I've lost a girl again

I’ve lost a girl again. I knew it when I woke up and found myself alone in the room. I couldn’t help but thought, “Damn, not again!” She’s gone for good. I couldn’t do anything. I was deeply sad. I missed her a lot.

I saw her while walking on the street with my backpack like a college student (I am not sure what I was at that time, maybe highschooler). I looked at her and she looked at me back. Good thing I was smiling. Now I can’t remember her face. I know she looked Asian, and her short dark hair was so adorable.

She was on the train with me (why the train, I don’t know. It might be a huge bus with a lot of people). She came to me and asked how I spelled my name. I told her while she wrote it down, her handwriting was pretty neat. I saw that and suddenly realized that I had met her before and knew her name. It sounded Japanese I don’t know why. I also remembered distinctively that I had written down some where on my note something like this:

Ts…, I wonder how gorgeous you will be when you grow up like a blossomed flower

“Ts-some-thing” was her name and that’s all I can remember now. My memories are fading really quickly, I need to type faster.

After a while she came back to her sit at the other end of this huge truck/bus thing. Next to her was a gigantic old man just sat there unenergetically. As soon as I wondered who he was, Dang – a Vietnamese guy I knew and know – jumped from that old man to before me, saying, “That’s her grandpa”. So it was her grandfather, who was constantly coughing. She was taking care of him, sometimes looked at me passionately. I know that I felt peacefully happy; I don’t know why I didn’t just come there to her.

What happened next, I can’t remember. Even my emotions for her are leaving me mercilessly. Why did you leave me, girl? Why did you appear only to vanish forever? I would come to you, you know, with all my might and my strength, only so that you’d stay with me a bit longer.

But the alarm clock rang, and I knew it was only a dream. Nothing had ever happened; there never was the huge train/bus thing, or the huge man at the other end coughing. There was no her, no “Tsu-some-thing”.

She is gone for good. I can’t do anything. I am deeply sad. I miss her a lot.

What the Bible means to me

At the service I went to last Wednesday, a question was raised: What does the Bible mean to your life? Really simple and hard to answer.

The Bible is long, that’s for sure. And what people can tell about it is not any shorter than it is. All of those sophisticated stuffs are great to read sometimes, but sometimes only, and there’s no way what I’m telling you is sophisticated. I am gonna write down whatever I think of, and then I’ll try not to even read it again until I have posted it.

The Bible contains a lot of stories, but it’s definitely not an ordinary book. It’s not an epic, a novel, a romance, or anything as such. Why? Because it’d be so uncool for me to tell Holden something like, “Last night I’ve read five books in the Bible”. Since every single verse can be a long and passionate lecture of Mr. V, reading them intensively and quickly can only tell me the plots. I would know how David became a king but not how great he was, and what God did to his life. I would have missed a lot.

The Bible is certainly not a documentary book either, since it’s full of enthusiasm and emotions that normal documentary books lack. But to me it’s quite similar to a textbook sometimes because I tend to feel so sleepy after awhile reading it (May God forgive me!). There were times when I couldn’t get anything after reading two pages. Then a person told me that reading the Bible was also to communicate with God. The idea makes me excited, not (only) because that I don’t have to understand the verses all the time, but because… oh come on, it’s to COMMUNICATE with God! I am not too confident in being able to pray sincerely and compassionately enough to reach God, but I CAN read the Bible. Yes, even I can communicate with Him!

So what can I say? To me the Bible is extremely long and hard to understand. But guess what? When I read it I talk to God!

…

Am I being inappropriate… again?

Another Performance

We Vietnamese Student Organization (VSO) in UCM (University of Central Missouri) had our first debut in this year’s Cultural Night. This was our second performance (you can watch the one from last year HERE), and it was definitely harder to make. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

VSO 2009 Performance

Choreographer: me

Performers: Chi Pham, Phat Hoang, Dang Nguyen, Cuong Duong, Vuong Nguyen, Son Bui, and me

Music: Thuong Qua Viet Nam – Pham The My

I am screwed

This post here is nothing beautiful, sophisticated, appropriate, or something like that. For some people, this may even be offensive or even heretic. If you still want to read a thought of mine then here we go.

So yeah, I am screwed indeed. Recently I realized that since I became a Christian, I seemingly have no chance to get a wife who really is for me. This does sound ridiculous but not too unrealistic.

Here is the deal: After all of these years, I have reckoned that a good wife for me should match me (be like me). I surely know a horde of movies which are about love-without-border and Hollywood does a great job convincing people that we can get married with alligators if we have our “true love”. But what I think is: two totally different people just cannot share their lives with each other. Different backgrounds make the two experience different things, cause them to love, hate, appreciate, despite, believe… differently from each other. An American and a Vietnamese wouldn’t be a right couple since one believes in capitalism and likes Bart Simson, and the other in communism and Thanh Giong (What the heck is “Thanh Giong”? Exactly!). So even though I can easily have a crush with a lot of American girls (and actually I get several new crushes every day), I know none of them are for me.

Vietnamese then! I can just fall in love with a nice Vietnamese girl, get married, convinced her to believe in God, then live happily together forever after or whatever. Oh, if only it’s just that simple!

Actually I used to believe in that until a month ago. I attended a Bible study class and learned how a wife and a husband ought to treat each other (by some verses in Corinthians that I am sure if you ask Richard he’ll know) and so it just doesn’t make sense for a Christian to get married with a non-believer. At the same time, I was discussing with my mother about God (who wasn’t a Christian and hardly knew anything about Christianity), and I realized just how hard to share my belief with someone. My faith and knowledge was only sufficient to convince myself and strengthen my belief. To help another person to know God and follow Him is next to impossible. I won’t be able to do that to my non-Christian wife.

So I will stick with either someone who won’t be truly for me, or a non-Christian wife who will end up being in hell. And trust me, it’s not funny at all.

I know I am wrong thinking like this – to be hopeless because of believing in God/Hope. I just don’t know what is wrong.

Like the outside let it snow

So here so are

Another pretty girl

I’m not gonna fall for that

Pretty girls are everywhere.

You like my glasses, you say

That’s good, and I like them too.

But you are all beautiful

So I cannot choose

Which I like best

To tell you.

And we smile to each other

Though we each belong to someone else

It sucks, I know

But oh well, at least

We feel a bit happy right now

Like the outside let it snow.

The class is over

Like the bubbles of the sea which drop

Then splendidly fly forever

Let me keep myself the joys and the sorrows

Like the outside let it snow.

Present

Anything we love, and we hate

Rest in here, the heart of the sky.

When the world is nothing accurate,

Endlessly strive,

Not to cry.

If rain comes now, with wind blows up

Million teardrops’d happily fall

If ice melts now to snow enough

So blue and sweet, the goodness of all!

Should I forget, and carry on,

Yearning to live, forever alone?

Or I’ll come back, to have you mine,

Until we’re dead, together we’ll shine…!

Break-dancing in the gym

When I came back to Bozeman for the 2008 Graduation, I promised to Holden that I’d have a break-dance show for the Cultural Night and would record it to show him. Sadly that they didn’t let me do it since it wasn’t really “cultural”, we ended up with another thing that I’ve post previously.

But a promise is a promise, so I still recorded what I had last summer. It was intended to be posted on Holden’s birthday but, well, you know, uhm… so I am going to post it this time.

This was recorded in a gym, soon after that the gym was closed in order to be renovated as a new recreation center in the campus. So I was apparently the last person who danced there, pretty historical isn’t it?

Performer: Anh Tran

Choreographer: Anh Tran

Filmer: Anh Tran (put it auto)

Music list: 1. Moments in love - The art of noise; 2. Cameo - Word Up; 3. Cali Life Style - Freakin (Remix).