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Thursday, October 30, 2003
TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPIN' posted on 10/30/2003 09:59:32 AM by agentCB
THING OF BEAUTY posted on 10/21/2003 01:12:57 PM by agentCB
BERKELEY posted on 10/13/2003 12:52:52 PM by agentCB
MARKETING IS IMPORTANT posted on 10/10/2003 05:25:11 PM by agentCB
TECHNO-HIP posted on 10/10/2003 05:17:59 PM by agentCB
TERMINATED posted on 10/08/2003 12:15:11 PM by agentCB
SACRAMENTO IS A MELTING POT... posted on 10/02/2003 10:30:00 AM by agentCB
i don't know how it keeps getting faster, but life sure is starting to take off. i am 1 semester away from graduating. no idea where i'll be after. i guess i'll worry about it then. i don't feel like writing much lately. apologies to the readers, but i have 2 stay focused on all the ish i'm doing right now.
someday it'll all make sense.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
my uncle who was buried yesterday had a favorite saying; "thing of beauty." to him it was a joke. when u see something ugly, it becomes a thing of beauty to him.
that pretty much sums up papang totoy's life experience. always positive no matter what was going on around him.
i had the opportunity of interviewing him for an asian american studies class my first year in college. unfortunately, i'm still looking for a copy of my paper (it's on a 5 1/4" floppy somewhere). below are what i can account for from memory...
papang totoy fought as a philippine scout in world war II. he was a 14 year old guerilla soldier who watched his best friend die in front of him at the hands of japanese soldiers occupying the philippines. he saw babies thrown up into the air and impaled on japanese soldier's bayonets. he saw many atrocities but never once was he bitter.
somehow he made it through, with his rifle that was bigger than him, he made it through the war in one piece. later he met my auntie (mamang goya) and got married a few years later. papang totoy was a mailman in my relative's hometown of cavite and was pretty popular in the city. then his family emigrated to america with the rest of my relatives.
with my mamang goya, he had 7 children and raised them all on his lone income. his first job in america was as a dishwasher at alioto's restaurant. i remember him making sure i wrote down that he was not allowed to be a waiter because he was filipino. his life was a struggle but he never let you on to it. although at one point during our interview, he broke down and started tearing a little bit when he was talking about all the jobs he had to do and all the crap he had to deal with here in america. you can tell it hurt, but he always found a way to make it work for him. always positive, he struggled to feed and clothe his family, doing odd jobs and anything he could get his hands into. he never complained.
i guess surviving a war does that to you. papang totoy probably felt lucky to be alive and everything else he went through here in america wasn't anything compared to what he went through as a teenager.
and his character is what survived all these years. built from pain, hard work and suffering, papang totoy learned how to appreciate life and live it to the fullest. with the little that he had, he made his own world.
now his children are continuing his legacy through their character. the matias family is one of the funniest families in all of our relatives. hell we're all funny, but you can always count on the matias family for good laughs.
the funeral yesterday was definitely a thing of beauty, relatives laughing and remembering papang totoy's jokes and stories. it was how he would have wanted it to be.
Monday, October 13, 2003
being in berkeley for a few hours made me realize that all my time at davis, being liberal and radical minded seemed more like a jaunt through target more than anything else. there's something to be said about the grittiness of berkeley that really compliments the liberal attitude at this fine city by the bay.
hit up amoeba with snaykeyz to sell his dancehall dan cd. i'd link a site, but i think it's under construction right now. anyway. i picked up some cool chuck d & flava flav tshirts from the tshirt store. snayk eyz got a hat from the berkeley hat store (one of my fav stores) and of course we snatched some vinyl from amoeba. i picked up nas' made u look and some old ass percussion record.
i already heard one potential sample in that record. everything else is kinda fast.
snayk picked up heiro's new album. and some other shit. i forget.
oh and of course i had to go to sweetheart to get some pearl tea. i opted for the white chocolate mocha pearl, haven't had that shit in a minute. while we were there we saw this...
i can only hope that there's no guy named "lychee" that works there.
Friday, October 10, 2003
this pic is from engrish.com, a site dedicated entirely to the unfortunate happenstances we call "lost in the translation."
i'll let the picture speak for itself...
many asian cultures (not asian american), especially japanese culture, jock american culture (read: globalization) and try to use english in their products in hopes the masses will buy the shit, just cuz it has english writing on it.
sometimes i hate the world, but i can't help but laugh at it sometimes.
otherwise i would be very cynical. haha
click here for more hijinks.
apparently, i've become the latest rage at work because of my new cell phone. i left AT&T and ventured over into the realm of sprint. main reasons: 7pm off peak time (like woah...) and better reception. at&t is ok, but i have a lot of problems with people hearing what i say and shit. that ain't cool.
another cool thing is that my new phone the samsung vga1000 (a620) has a camera! not that i really needed it, since i have 2 already, (digital and an analog xlr) but it just happened to be the best value as well.
kill 2 birds.
so i'm all up in the picture thing. the phone is great, the reception is great and above all, i have 7pm off-peak time.
that's the shit.
bringin' it back to 97. at&t couldn't top that. if u want my number, i have to know u first.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
i don't know how many times i'm going to hear that word in the near future. this is probably going to be the new buzzword for CA politricks.
now that we have arnold in office, i quiver in my galoshes thinking about the potential changes coming up.
for us non-profit social service heads, republicans usually have a field day cutting all our shit for the sake of balancing budgets etc. then crime and shit goes up, and then it takes a few years to get a democrat back in and then the democrats put things back into place and then the budget get messed up again...
of course i generalize.
but that's the pattern i see. no matter who's in office, there's always some special interest up in the capitol vying for their own needs, leaving others out in the dust. let's see what arnold can do with the mess we call CA politricks and hope that all of us people making a difference out there don't get fucked over in his wake.
so i figured arnold would win, but not by the landslide-like margins that came about last night. only the bay wanted davis in. not even his own home county of OC and LA wanted that sucka in office still.
so anyway, i figured my vote for bustamante wouldn't do shit so i voted in who i really believed and thought would make a more decent respectable leader...
GARY COLEMAN
haha yeh right. i voted for camejo...
oh and thank you for voting no on prop 54. i swear, if that shit passed i was gonna fuckin move to reno or vegas (need to be near family still).
Thursday, October 02, 2003
...according to time magazine and i just got new insight. if any of ya'll out there can recall, sacramento was deemed the "future of america" as the most integrated city in america, according to TIME magazine. you would think san francisco or LA would have more integration than sac but TIME magazine based it's survey not on the existence of cultural enclaves (ie. chinatown, lil italy, etc) but instead they based their findings on how much people of different cultures live together and coexist in the same areas without any cultural neighborhoods
i used to argue that sacramento was not harmoniously integrated and that it was a poor example of diversity and appreciation. it wasn't until i was in the bay last week riding on BART, when i realized something else.
perhaps what TIME magazine was trying to say was that sacramento is how they want america to be like in the future.
living in sac, i can speak with direct experience on living here. sometimes i hate it and sometimes it's cool. when i first read that article above, i wondered why they didn't pick sf or the bay in general. i saw more interaction between people of all ethnicities, etc. in my day in SF than i've seen in sac in the past month. i saw people of different backrounds talking together on BART, people laughing together. i don't really see much of that in sac. although i do see more interaction between people of the same social class, regardless of ethnicity. and also i don't see it unless i happen to make the initial move.
for TIME magazine to shun the existence of cultural enclaves as contrary to what true "integration" or diversity should look like makes me weary of what's in store for all of us people of color.
the fact that these places exist in the first place was either because of discrimination or due to economic deprivation by society. then to ignore these neighborhoods and play down it's importance to a city's vitality it very ignorant in my opinion. people of color do things differently, if they like to build their own neighborhoods, who cares, especially when they welcome white tourists money 24/7.
tons of people travel to SF and they all try to stop in chinatown, little italy, japantown, the fillmore, haight, ok so maybe i'm pushin' it with the last two. what i'm tryin to say is that these neighborhoods are badges of honor for a city. it shows appreciation and respect of different cultures, rather than trying to shake everyone down and keep them all mixed together playing happily together in the colorblind euphoria of ignorance or "tolerance" which ever word makes u feel better.
what i see more of now is that sac is what the majority wants culture to look like. nothing that stands out to challenge the majority's establishments and stronghold on society. no chinatowns to contrast against the numerous strip malls and mega malls we have up here in sac.
to call this city the future of america almost makes me sick. it's as if people are in denial of the fact that there are people that actually don't do things the same way as the majority. to them i feel it's a problem. for me it's just my way of life.
don't get me wrong, i like sacto. just don't call it the future of america because we're still working on shit here.
