Tag a log.

So the other day, I was at the bank, and the teller asks me, "Are you Filipino?"  So I say, "Yup".  And then we proceeded with the transaction.

Sometimes people speak Spanish to me, and sometimes people speak Chinese to me.  I'm not sure exactly how the teller figured out that I was Filipino.  I wouldn't have guessed that he was Filipino just by looking at him.  I'm not sure how any of that was pertinent to the transaction anyway.

We didn't even go into any kind of small talk about our Filipino-ness either.  So I guess, my point is, what was the point of asking me that?  It's not like it would change anything.  It's not like you'll slip me some extra cash because we both happen to have the same ethnicity.

It all just seems pointless to me.

I can see if I was having trouble speaking English maybe.  Then you can take a chance and say, hey, if you're more comfortable with Tagalog, I happen to be Filipino as well.  But I mean, he seemed to be fluent in English, and I believe I can communicate fairly well in the language.  Also, I'm not even that used to Tagalog because I don't really speak it with anybody anymore. 

I mean, am I wrong to wonder about the logic of asking somebody's background, regardless of whether you happen to be the same or not?

Another day, I was at the pharmacy.  The lady spoke to me in Tagalog, and I answered in English.  She looked up from her computer and gave me this curious look.  It was only a quick glance, but she seemed to be figuring me out, like it was so odd that I responded in a different language.  I may have had an accent then.  So she may have assumed - and rightly so - that English wasn't my first language.

My accent comes and goes.  My Filipino-born friends don't think I have an accent when I speak English, and they think I have an American accent when I speak Tagalog and other dialects.  Meanwhile, my American-born friends think I have a Filipino accent.  And I sometimes speak pidgin with my Hawaii-born wife of Filipino descent.

I used to actually try and speak Tagalog back, but now it's just too much effort.  I used to want the other person to know that hey, I'm Filipino, too, isn't that great?  But now I just wanna get my shit and go.  It doesn't really make a difference.

I'd just rather not assume.  I didn't realize one of my co-workers was Filipino until a few weeks after he was hired.  Someone in the office mentioned it to me.  And I said, "That's cool."  I mean, what else was I supposed to do?  It was actually the Filipino guy later on who came up to me and said something like, "Hey, you're Filipino also, right?"  And then we talked about where we were born, how we grew up, our families and other things.  And that was cool.  But I would have the same kind of conversation with anyone regardless of their background.

And he didn't speak Tagalog, but he understood it.  Just like my wife.  Actually, my wife doesn't know Tagalog that well.  But I told him that I have Jufran hot sauce in the cupboard, and he can help himself to it if he wants.

As you may or may not know, I'm a staff writer over at www.ganggreennation.com.  I have been interacting with many, many Jets fans over the years, and I have no idea what most of them look like.  And they don't know my background either.  And I like it that way.  And we get into debates about the team, and we joke around, and we even share real life problems and empathize. 

I'm rambling on now, and I guess maybe I'm making a big deal of this. 

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Cool story, bro.

So yesterday, on a total whim, I decided to take my son to the library for the first time.  I hadn't been there in about nine years.  I think I wanted to check out if they still had a media department so I could rent "Moonrise Kingdom".

Anyway, we went to the kids' section and read "The Cat in the Hat" and "Horton Hears a Who".  Then we checked out the media department, and it did still exist.  We found DVDs of "Horton" and "The Lorax", and we rented them, along with "Moonrise".

We went home and watched "Horton" while eating lunch.  We don't usually watch TV while eating, because Timeout Boy ends up just staring and not touching his plate.  For some reason I decided to just feed him and let him watch.

We then went grocery shopping.  We bought some things at Target.  Then we drove over to ShopRite. On the way there, the kid fell asleep, so he and I stayed in the car while my wife continued shopping.  I listened to the radio, and for some reason I was really paying attention to the songs' bass lines.  Then the DJ came on and mentioned that it was Dr. Seuss' birthday.

I thought that was a pretty cool coincidence.


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Travel Plans

As I sat down to have my coffee on Friday morning, my boss came in and sat next to me.  "How do you feel about travel?" he said.  "I'm not sure," I said.

He then asked if I wanted to come to Las Vegas to a convention.  He gave me a choice in the way that I'm the only video editor in the company, and they need someone to edit a video during a show.  Not that I didn't want to go.  I like being needed, and I want to be there.  The question was the logistics.

My wife goes to graduate school classes twice a week.  We don't have a babysitter because we've never needed one before.  It's always been pretty much just us.  For the first couple of years, her cousin lived with us, but she has since returned to Hawaii.

We've never left Timeout Boy in the care of anybody else, let alone someone new whom we don't know.  In fact - I've written about this before - anytime we really want to see a movie, we take a day off, drop him at day care, and go on a little date.  (Over the years, we've taken days off for "The Dark Knight", "Inception" and "The Dark Knight Rises".  We're actually going to see "Django Unchained" this Friday, which is not a Nolan movie, for a change.)

After sorting it all out, my boss agreed to let me leave a day early so I can be home for one of my wife's classes, and she will either bring our son with her or just skip the other class.  Now what I'm worried about his Timeout Boy himself.  As mentioned, we have never been away from him much, and definitely not overnight.  Not even once in his almost four years.

There were a couple of occasions for me.  One was when he was about 9 months old.  I was invited to this Monday Night Football viewing party with free beer and food.  I was pretty miserable.  I just wanted to be home playing with my kid.  He didn't seem to notice that I was gone long, so that was good.

The second time was just a few months ago.  We had a little company dinner, and he kept asking for me all night.  He couldn't go to sleep because I wasn't home yet.  I kinda felt bad about that.

This time I'll be gone for about four days.  I hope he'll be okay.  I probably won't be.  The worst part will probably be the flight itself, when you're just sitting there with nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Maybe if we get free internet on the plane, and we can do a video chat.  We probably won't have internet at the hotel, in order to save money, but we might have it at the convention since we'll need the connection, so maybe I can sneak in a quick video chat before or after.

I don't know how frequent flyers do it.  Sometimes I rush out of the office just to have a few more precious moments at home.  I don't know how some people can deal with being away from their families so often.  Even those who don't really travel but spend long hours at work.  I'm not sure I can handle that.  I don't get paid very much right now, but at least I have my weekends and generally get to leave after 5.

Anyways.  Getting there and back safely is also in the back of my mind.  I don't even wanna get into that at this point.  I just can't wait for it to be over and be home again.

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Queue Tips: James Bombed

I heard there were some good reviews of "Skyfall".  I've even heard it was the best James Bond film ever.  So far.  It starts in medias res with people dead and shot and the spy in hot pursuit of the all important McGuffin.

They chase through exotic locations, amidst crowds of foreign extras, colliding into their carts and wares and putting their lives in danger.  There are police standing by at the ready, and they join the race without a thought.  Not even a look at each other to say "WTF yo?"

And then Bond and the bad guy ride motorcycles through the rooftops of this village.  And it all goes smoothly.  They even crash into a packed market area, and everybody lines up to either side so they can pass through without hitting anyone.

Then, another agent stops traffic and causes accidents until there is a logjam.  She then gets out and watches the bad guy get away on top of a train.  And no one yells at her for the damage she's done.

And so Bond gets on the train as well, and we get the fighting on top of a moving train scene.  There is a Caterpillar digger thing on the train, and James gets on it.  The bad guy keeps shooting at the metal digger part of it as though he thinks it's going to make a difference.

And stuff like that.

I don't remember the rest of it.  I can't recall the female spy vixen agent's name.  It's probably Connie Lingers or something like that.  Sorry if I spoiled the film for you, but you've probably seen it anyway.  In other movies. 

Skyfall?  More like Skyfail, amirite?  LOLOLOL

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Presents for the Future

I think Timeout Boy has been playing with the ribbon more than any of his Christmas toys.  He calls it his snake.  It was on the bed one morning, and he yelled at me when I sat on hit.  Meanwhile, I don't know where the rest of his presents are.

Four of them are in the closet.  Still in the box.  He was more into the opening presents part than the actual content.  He would rip the wrappings, throw the paper in the pile, and look for the next gift.  We had to keep stopping him to take pictures.

He didn't notice when I took his two Lego Duplo sets and put them back in the closet.  Just like he didn't notice last year when I took his Hess truck and stored it away.  So now he has two Hess trucks in the closet.  Next year, he gets to open them again, I guess.

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Silly nut.

Conversation with Timeout Boy, 3 years old.

Him: I want to watch, Daddy.
Me: Okay, you can watch Daddy.
Him: No, I don't want to watch a people.  I want to watch a DVD.  You silly nut.

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Memory Gland: Itchy Feet

I've slept like a baby the past couple of nights.  That's because I hardly slept the past few nights before that.  I'm a light sleeper.  I usually wake up two or three times a night, and usually I'll go to the bathroom and go right back to sleep.  I have to keep my focus on sleep, or my night is ruined.  So if my wife is still awake - or when her cousin was living with us - I would have to ignore them and the rest of the world, or the sleep switch in my head would turn off and I'll be wide awake all night.

For some reason, sometimes when I wake up at night, my feet would itch.  Then I'll scratch them and go back to sleep.  But then they'll itch again and wake me.  And again and again until I get pissed off and can't sleep anymore.  This is what happened earlier this week.

I'm not sure why that is.  I'd put lotion on it.  I'd put anti-itch cream.  I would sit in the tub and scrub and scrub.  But in the middle of the night, it would still happen.

In the morning, while I was putting on my shoes getting ready for work, I remembered having itchy feet as a child.  I was eight years old or younger.  It was New Year's Day.  My mom and I were getting ready for church.  I have to idea where my dad was, or my two older brothers.

I didn't wear shoes often as a kid.  Like most kids in the Philippines, I always wore slippers, or flip flops, or tsinelas in Tagalog.  So when I put on shoes that day, I was uncomfortable and my big toe was itchy.

I was whining, even crying about it.  And my mother said that I shouldn't be crying on New Year's Day, because that means I'll be crying all year.  Since then, I always thought whatever you did that day, you'll be doing all year.  I don't remember how the rest of that day went, or the year, for that matter.

Anyways, I thought hard about my current situation.  I realized I had been having some terrible dreams before waking up.  Nothing nightmarish or anything.  More like worrysome.  About trivial things.  For example, I had been digitizing some video tapes into my hard drive, and I had a dream about that, where I was all confused in trying to organize the tapes.  Stuff like that.  I would be all anxious and wake up.  Then my feet would itch.

One of my dreams was a vague one about a saw cutting wood.  Like nothing else but that.  I wasn't even doing it, and I don't know who was doing it.

Anyways, I thought about it some more, and I realized I hadn't been so organized at work recently.  I haven't been keeping track of my projects.  So I made a list of my tasks and priorities, and that seemed to help clear my mind.

I slept very well the next couple of nights.  But my dreams were still weird.

In one of them, I was with another person, and we brought a live cow to this guy's house.  The live cow was to replace a dead cow in someone's living room.  That person opened his front door, and he was telling us that the one he had was fine or something.  He was an older man, and he had a distinct hook-shaped nose.  He kind of looked like maybe an actor from a Scorsese picture.  And then he was eating off an opening from the dead cow's body.

Later on, I was eating with a man and a woman at a small diner.  We were talking and there was some noise, and the woman casually said something like, "I wish you would close the bathroom door" across the room.  And then I looked over and realized that the open door in the corner was the bathroom door, and whoever were there closed it.  Suddenly we could hear ourselves clearly, and I remember thinking, so that's where that noise was coming from.  And then the woman somehow ended up sitting at another table at another corner of the place, and I noticed that she was overweight.  She hailed over a worker there, and I think she paid our bill.

Later on, the man I was with, who was an older man, but maybe not the same guy from before, was in our house.  He was kind of jumping on our bed and on my son's crib, just like my son would.  There are some other details that I've forgotten.

And then I woke up.

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