The End of Another Semester

It's almost 8 AM and I'm still up because my sleeping pattern is out of wack! Well actually, throughout the whole semester I usually slept around 5-6 AM and wake up around 12 PM. Ah. I really don't know if this is exactly healthy for my body, but I hope to regain a normal sleeping schedule (11-2) this break.

Reflection of this semester, Fall 2009

it's been quite interesting living at DA HEIGHTZ in Rochdale, the well-renown, or rather notorious spot for parties that hold over its maximum capacity of 30 -- we've had 200-300 people come in and out at our parties. While it kind of sucks to have the downstairs room, the experience living here is quite indelibly memorable. Aside from cheap rent, cheap landry, I am really loving the community aspect of co-op living. I am really going to miss my roommates and this atmosphere when I leave for Viet Nam next year in the Fall. Of course I won't miss the dirtiness of the apartment though. hah!

I declared American Studies as my second major this semester and after taking two of the courses offered under the department, I can say I really like what I am learning and I feel the topics discussed and the different theories really correspond to my own fascinations, curiosity, and questions about American life, or even the questions surrounding the definition of America, being an American, and American culture. Very interesting! Because I'm double majoring now, I'm hoping to graduate by Spring 2011, or Summer 2011 at the latest.

I think one of the most important aspects of this semester for me is the new type of consciousness--or different sets of question in regards to my life here, in San Jose, and elsehwere--that deals with my position being a student here at CAL, an elitist university and how I've realized how alienated and detached I've become.

To tell you the truth, it's quite depressing thinking about how just by being here, by being a Cal student, by having that attached to your name and people's perception of you, it can be quite condescending to other people who do not go to this prestigious university--just by you being you, or what ever/how ever you want to define it.

My birthday is also coming up, December 25, Christmas day. I remember growing up my parents would celebrate Christmas because of me--they did it because they did not want me to feel left out from all the other children at school who would talk about their Christmas day, waking up bright and early in the morning, running to the Christmas tree with their parents close by opening up presents under the shining light the Christmas tree star, and how they got the newest toy that they had always wanted and or the newest video game, or pair of shoes, or skateboard. My parents wanted me to feel like I was a part of America.

I wish I could show more gratitude to them now, but it's hard because emoting has never been an easy thing for especially when I am at home. I don't know if that type of tendency is part of my psyche or habits or whatever, but it's very hard to express how I really feel at home. You can say it's cultural, but there can always be a change. Perhaps I'm just not used to being expressive at home because lyrical or verbal love is not emphasized in my family; love is rather a form of sacrifice, and it's usually silent. Hmm..

I don't want to drag on for too long. It'll be dull. Until next time. I really have to get back to sleep. I'll be sure to get on this more since it's quite therapeutic.

Passed in the Past

It's 5 AM and I still do not know why I'm still awake. I suppose I've gotten so past the sleepy stage that I am now wide awake.

Recap:
-APALI 2009 was definitely a revolutionary year. I am so grateful to have been an intern for this year. No regrets.
-I was able to pass Astronomy class with an astonishing grade of a C+ with little to no effort put into studying for the tests and giving my attention in class. I really disliked the professor who was incredibly condescending and self-righteous towards his students. Screw that guy! I could not stop thinking about how he looks so much like Plato/Aristotle and Santa Claus.
- <3
-I am disappointed that I was not able to catch up with more old friends. I have to keep on reminding myself not to get so caught up in me and my own little world that I create under the circumstances I am in.

Lately, I've been thinking about how and where I fall within the time continuum of space and time (philosphical isn't it?). I've thinking a lot about my past obsessions with computers and technology, especially back in middle school, aka the Counter-Strike days. The days of anime, AzN PryDe along with growing popularity of AzN youth typing in "hip" sticky-capped internet ebonic langauge, searching and experiementations with identity.

I felt back then I was truly ahead of my time in terms of my expertise with computers. I had truly thought that I was going to be a computer engineer or computer programmer until my parents told me my "element", which is wood, was not compatible with steel, which in this respect is associated with computers. I remember helping all my friends with their computer hardware and software problems in person as well as on forums such as viaarena.com and tomshadware.com. I was proud that I had knowledge many did not have since during this time, not many people had computers. This was a time before myspace and facebook while xanga and blogs were gaining a lot of popularity. I was so proud to be a computer geek or nerd. I felt I was ahead of my time relative to the friends I had who did not have access to the type of computing langauge I had.

But now.. I feel like I'm still stuck in 2001. I often get surprised of how "mainstream" internet langauge is nowadays: LOL, LMFAO, OMG can be heard in songs and tv shows. Programs are made so user-friendly nowadays that I feel a lack of independence and control to how I used to feel about using programs from back then. Webpages do not have to be self-coded in HTML anymore. Pirating movies is not just limited to IRC anymore, but can be downloaded and watched on streaming sites and torrents. In many respects, I feel like how my computer is everyday--always becoming obsolete with each second that passes.

I feel like the world that I am an insider, yet outsider in is moving so fast like the skinny kids in my PE class mile-runs that my chubby self cannot keep up with their ever fast times. I'm always a few laps behind. Clocks have hands, but will never give you a helping hand because even when you are behind, it will keep on moving, ticking and tocking, without you.

Blurry Lenses

Watch this. And it's gone. Shall we replay that? No, we can't. We can't let anyone know about this. We can't let anyone know about us. Destroy the footage. Destroy the evidence.

Drink this so you won't remember it, or at least you think you won't remember it. Drink it so perhaps you can bend the truth a little bit. Oh shit, the cameras are watching me. How do I shut it off? How do i shut off people's eyes?

jibber jabber jibber jabber. Let them talk. They don't know the truth. This really happened.

[presses play on the remote]

Ow. My head hurts. There's only so much I can remember. Why do these scenes keep on playing over in my head? How do I shut this off?

[presses stop]

It's over now. I'm going to archive you in the library now. First, I gotta brush the dust off my shelf. There you go.

Stages

The VSA Culture Show is coming up in a few weeks: April 19th at 5 PM At Zellerbach. The title of this show is called "Monsoons". I play the nameless "Warrior" who tries to save a village from starvation and a drought. He journeys into the jungle to find the sacred spring that can save the village. Ironically, in the end, he causes the unleashing of an evil spirit worsening the problem. It is supposed to allegorically reflect the history many Vietnamese Americans came out of: The Viet Nam War and its many paradoxes in revolution, nationalism, heroism, change, oppression, and displacement. Woo, so many key words!

I've never given actors much credit for their talents. Acting is pretty hard I must say. I know it's all psychological. I have to be in the mind of the character, not just the body; I'm still waiting for my costume. Hopefully, by then, I can get into character more. If I had been given an insane, funny but meaningful, or villainous role I think I would have fitted those better. Besides the stress and anxiety of memorizing these darn lines, I am pretty excited to be on stage acting for the first time ever. Come see me! SUNDAY, APRIL 19th, ZELLERBACH, 5 PM, $13 presale, $15 at the door.

I've been down lately. Another stage.... My taste buds don't work as well anymore so food doesn't taste as great. My stomach is constantly aching, So does my mind. My nose is always congested because of the weather--it's so nice out, too bad I could never enjoy sniffing the flowers like how it is in cartoons when depicting spring and its beauty. Music doesn't sound as good anymore either. It feels like my speakers are dying or is it my ears, or is it the pleasure I take from listening to music?

I can't sleep sometimes. I constantly think about things I shouldn't even be thinking about. Circles. Reoccuring shapes and scenes and faces.

I sit with my face down to a ground I used to walk on when I was a Freshman, unfamiliar and unaware of my placement. I hear the doors closing like an orchestra of secrets. Behind those closed doors, I wonder what happens. The knobs lock, why should I bother busting the door open? Knock. Knock. My face still to the ground reliving what I could've, should've, would've been through. We are placed at certain times, just like music--right and exact--about perfect--no, it must be perfect. They suddenly stop. Gone. It's dark. Night Time. Behind the same closed doors, laying down next to you, secrets are revealed we both become vulnerable in darkness where our shadows do not linger. Safe again? really?

I am here. Again. And I wonder why I keep on coming back.

Save Her to Define Me

Their speech and the movement of their mouths do not align. The weak woman character in the dubbed-in-Vietnamese Chinese kung-fu series cries in distress as she is getting raped by a villainous male character with hands that aggressively caresses her face traveling down to her waist and onto her.... Her voice is drowned by the dubbers inaccurately capturing the emotions displayed, skewing the tone of the scene. She screams. I wish I could had done something. Though I made sense of my world through these depictions on screen, it was not real, but it soon became real for me.

My 8 year old eyes, with pupils of dark brown, mirror the horrendous scene on the tv. I slowly form my perception of good and evil, man and woman.

I can see my little self growing angry, frustrated, confused of why women had to be weak, why women had to be dependent on a male hero to save her. I was a boy who wished he could be a hero to all those women under the evil of certain men. As a boy, I felt it was my duty to protect women, as a boy becoming a man.

I remember back then, I told my mother not to wear such revealing outfits out of fear she might attract other men. I wanted her to stay with me all the time, to smell her hair, to say she is my mother. "Please do not go to the doctor's, ma. I don't want him to touch you in those ways." I cried to my mother. I would use a plastic stool we would buy from Dai Thanh Supermarket on Story Road to hold onto her while she makes rice porridge. The familiar scent of her black, curly hair comforts me that I am home with my mother and that she is safe and that we are safe.

Manhood, I believed, was defined through these lines set by movies and television. I believed that one day I could be those heroic men in these stories. That was what represented good to me. I should have realized that women have the agency, that I should not be protective all the time of them, that I should not try to define myself through rescuing them to reinforce their fragility and weakness. Though I am conscious of this, I still have a tendency to be protective, but I am slowly letting it go little by little.

I want to let go of what I felt was right to me then
and move on what I think is right to me now.
The first step is to accept that "Women are not Roses".
They are who they are. Who they want to be. What they want to do.
I am who I am and I can't define them because I am not them.
I am not my mother. I am not you..

Friday Night(s)

I don't want to let the drink talk for me. I ask it where it was made. It answers Europe, perhaps Germany, perhaps Russia, perhaps here wherever here is, it answers through my reading of its name and labels of the bottle. I twist its cap. I smell the scent of nail polish. I imagine my multiple Vietnamese barbers from multiple beauty salons. I imagine them cutting my hair, calculating which angle to snip at, wondering if I wanted it that way. I smell that scent, yet I still consume it, a piece of myself, my make-up. My mother appears out of that imagery evoked by my scent. My mother appears when I hear you speak of whatever issues you have being a woman.

Tears drip down an unfamiliar face. I've never seen this side of me before. Thank you for witnessing it so I can witness it for myself. Thank you.

Luminosa Noche

So I was looking through my xanga posts from high school, I was able to dig up a really sad poem I had written after my first break-up. Ah, the days of xanga.

Here is the poem I wrote during my junior year when I was taking my third year of Spanish.

Luminosa Noche

by Son Chau

Esta luminoso noche, hace muy frio-las nieves se lastiman
Yo no siento mis manos-son helada.
Escucho el clima, en mi cabeza, hay una tormenta.
Miro el cielo este noche con ella en su carro,
Las estrellas amarillas en el cielo negro detra's de nos-las hojas cantan en la calle.
El carino es un ilusionada-puedo llorar cuando estoy triste, puedo reir cuando estoy comi'co, puedo romper cuando tengo dolor.
Hay dos rios contentos, pero uno corre, y uno para por eternidad.
Hay dos flores bonitas, pero uno crece, y uno esta' mismo y solo' por eternidad.
El mundo me lastima-Yo me lastimo-Ella me lastima.
El mar en el mundo es azul, largo, y placido,
Los pajaros pueden volar debajo del mar.
Puedo morir debajo del mar, pero puedo vivir con ella....

This poem characterized much of my "emo-ness" through high school. Thank you Dashboard. Thank you Taking Back Sunday. Thank you Early November.

Home She Said To Me

Mẹ,
cho con đời sống.
Mother,
you give me life.
You,
gave me life.

Mẹ,
How
can I put my hands on
you.

Mẹ,
When
you,
give life.
When
you,
make my home, make me home, make me.

Em,
your brown-nâu eyes,
mirror
my own,
mirror,
Mẹ.

Mẹ,
your tối-đen, black hair
imbued
by
the aroma
of
the
Perfume River.. is

The essence of my adolescence.
The essence of my manhood.

My running reflection.

Mẹ,
the wrinkles, the cracks, the marks on
your
hands
mirror
the beauty
I mirror the world to you, Em.

Viet-Nam-Mẹ-------------------
America-Em--------------------

I am you. I am you both. Viet Nam. America. My Em, my lover. My mother, my creator.