Well, I am back again, tired than ever. I was supposed to write tonight. To start another script. I’ve been getting that itch to write again, but this time I do not know what to write. So I just thought that I would write something in my journal. I guess I am putting off the script writing because I went out to play some tennis tonight and that sort of threw me out of my routine.

Anywho, what am I going to write about tonight. For the most part, I do not know. How about a little about my trip, eh?

The trip was nice. It was a nice break. Seeing family again, just hanging out with family again. Going back was a little weird, especially meeting and hanging out with my extended family. I miss so much while I am down here. Their lives went on and so did mine. There was so much that I wasn’t a part of, and I felt like an outsider. It was hard to fit back in again, you know what I mean?

New additions to the family, big changes, new lives, just many things that I missed out. I’m sure they feel the same way about me also. So go the 20 questions as they each try to catch up with me and I do with them. The “So what’s up?” “What have you been up to?” “What are you plans?” “Are you going back to school?” “Are you seeing any one?” I think that was the biggest question, or some derivative of that question, “Are you seeing anyone?” and the answer is a definite no.

Oh, how things have changed and how things haven’t. We all still click, but we all have grown up and moved on. People are hanging out with different people, new wars have started, and old battles have ended. Ahh, how life goes on. How time changes things.

But all in all, family is good. Family is great. Family will always be there. Connections will never be lost, even though it feels like it is hard to connect.

Each one of them wants to get that connection with me, and I with them. My limited time spread thinly between each of them. The 30 seconds of catching up and interruptions don’t lead me anywhere close to catching up, which leads to so much that is loss between us.

It seems like there were so many things I want to talk to each of them about, but I never knew how to start. Never knew what to say or where to start. The usual formalities of catching up. Didn’t know what their conversation threshold is like cause we never really talked that way, and maybe they were afraid to pry also. I don’t know. Isn’t miscommunication grand. I’ve had a great deal of it lately. Just funny.

Children, kids, little ones. They were a wonder as usual. I actually got along with one in particular that I’ve always had problems with. Little Jasmine. She’s a little darling. She wasn’t afraid of me. So was Ethan, aka Clark Kent. So adorable. It’s nice to be around children, cause they don’t know what a wonder they are. Well, it’s nice, until they cry, and then it’s like okay. You are no fun anymore.

I’ve met up with two friends also. I couldn’t get the two of them together for one reason or another, but I got to hang out with both of them. It was nice. Just catching up with J Jones cause we rarely get the chance, and I never lost a step with Lisa cause we still communicate on a regular basis. It’s just like I never left. It is always nice to just sit and drink and talk. Just talk about our lives, catching up. I wish I could do this all day, but sometimes, we just run out of interesting things to say. Meh. Lisa still very insistent that I move back up so we could always hang out. Just don’t understand why she is so insistent. I was never satisfied with her answers.

There were some people that I didn’t get a chance to hang out with more than I actually did. One expecting mother in particular, but I guess next time. Time ran short on my visit and her little visit also. I guess that is what busy people do, they miss each other.

* * *

I had a nice little chat the other day with a friend of mine at work. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked with her like this. Lots of miscommunication and mixed signals between us I think. It was nice talking again. It was great. I asked her specifically what her plans were regarding going back to school. She’s still deciding. She’s in a lull like I am, not really sure what she wants to do. Well, eventually of course, the conversation came to me and where I stand in my life right now. I told her how I’ve been reevaluating my life lately, especially this past year. She said something interesting that makes sense. She told me that she would never want to reach that point in her life where she would stop reevaluating her life, to never reach that point where she never thinks about her life, the choices that she’s made, her regrets, so on and so forth. She doesn’t want to do it because it would mean that she’s gotten comfortable in her life. I think that’s how she put it. I may be misconstruing her words here, but I understood what she was saying. She’s not at the point her life, career wise or fulfillment wise, where she is comfortable enough to not reevaluate it. That’s what she meant.

I feel the same way. I don’t want to not think about my life, where I am, so on and so forth, because it is not where I want to be. Plus, I’ve come a long way this past year. Miles and miles from where I was just a year ago. A lot of growing up this year. I guess for me, and maybe for her, to be comfortable at a place in your life where you are not comfortable with it at all, just means that you have given up. You’ve lost hope.

I had a similar talk with Lisa today. I brought up something regarding how people see me. I always ask other people what their opinion of me is so I can find who I am. Reflection theory, if you will. You are how other people see you. Lisa brought up a good point, people see you differently from other people. No wonder I am confused. She then asked me how do I see myself, and I told her honestly, that I’m angry, though not a lot less angry than I was. I’m getting better. I’m lost, confused as to where I want in life, and where I want to go, and that is frustrating me. I’m in the same boat as many people around my age and in my situation.

We’ve worked it out to the point that I have such high expectation for myself, such high pressures that are pressing on me. I have lots of potential, tons of potential. I know this. Yet, I’ve always felt that I’ve accomplished nothing. I haven’t accomplished anything worthwhile.

Lisa’s response. Stop thinking so much. Just live. Just live. I am young (I don’t feel it, but I am). I have all the time in the world to accomplish something. I just have to be patient. Just a little patient and let things happen, and in the mean time just live whatever life I see fit.

* * *

All right, enough with the self reflection. On to something funny that my great uncle told me this weekend. The evil Ho family curse.

Apparently, us Ho’s aren’t supposed to marry any one with the last name Chang because there is this family curse cast by one of my great great great great great great great grandfathers.

How did this conversation come to pass? Well my ex-roommate Vicky came down from San Francisco to visit. I met up with her Sunday morning for some Dim Sum. Anywho, since my uncle’s place is nearby, I thought I’d drop by afterwards. He asked me what “wind blew me that way” and I told him I went to Dim Sum with Vicky. Of course hilarity ensued with the elderly and they thought she’s my girlfriend. No no no, I told them. She’s spoken for. Anywho, he asked me what was her last name, and I told him Chang. And out of nowhere, he and my aunt were like, no, don’t mess around with no Changs.

No good will come out of it. No matter what, do not marry any Changs, no matter how beautiful and breath taking the girl may be. Why, I asked. The curse, the evil curse. No good will come out of it. Death, infertility, miscarriages, bad family, just bad things.

Of course, by now, I’m laughing my ass off at how ridiculous this all sounds. He even went as far as to give me examples of other relatives who married Changs. One lead to death, another to infertility. Bad things I would say.

I went ahead and asked him how the curse came to be.

Apparently, many moons and generations ago, my great great great great to a certain extent grandfather was walking down a street. A Chang went up to him and asked if he had any smokes or pipe tobacco or the ganja. My grandfather said he only had some smokes. Upset, the Chang guy took his pipe and whacked my grandfather across the head, cutting him. The next thing, my grandfather is at home, angry, bleeding, pacing back and forth, back and forth in the back yard with a machete, ready to cut someone’s head open and thinking. Just thinking and being angry. He came to the conclusion that since the Chang guy hurt him so badly, he will cut any and all ties with any Changs from now on. Any one in the Ho family who marries a Chang, no good will come out of it. And so this curse was passed down, from generation to generation.

I will be sure to pass this along to my generation and posterity. I will not be the one who will break the wicked Chang curse.

I just have to say, hearing that story was fucking hilarious.