Thanksgiving, a day that will haunt me every year

November 26, 2005. 3 days before my dad died, it was Thanksgiving day. My family was at the hospital in his room and we all talked and shared memories. Thanksgiving that year...was not the same. And it never will be again. The rest of our family, cousins, aunts, and uncles, all celebrated thanksgiving at my cousin Steven's house. There was a huge gathering there, but we stayed at the hospital for a portion of the night. However, instead of staying with my father for the remainder of the night, for some fucking reason, we left to Stevens house to celebrate for a bit. What the fuck were we thinking? Did i seriously leave my father at the hospital on thanksgiving day? 3 days later, he died. I will never forgive myself for leaving to go to Steven's house. I don't care if we only left him for several hours, what we did was wrong.

I regret being such a jack ass to my dad. I always sided with mom, at times I even hated him, but for what? Stupid things. I wasn’t old enough to know anything back then. When he got sick, I didn’t even bother to be that close to him. Every time he needed help with something, I would grumble and moan and do it as if I didn’t want to. He ended up being mad and doing things on his own. Why couldn’t I just help him without complaint? He was dying for fucks sake. Every time I had to go to the hospital with my mom, I was more concerned about other things. When I sat in that room with him in his bed, I would be on aim on the computer in the room. I should have been sitting there like a son, and talking to his dying father. Maybe it was because I really didn’t think he was going to die soon, but he did.

Im not sure when it happened, or why, but there was a point of time in my life when i stopped talking to my dad. Maybe it was a series of events that lead up to it. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder what my dad thought of me. I never realized how proud he was of me. After he died, my mom told me he always talked about me and said I was the smartest of the family. He knew I’d be the top of my class and be successful one day. He believed I could be a doctor. He said he just wished he would live long enough to at least see me graduate. He didn’t want me to grow up so young without a father like he did.

My actions will haunt me forever. As a son, I wish I would have treated him better when he was still alive. I really, really fucked up.

Why do bad things happen to fucking good people?

Today has been a bad day. I woke up late for school. Stupid neighbors told me to slow down when I was driving posted speed limit. That really pissed me off. People at school pissed me off, school itself was pissing me off. I saw that I scored below average on my midterm. I went to eat Chinese food and their Sweet and Sour Chicken tasted like sour patch kids. Wtf happened to the “sweet” part. I went home, felt like shit. I decided to go continue my training for my fight. I end up screwing up my wrist 2 weeks before it. It better heal fast. Honestly, nothing has driven me to make me feel good since summer.

Everything pisses me off. Just a few days ago, I found out my aunt might have bone cancer. Cancer… I know this piece of shit very well. Fuck cancer. Not only is it just some kind of cancer, but BONE cancer. For god’s sake, their family is perfect. Why is this happening? My uncle worked so hard to get to where he is today. Built up his wealth, building a mansion, has a beautiful wife, and especially, 2 gorgeous little daughters that I love. THE perfect family. Yet one day, for some reason, she has to go to the hospital and her body no longer has white blood cells. Bad things happen to good people, and it fucking sucks. This is one reason why I no longer believe in God.

The other day I took the 2 daughters out with my brother to eat ice cream. It was a fun experience, I have the time of my life when Im with them. They make me laugh. It pains me to know what might happen to their mom. I lost my father at the age of 16, I couldn’t imagine them going through it at such a young age. I want to be a big influence on their lives, and take them out more often. They seem to really look up to me. I plan on taking them to the aquarium or out somewhere next week. Family bonding to me is extremely important.

Off topic, but on a side note, ive always been pissed off when I think about some friends. You don’t really always know who they are. One in particular, that I WAS extremely close with…smoked weed, and they never told me this. The funny thing is, someone asked me if they did, and I defended them. I stated, “there’s no way.” he/she is not like that, wouldn’t do that, never. They know better. Turns out, I confronted this person and couldn’t believe I defended them. I wonder what else there was about he/she that I never knew about. Probably a lot. I hate people who smoke, and find it extremely disgusting when females smoke.

My boxing match is in 2 weeks. I’ve worked hard, very hard. Everyday since summer I trained until I felt like dying. My shirt would be so soaked I would have trouble taking it off. Thoughts that anger me, thoughts that make me want to crush everything….this is what fuels my work out. I remind myself of everything that I hate so much, and as I do this, my arms gain more strength and my adrenaline continues to pump. I have the strength to go beyond my normal physical capabilities because of this. Everything that I put into my training, my sweat, my blood, my rage and angers, will be in my fists. These fists will connect and I feel very sorry for whoever is against me. No hard feelings yo, but you’re gna get hurt if you’re in the ring with me. Of course however, I love boxing. I love fighting. It’s my passion. Its an art. However, just currently… it’s been helping me vent.

School sucks. No idea what I yet want to do with my life.

Summer Ends

Damn, school starts in just 4 more days. It's funny how fast time goes by, just a month ago i said "look guys...before we know it, it'll be September 30th." And whata ya know..its only a couple of days away. It kind of sucks i guess, but it's whatever. life goes on, i gota start doing shit. Study hard, finish my classes, graduate, get a job, be rich. Ive been on a break now for nearly 4 months and i don't know if i was even able to accomplish much this summer. I think back and tell myself, what the hell did i do? I feel more stupid than ever, my grammar sucks and i can barely even speak properly.

Overall, i mean it was fun chillin with the homies from day to day, but i wish i did more with my time. I probably shouldn't have stayed up so late every night doing nothing or playing video games and waking up late. Instead i should've taken on some new hobbies or worked on some projects around the house or something. I've been constantly telling myself i should renovate the backyard and make it look crazy, or remodel the house. I suppose it was also a money issue that didn't allow me to do all of those things. remodeling is nice, but also quite expensive.

I guess this summer i went to Cancun, that was fun...boy, that feels like a decade ago already. But after Cancun though, i didn't do much at all, or at least nothing that was extremely memorable. I wish i could've done more, but maybe next summer i guess. I've been constantly writing down "things to do" on note cards every week...but i never usually get around to it. Currently i have 2 note cards filled with things to do and my goal is to mark it all off before summer ends. Chances are, not likely but i'll try.

At the beginning of summer i noticed that i was getting out of shape. Especially when i was in Cancun, i didn't have quite the physique that i desired haha. may sound gay that I'm so concerned about those kinds of things, but i like being fit and looking good. I've never quite looked like this so I've been recently going back to the gym a lot. I try to go everyday and I started boxing again. Hopefully i can fight again soon sometime this year. It's something I've always enjoyed and loved, but I've never really devoted my whole time into it. It's also something to get my mind off of things when im pissed off or something. Trust me, punching something is a huge stress reliever. When you throw everything you got until you can't breathe and your fists hurt... you feel good. Training will be pretty hard with school going on, but i'll try to continue my routine everyday after school to stay in good condition.

Recently though, i've been getting into biking. I got all my LiveStrong gear and i feel like a bad ass haha. got my yellow helmet, live strong watch, bracelet, shirt, shorts, shoes, the whole package! I originally used my brothers mountain bike, which is pretty nice, but then Jane let me borrow her brother's road bike. The difference between the bikes is huge when you're biking on the road. I save tons of energy simply because the road bike is so much faster and it allows you to move longer distances without pedaling as much. So instead of driving places, i always bike now. If i need to go to Lowes or the bank, i usually just bike a few miles out. I also just bike for leisure and sport, its something i've grown to love. I wana be able to bike to Redmond soon...i was thinking about doing it before school starts but i don't know. One of these days though, i'm going to bike to UW for school. I want to do it before the school year ends at least. Once i get enough training, i want to do the Seattle to Portland bike trip. I know i can do it and i will do it sometime in my life. That's not even that bad really ive always thought it would be awesome to bike all the way to california, then around the states and just explore and sleep wherever i can find a place.

I forgot to mention, something kind of funny happened 2 days ago. One night, at around 10 something, my buddy Donald gives me a call and asks if i wana go to a party. At first i was reluctant, i'm not the type to really go to some random party and drink. I thought it would be awkward if i didn't know anyone, and i felt like i would just feel out of place. But i ended up going and i'm kind of glad i did. i was able to get out of the house and experience something new i guess. When i got there, i was surprised to recognize a lot of faces, but also a lot of faces that i didnt know. You know you don't go to a lot of parties when right when you get there, an old friend of yours comes up to you and she says, "what the hell are u doing here?" Not even a "hi," or "hey how are you." haha i didn't really care but i was kind of like wtf? Nice way to say wassup, but i guess she was a bit intoxicated. Anyways, the party got a little too loud and cops ending up coming. I don't really feel like going into deep details, but what happened was me, Scotty, and Chris ended up running away from the cops right as we walked around the corner of the neighborhood. We ran cause I wasn't trying to get an MIP and we called Donald to come pick us up. With our awesome luck, Donald ended up driving into a ditch and we tried to push him out intoxicated, but that didn't work too well. Donald wasn't even drunk...just poor driving skills haha. We called up Jeff Goslee, who woke up out of bed and came to help us out. he's the one person you can count on when you need help, good guy.

Blue Scholars performs on Monday, i'm pretty stoked about that. They're going to be at UW for DAWG DAZE (an event with a bunch of festivities before school starts). It's free too and it'll be on the HUB lawn. I've never really seen any hip hop group perform. Oh yeah, my last blog said i was going to be at the JAY Z concert...well scratch that because we never bought the tickets. When we wanted to, the seats we were gna get were full and they upped the price for the shitty seats and we figured it wasn't worth it anymore. I was actually really looking forward to it too becuase this was probably Jay Z's last time ever touring and i've never been to anything like that.

What else is going on....i'm not exactly sure. School starting again is about it. I dread it, but at the same time i think i need it. A lot of things have been on my mind recently this past month, things that don't make me feel all that great. i need to get over it and school will keep myself occupied with things to do. UW year of 09-10, here i come!

An update on my life and frustrations

Hey so it’s been a while since my last blog (on myspace). I was recently reminded of blogging again because I was hanging out with my friend Jane and she said I haven’t updated my blog In a while so I figured, hey lets get a new one up! Before you continue reading, I must warn that this blog will be extremely long due to the fact that I haven’t blogged in forever. I will probably just throw down as much random shit as I can off my head of what has happened since my last blog… or things that really piss me off, which has been happening frequently this past month.

Let’s see…where to start, my last blog I believe was about my encounter with the homeless male who tried to fight me. A lot has definitely happened since then. That event probably happened around spring time before finals. I was able to finally finish my first year of college! It went by pretty fast and I can’t believe I’m already starting my second year. I still have no idea what I want to do but what the hell, I’ll just keep taking stuff. Finals were pretty rough and I’ve never had such low grades in my life. Not to brag but I’ve always had a 4.0 until I got to UW. High school was too easy and I had a terrible mentality when it came to studying during college. But it’s whatever.. I don’t let it get to me. I get what I deserve and I’ll just work harder next year.

Overall, my first year wasn’t much different than what I had experienced before. People always talk about the “college experience” and living out, but I didn’t get to do any of that because I commuted everyday! Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live on campus, but I guess I’m saving my mom a lot of money and she also wants me at home. People always give me shit for not moving out but in my eyes, I don’t really think it’s always that worth it. I mean it sounds awesome and everything, but sometimes I think it would be better to just save my mom the money. Maybe things would also be different if my dad was still here. Honestly, I probably won’t move out for a long, long time. People usually think I’m crazy for staying at home, but I think it’s more of an Asian culture thing. For the most part, Vietnamese people always stay home and live with their parents until they’re married. Moving out sounds super nice, but I don’t think I could leave my mom to live at home by herself after all she’s done for me.

Anyways, the commute to school every single day is not as bad as people think it is though. The bus ride is usually only 30-45 minutes and most of the time I sleep so it’s basically a nap time for me. I’m always so tired I would just go in and close my eyes. By the time I open my eyes, I’m already at my bus stop at home. Speaking of freakin taking the bus…during my first year I overslept my stop on one of the days going home. I was pretty pissed off because nobody even bothered to wake me up especially when my stop was the very last stop on the list. When I finally woke up, I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I thought to myself, “weird…its quite an empty bus today.” Then I glanced out the window and noticed the exit signs were going down rather than up. It took me several moments to realize what was going on but then I instantly said, “fucking shit.” I got up and ran to the front of the bus stop to tell the bus driver what had happened. When he looked in the rear mirror he jumped and nearly had a heart attack. He thought the bus was empty and that he had seen a ghost or something. He was pretty chill about it after he realized I was a human being, and took me to the nearest bus stop. Luckily I was not back in Seattle or my day would have been further ruined.

Normally, in a situation like this, it wouldn’t be too terrible because then you would just whip out your cell phone and make a quick phone call to a friend to come pick you up. The thing is…earlier that day in the morning; I had lost my damn cell phone. you might ask why? It was because I had overslept on the bus again and the bus was already at UW! I woke up and frantically looked for my phone but I must’ve dropped it in between the seats while I was asleep. I eventually said screw it because it was taking so long and just got off the bus. But anyways, I had to wait at least an hour to find the right bus stops and get back to my original bus stop where my car was parked at the park and ride. What a day.

After summer ended, we got to go on a lovely vacation with the family to Cancun Mexico. We stayed for a week at the Barcelona resort with all of the cousins, aunts, and uncles. I don’t really want to go into too much detail because there’s so much to talk about…but I guess to sum it up, it was a blast. The vacation to a resort was definitely a stress reliever after finals week. Not to mention, I think I killed my liver drinking too much. The resort we stayed at was “all inclusive” meaning, once you pay the fee to enter…its ALL YOU CAN DRINK AND ALL YOU CAN EAT. I drank every single night for 7 nights with the cousins, and I don’t think im too proud of it but it was an experience I suppose. Oh and I forgot to mention, the last day I had a hang over and I ended up losing my Wallet, Phone, Camera, and Mp3 player. Pretty sweet.

After we came back from Cancun…I can’t really remember what I did. I went to Canada for a friends birthday party, and I had some friends from Oregon come visit for several days. For the most part, I just chilled and hung out with the homies and did stupid things to entertain ourselves.

Lately however, I’ve been getting quite agitated for many reasons. One being, people who create short worded responses thru text and people who text you but don’t respond because they were busy doing something “at the time.” They then decide to never text you back at all, even when they are free several hours after reading the text. You know, I guess maybe I shouldn’t get mad about those kinds of things but if you’re going to do that, then simply don’t ever text me because I will get pissed if I ask you a question and you respond with “no” or if you just don’t respond at all. Why? Cause then I can’t tell if you’re pissed off, or if you don’t feel like talking, or if you’re just simply socially challenged.

Another thing that bothers me would be Peter. I don’t normally like talking trash, especially about my older brother, but he’s one of the most useless human beings that I know. You know what, that’s not even talking trash because its simply truth. And it’s sad to know that this useless human being happens to have my DNA inside of him. I swear to god I act as the older brother when compared to him. I basically clean up after his mess with EVERYTHING. I can’t remember the last time he’s mowed the lawn, washed the dishes, clean the bathroom, or even vacuum the house. The other day he broke the back door lock to get into the house because he had no key. Real responsible right? That’s not even the worst part, he hasn’t even fixed it yet. So today I had to go out to Home Depot to buy a new door lock and probably will replace it on my own tomorrow for something HE did.

You know, it would probably be fine with me if he didn’t do any chores around the house, but the worst part is that he creates a mess with everything he does and never cleans up after himself. When he eats, he leaves his bowls on the counter or on the table. How hard is it to toss it in the sink really? When he comes home he throws his shit everywhere and just leaves it. I duno, the list goes on and on. Basically what he does is just make a mess for everyone in the house and my Mom hates it, and so do i. What pisses me off even more is that he always thinks he’s right. Couple of weeks ago I tried to pay the phone bill for my mom. I needed to know the online password but I couldn’t get a hold of Peter. When I finally talked to him, he told me he didn’t want to respond to my texts or return my phone calls because he thinks I’m “irritating.” What kind of fucking 24 year old does that. There are so many things I can say about him but it’s really all too much. Every time we argue, it’s because he’s being completely irrational.

One night, he was gone for nearly 2 days and didn’t contact my mom at all. I don’t care if he’s 24 years old, my mom is worried about him and he needs to call home and tell her whats going on. If he can’t deal with that, then he needs to move out immediately. She pays for everything so it’s not unreasonable for her to request her son call home every once and a while. She was so worried she told me she wanted to call 911. I told her Peter is just stupid and is out with his friends. It’s funny cause I was so pissed I sent him a text asking if he had “down syndrome.” When he finally saw it, he texted me back saying, “no but I fucking hate you and I mean it.” Personally, I thought my comment about him was kind of funny, but I think he really meant it when he told me he hates me. Good, now move out so I don’t have to deal with your 12 year old self anymore.

On another note…don’t you hate it when someone tells you something about someone, so every time you see them that “something” comes up to your head? You try to forget about it, but it’s hard. The funny thing is they have no idea you know or if anybody even knows period. But if you even mention it to them they’ll laugh and agree with you…but they’re lying. I suppose sometimes be careful what you text to people eh? It could be not true, and i guess kids do tend to talk to their buddies.

So what’s been going on besides all of that? My birthday was pretty recent and i finally turned 19 years old. I didn't really do anything for my birthday but i didnt really feel like it either i guess. We went out to eat pho with the family and i got an action figure from anthony haha. My mom gave me 50 dollars and that was pretty much it. School starts again in 2 weeks and I am quite depressed. I guess time goes on and we have to do what we have to do. I’ve been going back to the gym a lot recently to get back into shape. I want to start boxing again and hopefully have a boxing match sometime this year or in the spring time. A friend of mine today told me I felt a little chubby when she hugged me. I guess that’s my cue to work even harder! I also bought my Jay-Z tickets today with all the homies. I’ve never been to a concert like this so I’m pretty stoked to at least say ive gone to a rap concert or something. The last concert I went to was a orchestrated concert playing Final Fantasy music. Yeah I know, sounds sad right? Haha but I really enjoy those kind of things so it’s whatever. I guess I have a broad taste in music. I love everything from piano, to video game music, to orchestrated, and rap. I love it all, except for country of course.

If you’ve managed to have read this far, I give you kudos. That’s a quite a bit to read, and it’s really not all that interesting. Basically what’s been going on with my life and my bitching about Peter.