go into the world to seek the rescue of sex slaves and 'untouchables'--people Jesus hung out with in his days. And they invite us to go with them, remotely or on the frontlines.

In an era of lists and bullet points, heck, why not another one? Check out some of the things you can do to help abolish slavery from your computer--or your lifestyle and ambitions.

I guess I'm doing one of them now, but injustices are not just fought by the clever, if even persuasive, tapping of keys.

BUSKERS IN THE BURGH

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:04:36 GMT

Be careful what you Google for.

Or at least, read carefully what Google spits out for you. Last Friday, Amy and I fancied an evening in the warm company of a jazz quartet somewhere in town. It seemed a great way to cap off a week that was dizzy on the see-saw high of 70F on Tuesday, only for a fat basket called the Last Laugh Winter Storm to stand up and stand the week spiralling to the ground with a thud. Don't you just hate playground bullies.

I was at work, so I commissioned Amy to run a search on the jazz club scene in the Burgh to check out what was going on. I'd pay for a good jazz performance, but you never know how many free gems are out there waiting to be unearthed. Yuenlin and I went to a free jazz concert at the nearby Holiday Inn (okay, $5 for a glass of Coke and a basket of chips) and were totally stricken at the sight of high school kids playing like Brubeck or Coltrane. It remains one of my favorite college memories today.

So Amy came up with the list (she's great at this) of options, highlighting one or two of her preferences as always; her golden recommendation was a place called Buskers in the Strip. It received a glowing review from a newspaper jazz column, which popped up among the top Google returns when she searched for 'jazz clubs Pittsburgh.' One of the performers is the conductor for CMU's two student jazz bands. I read over the column quickly at work, Googlemapped the address, and the evening was set.

We drove over to the Strip at about 9pm. Jazz is like Wendy's--great even late. In fact, it's more like mamak--great especially when late.

Buskers wasn't where the map said it would be. Weird. There was an elegant-looking Dejavu lounge, and a bar that had so many neon beer labels on its front 'window' that screamed HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! We made a few rounds before I decided to hop out into the last winter cold and brave a search on foot.

There was hardly anyone on the street. Considering that it is Pittsburgh, this wasn't surprising. But it was St. Patrick's day, so everyone seemed to be locked-in at a bar, Irish or not.

I asked two rare gentlemen, one of them a parking attendant, about the elusive Buskers. Both shook their heads forlornly. I was beginning to wonder if Buskers actually was a physical location, or whether it's just a motley crew of bored college professors who jammed together on Saturday afternoons before going home to watch ESPN.

After a fruitless hour at the Strip, we headed to Gullifty's in Squirrel Hill, my second choice only because of it's $5 dollar cover for a band I'd never heard of. I was disappointed and suspicious.

I was also badly needing to pee. We stopped at my house onroute to Sq. Hill to address this pressing bladder. Then a thought came to me. When was this jazz column review that so misled us actually written?

http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/20020524jazz2.asp

Five years ago.

(Gullifty's was a good enough alternative, although the crowd looked like Senior's Night.)

Dirty Feet

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:09:56 GMT

From comedy to poverty, here's another video link. It's getting a little irreistable to embed stuff on websites these days. You can embed videos, mp3s, picture galleries, and even calendars onto your site to share with everyone in the whole world. Except maybe the Queen, unless she logs on now and then. But I can't see monarchy logging onto Gmail.

And maybe royalty won't be logging on anytime soon to see Bono's speech on Youtube. Not claiming to be a big advocate of poverty--though I may ashamedly lay claim to being purveyor of poverty, through my background, status, lifestyle, and ambitions--but I think Bono's cool for saying the things he did. It was important to bring God into the picture too. Too long have people spoken out and acted to address poverty inspired by a moral cause, instead of looking at it as a spiritual issue that we all have to hop into. Go Bono.

I wonder how do people like Bono reconcile living in mansions and wearing designer suits with their rhetoric rallying cries to end poverty. Not saying that Bono lives in a mansion or wears Gucci that costs as much as a mansion, but just thinking out loud. Is it necessary for us to shirk status and security to help reach out and embrace the poor? The rich man did walk away sadly when Jesus told him to give away everything he owned.

That, to me, shows that at the end of the day, it boils down to motivation: are you being altruistic to elevate your status of humanhood; or to lower yourself to be with God?

God, my friends, is with the poor--and God is with us, if we are with them.
-- Bono (unless he stole it from someone else, like the Queen)

* Thanks Xian, for the link.

Dirty Hats

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:58:09 GMT

I've been missing Whose Line Is It Anyway? for the last two years since graduating from CMU cable. Used to watch the show back to back with Iron Chef--and that pretty much sums up my college TV escapades. Brimming with talent, humor, and, well, sexual innuendoes. Nothing in the show gets old--except the Bill Clinton cigar jokes.

Hats (world's worst dating video service) is one of the improv games that make me laugh till my bladder deflates. Filled with all of the qualities listed above, plus a host of bad puns. Most of these puns, I get. Gosh, too dirty up there.

A HARMFUL TOILET

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:47:46 GMT

Homeless people are often stigmatized because many of us--the homefuls--believe that they are all either mentally ill , addicted to crack, or out to mug us clean of our pants. We sidestep them when they thrust their cups out in front of us, averting our eyes and closing our ears as though participating in any kind of interaction with these people will give us AIDS, or at the very least, a bad taste on our tongues.

I've only ever stopped for a handful of them in my five years here. Come to think of it, most of those I've talked to are n't the staple panhandlers that are fixed into the local streetscape. Instead, they are one-off persons begging for a few bucks or a Subway sandwich, people only passing through, people whom I never see again. I didn't even know if they were homeless--only that they were trying to get somewhere, and could I please give them a little help, God bless my soul?

And I would feel obliged to give, mostly to get them off my back than to show them Jesus' love in meeting their needs. Oh why not, let's come clean--most times I am compelled by guilt to give, feeling all the eyes of the street needling my back to do the morally right thing. I think we mostly avert our eyes and route because we've become sadly suspicious of everything in the world, from faux beggars to Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Also, the cost of giving kindly is something that we are unable to grasp in a capitalistic, reap-what-you-earn culture.

More often than not, I'd walk away feeling conned, nursing the shame of giving away my money or 6-inch meatball sub to someone of whose origin and destination I do not know, of whose mental state and criminal intent I'm not aware of.

But researchers say that homeless people are mostly harmless. If anything, they are the victims: of the cold, of the police, of the homefuls, of the random group of youth looking for an easy target for their bricks. And I may tend to believe this. Calling the homeless harmful is like saying that all Chinese people speak Chinese, or that all Americans are fat (this is debatable).

I find little girls much more harmful.

I was over at a friend's place, waiting for lunch to be ready, when Maya tugged at my hand. I'd committed one of the gravest pre-lunch mistakes: leaning closer to a 3-year-old with a Disney storybook than to the tacos.

"Can you weed to mee?" Maya said. She gave me one of those looks straight out of the Handbook for Puppies, ready to orchestrate an asthmatic fit should I refuse.

"Okay." My stomach groaned. "Just one."

I sat her down on my lap and read her a dramatic rendition of a much-abridged The Little Mermaid.

"Okay?"

Puppy eyes and a barely audible whine. Fine. I turn the page and read aloud from Aladdin. I took a quick peek over near the end to find out, horror of horrors, that I held a compilation of ALL princess tales Disney ever laid their hands on. I had a harem of princess stories waiting to be read.

"Can I go now?" I said when I was done with Princess Jasmine, as meek and gentle as I could muster.

Maya shook her head seriously. I could feel the coal mine about to collapse on me.

Then an idea.

"Okay Maya, tell you what. I need to go to the bathroom. Baaadly. Pretty please? I'll come back."

She sighed and relented. I stood up to go, smelling freedom (literally, taco fillings), when Maya got up too. How very kind of her to show me all the way up to the second-floor guest bathroom. She opened the door and flicked on the light. She made ready the way for me, so to speak. Marie, her 5-year-old sister, bounced in out of nowhere to make it a very hospitable potty guide team.

"Thank you girls." I lumbered over to the toilet and looked back at them. "You can go now."

SLAM.

The door closed firmly, but there was one thing slightly wrong. The girls were leaning against the door from the inside, giggling and pointing at me.

"Er, girls--"

"GO POTTY!"

Rabid giggles followed. Nervous laughter on my part. Was this the TV substitute my friends had taught their children?

"Why, I don't really... can't..."

"GO POTTY!!!"

Despite my best creative excuses and timely tugs at the door edge--and despite there being no ransom other than repeated demands to show them how to use a toilet for all its worth--it took me a good part of 5 minutes to negotiate my way out of there.

I don't recommend playing Hostage with kids, especially with multiple girls luring you into a cosy bathroom for a pee you did not have to take. But boy, did those tacos taste good after that.