thanksgiving indeed

So yesterday I was walking to tkd and when I arrived I realized that
my backpack was open - and that my wallet was missing. I panicked and
started backtracking my route to see if it had fallen out and sure
that any new yorker who found it would surely take it (some cynicism
after having my blackberry snatched out of my hand a couple years
ago).

I started running back and suddenly I get an email from will asking if
I lost my wallet and phone (hrmm didn't even notice my phone was
missing!). I thought it was really bizarre that will would be in the
neighborhood and happened to have come across my missing stuff!

Calling him from my bbry, I found out that some guy had found my
stuff, checked my license, and started calling people in my phonebook
to try and get my wallet back to me. He had finally gotten ahold of
will and arranged to meet him to hand it off (thanks will for being
willing to go get it!).

So I ran back to where the guy was and was so overwhelmed by his
honestly, and utter relief to get it back. Everything was intact and
he had even left messages with a couple other friends asking if they
could come and get my stuff.

It still floors me that this guy went so out of his way - and didn't
take nor want anything but my gratitude for his kindness. But it
reminded me to be thankful, not just bc I got my stuff back but bc
there are still good people out there.

The end.

kindness

So at Eugy's recommendation, Al and I took the love languages test - which he thought was kind of contrived, but hey, no test is perfect. At the end of the day he disagreed with his results, saying that words of affirmation were actually most important to him.

Which is kind of hilarious bc words of affirmation are my lowest ranking. Not that I don't know how to affirm or don't need it ... I guess I just feel like

a) talk is cheap if it's just words

b) you can say the same things...by writing them down...on nice stationary...perhaps accompanied by photos...in a scrapbook...haha.

So in an attempt to make him feel loved with words, I set out to send him an e-card...I haven't done cards in awhile, though I used to send them often, and in spurts. I came across one that was pretty cool, about the fruits of the spirit. I actually got so caught up in it that I was getting inspired, myself.

I particularly liked the one for Kindness: I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. I will be kind to the rich, for they are afraid. I will be kind to the unkind, for such is how God treated me.

Man. That's deep.

I found the contents of this card to be challenging and inspirational at the same time (my favorite kind!) - but I also realized when reading through it, that that's generally what Al does in my life. The challenging part is quite frustrating and annoying sometimes - but it's good for me. He reminds me daily that I'm impatient - either by telling me so, or ... giving me a reason to be impatient and then withstanding the result. Haha.

But yeah ... there are very few people I've met who are just plain kind. But those who are ... man. There's something about them that's just ... amazing.

But the thing that really struck me about this card was that with each page on a different fruit - it says "I choose to be..." Whether I am or not by nature - today I will choose to be.

It gave me a little insight on this whole free will thing - God let's us have the choice, because the choice is oftentimes the hardest part.

I want to try an experiment ... if I choose one fruit per day and try to focus on applying it ... what would happen? Kind to the unkind, for such is how God treated me ...

why so holly jolly?

al asked me the other day why i like christmas so much. this is one area where we differ - he's completely ascetic, could live in a box with one set of clothes, eating the same food every day ... his family doesn't really do presents for birthdays or christmas, i'm guessing partly because of financial reasons and partly just because his father is ascetic. not sure. but me, i'm the opposite ... i love presents, shopping for presents, making presents, wrapping presents. obviously, who doesn't like receiving presents...but just in general...i live for this time of year.

so besides the obvious answer of jesus came to earth joy to the world - what is it about the christmas season that makes me so holly jolly?

i was originally going to make shoeboxes for op xmas child for al's church, which was the first time i'd heard about it. as i put some things together, it turned out that my church was going to do it through a tlc-wide effort. amazingly enough, we were able to make something on the order of 25 boxes in a night of wrapping paper carnage and a heap of school supplies, toys, and bathroom products in my living room. (there's a spot on the floor that still smells like dove soap).

the cousins asked me to make a wishlist so they could figure out what to get me this year - and btw on principle on hate making wishlists because i'd prefer that people would put thought in on their own - but nonetheless i started making a list.

it's kind of hard to make a list of what i would like to receive. there are things that i need around the apt or things that i want - but honestly speaking if i really wanted something i would just go out and get it. if it's too expensive for me to get, then i certainly wouldn't expect someone else to get for me. aside from a list full of items like "for sam to finish the scrapbook she was making that illustrated how much she loves me" and other sentimentalities ... i don't have much to request.

when i think about the most meaningful gifts i've received in my lifetime ... they would boil down to a few very memorable ones:

-lspero's 'mix of awesomeness' that she made for me before i went to my last team trials, where she interviewed various people at the dojang and who've been important in my tkd career for thoughts, encouragements, and roasts about me and then used her sound editing abilities to create a cd full of songs people wanted to send me, as well as edited pieces. she managed to capture the essence of why i competed and taught, and perhaps the essence of who i am - and reminded me of it in the pinnacle of my career. unfortunately it ended terribly with getting my knee kicked out and my heart broken - but in the end, it was much more bearable knowing that i had all these people behind me ... and that because it was meaningful to them, it was still meaningful to me.

-bbren's sparky book of photos and people's impressions of me when i left boston in 2004. for many of the same reasons that the audio mix was meaningful, it captured that my existence had been meaningful, significant, and appreciated.

-jaac's pink nintendo ds one xmas, along with my favorite game of all time, big brain academy. perhaps the extravagence of it threw me off, or the sheer ridiculousness that i would be carrying a hello-kitty-pink thing around and get laughed at ... but even that was meaningful to me, as he had always told me that my inner emo-color was baby pink.

-the ipod nano my teammates got for me last year for my birthday to replace the nano i had lost...not so much for the nano itself, but because they had it engraved with 'handy smurf' (an inside joke on my obsession with smurfs that year and the fact that i had broken my hand) and my email address - in case i lost it again.

-the year my jewish family got me the tiffany's elsaperetti cross necklace - only to find that the one piece of jewelry i already owned was that exact necklace in gold. (to this day, i have two pieces of jewelry and they're the same thing just in diff metals...haha). my jewish bro (then 13) had picked it out himself, and aside from it being a nice necklace, i just thought it was special because he had picked it.

-this one's pretty silly, and i don't even think i ever used it, but it was so cute. i had this tkd student who at the time was 7. she went with her mom to some fancy cosmetics and soap place and got me this fancy soap - so i could wash myself after i'm all sweaty after working out - because "you don't want to be stinky!"

i think of this year's christmas gifts, i'm pretty excited to see people open them. everyone makes fun of me for loving black friday so much but...finding gifts at great deals...it's like you took my 2 most satisfying feelings and mushed them together into midnight madness.

as i signed up to adopt a child thru al's church this xmas, i suddenly wanted to make more christmas child boxes. i figured, i had originally wanted to make them for his church, and despite the fact that our church made a whole bunch ... well, it'd be nice to bring at least one in to his as well. i was perusing the website and came across this video...which i guess encapsulates why i love christmas so much.

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/seeing_through_childrens_eyes/

random dump

yeehaw, the macbookpro is here! happy birthday to me! well actually, it was a laptop upgrade for work / an experiment to see what would happen if i requested a mac. still fighting with the paperwork to get my related accessories, but the computer itself is here, hooray!

mve got a solid A on her last calculus exam, bringing her to an A- for the quarter - how satisfying. hard to believe she'll be graduating this year, but i guess that's life when your job is to get kids into college and send them off. some of my original students have now graduated from college...it's kind of weird thinking they're adults now.

this year's crop of students has been interesting ...

fball was cancelled tonight, which left me with an initial restless feeling of "who can i fill in this time slot?" i realize that i have an unsettled feeling when there's a big fat gap in my schedule without anything planned. hrmm, perhaps the sign of a workaholic.

shenanigans

well, that was unexpected. i find this entertaining given the poopiness of my last post, but as i look back, my foul mood probably contributed to the fact that i was duped with the shenanigans going on right under my nose.

impressive.

so friday al and i were supposed to have dinner with hj for my birthday. that being said i was exhausted from the week, in a foul mood, and feeling under the weather. i ended up leaving work on fri just wanting to go home and take a nap - and not really wanting to go to dinner at all. al says he'll pick me up from the train station, but i was insistent that i needed to take a nap. so he meets me at the train station anyhow, and walks me home, where i find darlin cleaning my apt. (i hired him to be my 'cleaning lady' since he needed some cash and i needed some help around the apt).

my bed was all folded up and i was thinking - man, he's so thorough, cleaning under the bed and everything. but then i was annoyed that i couldn't sleep on my bed. so i promptly passed out on the couch, while al and darlin made the bed back up so i could pass out there.

after an hour or so, al comes in to wake me up and try to get me to go to dinner ... at which point i was like "you go have dinner with hj...i want to sleeeeeeep". he finally convinced me that i'd feel better after i'd had food, and off we went...somewhat late. on the way there he tells me that there's a mystery guest - which was pretty darn hilarious bc the mystery guest turned out to be pyshin. so the 4 of us had dinner, which, to his credit, did make me feel better. the waiter even brought out birthday desserts for us without having had to be asked, which was really impressive.

so al says, for the next part of the evening, he thought we'd go back and have a quiet evening at home with p and hj, and we each headed to our respective cars. we're driving home and he misses the turn for 122, where we usually park - and i was like "uh dude, you missed the turn, what's going on?" and he absentmindedly takes the next right turn and loops around, looking for parking. it was pretty hard to find parking actually, but we finally squeezed into a spot and headed home. meanwhile i was thinking, man, i just want to go to sleep.

so we get there and he opens the door - which ends up being kind of stuck. he sort of shoves it open and lo and behold, there are a whole bunch of people and a cake and stacks of champagne flutes and ... shenanigans. it was pretty impressive, i must say. and then he goes "c'mon guys - at least move the shoes away from the door - i couldn't get it open!" haha.

so apparently darlin had cleaned my place that day and was going to set up for the party when i ruined the plans by deciding i needed to come home and take a nap. he had my bed all folded up because if everyone who said they'd come had come, he and al had transformed my bedroom so that people could hang out in there.

the apt was decorated with these blue streamers and hanging things everywhere - as lisa put it "it's like a public school prom where you could only afford one color!" haha. it was a great mix of my church and tkd friends, and generally just great to see everyone all at once.

much to my embarassment al had prepared martinelli's and wine with the flutes for a toasting affirmation time - man, i haven't done affirmations since college and intervarsity. i forgot how embarassing it was to sit there and have people say nice things about you. but he thinks i have issues accepting compliments (and perhaps he's right) so i appreciated the gesture of the activity. it's kind of funny, most people's comments had a common theme - about how i was so mean or intimidating or scary but then they got to know me and i'm not that mean ... or that i created community or something like that. i realized that perhaps my calling is to create communities for people, because that's what people seem to remember me for. interesting.

al's goal was to make me cry, but he underestimated my ability to suck it up in a crowd. haha. but it was nice, nonetheless...i almost teared up when lisa started crying...haha and i think darlin was close. it was all very warm and fuzzy.

and then apparently there was a gift. i had to sit on the chair with my eyes closed and i sat there for a long time while they brought something out ... but then apparently they were waiting for a reaction and alan realized that no one told me to open my eyes yet. much to my surprise, they had gotten me a keyboard - a pretty nice one too - with a stand and bench and earphones and everything. quite overwhelming, but ... what a birthday.

then on sunday we went up to westchester and he cooked dinner for my cousins and we all got together to celebrate ... which was great too. i got to hang out with all the kids, including jordan (3) who can't say my name and calls me "swarmy eemoh", alex (5) who drew me a card where apparently i'm a clown (there's a pointy thing on my head) ... sam (11) who asked me if i could move back in ... syd (7), whose card alan interprets as a desire to be closer to me (i interpreted it as her thinking her brother's head is big) ... and my man issac (4) who drew me 2 cards. one of them had some squiggles and shapes and i asked him what they were.

"that's my garage, and that's your garage"

"but i live in the city...i don't have a garage"

"then where do you park your car??"

haha. i miss those kids a lot...

poor alan was so exhausted from the weekend. apparently he had worked from home most of last week in preparation. getting the keyboard from his place to my place without me noticing...apparently there had been cases of beer and soda on my balcony and he had just counted on the cold that i wouldn't go out there for a few days...

impressive.

thirty, not-so-flirty, and surviving...sorta

i have to say, 30 has probably been up there for worst birthdays. including my 28th birthday, when i had my blackberry stolen out of my hand and failed to catch the teenage thief as people on the street turned to watch me chasing after him, but did nothing to help. that was pretty bad - but at least then i went to the dojang and got to spend my birthday with my friends.

i've been thinking a lot about how i would have liked my birthday to go, and why i've been so bummed.

here's what actually happened:

so on weds morning, alan tells me that he wants to take me to dinner. a nice thought, though me not being good with last minute planning - and "not being good" being a euphemism for having no capacity for and generally being offended by - i was a bit torn since i had planned to go to TLC that night. but i wasn't going to turn him down since he was trying, and i mean, it's kind of pathetic to not have dinner on your birthday, so i figured we'd go to TLC and leave early to go have dinner. fine.

so i go to tutor my most and least favorite students, and then hopped a cab to get to TLC which was in midtown that week. the cab goes down west end...and gets slower and slower until i realize we're gridlocked in traffic. by the time i noticed this, we were stuck at an intersection somewhere on 11th ave all the way west, where this double length bus had decided to try and get thru an intersection or turn or something - and was stuck blocking the whole box. like, there was no room for anyone in any direction to go anywhere. and new yorkers being the lovely people they are started honking and cursing incessantly.

seriously people - what is the point of honking at that point? if you're angry, i understand - but be productively angry. get out of your car, find some tools, dismantle the bus and move the pieces - but honking really isn't going to help get that bus out of the intersection.

all the things i dislike about new york presented themselves in that instant - rude people, cold weather, tight roads, insane traffic ... at this point i was already late for TLC, which i was already planning on leaving early from. so i abandoned the cab and decided to hoof it.

i was on 42nd and 11th and had to get to 32nd and 5th - but 6 avenues is no joke. i started walking across 42nd, but was mobbed by tourists and generally just thwarted in my attempt to walk quickly. by the time i got to times square i was so fed up and frustrated - less than halfway to my destination at best, and 45 minutes late - that i just gave up. at that point, i would have made it (and i hate being late) just in time to show my face, turn around, and get myself back up 20 blocks for dinner.

later eug sent me a picture of the cake they had had - which only made me depressed because i missed out on the one thing i had wanted most, which was to spend my birthday with my friends.

dinner was ok and al made a valiant attempt to cheer me up from my meltdown - but it was totally not what i wanted. looking back, i should have cancelled the dinner and just gone to small group. generally i get really annoyed with schedule changes, and poor planning - but the circumstances added to the change that he would be at some school function and just meet me at dinner instead of coming to TLC - or perhaps the fact that i wish he had just planned something in conjuction with or after TLC ...

to add to all of this, my parents called me to wish me a happy birthday - which was nice - but then my dad said something along the lines of apologizing for not sending me anything this year because he's been so busy he just didn't have time. and then proceed to ask me if there's anything i'd like. after that i was supremely offended, considering he seems to spend quite enough time thinking about me in terms of how dissatisfied he is with life choices or what-not, but he can't spend some time to think about what might make me happy on my birthday. and just in general, asking me what i want, when he knows that while i love presents, i hate asking for them. seriously - what kind of gift is that? gift-giving for lazy people? the whole point is to be thoughtful. if i want something, i'll just go and get it myself. seriously.

the day was capped off by having to go to sleep early since i had to get up at 5am the next day to drive through the rain to catch a flight for work.

i wish people would stop asking me why i'm not having a party or doing anything to celebrate my birthday. i think al has something planned for tonight (a rather feeble attempt at covering his tracks about dinner) and supposedly we're going up to unnee's house this weekend to celebrate with family. but it still doesn't change the fact that my birthday was pretty darn terrible, lonely, and depressing.

maybe this is why koreans say that you're not supposed to celebrate your birthday after the actual day. when i was little, my mom would always make me have my parties the weekend before, not the weekend after. i never really understood why, but i guess it makes sense...maybe tonight and this weekend will be fun and affirming and whatever. but i'm just not in the mood at this point...despite what i may have wanted before, all i want for my birthday is to sleep all day.

altenor

my debut singing tenor...haha. i think beth wants me to sing tenor going forward...not sure how i feel about that. will is so solid, i hope he doesn't quit, despite the heckling he gets from his friends about being a choirboy.

why so downcast

otherwise...a good weekend for football. technically we didn't lose any of the games we played, though we forfeited the finals altogether since jean was taken to the hospital in the semifinals and everyone was so distraught. it's kind of unsettling how watching someone get knocked unconscious doesn't faze me anymore...obviously i was concerned about her, but i realized on saturday when most of the girls fell apart, that most people haven't seen people get knocked around like that. but she's ok, thank goodness...it was really cool to see the team cover her in prayer.

otherwise a solid tournament, though we did get pretty easy bracketing. hopefully we'll be able to pull it together for the tournament of champions - november is looking to be ... well, not quite as crazy as october, but not light either.

i picked up 2 new students, after dropping 2 after the fall testing ended. alan was upset at me for taking on more committments - apparently i have trouble saying no to opportunity costs all around. he's probably right on that one - though i had to point out that my multitasking abilities are well above average, i'm probably overcommitted this fall. well...dodgeball is over...football is almost over...man, now that i think about it, i'm thankful i was rejected from that orchestra i auditioned for. no idea where i would've fit in practicing, let alone rehearsals. speaking of which, i think i ignored the last request i had for private lessons...whoops.