Meh...my new playlist

My friend in high school was pretty chillax. She'd say meh when there was nothing to be said. Touched by that memory, i thought of some relaxing songs I think of when the stuff hits the fan. Here they are. Whether I'm feeling like million bucks or the zero in closed bank account, this kind of music goes great with a afternoon ride from class on friday when you know the weekend's coming and you are going to just call it a holiday.

iTunes, Gmail and Skype

You try to get work done. So I hook up the laptop next to my desktop and lo and behold, the time flies. I'm constantly checking my email to see if my group are all one the same page while Switchfoot's "American Dream" blasts into my ears through my Panasonic headphones, Gchat is chiming every once in awhile, I'm editing a lesson plan, cutting and pasting other people's work into one work. The music is shuffling, time's flying and I haven't even started my readings for tomorrow. And I'm a week behind. Ok, gotta get off line, burn the midnight oil. And all the while my mom's asking if i want the rest of the boiled peanuts. Hmmm...difficult choices.

Red nail polish

I'm frantically trying to run errands. first its this thing then the other. how disheveled is this life. So may responsibilities yet the time seems to go by in the moment. time is so precious, it perhaps trumps cash. How can you buy time? It's like those two Pink Floyd songs. Puts things really in perspective.

depositing a check in the bank, sending post by attaching the correct postage and certifying it to make sure it gets to where it needs to go.

Decisions, outcomes, lives hanging in the balance. All the while I sit staring at the red light to turn green while the hot afternoon sun tans my forearms.

From moment to moment, I'm in the zone. a few minutes here means less time to do something else. the opportunity cost of prioritizing. Makes me wonder the meaning of life. I seldom think of it since I am so caught up in something that it rarely dawns on me.Until its important.

Agh, I still have to get this done.

I depart

Knowing that this wave will break into the ocean into other waves. There's always bigger fish to fry. You never stop. Running. You keep going until you give your very best.

red nail polish.

Returning to Los Arboles

Dear Journal,

I cannot believe it has been a week. Fall Break went by so fast.

I'm sure the students had a fun time during their break off.

As for me, all I did was sleep and finish my homework. Of all the days of last week, the most memorable one was Tuesday. It was raining really hard. The wind was so strong that I ran after a plastic bag.

Staying at home made me realize how I missed going to class to see my friends or going to Los Arboles in the morning to observe Mrs. Patton and her students in room B4.

Tomorrow I am going back to teach another lesson. I hope that I don't keep the students too long. Then they will miss out on recess.

Till next time,

Mr. Ow (aka Jay)

Driving Home

It's been a long Saturday with my mom helping her buy groceries and hanging out with my grandparents in North Beach. We park in front of the delicatassen across my grandparents but the owners don't give us trouble so we leave it there for a bit. Then we repark it a few blocks away up.

My mom and I venture into Chinatown. It's hot, strange for City weather and so I'm wearing my green GAP fleece, a book under my arm that I've been wanting to read called "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pusch.

As I read and wait, a stranger waits as I adjust my gaze from the book to her eyes. She's wearing a red sweatshirt and is hesitant. I ask her what she needs and she's deliberating whether or not to take a box among the heap alongside a Chinese bakery. It's a typical take out place with hot dim sum piping hot from the racks; the steamy aroma of mantou buns waft around, they wander out and find themselves within my nostrils. It really bugs me that find this dirty, crowded, and smelly place delish in its food offerings, unique in the eavesdrops of everyday chatter, a smattering of different languages, and the different denizens who frequent the long stretch of road that's Chinatown

She and I talk for a bit, and then she decides to locate the manager. My mom returns from her errand and she sets off for another store. I part ways with this female acquaintance and wish her luck in procuring a box for her stuff
I situate myself inbetween two vendors and think about how often I've been here growing up and in the recent years.

Maybe its the old Chinese guy who asks for a nickel in Chinese/English in case you don't know either. Or its the suburbanites like myself who stay with their parents cuz they're forced to. Perhaps its the locals who live in the area or the City and are just doing some groceries for next week's meals.

Regardless from the old stock of retired, aged Chinese immigrant or the young, cosmopolitan foreign exchange student these people intermix. It's a world of shuffling, buying/selling, and getting where you wanna go.

As I am about to continue in reading my acquaintace takes a brief moment to greet me; the wooden pallet attached to her stowaway impresses me. She told the clerk behind the counter at the bakery that she would compensate her a dollar for the pallet which she then handed over to the boss. Success!

A few moments go by and I'm breezing through me read, waiting for my mom and guarding my mom's parcels. Then all of a sudden two Chinese women bark at each other. I cannot understand a word they're saying cuz they speak a different dialect than I but its so commotional. Spectators' reactions vary, some pass by indifferent while others smirk. They find amusement in this? This altercation lasts for another ten-fifteen minutes. An African American male sticks his head out of the car and is puzzled, trying to locate the ruckus. He darts ahead, cuz he knows the traffic behind him will get upset.

And so they take their drama, and the move down. Loud exchanges back and forth. Fingers pointing and spit flying around. The argument subsides and everything's back to the good ole hustle/bustle.

As I'm finishing the last chapter of the book, my mom arrives. We walk back to Grandma's and call it a day. After checking my email and trying to figure out the name of the HK Drama I used to watch back to back on my Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, I'm disappointed I cannot locate it at the library. I'll have to watch it streamed online i suppose if i can find it.

Dinner is my mom's specialty, baby back ribs on sale from safeway glazed with bbq sauce, my uncles famous ginger and onion coated dungeness crab, some snow peas and a dollop of white Thai jasmine rice. At the end of the meal, I'm licking the sauce off my hands which are pruny and wet with all the crab meat I've consumed.

As my mom and I go home, I think about times on this hwy when this one time my mom got lost on the 380 going back home. She had to stop and ask someone to guide her back. Or the last time my dad promised to treat me to innout after fixing the integra at my uncles shop but we ended up going home to eat. Perhaps it was the last time I took Caltrans when the semirig turned over and a clean up caused the 101 to shut down.

These memories are resurfacing and pervade my thoughts as I look at the passing yellow street lamps. And the radio plays my favorite song by Journey as I converse with my mom. There's something about driving, the music, and these thoughts that arise. It's like I'm processing it all yet at the same time I am still here in the present. Quite trippy yet it is cathartic.

Tonight was a good night. It's good to have relations in the City. I'm glad I live close enough to visit yet far enough to not get caught up with all that pressure. Allows me to be sane.

Now what was it?

I'm trying to remember but I was going to write today. It's funny how sometimes you have a a - ha moment but then you forget what you recalled which dawned on you. Walking around a vast body of water, talking in dialogue with my cohort I feel a sense of continuity in my experience. That some where some how we have our prior knowledge and experiences that have brought us to this point. Some are married, working, about to be married, are in relationships, have children, made career switches. And its all for the same purpose, the same goal of becoming a teacher. It's funny, I look back at how I wanted to be a teacher in my undergrad years. I remember reading Jonathan Kozol's "Ordinary Resurrections" and Mike Roses " Lives on the Boundaries" and it made me see the educator not one who simply teaches and receives tenure after a few years. But I saw such hope and vision that the future could be better, that we, in the present may not know or see how our pupils turn out or how our instruction may lead or guide them.

However, its in the day to day, the relationships and conversations in the classroom with our students that we the teacher create the culture, make change happen in ways that we ourselves never thought possible.

Perhaps this is what Rafe Esquith said when he referred to "teaching like your hair's on fire" or when Robin Williams urged his pupils to constantly "seize the day."

each time I think about what made me want to become a teacher, I go back into my memories of who I was. I still have a letter from sixth grade teacher who could have given up on me due to my behavior problems. But nonetheless she persisted. She taught us in ways that led us to believe that we were not just sixth graders, but young adults maturing and eager for life's next steps.

I think back to those teachers who had such intensity that it was attributed as a sign of respect or a sign of some way of adding to their eccentricity.

Well, i've digressed immensely and i didn't even remember what I was supposed to journal about.

Now what was it?

Reminesce - HS

I'm sitting in a conference room. Dark blue sweater, slim black fedora, my plaid Vans listening to a HR staffperson brief me on fire drills, evacuation protocols and lockdown procedures and in the back of my mind it brings me back to that one time at Milpitas High when we were on lock down.

Back to the huts built at the end of the overhangs that provided shelter from the sun, cover during the rain and zones for classes, from frosh to senior. It's funny now I remember this odd ends and knickknacks that are meaningless.

I recall a time when I hung out on the outskirts of the popular areas, in between academic buildings, in a stair way that was held in place by concrete barriers. There was a small courtyard in the middle of a set of descending and ascending stairs where we, our clique hung out.

One time I remember back in the day before cell phones were popular ppl used walkie talkies. And one time my friend was prank calling using his walkie and the funny thing is the person on the other line knew who he was. He demonstrated this by describing his clothes, build and so forth a couple miles away. We panicked, and hid in our concrete bunker, to avoid identification, lest the angry person on the other end wallow out some justice.

Or there was Vinny, a friend I remember from second grade who moved to the area and then transferred to my school. He was a quiet fellow, very sensitive and perceptive. Yet, he was full of a lot of pent up emotions. One time, he was quite upset and he used some wooden sticks and shredded quite a few inches of bark from the tree.

Pink in the face and screaming, that somehow allowed him to diffuse his anger, if not in a more holistic way.

But then he moved, down south to be with his mother. He told me that his mother could make peanut butter, from scratch, that the film of the oils and grounds formed a perfect texture on the bread that it was remarkable.

As time moved on people went different places. They went back to their home group. And I as well. It's funny how these memories come back in the most randomest times. One minute you could care less and would rather cue towards the end or credits yet in another you want to hold on and never ever forget. But that's life's moments. You are in the moment and out the next. You just have to keep going and be humble. As my friend told me, in a personal conversation "Humble, but hungry."

another side conversation with my self.