lost luggage.

So I flew from TPE – SHA for 3 days 2 nights, landed in the late afternoon, left on third day’s morning. Because of some “foggy conditions” my plane wasn’t able to land in TPE so I transfered my flight to another airlines – easy enough. I checked in at the other airline counter with my new tickets and checked my luggage in. That being said, there should be no issues – its not like I checked in my bags at airline A and got my boarding passes from airline B. I checked in at airline B, and sent my luggage in at airline B. I landed in SHA. I’ve got an upgraded airline card so my luggage usually comes out pretty early in the cycle. I’m waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I’ve never waited this long for luggage before. After sitting at the luggage carousel for a good hour this other guy looks frantically beside me as if he couldn’t find his luggage. He proceeded to ask a help representative and described the exact same situation as me. “My flight for airline A was delayed so I switched to airline B, but logically there should be not disconnect because I checked in and everything at airline B!” I had to leave information with them and they said that the luggage SHOULD be on the next flight (the airline A flight that I had missed was delayed 4 hours and came in later that night) – and if it didn’t, it’d come in the next day. I asked them what if it didn’t come in (tomorr0w)? They replied, “Well, we could guarantee that it’d come in the third day.” I told them, “I’m leaving on that day – in the morning.” Silence. More silence. I think I made him feel like an idiot. They proceeded to try and confirm that my luggage would come in at the latest the second day (tomorrow).

Good thing I got my luggage later that night. First fog delays my flight and I have to fly Air China (terrible airlines by the way, I swear they use 1985 repo’ed planes that other airlines stopped using because of mechanical failure risk and their service is total crap – this lady woke me up for a meal one time and proceeded to drop the trey of food onto my table. Anyway, long story short – I avoid Air China like the plague, but had no choice. THEN my luggage gets lost in TPE. Its okay. Things always work out in the long run – it just matters how long your scope of time is.

knives in my back.

I figured out that I’ve got a lot of stress hidden in my upper neck / shoulder area so I decided to treat myself to a massage yesterday. Yeah. Ha.

So I walked into the place and I ask if they have any availabilities – I didn’t make a reservation ahead of time but luckily they had room. Once I sat down and started taking off my jacket the lady comes back in and asks if it was okay if a “jie jie” does it (jie jie means sister). I asked her, “What does that mean?” She answered, “Oh, someone older rather than younger.” I was thinking in my head – obviously it doesn’t matter, I’m here to get a massage, not to stare at pretty girls. If I wanted to go stare at young girls I wouldn’t get a massage where my face stare sat the ground for 60 minutes straight. Apparently they had their end of the year dinner the night before and a lot of people called in sick. Go figure. I’m pretty sure everyone was hungover, maybe only the old ones came to work.

Anyway, I was completely fine with the situation so she went to go get someone. Enter middle aged 160 lb woman who practically grunts at me, “I’m going to give you the massage, okay?” There’s a split second of hesitation in my head before I quickly agree. She was about 5′4, 150-160 lb, and looked farm strong. What’s farm strong? (Farm strong is a term I’ve taken from Tim). There’s gym strong – being able to lift a lot of weights in the gym, and farm strong – being able to flip tires, move hay stacks, applicable strength you’d develop on the farm. Typically really buff people are gym strong, but the TRULY strong people are farm strong. This lady looked farmed strong.

She started my shoulder with her elbow and it felt like a knife going through my shoulder. I was wincing and crying into my pillow and sweating because of how much it hurt. Within the first 5 minutes she said “You’ve got a lot of knots,” and I barely was able to whisper an “Uh huh..” She started moving down my back and the whole time I was streaming tears into the pillow and breathing deeply. Based on my non visual senses, i.e. my sense of hearing, I’m pretty sure she also put 100% of her weight on me effectively turning her elbow as a focal point of pain. “How the hell would you know, Alex? Your face was planted in the pillow thing.” you might ask. Well, the room was pretty small. I could hear something making contact with / hitting the walls so I can only assume that she laid her elbow on my back, and used her feet to prop herself against the wall. If you can imagine that, I think you can accurately imagine how I feel right now. She said to me, “Your back is pretty red from the massage, hehe.” Yes, she chuckled. “Its from the massage so it’ll go away.” she said while chuckling. “No, that redness isn’t from the massage, its from the internal bleeding you just caused me.” I was thinking. That went on for about a good 40 minutes. Yes. 40 minutes.

She then proceeded to stand on my back. This is how I know she was 150 – 160 lb. Needless to say she pretty much destroyed my upper body. Then she walked on my calves and dug her heels into my legs. She also gave me a head massage at the end. I felt like her fingers were going to pierce my skull – no joke. The thing that people don’t realize is that women that are farm strong, are FARM STRONG. I straight up felt like she was going to put her fingers through my skull / temple region and into my brain matter.

Do any of you remember what it felt like after you got your wisdom teeth out and the doctor gave you Vicodin? Remember how it made you feel like your legs / arms / body was numb and floaty? She made my whole body feel like I was on Vicodin. The difference is she didn’t need any opiates. She used her hands / feet / elbows / 150-160 lb body.

That being said, I feel pretty damn good right now.

irritable.

I noticed that recently I’ve been a lot more irritable. I’m sorry if I’ve been an ass to you in the past few weeks – I don’t really know why, but I have a few guesses.

• I haven’t been sleeping to well lately. As I told Ryan, I’ve even been irritated in my dreams. What the heck, right? I’ve been really tired in the late mornings and relatively energetic around 11 PM despite exercising / working out / going to work, etc.
• I’ve been having to bolster my patience due to my recent change in direction at work. Maybe its like Barney’s chain of yelling (How I Met Your Mother). At work when you get yelled at from your boss, you yell at people below you / your friends / your wife (I’m not married, yet, Lord willing). Maybe I’ve been having to eat a lot of crap lately so I’m extra irritable towards my friends.
• I haven’t been treating my body too well – my diet is kind of out of whack. I’m eating out a lot with my friend Ryan and he really likes simple stuff / has an insane metabolism so we end up eating things that are carb heavy and end in the words “all you can eat”.
• Oh yeah, and I think I’m getting a little sick.

I realized that you can also tell the average poverty level of a country by what they eat. Last night we were at a dou jiang place (soybean milk) and when I saw my friend eating 餿餅油條 (soubingyoutiao picture below) it really made me think. This whole place is just a mix match of carbs. Essentially its the bottom thing in the picture wrapped around the top thing. Bottom thing is a Chinese flat baked pastry with lots of sesame seeds and the top thing is what we call “Chinese donut” – fried carbs. I swear, its just carbs matched with carbs. I don’t know how I’m supposed to put off weight when this is all the eat. Breakfast? Congee and You Tiao (Chinese donut). You’re dipping fried carbs into congee? I mean, is it good? Heck yes its good. Not for my body though. Ryan’s body like .. doesn’t process carbs or something.

Last Thing:

Mandy: are you counting down the days?

are you sad that you’re leaving? (in a weird way)

23 minutes

8:20 PM

me: hmm

actually

yets.

yes.

LOL

is that weird?

i think its just human nature to not enjoy change

8:21 PM

Mandy: i can see that

me: its like how pepole odn’t break up even if they’re in bad relationships

Mandy: yeah

me: because its comfortable

8:25 PM

how’d u guess?

8:27 PM

Mandy: haha i dunno. maybe we’re more similar than you think

Eww.  =]

change.

Hey guys, whoever reads this blog.. bookmark it? Or remember the URL. I’m taking the link off my facebook… after this weekend… you know, for recruiting reasons. I wouldn’t really want random recruiters looking at my blog.

Anyway. Thank God for casual fridays. Wearing casual clothes is so God send after 4 days of wearing business casual / formal. So I walk into the elevator and there’s a banker next to me. How do you know he’s a banker, Alex? Well, first of all he’s wearing business formal on a friday, there’s no banks in the building so he’s visiting a different company, and he’s wearing a tie bar. No one wears a tie bar unless you’re Shia Labeouf  on the cover of GQ. What I really don’t get is how someone can get up in the morning, put on a shirt, tie, and suit, shine his shoes, and not do his hair. He had that typical Asian engineer at Berkeley hair. You know what I’m talking about? It’s where the guy has long-ish hair and you can tell he sleeps on his back because the crown hair poofs up from rubbing against his pillow. How hard is it to take a shower in the morning? Even if you’re lazy you can just throw some water back there and push it down. I mean – yeah, I’m being a jackass for dogging on a guy’s hair but he spent the time to put on a full business formal suit AND bust out the tie bar, why not WET your hair and make it looks presentable?

Okay, terrible rant, I know. There are plenty more things to write about – like Haiti. My prayers go out to those rescuing, enduring, and surviving the disaster. We’ve got to remember that there is perfection in God’s plan and timing though. Its easy to say when the roof didn’t fall on my head in my office, huh?

so tired.

Sometimes I feel the strongest when I’m the most tired, the fastest when I’m running so slow.

Sometimes I find order when I’m drowning in chaos, the highest when I match all time lows.

There’s beauty in the breakdown, majesty in the mayhem,

But only when pride is conquered can we finally grow in spite of them.

I didn’t think this would end up, a terrible, rhyming, piece of crap at best,

But rest at ease, my thoughts aren’t that complete, so I can finally put thine eyes to rest.

So… I have a phone interview at 11:30PM tonight. Its 8:30PM. What to do? Da’an basketball of course.

hmm.

I’m taking a pretty big leap into a dark dark hole. I really hope I know what I’m doing.

anthonylbui:  prove them wrong man

people have done it before so what are you afraid of

me:  haha

true that.

anthonylbui:  yeah have some faith

if you don’t jump on the most scary thing

anthonylbui:  then you’ll never do what you want to do

me:  hmm

this is true

anthonylbui:  too much regret

you’ll be fine

rain.

I love the sound of rain when it falls on my roof. I love it even more when the rain collects in gutters and produces this oddly calming rhythm that lulls me to sleep. Back in Berkeley my apartment was on the first floor and I remember hearing the rain collecting from the floors above and hitting the courtyard that was right outside my window. February nights were a great time to fall asleep.

Its been raining the last week here in Taiwan. I definitely miss the sound. Anyway, because of the rain I decided to take a cab home from the gym. Cabs are pretty cheap in Taiwan – definitely something I overindulge in. Usually I pick the new cabs – the new Camry’s or new Nissan’s just because they’re bigger, cleaner, and more comfortable. Me being the genius I am decided to entertain this beat up Corolla – it looked like it was from 1992 and the odometer read something above 300,000. Kilometers, not miles. A few things stuck out to me – the driver was scooted up awfully close to the steering column and smelled this awkward smell. His seats were reupolstered with this tacky fake leather and didn’t even fit right on the back seat. I was sitting on the crease that was supposed to round the edge of the cushion. Every time he changed lanes at a stop light I felt like the car was going to be t-boned from the side by a car that was probably in the blind-spot that he never checked (David Chang never checks his blindspots either – his 2 foot mirror supposedly shows him everything). His windshield wipers would attempt to sweep the rain off the windshield but it ended up looking like someone smeared vaseline all over the glass. Needless to say I was pretty freaking scared. Next time I’m choosing the newer taxi.

Wow this post reads like a freaking short story. What the heck? I never write like this. Maybe the emo’s starting to show, haha.

back.

So I’m back in Asia now. Long flights and Alex really don’t mix too well. At least I got a lot of sleep, right? On the airplane sleep is usually a packaged deal and comes with crazy dreams and overwhelming thoughts but hey, I don’t really have a choice, do I? There’s no way I’m not going to sleep on a 14 hour flight.

Have you guys been to Roscoe’s? I just went the other day for the first time – pretty freaking delicious. I definitely see my self going back there in the not so distant future.

Sorry, that was pretty random – maybe its my stomach telling me I’m hungry. Dang. I have to make time to burn off that Christmas weight I DEFINITELY put on while I was in the states.

Despite having similar in-flight entertainment (thinking too much, missing the States, dreading going back to work) I was able to get a lot of reading done during the flight. I crunched through a lot of Counterfeit gods (one of Mandy / Tim’s Christmas presents to me – Thanks so much! ) and got more sleep than normal (I didn’t get too much sleep at Mandy’s because of my favorite niece Sara that wakes up at 6:30 AM). Despite every part of cynicism within me wanting to doubt myself I honestly feel like I’ve landed with a different mindset this time. Sure – there are going to be drastic changes in the next few weeks of my life but those aren’t what are on my mind right now. As humans we tend to set our sights on what’s happening in the near future – tonight’s dinner, what I’m doing next weekend, when I have to fly back to school, when am I graduating – and as we pull that timeframe out longer we tend to see the things happening in the short term sharpening as we make decisions based on the long term good of our lives. What’s really interesting is that as we gain an eternal perspective (the longest term, if you will) and we start to see God’s plan for us in our lifetime we end up focusing on today. Not tomorrow, the day after, the day we get married or have kids or even the day we die, but today. As we stretch our vision towards an eternal perspective those worries we have of the future are compacted and what becomes important is merely today.

I feel more and more grounded everyday but its like tipping over a vending machine – you can’t push it over in one try, you’ve got to rock it back and forth before it’ll fall over on the last push. There are days when its clear and sunny and I can see all the way to eternity, and there are days of Berkeley fog where I can barely see my feet, but for now, I think its moving towards clearing up.

³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:30-35

P.S.

(Over Blackberry Messenger when I’m at the airport – Mandy dropped me off)

Mandy:

Feels weird to come home to an empty and quiet home

It was nice having you around

Btw you left your grey socks here

Thanks Tim and Mandy Kong for a great week. I’m so grateful for your love and hospitality. You two have been such a blessing in my life and such wonderful living testimonies that I can turn to everyday. Your convictions run deep and I am honored to be your brother and hope that one day I can do for someone else what you’ve done for my life.

a year ago today.

I can confidently say that a year ago today I shared some very similar feelings that flood my mind today. A year ago today I was in Taipei not wanting to leave, struggling to simple and meaningless things that seemed so utterly important. Today I’m in LA not wanting to leave, holding onto feelings of easiness and wanting to go the easy route.

A year ago today I was mashing headphones into my ears to drown out God trying to talk to me so he had to pull me by the ear until I finally started to listen half a year later. Today I put my ears to the ground trying to hear every little whisper and so often I feel like I can’t hear anything. The funny thing is that its not God not talking. Its me not tuning into the right frequency.

¹⁹ The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.

Habakkuk 3:19

Lets go on the heights with feet of a deer, not the road that is easy, but the one on the heights.

merry christmas.

I’m in LA! Merry Christmas everyone.

Merry Christmas is such a loaded statement. I hope you all take a minute or ten to really think about what it means. Christmas represents the birth of our savior, the one who paid our ransom because he so loved us.

Life brings us challenges that we might not understand now but only to prepare us for the roads that lay ahead for God’s timing is perfect – the time given, determination provided, and grace distributed is sufficient, never too little or too much.