Capsule

A friend of mine is visiting Thailand soon for a couple weeks.

It hurts.

Well, it doesn’t hurt. it’s a yearning feeling.

I forget in which language it is but the translation to miss something, is actually to have it missing from you.

That is what Thailand is to me.

Not just a nation, but my true self is there somehow. I know that nostalgia has kicked in in a way that I am different person from my Thai self. And if I visited now, it would an utterly different experience as I would do different things and react differently.

Everything would be different.

In my memory though, Thailand is a time capsule of tough lessons learned the hard way, and waking up every morning to sun in my sheets knowing I was happy.

I’m yearning to open up that time capsule for myself.

Maybe, I just need to create another instead.

Grumpy

I have become a grumpy old man.

And like most old men, I don’t know when or how this happened.

Fatigue, idiots, and being surrounded by other old men are probably to blame.

This semester I have enrolled in an EMT class because I generally am really interested in emergency care and helping people whilst being at a university that has a great school of medicine. It really did work it quite nicely. With this though, I dedicate four hours every Tuesday and every Thursday to EMT lecture and lab.On Tuesdays, I have EMT lecture from 6:30pm to 10:30pm.

This Tuesday I arrived in the building at 6:28 and was walking down the correct hall at 6:29 and at 6:29.30 was asking two girls if the seat behind them was taken or not.

The seats in the classroom are on rollers and are not in orderly rows, so it’s hard to tell what seats are still open.

At 6:29.45 I was done with them debating about seats and just sat down as it was rightly now my chair for the next four hours and fifteen seconds.

Throughout the evening, lecture was going well and I was listening and trying my gosh darn best to spell weird terms that I actually might have to know to help some imaginary person in my imaginary future.

The thing that is neat about this course is that it is completely voluntary. It does not count for pre-med or physical health major students whatsoever. This course is all about becoming an EMT just to become an EMT.

That said, throughout the class I happened to be sitting next to Ms. Blurts-A Lot- The-Answers and behind a girl doing homework on her laptop.

I couldn’t help but think about the drastic differences in people I was surrounded by.

Next to me, I found someone that I would probably want as an EMT if I was in trouble- at least, if I had some obscure thing happened to me.

And in front of me, I found someone doing their biology and econ homework whilst we were discussing the difference between cardiac arrest and cardiac failure.

This reminded me of my grandfather’s college lab story of his instructor killing a rabbit during a surgical demonstration- and how he never wanted him to conduct surgery on him.

The same applies to EMTs as to engineers, architects etc.

Before class, I was grumbling because of my own tardiness. During class I was grumbling because of the lowering standard of appreciation of education. And after class I was grumbling because the snow from Jonas the blizzard had turned to brown mushy slush and they ran out of old fashion donuts at Whole Foods.

I think I have come to the right conclusion.

I am a grumpy old man.

But if being a grumpy old man helps me motivate myself to pay attention in class, raise my grades, avoid slush, and eat more donuts, then a grumpy man I am.

Perhaps

1. As I sat white-ing out the answers written in pen from the used workbook I bought, advertised as  

“like new,” I couldn’t help but wonder when I started to become a push-over. 

2. Now as I write this, I am sitting on my bed eating challah bread that ironically reminds me of the communion bread my sister and I gutted every Sunday morning of our childhood.

These are two actions that I know have stories. Perhaps connected, perhaps not. But I don’t know what they are yet.

I often think about starting this blog up again. To be used as a journal for myself that is polished enough for it to be sent out into the world. I get busy, and it falls to the wayside. However, I believe that now, more than in the past, I need to start writing again. And, that’s that.