I’m very serious recently, like a serious man. Since the Pandemic starts, I rarely feels less serious. Seriously, I lost friends, sleep and humorous, like a tree burning inside.
My family, my reason for life, plan a Hawaii trip with another family this summer. I know everyone is flying to this island to get rid of their tedious prison time at home, and I think that popular idea is not too silly. My brilliant wife booked a very very nice vocation home at the big island, and it’s about 4 time the size of our current home. And Hawaii is just a couple of fold better than San Jose where famous for their sands industry.
That vacation feels like a hole of light when I’m trapped in a dungeon. I’m counting every last bit of my fingers and toes. That’s the hope that I will not murder by my new boss in my deadly enterprise company, if I miss the flight I will definitely found dead. American has a drinking problem, and I lost my sense of beer tasting, totally eclipsed by the guilty of drinking. I can’t fake. I have no talent of beer tasting, I’m just using that as an excuse. There’s no cure for being a dull and tasteless soul. Not even Pixar’s soul, which is brilliant BTW. Before I gave up myself to “Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days”, no offensive, but you may know that’s the joy of being a fundamentalism (so you won’t be a hacker). Oh, I mean it’s hard to be a good dad, being optimistic, being a OK husband. I feel that is a wormhole to reborn. Maybe I can be “not serious” about everything, like a desperate meat ball.
When I march through this long and dark tunnel, I can see the light is at end of the tunnel. It’s only weeks away. It’s my nirvana, like “Negative Creep”.
And then, a day, then weeks, I get stuffy nose and other allergies symptoms. It’s OK, it happens every year. It’s the pollen, a good year for vegetarian, bad for my nose. Every year my months of allergies turns to Sinusitis around May, this year no exception. Oh, some exceptions, I also get a very sore throat. I mean like something burning inside, I shared the link above, that’s what I felt. I virtually visit my doctor, she is so nice, she told me that I should be under antibiotic. Oh, lovely, I love writing scripts with a powerful language. Penicillin is as lovely as PHP, which is the best language in our world. Penicillin is definitely better than beers! When I can eat Penicillin I will not even dream about beer. I was so happy, I start to worry. I worry that my nose and throat may get worse.
Oh, and it did. I lost my voice the next day, even with my favorite Penicillin. I didn’t get my bonus fever though. Lost voice is a good thing, I don’t need to show up in meeting. I just kissed my pillow for 2 work days, and a weekend. On a Monday, my voice becomes funny. My throat is burning. But my nose feels better, the Penicillin works. And a week later my voice sounds less funny, but throat is still dry, burning, like the unlucky California tree, still burning inside. Oh, it’s OK, it’s still two weeks until our vacation, I still have time to win the battle with feeling stressed of ruin my vocation being down.
Time flies to 72 hours before the trip day. We need to do our COVID test together. I’m sure my dry throat is not because of COVID, I got my Pfizer shots and are fully cooked.
But the night before the COVID test, my younger daughter got fever. I can’t believe that happened, I’m shocked it’s not a nightmare, it’s real. But we still need to do our test. We drive a hour and visit a city 1 hour away from our home, that’s another indicator that everyone is flying to Hawaii. I’m a serious man, doing a COVID test for a hot baby is a good idea, we can tell if she got COVID!
The next day, we got a good news that everyone is negative in our family. I mean we really feels negative, because our vacation is very close to vaporized. We will not fly when anyone in our family has COIVD, we will also not fly with a hot baby! Oh, I forgot the good news that we are COVID negative. One thing is off the list, but our little flower is still fever “not free” on that morning! It’s 48 hours until the flight. I’m a serious man, we almost can’t make it. Indeed!
But our little is fever free on that 47 hours mark. And then she stays fever free until 24 hours mark hit. So we have a thin hope to fly honestly (fever and symptom free, and COVID negative). But in the meanwhile I don’t feel sick, but my throat still feels funny, I still get dry mouth at night, I still feels like shit that we almost can’t make it. I start to plan for the worst, so I won’t die from heart attack. We start to pack our luggage, like there is still hope, like the summer Olympic this year. I start to worry that theft will visit our home. I found that I forgot my password combination of my safe, a physical safe weight for a ton (a metric ton not US ton, use as a metaphor). Then I search my home, from 1Password to every piece of paper I may use, I can’t find the combination. But I’m looking for that combination? I don’t need my passport, I don’t need money there (and there’s no money in it), I don’t need to use the prime lens in that safe, I don’t need to leak more secret of my life. And then I found the combination, I tested and been positive that I can open and close the door of safe. And then I continue pack my luggage. We sent our guinea pigs to our most thrusted friends’ home, they have a pool so everyone is happy to take care of other’s pets. We even get BBQ treat from my friend, we even tested our Snorkeling equipment from him. He even have snorkeling equipment we can borrow so we can return our equipment bought from Amazon. Sorry to waste some natural resources, I feel guilty because I love what Greta is doing. Oh, you can tell I’m a serious man, I’m talking with my “Rabbi”, and I feels like approaching a black hole. That’s just a metaphor, like what Christ Nolan used in his interstellar. Oh, where is my train of thought. I’m packing my luggage. I packed too much, like moving home. I want to pack a lot of medicines, so that we won’t sick in the trip. At this stage, me, the little flower may be sick at any time. We may be super tired, we may miss the flight. We may catch COVID on the flight because our immune system is weak. Lost our ticket for life is a step away.
I can’t sleep at night. My watch told me I didn’t sleep well. I still need to work, and the work feels heavy like black hole. This is mental disease, I’m not a capable man to raise two kids and keep my wife afloat.
I’m beer free for 3 weeks minus a day. I’m pretty sober but feels worse than those days I drink beers. But you know you can’t trade sin with god, you can’t please gods/goddess. Oh, I forgot to mention. I got neck pain, like lose a wrestling game. That was 3 days before the trip, the day after we did our COVID test. My neck and back just sore like lemon. I can’t tell the difference of sour and sore, I’m a bad language user, I don’t like PHP. I wore my winter cloth, because I see snow at peak of Hawaii big island. I worry I may get more cold and develop more symptom of serious man. I have a metaphysic feeling that warmth helps my neck. But you know that feeling is not much difference of getting helps from god. And I don’t even know how black hole feels. But it turns out the warmth doesn’t help, my neck and back still sore like stoned (I don’t know why stoned doesn’t mean it feels like stone, but have a sinful meaning. I don’t mean that “stoned” literally). So I used a pain reliever called ibuprofen, and it worked. Sorry, I’m not reducing fever, I just want to get rid of the back pain. It doesn’t work that well, my work still feels like sucking my soul out of my skull. So I used a pain relieve cream from Walmart, and it worked! There’s a volcano eruption on my back, near my neck. The ingredient of menthol burns my skin, but rather than that other ingredients do their job. The warmth do work, I mean that feeling like Salonpas patches, they smells like root beer, but they do relieve the pain.
So there’s a chance that I can reborn before the flight, my ticket to life. And only time can tell.
I’m writing this in Hawaii. I’m not detained by police. Our flight didn’t dive into sea water. Black hole doesn’t burp with our earth. So we actually made it! Flora is fever free and have a very high spirit. My wife didn’t divorce me. But Hannah did get her fever from yesterday, but then fever free for a whole day. Lyft scheduled pick-up worked. We get a XL car, and it caries our over-sized luggage just fine. No traffic, no traffic accident, no highway cops. We didn’t catch COVID, finger crossed. The Hawaii travel’s official website do work, and our PDF is not eaten by my Mac. We don’t have food poison. I do get some deep sleep before the trip, at least better than some other horrible day. I didn’t lose any electronics on the airplane. I didn’t forget batteries of drone, cameras. My back pain is still with me, but fades a bit. I get a blister on my foot, but it’s not broken. I still make mistakes, but they didn’t take my ticket to reborn.
Oh, I’m a serious man. I will go to interview, find some work which doesn’t eat planet earth. I still suck at leet code, but that will not take my ticket to reborn. I have some cash to stay afloat even my boss hate me. I love my daughters, my wife, my parents and the beautiful world. Hawaii is nice. It’s not as weird/cool as Australia, but very nice. It’s the same feeling to hear “Aloha” after you did your apple fitness+’s mindful cool down. The ramen place we went right after landing was a disaster, but it won’t take my ticket to reborn. There’s a small beach near the nice rental house where kids can practice snorkeling before they go to real snorkeling.
I’m doing my meditation, and my neck is sour like sore. I did drink an Ola light hazy IPA yesterday, and that taste worse than my home-brew hazy IPA I yielded last year. Which make me feel like not the worst beer taster in the world, at least I can brew something not horrible. Oh, I’m not saying Ola beer is horrible. It’s using the wrong malt bill and wrong yeast, used not enough dry-hopping and added to much hops to their wort. I’m the most hateful person in our group, because I critics like hell. But today, I start to joke like I used to be. Because I know I’m a serious man, and you can tell the end is as black as it is in the movie. You can only blow that gravity away by a laugh, like the serious Sci-Fi TV serious “Dr Who” (Sorry I only see maybe 3 episodes of them, and they are old, scary but fun. Newer episodes are boring, see I like critic like hell). And then I cleaned all the dishes, cleaned kids’ wounds from today, washed myself. Then I sit down, alcohol free, writing a poem of myself down. I will post it on my blog, I’m not a private person, I’m the opposite.
I lied a lot, like I used to be. But there’s some truth in this blog post, like I used to be. I hope that I actually get a reborn, been lighter body, been funnier, been serious only with none-PHP-language and maybe English and Chinese. I don’t want to lose my sleep, and the 3 hours time difference helps, it’s still before 10PM when I finish typing the words before this sentence. Why I’m pouring this much of negative words here? Because I’m really a serious man? I never own a motorcycle but I love to learn how to do maintenance of them. I love the craft of living, like I love making coffee and tasting beer.
Hope tomorrow I will fly away from the black hole, lands in Island Hawaii. Seriously joking like that’s the real quality of life.
