Love Joe Le

Joe,

I believe it’s now been a month since I’ve last seen you.  I miss you dearly.  I still reminisce about the days of grade school, middle school, and high school.  You’re loved greatly by your family and friends.  Joe, I still think about you at least once each day.  Many things remind me of you.  I still remember back in elementary when you’d first moved here from Arizona and how you loved playing Lacrosse.  haha I also remember how you spoke of your sister.  And you know what?  You were right.  She’s a wonderful sister. 

The foundation that your sister set up under your name is wonderful.  I’m so glad to be a part of it.  We’ll make you proud, Joe!

Keep looking after us, buddy.  One day, we will meet at heaven’s gate.  I’m expecting you to show me around!  We’ll catch up when that time comes.  It won’t be too long, I promise.  Until then, I bid you adieu.

Joe Le

Joe, you will be forever missed.  Thank you for everything you’ve done for everybody and anybody that you’ve touched during your 21 years of life.  I’d first met you back in 6th grade when you’d first moved to SoCal.  All throughout middle school, you were my lunch time buddy.  Then in high school, we had French together for a few years.  We graduated together at WHS, class of 2008.  Onwards to college, we headed out to sister schools.  Surprisingly, just last week, I’d found out that we were transferring to the same state university.  Thanks for everything.

Recurring Dream

I woke up in tears today.  And for once, I’d actually remembered my dream.  It was so vivid, so real.  And I remember every detail exactly as it’d happened, as I’ve experienced it once before. The only difference was that I knew what to do this time.

The dream started out with myself and my parents in our old Toyota (which we had when I was 4 and hadn’t thought about it since) parked in the parking lot of a local Target.  Everyone was at the age of whatever year that dream originally took place except myself; which made my older brother younger than I this time around.

The world was in some sort of post apocalyptic war.  My brother was coming home from the hospital in an ambulance, but because of the circumstances, he had to be dropped off at that Target.  We parked and waited for him.  The original dream ended badly in that there were guns going off in all directions and I woke up with only a faint memory of death and the events that followed after my brother came to us.

This time around, I knew what was going to happen.  In the dream, somehow, I knew I was in the dream.  I’d told my parents to please listen to me, that I knew what was going to happen.  I’d instructed them to avoid all obstacles as they appeared.  Oddly enough, though it was taking place back then, I had a cell phone.  Was I a time traveller in that dream?  I heard my brother’s voice coming from my bag through the cell phone.  I was told that I was his favourite, that whatever happened, he’d loved all the time we’d spent together.  From that moment on, the skies were bright.  Though the feeling danger still lurked because of the “war,” I still had to instruct my parents how to get out.  But instead of waking up with that strange feeling of death and danger as I had before, I woke up with a happy feeling as our entire family drove off into the sunset, happy as ever.  I love my family.

“Kung Pow” Movie

At work the other day, some friends and I were talking about ‘Kung Pow,’ a movie that came out back when I was in the sixth grade. I just remember that it was one of the ‘stupidest’ movies ever created (in the sense that it was dubbed over original Chinese scenes), but the random storyline and some of the hilarious scenes made it all worthwhile.

The one line that I remember is Tang saying, “My name is Betty.” in that little accent of his. His little theme song, “Chicken go cluck cluck, cow go moo, piggy go oink oink, how about you??” was sung in class every now and again when the topic of ‘Kung Pow’ came up.

According to IMDB, the sequel, “Kung Pow: Tongue of Fury” is supposedly set to be on the big screen some time in 2010; 8 years after the release of the first movie, “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist,” in about 2002. For the longest time, I thought that the “trailer” shown in the first movie was fake. Let’s see if it does come out some time this year.

Childhood Playground

I was just thinking about how the playgrounds around here used to look like; how we were able to have fun with the simplest of things. Back then, we had sand. Now, there are painful wood chips which attract termites. All of our playground toys were made of metal. They’re now made of cheap plastic. I remember only having a couple of things on the school playground; a set if large swings, a set of short swings, a small slide, and a metal dome cage thing to climb on. The rest was just blacktop, where we played dodgeball, 2 square, and 4 square.

On the “big kid” side of the school, we had more or less the same things but also had monkey bars, handball courts, and basketball courts.

On both the big kid side and the baby side, we also had a big field where we’d play “kickback,” kickball, and soccer.

Good times, those days. But alas, it’s all come to an end now that we’ve received a plastic jungle to play in (Fisher Price brand, at that) in shapes whose function is unknown even to the most imaginative of kids.