And by the brink, I mean casually enjoying life without updating the world about it. But, like the title says, we’re back, you can breathe now. School is in full swing, classes are already being skipped in favor of sleep and its raining. That’s all you get right now. That’s all you deserve.

Also, go bears.

The Beard (via Facebook) December 9, 2010 at 1:37pm  

Inadequate packing for a vacation can ruin an otherwise tolerable trip. This holiday season, take a vacation from thinking by blindly following these simple packing tips:

Pack light so that you can fill extra luggage space with free magazines and emergency-procedure pamphlets from the airplane.
If you don’t own any luggage, wear every item of clothing you want to take, and keep toiletries under a tall hat.
Suitcases are called suitcases for a reason. That’s where suits go. Not socks. Take them out.
Pack a separate bag for every climate that exists, just in case the plane accidentally lands on an iceberg instead of inside a volcano.
Do not pack live lobsters to eat on your vacation. Riding in a plane gives them diabetes, and if you eat them, you get double diabetes.


The Beard gave me this helpful advice right before I started packing for Winter Break. Now that I’m packing to return to Berkeley, I of course revisited it. 

I was born under ordinary circumstances.  A mommy loved a daddy very much, and then one day the stork came.

No, I was not the stork. That comes later.

The stork brought me, oddly enough, to a hospital. I can prove it – there are pictures. On the flight over I had become strangely bloody, most likely due to the stork’s menstruation, and needed to be cleaned off by the resident nurse before I could be entrusted to my parents’ custody. There was one but one issue: they could in no way loosen my unbelievably strong grip on the tennis racquet in my hand.

Hospitals have strange rules and regulations. There are rules dictating how to empty bedpans; regulations regarding IV drips and drug regimens. Perhaps the strangest of all of these rules dictate the care of new-born-children- NBCs, in the colloquial.  Hospitals are legally obligated to thoroughly clean every NBC before presenting them to their parents, or else face the immediate removal of all of their personnel over the age of 38. How do I know this? We’ll get to that as well. Regardless, due to my fixed grip on my tennis racquet, there was no way they could clean the stork-blood from between my fingers. They, the collective hospital, were forced to keep me until I released my hold on the unexplainable item I was so attached to – something that wasn’t going to happen for a while.

Thus I spent the first five years of my life in the hospital. I wandered the hallways for the first week, whacking every vaguely circular object in my sight. After a few near-misses with some of the older patients, I was taken under the wing of a certain Dr. Kim. Dr. Wooram Kim- Korean doctor extraordinaire. Under his tutelage, I learned the language of Korea, the skills of a Doctor, and the tennis serve of an enraged Gorilla. A three-time Wimbledon-winning enraged Gorilla.

I, of course, remember all of this. Of course.

The sharpest moment from my early life, one that I recall often with fondness, is filled with screaming. The shrill cries of an overly aroused mob are set against the backdrop of a stadium, filled with two feet’s worth of broken yellow balls. I’m standing in the midst of these crushed and cracked, furry, spheres. I am wearing Captain Planet underwear, and I have a tennis racquet in my hand. I am three and one-half years old. A grown man lies, crying, on the other side of a low-slung net. His beard is half the length of mine, and he can’t speak Korean. As he whimpers for his mother in a language other than my own, I am approached by scantily clad women bearing a golden trophy in the shape of a visibly sexually frustrated Musk Ox. I’ve just won my first Triple Crown.  In order to grasp the 86 pound trophy, I release my tennis racquet for the first time in my life.

Immediately I am seized by two large nurses who have been waiting for this chance for years – Dr. Kim drops to the ground in grief and immediately forgets the names of everyone he’s ever known. I am separated from my racquet, my trophy, my Doctor, and my scantily clad women. I am placed in a box, and shipped overnight to Los Angeles- to meet my birth parents.

Ever since that fateful day I have searched every rounded slope of the earth for my racquet, my trophy, my Doctor, and my scantily clad women. I have flippered with manatees, I have skipped with jackrabbits, I have swooped with squirrels, and I have celebrated with jellyfish. I have learned the ways of the Stork, and have delivered more babies than Al Gore.

This is who I am.

You may be asking yourself: what exactly is the moral of this so-called story? Well, my dear friends, I will tell you:

Everyone, even those born under ordinary circumstances, can become extraordinary. Especially when it comes to tennis.

And Storks.

Also, crying.

the rest of this week: studied til 5 am today, sleep, get up, study, take last final, frantically pack, BART to SFO, 14 hour flight to taiwan, drive to waipou’s place, CRASH. 

via.

(Source: sticks-stones-and-techno)