Humanity Thanks

From: Steven Jacque

Date: Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 12:07 AM
Subject: Humanity's Thanks


Thank you all for your generous donations to habitat in light of the Bucket 100! This lovely 120(!) mile ride through rural Indiana was to make sure habitat for humanity can afford to give homes to those in need. Altogether we raised $500 out of a little over $4000 in total. There were 22 people in total riding this year. All in all, 12.5% contribution is a great turn out, thanks!

Anybody interested in the contents of the trip should keep reading.

The starting point of the ride resided in the inferior* Indiana University where 22 riders would meet. The students from Purdue, including yours truly, were bused down to IU's campus the day before where we would spend the night in a church. However due to miscommunications the church was locked for the night by the time we got there. This was discovered after the bus left. We got into contact with members of the student body who were very apologetic about our predicament and offered their student body house as lodging... 2 miles from the church. ~15 students and no bus, we restored to the best option: the moving van. We hopped in the back an took a blind ride through campus.

The next morning we rolled up our sleeping bags and headed for the starting point. Everyone else drove in that morning and gathered for the introductions/safety/how-to shpeals. Soon the police drove up and escorted us through campus as we began. We left behind IU quickly through a bit of forest and hills (who knew Indiana had elevation?) and hit the flattest stretch of road anywhere.

Most of the group quickly took off zooming on their mutant seasoned biker legging and souped up bikes leaving slower group, including me, behind. About an hour in we hit an Orchard with a big sign out front advertising fresh apple cider. There was no way we could pass that up.

The rest of the trip was considerably less interesting. Just flat farmland with corn, soybeans, more corn and cows.

Oh hey! A post office!

More farmland.



After what seemed like an excruciating 120 miles we reached our destination: Danville High School. The halfway point. A whole 60 miles between us and Purdue still remained.



ARRRGH



We rested for the evening and set out in the morning.

60 miles into the wind later, we puffed up chaucy Hill, the last hill. Finally the end was in sight. After the grueling ride I was ready to get some food. However once we arrived organizers of the event greeted us but no food. Oh well, at least it was over.

Thank you all again.

-Steven Jacque

*IU might not be inferior it's just a requirement for a Purdue student

Happy Birthday Steven

• Wait at least 1 hour after you eat before going swimming to avoid cramps. 
• Do not eat celery leaves, they will make you deaf.
• Do not drink alcohol when you eat durians, you will die.
• Do not part your hair in the middle during a thunderstorm; lightning will strike you and split your head in 2.
• Finish all the rice on your plate. Every grain that you leave becomes a blemish on your future spouse's face.
• Do not eat standing up. You will get fat feet.
• Boys should not eat eggs that have been left overnight. "Something somewhere" will grow very large.

— Things my great-grandmother taught me.

 Happy Birthday, dear Steven;

    With every one of your birthdays that we celebrate, I worry more about time slipping away. I am afraid that we have not had enough time to tell you everything that we should or want to. Have we taught you everything that you need to know?


Lesson 1- Crossing the Road:

You used to hold your hand out to me when we were getting ready to cross a street. "Mama, we have to hold hands!"  

And then, we would look left, and right, and left again with much enthusiasm and gusto, before you ran across pulling me behind you.

Lesson 2- Economics:

When the country was going into dire economic straits,morning news on the radio on the way to pre-school was usually grim. "What does recession mean, Daddy?", you asked from your car seat in the back.

Daddy painstakingly explained global economics, the gross national product and unemployment to you. Never mind that you lay awake the next 4 nights worrying about the eventuality of losing our house if Daddy lost his job.

No Steven, Daddy is not going to lose his job.
No, we are not going to be homeless even if he does.
No, you do not have to go find a job yet... maybe after you're done with kindergarten.

Lesson 3- The Art of Negotiation:

"Mama, can I have a cookie and watch t.v.?"
"No, Steven. It's too close to dinner-time."
"Can I just watch t.v. then?"
"No, Steven. we're going to sit down to eat soon."
"Pleeeeeeze, Mama??"
"Didn't Daddy tell you no already?"
"Yes." "But Mama, YOU are the boss of this house."

Lesson 4- Genealogy:

You discovered the bony ridge that is on top of your skull. It is the same bony ridge that Dad and your great-grandmother have on their heads. We told you that it came from the Klingon part of the family. You believed that you were part-German, part-Chinese and part-Klingon for many years.

Lesson 5- Birds, Bees and Special Hugs:

"Where do babies come from, Daddy?" This was another one of the hundreds of profound questions you used to ask at bed-time right after you were tucked in.


"Well, Steven..." as panic raced through Dad's brain. In a stroke of perceived genius, Dad remembered a conversation with his boss regarding a similar situation with his children and he chose to borrow the response. "... children are made when daddies and mommies give each other a very special hug."

Phewww... an awkward moment averted?!! Oh, if only...

You asked me a couple of bedtimes later, if we were giving each other special hugs at mass, when the priest asks that we offer each other a sign of peace

No Steven, people are not making babies in church during mass.

   There are so many more lessons that we have taught you. And yet, there are still so many more lessons to learn.

   Perhaps the most important lesson that we have learnt is that you will grow up no matter what lesson we try to teach you. You will grow and learn that some lessons are more important than others. You will learn your own lessons.

   We can only hope that we teach you enough to recognize a lesson when it presents itself, and to know how to apply lessons learnt with wisdom and sagacity. If nothing else, we know that you know how to cross a street. And that it is very expensive to go visit our Klingon home world.

Have a happy, happy birthday, Munchkin!

Love,
Mom and Dad

Malaysian Curling Team

Curling

From Wikipedia

Team members 4 per team (2 in Mixed Doubles)

Olympic 1924 (Retroactively made official in 2006).
Officially added in 1998.

Curling is a team sport in which stones are slid across a sheet of carefully prepared ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Players sweep the ice vigorously with brooms to manipulate the trajectory of the stones.
Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game, points being scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones.

Dear Steven;

    Did you watch the recent Winter Olympics held in Vancouver?

    Dad and I did, and one thing was certain. Malaysia was way under-represented. In fact, Malaysia has never participated in the Winter Olympics! And being in an equatorial tropical region of earth is poor excuse for this blatant shortcoming. I feel a nationalistic need to rectify this situation. I think that I will start a Malaysian curling team for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

    I did not come to this conclusion lightly. Do you remember our ill-fated ski vacation in Breckenridge, CO? Remember how I took ski lessons and relentlessly practiced going up the bunny hill with the rope tow? I looked so snazzy in your old snowsuit that you had outgrown and handed down to me. Step aside, Lindsey Vonn... here comes Steven's hot snow-vixen mama! Bet Lindsey never flopped around on the ground as alluringly as I did.

    At the end of the lesson, Dad deemed that we were ready for the "Green Circle" slopes. I understood that Green Circle means the easiest slopes on a mountain. Green Circle trails are generally wide and groomed, typically with slope gradients ranging from 6% to 25%. However, Green Circle in Breckenridge apparently means "Place for flatlander snow-vixens to die."

    The nightmare began with the dismounting off the chairlift. Auntie Sue assured me that even veteran skiers fell off the chair face-first and ate snow. Then I waddled like the proverbial duck with oversized long skinny planks duct-taped to its feet, to the the start of the "Green Circle" trail. Small children were zipping around me on their miniature skis with no poles. I'm quite sure that they were midget offspring of mountain norsemen and yetis.

    I planted my poles and dug the edges of my skis into the white snow. And I fell. I stood up perpendicular to the mountain's fall-line like the ski pro told me. And I fell. I stood up again. And this time, I slid backwards down the mountain. And then, I fell. I wedged my skis, and I fell. I snow-plowed, and I fell. I finally stayed down, and begged tearfully to be left to die alone. "Go without me. I will only slow you down. Let me slide down this mountain on my butt. Maybe I will meet you at the bottom in 2 days. Maybe I won't make it. But I love you all."

    Thankfully, Auntie Sue managed to flag down a rescue snowmobile during my heroic gesturings.

    So you see why skiing is out of the question for my Olympic debut in 2014. And I suspect that with my lack of agility and coordination, figure skating would also be out of the question. But I do know how to use a broom! I have years of experience sweeping and cleaning. And I have experience looking stupid. Which leads us to curling! All I need is to find 3 other Malaysians to complete the team, and a very warm sweater. Dad is totally supportive of this noble venture.


Wish me luck.


Love,
Mom and Dad

Bread and Butter

"You are the butter to my bread, breath of my life."
— Paul Child to his wife Julia, in the movie, Julie and Julia

Dear Steven,
     Happy Valentine's Day. It is a day for flowers and whispers of sweet nothings. It is a day for romance and twitterpating. It is a day dedicated to love. This seems like a good time to tell you about how Dad and I met, how you eventually came to be.

     Dad and I met at the Baptist Student Center cafeteria in Carbondale. Dad worked there as a dish-washer and I dished out the (sometimes recognizable) fare that the cafeteria offered. It was a late Sunday morning in January after the breakfast shift.

     I was pouring myself a cup of coffee. It was one of those industrial coffee dispensers with a spigot and a drain hole at the bottom to catch spills. I noticed the scruffy dish-washer, badly in need of a shower and a haircut, wearing a plaid fleece shirt over a worn T-shirt, waiting next to me.

     I had arrived just weeks ago: a Malaysian girl who had never been out of her zip code by herself, who had always been chauffeured and chaperoned everywhere; a well-coddled tropical princess who was displaced 10,000 miles and 13 time zones away, very homesick and very cold. I was happy to have the cafeteria job. It brought in pocket-money and it kept me from weeping in my dorm room wondering why I was sent to this god-forsaken country instead of England or Australia where all my friends went.

"Coffee?", I ask.  He grunts a guttural sound and hands me his coffee mug, and I pour.

     I find out much later that Dad was suffering a well-deserved hangover. To his credit, he graciously sat with me, nursed his coffee, and made very small conversation.


     And that was it. No fireworks, no cardiac aerobics, no love at first sight. I was not looking for love. I was looking to get my higher education done in the shortest possible time so that I could go back home to my coddled life... where the boys were not so scruffy-looking and were better groomed... my best-laid plan.


     But your father has magical powers of persuasion. He charmed me with plush stuffed green frogs, ginger snaps in my mailbox, kite-flying afternoons and meteor-hunting nights. He introduced me to the constellation Orion, the Pleiades star cluster, water elephants, haikus, Booby's sandwiches and vodka. He brought poetry and Led Zepellin and Nietzsche into my ordered life. Nietzsche who? He made my small world bigger and scarier, but oh, so much more fun. He makes me laugh.

     And he made the Disco Queen fall in love with a grassroot member of Insane Coho Lips. Pretty insane, huh?!?

     
     I know that this is not the world's greatest love story. It may not even be a good story, but it is our story. We gladly share this with you until you have one of your own.


Love,
Mom and Dad

Not Worth My Salt

Ice forms when the­ temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). When you add salt, that temperature drops: A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), and a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). On a roadway, this means that if you sprinkle salt on the ice, you can melt it. The salt dissolves into the liquid water in the ice and lowers its freezing point.

Dear Steven;

     It is winter in Chicago. We have had snowstorms, ice-storms, freezing rain and sleet in the past week or so. With each precipitation, the city is obliged to salt the roads in mass quantities. When the snow melts, we have our very own Dead Sea on 75th Street. Consequently, my normally Barcelona-red Toyota Camry became a splotchy classic Chicago Middle-of-Winter-Dirty-Salt white. It was time for a car-wash.

     I pulled into one of those car-wash places in a gas station. I slid my credit card into the credit card slot. Lights flashed and (I swear) Orson Welles spoke from the speaker next to the credit card slot and apologetically informed me that the credit card slot was not working, and suggested using cash instead. I should have recognized this as a bad sign.

     I pulled out $9 for the Deluxe Works Wash with the Undercarriage shower. After I fed $7 into the cash slot, lights flashed again and Orson congratulated me for choosing the Express wash, and would I like to add more cash for a different wash?

     Yes I would, Orson, I want the Deluxe $9 wash, not the Express! I fed 2 more dollars into the slot... and nothing happened!

     The lying, cheating Orson Welles impersonating machine ate my first $7 and was now waiting for more money. Since I was in a relatively amiable mood with time to burn (Dad was out with his office-mates) I fed my last $5 into the lying, cheating Orson Welles impersonating machine for the less-desired Express wash.

     The robotic arm came around and sprayed my car with tri-colored soapy foam on one side, whirred around the corner and sprayed the other side. We soaked comfortably for a few moments while I listened to some old-fashioned love song on the radio. Then the arm came around with the Armor All spiked rinsing spray cycle. I watched the salt cleansed away on the one side, as the robotic arm whirred around the corner. And it stopped.

     I drove up to the cashier's kiosk in my dripping half-washed, half-foamed car. I calmly explained to the cashier that his lying, cheating machine stole $14 from me and what was he going to do about it? He offered to give me a "free" $9-wash.

"No, no, no, you don't understand. I already paid $14 for this mess."

"Okay, okay. I give you free wash AND refund."

     Somewhat placated, I drove back into the lying, cheating machine. My car is covered again with tri-colored soapy foam. And I waited for the déjà vu rinse cycle.

     And I waited. And waited.

      After interminable moments, I thought to start my wipers so that I could see. Mr. Cashier was waving me to drive out. Apparently, the car wash was not working.

No shit, Sherlock!

     So now, I have a salty AND tri-colored foamed car. It looks like it's been covered with frozen poop from a flock of diarrhea-infected sea-gulls.

     Ahh... the joys of living in Chicago.

     Put on an extra sweater, my son. Keep warm.

Love,
Mom

Resolutions

Dear Steven,

It's time to take the Christmas tree down.

As I put each ornament away in its resting place for another year, I ponder all the New Year's resolutions that I should make. Resolutions that I make each year and then ignore by Martin Luther King's weekend holiday.

Perhaps I should just review our year that we've had, and be grateful for all that we've celebrated, rejoiced and endured. Looking back at the very busy year, one clear thought surfaces...

"We are so very blessed."

Firstly, we have you... our reason for the sun's rising and setting every glorious day. We have our very loving family and friends: People who laugh with us and cry with us, people who call just to say "Hey", people who break into doctors' offices on a Sunday afternoon to get us necessary blood tests (this story will have to wait till another post.)

Sometimes, I think that we have a lot more blessings than we deserve. But I am very thankful.

• January — Celebrated Chinese New Year in Cincinnati.
• February — Mr. Dick had very successful heart surgery.
• March — Found that my cholesterol has dropped below lethal levels.
• April — Celebrated Uncle George's 60th birthday
• May — You started your summer internship at Argonne.
• June — Rode our bikes in the glorious treacherous mountainous roads of Kentucky.
• July — Uncle Peter and his family emigrated from Malaysia
• August — Celebrated Merdeka Day (Malaysian Independence) with the Chicago Malaysian Club
• September — Celebrated Por-Por's 70th birthday in Disney World.
• October — Watched Northwestern beat Purdue
• November — Nanny moved to an assisted living facility
• December — Christmas with the family

So, I resolve not to make any new resolutions. I will just try to make good on previous resolutions made.

I resolve to fret less and to laugh more.
I resolve to love and not worry if I am loved back.
I resolve to leave things alone... I cannot fix everything.

I resolve to always love you.

Love,
Mom and Dad

2010

New Year's here and now,
Resolutions are made and
Yet to be resolved

To speak less often
To listen better and more
In order to hear

To change what I can
To not change what I can not
To just let it be

Love with all I am
Free and unconditional
No expectations

Lofty heights to reach
Eleven and half months left
Same again next year?