Ong Xuyen

I already knew his time was almost up when I called my mom earlier today. She said he was no longer responsive. I was restless all day as I tried to get some of my thesis work done. Wanting to get out of the house, I asked Nelson if he wanted to go to Black Bear Diner.

Sitting down a flood of memories hit me, and I realized I had already shared my last meal with Ong Xuyen before I left for the beginning of the Winter quarter. Ong Xuyen loved to eat out, especially at diner-type restaurants. When I was first able to drive I remember taking him to IHOP all the time. As I grew older I discovered different places to take him--from Harry's Cafe, to Doug's Mainstreet Grill, and more recently Spires. Nothing fancy, really, he just loved to go out and eat with us.

Sunday Paper

Good ol' Sunday coffee & paper

In case you did not notice, today's high schoolers were all born in the twenty first century.

Boy is it easy to think that we are a millennium apart.

How much more can be said about the "millennial generation?"

Luckily for them, their story is largely still unwritten.

If, however, you look at the stories being written day by day, it is enough to give at least this rambler some pause.

Sitting here in a coffee shop, attempting to put in yet more hours of work this week, I took the time to pick up an LA Times that was sitting on the table.

With nostalgia over the high school, LA Times-Award-winning, journalism years I flipped immediately to the second page.

Jan Ewell¹had told us usually the juicy stuff is on the inside flap of the page, where people are usually too lazy to venture to.

Here is a summary of headline-worthy newsbits²

• Chinese leaders plan how to rally their economy, step back corruption reform
• Exxon Mobil screwed the icecaps and coastal cities to pad their pockets
• Allegedly drunk driving woman kills 4
• Obama agrees with majority of Americans that standardized testing is stupid
• Naval academy brings back celestial navigation because hackers

Then I logged in to my laptop, and the first thing I saw pop on my Outlook was my Al Jazeera and KPCC news feeds.  Here is more from this past week:

• Black churches burning 
• Police shoot another innocent man
• Rape and violence up in civil warring South Sudan
• Swedish school sword rampage

Worked myself to the
bones this week.

So are these the headlines we write day in and day out?  

For most of us, no, we live a mundane life.

We work our 9 to 5's and go about our day in relative peace.

Except on the 405--there we question the doctrine of human dignity.

But how do we avoid becoming simultaneously the most connected and least connected generation of all time?

Am I just the voice of our mothers and fathers crying out, "do better than I did?"

Do we rise up to change our social and political structures?  Do we work the system?  Do we grow jaded, give up, and wait for the next generation to "fix things?"

For the uninformed, Pope Francis has declared an extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy³.

Let's make mercy more than something we talk about.

It begins December 8th, 2015.

The Year of Mercy.

Can it change the world?

Yes.  Mercy can change the world.

Will it change the world?

That is a headline you must decide to write.

Though I will undoubtedly stumble, you can consider me all in.

NOTES

1. Janet Ewell advised our high school journalism crew, which I was a part of from 2003 to 2005.  We won best overall at the Los Angeles Times 5-county competition for high school 4 page spread.  She got LA Times Sports writer Bill Plaschke to come and mentor us.  Aside from journalism, she was always a great encouragement and advocate for me as a young man of faith.
2. Links to LA Times and Al Jazeera news sites provided for your curiousity!
3. A jubilee year has biblical roots and is essentially a special year for remission of sins.  They typically fall in 50 year intervals, but this one does not so it is "extraordinary."

Letting go

I think this is my biggest difficulty. It's why I've taken myself so seriously, it's why I get angered easily, and now it's why I feel so overcome with sorrow. I have trouble letting go--of the past, of the present, of the future.

Why do I try to live with fists clenched so tight? What reason is there for holding on, even when all holding on does is make me sad?

Sometimes it feels...

like all the heart I have is never going to be enough.

Accountability

Just trying to keep myself responsible and my tasks in order:

- CDPH Memo: POU for As/Nitrate Capital and O&M costs vs Bottled Water (due Thursday)

- Green Design: Finalize Materials Report, Start and finish Cost Estimate Report (due tomorrow)

- O. Chem: HW#4 due June 1, Report due June 9

- Water Quality: HW#4 due June 6, 10 page proposal due June 9

Today is May 24...

Help me climb this mountain, don't let me fall.

Let the waves crash...

Taken from a post by a Redditor named GSnow:

Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gorged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

a fire in my soul

God, you've put a fire in my soul. With each and every person who's come into my life, you teach me a lesson, new or old.

I had another dream about my God father James Le again. It was like he had never left. I imagined him a little bit older, a little more lines on his face, the hair on his head a bit more thin.

It seems when I dream about him, it's because I am stressed out, or even fearful--afraid that I have taken the wrong path. Afraid that I had left my family and friends behind for too long, or perhaps, that I would just end up a failure. But those dreams I have are bittersweet medicine. I wake up with a twang in my heart from the longing of loved ones I can no longer be near, but I grow in courage, in resolve.

James taught me many lessons. Some of them were spoken, but the magnitude and direction of his life speaks mountains to me. It's a bit cheesy, but these are the words his life spoke to me:



Thanks, Pops, for the lessons and the courage to go on. I miss you, but we'll have our time again some day.

Changing the world

I think sometimes people get ahead of themselves, wanting to change the world and all. There's a lot going on in the world today--protests, revolutions, whatever you want to call them, triggered by economics, unjust institutions of power, etc.--and I think it's inspiring to many people.

I suppose when I say "sometimes people" what I really mean is "sometimes I." Because it's true. There was a time when I was younger when I realized changing the world means changing MY world--that my life has such a limited reach into any greater context. I want to see things change so bad, I want to be a harbinger of justice to everyone, but I have to remember who I am and what I believe to be justice. Live and die with dignity, decide on your own, but think critically, what exactly that means--it's the only way to change your world.

november & the souls

I remember you all and I still feel the love you poured out on this earth while you still could. Thank you.

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Davis

I've been up in Davis having a ball, gettin' it done. Since I left, I've been worried about family & friends--mostly mom and Khanh, the one's who are most used to having me around.

Caught up in all the work and learning, I never quite got the chance to sit down and realize how much I miss everyone--which is a lot.

I suppose this ought to serve as motivation for me to study. I'll be home soon enough.

dreams of the father...

I've been having dreams about my Godfather two nights in a row. I'm not sure what my subconsciousness is trying to tell me, or perhaps what, in some mysterious way, God is reaching out to me.

The first dream gave me the sense that I was being protected by him... the dream itself is difficult to piece together because it was quite abstract.

This second dream was of him being around for a week. I don't know if this was postmortem or what, but Masaru (one of his best friends) and myself were angry that he'd only be around for a week. He and Masaru played a game of basketball to settle some kind of score, and I sat in my car listening to music and watching them play. He told me, "take it easy, Drew." After they finished the game, I tried to get them water from the trunk of my car but I ran out. I asked Jims what he planned to do the week he was still here, I can't remember what he said.

Take it easy, huh? I think it's time for me to sit down and really prepare myself for a new stage in my life instead of running around.

I wish I had some more recent pictures of him and I, I suppose there weren't too many. And then again, I suppose it'd be too much for me to look back in that way. His memory shall suffice.

brokenness

Sometimes, I sit and think about the brokenness of this world, that we live in. I become overwhelmed by the gravity and magnitude of this world's issues. I just probe my mind, seeking answers.

Then I think, "it's time to sleep, tomorrow's another day."

I think many of us have a deep desire to dry the tears of others, to be that warm embrace for all those lost and cold. Each day, we have the opportunity. Take charge of it.

Love, reign o'er me...

I had just finished cleaning up my classroom and returned the attendance sheet at Sister's office, pretty much on the opposite side of the church where I had parked my car. As I was leaving the school yard, the rain started to pour. With each couple of steps I took, it got more violent, heavy. I didn't have an umbrella, so I ran to the church.

In the back of my mind I was thinking that I should stay for confession--half an hour away. I thought that, by some chance, maybe God was drawing me closer. I am not usually that superstitious. I mean, often times I see how one uncontrollable event leads me to another, I just usually (at least publicly) go along and not question whether things turned out that way because of God, or fate, or what have you.

I have to say, I now deeply believe I was meant to walk into that church, that day. When I got in, there was a homeless man sitting at the piano, being scolded by our Pastor. The homeless man was told to leave, else the police were contacted to take him away. The homeless man kept asking "isn't a church supposed to be a sanctuary? what time is your service, I thought mass was at 5:30 and 7:30?" One of our Vietnamese deacons came by and scolded the man much more harshly than the Pastor, who at least tried to stay calm (if not just cold and indifferent).

There was a boy in the church with his parents. A young Vietnamese teenager. It appeared as if he wanted to stop the Pastor, but his parents kept holding him back and saying something to him. The Pastor finally called the police (actually the sheriff), and walked away. No longer berated, the man began to play the piano.

The man was a tall black male, he had a beard and mustache, with a big afro. He was wearing fatigues, or at least camo pants, a large dirt and sweat stained white t-shirt, he had a military hat that matched his pants, and a green jacket, almost a wind breaker. Sitting next to the pews near the piano were two bags of milk and bread. He had a gentle demeanor, and played beautifully, if a bit choppy as if he had been long out of practice.

The song he played resembled his person quite a bit. At times dark and mysterious, but also gentle and slightly rusty. I could only speculate as to who he was, where he came from, and how he ended up here. I sat and listened to his song, up until this point not saying a word.

I did not know what to do or say. I knew I was witnessing a great injustice, not only to this fair tempered man, but to God's House. Just then, an alter server placed something on the alter, turned around, and bowed to the cross. At that point, I got up and called the boy's attention. I told him he was supposed to bow to the alter. I explained how significant the alter is. After all, the cross is just a statue of Christ crucified, but at the alter is where, alive, he gave himself up, and at the alter where he is alive once more.

At that moment, I remembered table fellowship, and knew what I wanted to say to the homeless man. I sat down and continued to listen to his song, until the time came when the sheriff would soon be at the church. I got up and asked him if he had lunch yet, if he wanted to go eat with me. He only looked at me once, closed his eyes, smiled, and looked forward. I don't know if he smiled out of joy or disdain for me. I pleaded, saying I would rather take him out to eat, then to have the police force him out. This time, he didn't look at me.

As I ran out of things to say, I stepped back, looked outside, and the sheriff had just arrived. The man finished his song, got up, took his bags and walked out the door, greeting the sheriffs.

"On your way out?" they had asked.

"Yeap," he replied. He walked away quite quickly. I still wanted to eat with this man, to hear his story. I cut through the church to catch up to his quick pace. I asked him again if he'd eat with me, again he just looked at me once, smiled, and kept moving forward. In the heat of the moment, I was at a loss for words, not knowing what else to say. I walked with him to the edge of the church grounds, where he cut away and went down Beach Blvd.

A flood of emotion and things I wanted to tell him hit me. I knew how stupid it might seem for me to go after him, at least to a parent who would worry about my safety. I wanted to tell him, I'm not stupid, nor did I pity him. I just wanted to know him. As I started walking back to my car, defeated, I thought once again that it could not just end this way.

Getting in my car, I heard this song on the radio. It was Bettye Lavette singing The Who's Love Reign O'er Me live on NPR. I began to drive around looking for the man, thinking if he saw my persistence he might sit down with me. I couldn't find him. I had parked my car in a lot down in the direction he was walking to get out and look for him, to no avail.

I began to wonder why I wanted so bad to talk to him, and what I could possibly gain from the experience. I guess it came down to this:

Can I really make a difference in this world? How? Am I just a fool, flailing around before my own time is up?

I guess I'll have to find the answer some other way.... Anyhow, enjoy Bettye's beautiful rendition of the song, if you hadn't already began playing it:

Isn't it a pity?

moved.

I am supposed to be reading Mark right now as part of my Lenten... exercise, shall I say... but I would like to take a moment and try to articulate something I felt today.

First I would have to inform you that lately I've been quite... fiery.  Hot headed, yet impassioned.  I've been praying for and working on this.  Today something strange came over me.  It is difficult to articulate exactly how it felt.  In imperfect words, I was contemplative as usual, but the noise was not there.  My heart felt heavy, yet strong.  I could feel something well up from deep within me and I felt a sort of sorrow and humility.  It was as if for a moment I truly understood my humanity.  On the ride home from school, where I would normally get frustrated by reckless drivers, my heart was silent... or rather, it was like something was dampening the anger, absorbing the shock.  Instead of the usual anger, I felt a profound sort of sorrow.  Not just like "how sad, that person doesn't realize what they are doing."  It was much more simple than that.  Perhaps because, at the same time I remembered my Christian calling to hope, and so I felt connected to the other drivers.  The hope is that one day, we could put such petty recklessness aside and share in the fellowship we all ought to belong to in the human family.

On this last note, I will begin my reading.  Almighty Father, you hear my cries and know my heart.  I thank you for such an opportunity.  As you listen to me, I too must listen to you.  Open, then, my ears, and mind... the very core of my being so that I may fully participate in your grace, to carry out your will.

if only...

...I knew what my purpose is.  I've always wondered, and at times I've fooled myself/others into thinking I know what it is, but I don't really know.  Engineering, all of a sudden, seems quite insignificant.  Am I really meant to serve as an engineer?  Is it enough, to start a family, work, and in my free time, truly serve?  Is starting a family really serving anyone? 

I'm in the mood to move outside myself.  Perhaps if I were a better man, I'd focus on helping a poor soul w/ a shitty family rather than trying to make a perfect family of my own. 

Alright, time to not look so far down the road.  Tomorrow's another day, gotta do what tomorrow beckons.  Right now, I suppose that's sleep.

spoiled.

I grew up a spoiled child and when I was old enough to understand what that meant, I did everything in my power to move beyond that. When I was a teen I became anti-social, at times nihilistic and even suicidal, at the very least self destructive. As I matured, it turned into resolve to just accept what's been given to me and to try to do my best to utilize it for the benefit of others.

My mom still tries to spoil me today. I am going to go on record and say that spoiling a person is not the same as loving them.

When she does this, it sparks that deep rage in me that's ridiculously destructive. The worst part is that it can be over the smallest thing.

I'm still trying to find a way to cope with my anger. If anyone out there has suggestions, I am all ears, but be forewarned, I have tried almost everything in my power to stop it.

Veritas, Aquitas

Sometimes I fear I am too self righteous. I have such a fiery passion for truth and justice.

Do I really seek the truth?

Is my sense of justice obscure?

Grad School, Part Deux.

Lyrics | George Harrison - I Don’t Want To Do It lyrics

Grad School...

Applying to graduate school's been making me so anxious and nervous.  I am not overly concerned about acceptance, but there are so many questions I have left unanswered. 

For those who don't know, it's pretty much my mom, "grandpa," and me still living at home.  In 2001 my dad got shipped to Santa Cruz/San Jose because his job, my sister started a family and moved out...already 3 years now.  My mom is fairly dependent on me around the house, not just to help her out, but to keep her sane, and keep her company.  This house I pretty much grew up in is so empty now, I know it's tough for me at times when I'm home alone, I can only imagine how she feels or how the OG feels. 

Other things I would leave behind are my girl friend, my parish, my friends... I know it's only 2 years, but it is a difficult thing for me.  All these things are what keep me sane and fighting on.

Then there's the issue of funding, research, the ability to perform.  As great as Cal Poly engineering is, it really does not prepare us for a research environment. 

What about relocating?  Texas, Illinois, Ohio... can I handle it?  The differences in culture?  The weather? 

Bleh, I need to stop being a little b*tch.  I guess I'll just answer these things some other time, some other way.  Got finish those grad apps...