how can it be?

July 9, 2006 at 2:14 am · Filed under life thoughts, people

My original intention was to write some non-sense about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man’s Chest, or complain some more about unmet expectations. That all went out the window when I saw an email in my inbox from Mary Ashburn with a subject line of “sad news”. Upon opening the email, my jaws dropped, my hands went up instinctively to cover my mouth as I sat in my hotel room in Reston, Virginia wondering what the hell happened up on Boston. The tears came gushing out as I clicked through the Boston Globe article link that came with the hard-to-believe words of the email. The tears wouldn’t stop.

The funny thing is that I actually thought about Dave yesterday. I was sitting on the hotel shuttle that picked me up from Dulles Airport. Right as we turned left onto Sunrise Valley Drive from the exit road off of Dulles Toll, I thought “Gee, I really haven’t seen Dave for a while. I wonder how he’s doing. And really, here’s a guy who is super cute, so nice, and such a solid person. And Harvard Med to boot. Why the hell is he single? I wonder if he’s got a girl now?” I don’t know what exactly about the way the traffic light looked as the shuttle turned, or the way the suburban parkway was lined with brightly-green trees, what about those that made my thoughts randomly turn to Dave Magoon. And the timing … yesterday of all days I randomly thought about Dave Magoon.

I can’t stop asking myself just how in the world this can possibly be??? How do accidents like this happen? How did I ever manage to get up from my near-death bike crash last week? How can Dave possibly no longer be with us? How can life be so ridiculously unpredictable, so lucky and so unfairly unlucky at the same time? Of all the people in the world, how could it possibly have been Dave?

The funny thing is that the last time I saw Dave, he was actually laughingly weaving me a story about the rooftop above his apartment that he is not allowed to be on. He and his roommate put a gazebo on the rooftop so that they could go out there and party it up sometimes. However, a great big gust of wind blew the gazebo over the edge of the building, landing it on a car parked in the street and completely ruined the car. He laughed and said he wasn’t sure how they were going to resolve the issue with the car-owner nor his landlord because his landlord would first demand to know why there was a gazebo on the forbidden rooftop to begin with.

There is one memory that I will always remember of Dave. When I saw him in Boston last fall, the first time in what must have been at least a couple of years, he gave me a hug so big, and so geunine, that anyone else would have thought we were long-lost siblings seeing each other for the first time in decades. It made me feel so good.

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非你莫属

July 6, 2006 at 11:43 pm · Filed under daily grind

So what the heck does that title mean? Such was the mystery for a few hours today as I realized just how terrible my Chinese is. I think I can communicate on a literal level with people, like the way a kindergartener can tell you that he likes blue better than yellow in the crayon box. Beyond that, anything remotely resembling literature, and all you would get from me is a completely blank stare, and maybe if you get me drunk enough, I will venture a guess by making up something ridiculous as I pretend to know something that I don’t.

So an old friend of mine puts “爱你, 非你莫属” as her gstatus, which “gstatus” in and of itself was a new word added to my vocabulary just today (okay people, I admit; I am getting old; i no longer follow the life and times of youngsters hip with the newest instant messaging technology). I looked at it, and I thought … “well, i know the first two characters, and I can pronounce the next three, but I really have no idea what it means. Dang, her Chinese is so much better than mine.”

I ventured to ask her “Girl, wth does your gchat away message-like thingy mean?” (I am young enough to know and use acronyms like “wth”). Turns out, she didn’t know either. Thus began a search that spanned hours as we asked friends, friends of friends, our mothers even, to figure out just what those silly few characters really meant.

Turns out, those characters mean “love me, and I will belong to you solely.” Let’s everybody hold hands now and altogether say “awwwwwwww.”

Yes folks, that is what it means. We, both being the girls that we are, melted knowing the true meaning of pretty words that we could somewhat pronounce but not understand. We, both being the non-native speakers that we try to deny being, recognized the true limitations of our language skills.

That made me rather sad, how terrible I am at my “native” language. But then again, not really. Because when did I ever understand poetry even in English? I don’t. You have to literally spell things out for me. Metaphors just don’t work with my brain. Sorry. Good literature is pretty much a wasted effort on me.

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another trip to the ER

July 3, 2006 at 10:01 am · Filed under daily grind

Remember my first trip to the ER? The leg laceration that left me crippled for 2 months? That came just a few days after a sprained ankle.

Last Monday, I once again sprained my ankle, but it was well on its way to recovery when I crashed very badly on my bike yesterday. I think from now on, I will make a mental note whenever I sprain my ankle that it is a sign of worse injuries/accidents to come.

I was out biking with Danilo, Alex, and Jack yesterday when we decided to do a little “race” back to S&P. So I built up to about 25mph going down the straight-away of Albany street, but me being stupid and inexperienced, tried to round the corner onto Pacific while still going full-speed. A combination of not leaning enough and the road not being wide enough, I crashed, head first, into the sidewalk at 25 mph. I saw a big white spark when I felt the top of my head hit the curb.

Reasons I am lucky:

1. I was wearing a helmet, which absorbed the majority of the impact. You should see the helmet (maybe I’ll take a picture of it and post it). It is f-ing scary. I took it off after I got up from the crash, and I looked at it and shuddered. There is a big dent at the top, and the foam is cracked in multiple places. That would have been my head.
2. Despite the major head-first impact, I injured no neck vertebrae, spinal cord, anything major that would have left me paralyzed.
3. Once again, I have some wonderful wonderful friends who stuck by me and made sure I was okay. Eternally grateful to: Danilo, Yoni, Alex, Oaz, and Jack.

The trip to the ER in the ambulance was so that I could get some xrays to make sure I had no major neck injuries, just in case. They also flushed out all of my wounds. I have a few pretty nasty cuts on my left elbow, and ridiculous road rash all up and down my left leg.

Casualties:

1. My bike. After convincing myself that I am okay, this was the saddest part. Some not-so-pretty scratches on the seat and handlebar, but most of all, a HUGE dent in the top-tube :( It was such a beautiful bike.
2. My ring. The turtle ring that my dad bought me took some major dentage. I probably have to find a jeweler to get it reshaped :(
3. Some major skin cells that are now driving my fibroblasts and neutrophils into full-combat mode.

Once again folks, I am okay, and I was so extremely lucky.  So how about that luck of the Irish?

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