YOU'RE STILL NUMBER ONE

Last week was Father's Day. I forgot. But here is one of my favorite stories about my old man that I like to share with others on occasion.

When I was 18 my relationship with family members was still rocky. I hardly spent time at home, simply because I was the designated black sheep, being the middle child. Which is basically the reason why I chose to attend college in Nilai after high school ended, all the way in Negeri Sembilan. Nilai was only 45 minutes away, but still, I would be living in the dorms.

One weekend my boyfriend at the time (who will go unnamed) called and suggested that he pick me up and then we drive to college together, just so we could be alone. My parents weren't home at the time, so he came by around midnight and we drove off into the night. We were about 15 minutes away from campus when my phone starts ringing. It's my dad. Probably tired of my rebellious antics, he tells me to come home that very instant. I tell him we're almost at the college, stop telling me what to do. He starts screaming on the phone, that if I don't turn the car around right then he would drive out to Nilai and get me himself. This goes on for awhile. He calls my boyfriend's phone as well and calmly instructs him to drive back towards KL.

So this guy turns the car around while I'm sitting there crying incessently. We reach my neighborhood close to 2am. The house I lived in at the time was at the very end of a dead end street. We were at the street sign at the other end, and from there we could make out the figure of my father standing under the street lamp at the end of the street, his arms folded across his chest. I don't know how long he had been standing there waiting, but I remember thinking, "I'm going to get hell for this."

My boyfriend could not hide the fear that had overtaken him, even in the darkness of the car. I heard him mumble finally, "you need to get out here. I can't go over there. You should go." So I get out, and he drives off so fast I think he left skidmarks. I walk down the long, dimly lit street towards my dad, expecting a full blown lecture to ensue, but he follows me into the house silently and doesn't say a word.

The next morning I get a call from my boyfriend who tells me he received a text message from my dad when he got home after dropping me off that previous night. I asked him what it said, and he read it to me, sounding slightly bothered, "if I were you I would have been a gentleman and dropped Zihan off in front of the house, but thank you for bringing her home."

I still laugh every time I think about that now. What had started as an embarrassing, angst-filled episode ended with me looking back on the situation and realizing that my dad had helped me see what separated the men from the boys. He didn't really like the guy, but let me make the wrong choice anyway. And I was mostly to blame for attempting to run off in the middle of the night. But my dad had called a guy out for not treating me like a lady, regardless of how unladylike I can be at times, and that put things into perspective for me.

Needless to say, the relationship did not last. I grew up, and have never settled for just any guy since.

LIFE GOES ON

Last week I received an e-mail from a high school student named Samantha, and though I wont share the entire e-mail, this part really struck me : "And now that I'm about to graduate from high school, I was just thinking back on my life and you were a major part of it, even though we never met."

Wherever we are in life, I feel that the good always outweighs the bad when you let it. Because life will crush you and break you repeatedly when you don't hold on to something that reminds you why you need to keep your head above the surface, and keep treading. A few nice words, an aspiration, a simple gesture, a song, a poem written by a sad thirteen year old on the other side of the world, anything. People will abandon you. Your friends will go down different paths, you'll realize you can't look up to anyone in your family and they don't understand you. Your teachers will imply that you will probably amount to nothing. People who don't even know you will judge you and make you feel small. Those closest to you will be the first ones to betray your trust. 

But it doesn't matter, because you are responsible for your own happiness and peace of mind in the grand scheme of things, and if you trust yourself, that's all you need.

THAT SONG

Gary and I were talking about music back in my apartment one night and turns out we both are fans of orchestral/classical music. Think composers like Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, and the like. Anyway, I suddenly remembered that there was one particular medieval-sounding song that is played in practically every film trailer showcasing climactic battle scenes where some guy is usually swinging his sword wildly at some other guy in slow motion. You probably know the one I'm talking about. I never figured out what that song was to this day, simply because I never knew how to describe it other than what I just wrote above. But it's one of those things that bugs me, and googling it never brought me the right results. So I tried singing it to Gary.

"It goes like this - dun dun dun dun! dun dun dun dun! dun dun dun dunnn dunnnn dunnnnn dunnnnnnnn!"

He nodded in recognition, amazingly, but didn't know what the song was either. So we were both on our laptops trying to find it, before I recalled a time early last year when I went on a That 70's Show binge and watched an episode that actually played the song in a scene with Kelso and Jackie. So I hit up YouTube to find that particular scene and lo and behold, someone in the comments section actually named the song.

The song is O Fortuna if you care to know, composed by Carl Orff in the 1930's. It is sung in Latin and according to Wikipedia, is the "most played classical music of the past 75 years in the UK."

My fascination with this song actually stems from a particular moment two years ago when I slept over at a friend's house in Providence. I was awakened at 6am to the haunting sound of O Fortuna playing on his stereo. Not loudly, but audible enough to fill the dark, still room with a slight eeriness. I was laying there on my friend's bed, him asleep on his couch, and I wondered if I had died and was making some sort of transition to the afterlife, or something that could be equated to the epicness of the song I was hearing as the snow fell outside on that cold winter morning.

I came to learn afterwards that my friend plays a cd compilation of classical songs throughout the night, songs he burned as sleep music. Like a background accompaniment as one slumbers. to make their dreams astronomically awesome? Because to be asleep and dreaming is a momentous occasion for them and calls for total grandeur? Who knows, I never actually asked him why. Because why not?

Received a surprise package from Gary the day after he left, sent as a gift from Amazon. As you can see, it is the extended edition of Gladiator with an additional three hour documentary of the film (!!!), which is even longer than the movie itself. He knows I've been wanting to get it for myself for awhile now. Thanks for that, Gary!

GUEST

Last Wednesday I stood around the arrival hall of Logan Airport, trying to find my old friend Gary in the crowd of people that emerged from the baggage claim area.

He flew over to Boston from Wichita, Kansas to visit me, bless his heart. I would have done the same, if there was actually anything to do in Wichita, which there isn't. I haven't seen him in about three years. This is also his first time on the East Coast so I had to make sure I did good in playing host. I lack good hosting skills, I think. After the third day my irritation with humanity kicks in and I'll say something like, "do we have to go out? People are outside."

Gary gets it though. It's the reason we became fast friends back in Nilai College years ago.

Nights were spent watching episodes of Doctor Who, Law & Order, and Worst Case Scenario. I like Bear Grylls and everything but sometimes I have to chuckle at his enthusiasm for survival tricks. Like when his car "breaks down in the middle of the scorching Las Vegas desert on a secluded road" and he's springing into action energetically. "He probably had three Red Bulls before they shot this," I point out to Gary.

Also, if you're driving solo and choose to take a long, secluded road, you're sort of asking for that scene from The Hills Have Eyes to happen.