My Favorite Teacher

Mr. Wong. He was my favorite teacher of all time. He was my middle school health teacher who said this during our sex education quiz, “I am the tester, and you are the….”

He infused humor in a lot of his teaching, but it wasn’t to make up for a lack of knowledge. He was actually very intelligent, and able to answer questions with a quick wit. I guessed he was a doctor at one time before he became a teacher. To this day, I don’t know if that was true or not.

But it wasn’t the humor or his intelligence that truly made him great in my eyes. Mr. Wong treated his students with a blend of respect and kindness that was noticeable to all of us, and it seemed like he really loved to teach. Overall, you can tell it was a joy to be in his class, even for him.

Because of Mr. Wong, I had aspirations of being in the medical field back then. Although, that never materialized, I am finally pursuing something that is pseudo-medical. I can’t attribute that to Mr. Wong though. What I can attribute to him is that learning can be fun, to laugh a little, to respect others, to treat others kindly, and to enjoy what you do.

Thank you, Mr. Wong, for being my favorite teacher!

Wake up, Sleepyhead

"Something. Write something," says the voice in my head that is assertive, which is a nice word for bossy. "Hey, I motivate you!" Whatever, dude. A lot of things have changed since I last wrote a blog post. Do people even blog anymore?

So what changed? Well, for starters, I'm a freakin Dad (excuse my juvenile language). My son, the bundle of joy and speed-crawler of terror, is nearing his first birthday. And yes, I'm still alive-- maybe a little sleep-deprived but alive. Those of you who want to have kids, let me tell you... It's doable, but... yeah... you'll find out when you have one. Don't get me wrong, I love my son so much. He brings me so much joy, and I love being a parent. But there's a reason why it took me so long to write on here. So much energy goes into raising your first child (major bummer for the second one-- yeah, I was a second).

You are learning as you go. It's kind of a bad analogy, but I'm going to stick with it. It's sort of like learning to ride a bike without training wheels, which is how I pretty much learned. I figured out it was easier to keep my balance if the bike was moving. With this knowledge, I took the bike to the top of the sloping pavement, got on, and took off on those two wheels. "Awesome! This is so cool! I'm riding a bike! Oh hey, there's a dumpster. Wait. Uh, I'm headed toward the dumpster. Oh crap." So yeah, I figured out how to get moving on a bike, but I didn't yet master how to steer. Like a kamikaze magnet, I was drawn in by the big green metal dumpster. *SMASH*

As a new parent, you hit the ground running once that baby pops out (again excuse my juvenile language). "He's so cute! This is so cool! I'm a parent! Crap. I put the diaper on wrong. Let me just... My face! I got peed in the face!" There's moments-- many moments where you get to learn on the job how to raise a child. There's a lot of good advice out there, but you tend to forget a lot of it because there is no time to think. That's when instinct kicks in, and I think the beauty of being a parent is that the ability to raise children is somehow innate. We have it in us to be able to take on the responsibility, even if we don't think it's possible. There's a correlation I can make to faith and relationship to God, but I'm going to skip that because I'd rather discuss those sort of things in person.

So yeah, I managed to figure out how to get my parenting wheels rolling, but there's still a ton more obstacles that I'll have to crash into and get up and learn from to keep those wheels rolling. As you can imagine, priorities are a lot different for me. But it's not just being a new parent. I'm also a returning college student. What? Why would I want to go back to the academic treasure of knowledge known as college? Wasn't it that for you went you last went?

Actually, I'll admit it-- I was a piss-poor college student in my first stint of college (sorry, juvenile language again). College wasn't really about learning in my classes, it was more about unfurling my social-wings. I was still a walnut in my shell when I just got out of high school, and college was the nutcracker that broke this nut out. Did that come out right? Oh well, you get my drift. So academically, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was taking classes that sounded fun and what my friends were taking, like Asian American studies (glass ceilings and affirmative action). Next thing I knew, I was a junior, and what the heck was I going to major in? Long story short, I decided to major in Geography because 1- I like maps, 2- some of my friends declared it as a major, 3- there was some promising job prospects in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) upon graduating, 4- I did all right on my intro to Geography class my sophomore year.

Fast-forward to now, I've got a couple of years of cartography (map-making) experience and almost 10 years of accounting office work. I won't get into the transition here, but let's just say I figured out Geography wasn't for me career-wise. And now I figured out that accounting wasn't for me career-wise either. What shall I choose? How about one of the hardest graduate programs to get into? SLP, I choose you! Brokemon!

So I'm currently doing a Post-baccalaureate program at UW for Speech and Hearing Sciences, and I plan on moving on to the graduate program to be a Speech-Language Pathologist. The reason is... another story for another day. Somehow, I just knew this was what I needed to do. So I've been subjecting myself to the rigors of writing essays and taking Scantron tests, which is all not that bad. But when you add a baby in the mix, things get a little hazy.

I sometimes wake suddenly with a sleeping baby in my arms, and I reorient myself. This is not a dream. I really am a dad, and I really am studying for a career I want. That's something.

Dare to Speak

I've been thinking of writing, hence, the lack of writing in this blog. Thinking of writing is not exactly writing, yes. To my defense, I've been in the process of asserting my voice. Sure, I have a voice if I write something, or if I say something, or even if I sing something (I just watched Pitch Perfect for movie date night *cough-no-plot!* ahem). But there is more to asserting my voice than just talking or writing. For me it is a matter of the heart, and yes this is going in the direction of deep, so if deep is not your thing stop reading and wait for the next post-- whenever that's going to be!

I think what I mean by asserting my voice is learning to speak from my heart, being true to who I am when I speak, being authentic. And personally that starts with my audible voice. For those of you who know me, you know that I'm generally a quiet guy. Is it because of my personality? I used to think it was, but now I'm not so sure. A key thing I've noticed about myself is my reluctance to speak from my heart. Sometimes when my heart has something to say, I could often times apply the masking tape to my lips and block the heart from making a peep. Why do I do this? I could point to a number of things, but I think the significant one is fear. It's the fear of being vulnerable and the possible pain or ridicule I could experience in this vulnerablity-- to a point where I would become shattered.

Becoming aware of these things has been a start for me in asserting my voice. I'm a bit more sensitive to what happens to my body when my heart wants to speak, and those signs signal me to speak audibly. When I speak from the heart, there's not much thought of what I think people want to hear, but more of just allowing my voice to be heard. In one of my favorite movies, The King's Speech, the protagonist/the King shouted out one of my favorite lines in the movie, "Because I have a voice!" I feel as if that emphatic declaration has been echoing through my veins. It's time for me to just speak.

And all of this, including the timing of it makes a sort of sense that is pretty mind-blowing for me at this point. However, I'm not ready to write all about it here just yet. There is so much for me to say and process... But for now we'll go one spoon at a time ;)

Chuck & Beans is spot on :)

Chuck & Beans

So I guess I'm easily recognizable...

About two months ago, I was at a Seattle Sounders game. We had won in thrilling fashion, and I was proceeding to leave the stadium with friends. Out of the sea of people that were filing out, I heard a shout, "Erwin?!" An old friend who I haven't seen in a while spotted me. Naturally I was caught off guard. We did our customary hello how are you doings, introduced our wives to each other, then parted ways. Carol made a comment to me after it happened, "I think you're easily recognizable." Really? I'm I that recognizable?

Fast-forward a month later, walking near Pike Place Market with Carol. "Erwin?!" someone blurts out in front of me. Caught off guard again, it takes me a good 10 seconds to register that the person in front of me is a friend from all the way back to high school. She just happened to be visiting Seattle. We greeted each other quickly as she was in a hurry, then parted ways.

Come to think of it here have been countless times this has happened to  me. These are just the two recent times that come to memory. It makes me wonder though. Am I really that recognizable that people would stop and greet me? I'm pretty clueless when it comes to recognizing people on the the street. 80% of the time if you walked by me, I wouldn't realize it was you walking by, and you would be offended. It could be that I'm preoccupied in my head 80% of the time...

Anyhow, I've also wondered-- I'm sure I have a doppleganger or two out there. Side note: if you are not familiar with the term doppleganger, it is a German term for "double walker," and it's my favorite word to use for someone out there who has a similar likeness to me. I only came to know this term from reading comic books. As I was saying, there must be a doppleganger of me. I've been told several times by people that they met or saw someone that looks just like me. Well, maybe you really did see me, but I just didn't acknowledge you. I doubt that because most people would let me know if I dissed them. Anyway, my point is what if you mistook one of my dopplegangers as me and you yelled out "ERWIN!" It must've happened already right? Has anyone mistakenly called out to someone, only to realize that it wasn't the person you thought? And have any of you done this to any of my dopplegangers? I'm sure it happens because it happened to me! But that will have to be another story for later...

So I bought orange pants...

We were in the mall the other day, and I strangely resolved to look for bright-colored pants. Is this me trying to be fashion-forward? Or is this me trying to have fun with my clothes? I've learned that the clothes I wear make a statement and sort of precludes my attitude-- if that makes any sense. My search for bright-colored pants brought me to Carol's suggestion of Express. Now, I've been in this store before, but I had never bought any clothes from there in my life. But we figured of all the stores, Express would definitely have bright-colored pants. Sure enough... I spotted them quickly upon entering the store. There was a wide array of colors from bright blue, mint green, to orange. For some reason, orange seemed to speak to me.

"I'm your color. You must wear me." So two things about me: I'm a good listener, and I'm easily convinced. Orange pants wins! I bought them among other things-- my first purchase from Express! As I carried my bag, something occurred to me. Naturally, it's called "buyer's remorse." The flood of doubts came... Am I going to look foolish in these bright orange pants? What am I supposed to wear with them? Will they make me look gay? (*stereotype alert* you know, because all gay guys are stylish!)

There's no turning back now. I could return the pants but that's like saying that I don't have the balls to wear what I originally wanted. And that's pretty sad. So I'm going to wear these orange pants, and I'm going to wear them proudly!

And well, these pants do look pretty good on me!

Stories that beg to be written

The other day I realized something. I've got stories that beg to be written, but I don't write them down. Why is that? I think the easy answer is that I just don't prioritize writing these days. Now my brain-- or is it my heart-- a combination of brain and heart (BREART!) is telling me, "Hey! We need the damn stage!"

"Oh, okay."

So here's the deal. This blog hasn't been worked on in ages, and I've done this before to only go back and neglect it again. I don't know if that is going to happen again, but I'm going to try not to repeat my same patterns. I'm going to be writing offline and make sure I have something in queue to post to help me build some momentum. I'm not sure what the result is going to be, but I think it's going to be good. That's my opinion though, so who knows?

All right, stories that beg to be written, you now have your stage...