Writing Prompt #1

My friend Masaki said "You're good at writing Asian" after he heard this. That made me laugh. Who says that except your good Asian friend? We meet every Monday to give each other writing prompts and go through the excruciating so worth it process of reading our shitty spontaneous drafts out loud.

Writing Prompt #1--we had to write after looking at a picture of a painting in Art Forum Magazine. This is what came out.

Death was knocking at our door and we had to run. There was a cave inside the mountain by our house. My mother told me to roll up the old rice from the pot into fist sized balls and sprinkle them with salt. She said, “Faster, hurry.”

I was trying to work so hard my fingers were shaking. Every time I heard a machine gun go off, I shuddered and it was all I could do to tell my muscles to keep moving, to not freeze up and fail me now. I was at eight rice balls, not ten like my mother had requested, when we heard a bomb so close the windows on the far side of the house shattered. I whimpered.

My mother only ducked momentarily and then looked at me fiercely and said, “Pack those up, we have to go now. Get your younger brother.”

I grabbed my brother from the corner where he was huddling. My mom carried a bucket of water on her head and my youngest brother, only 3 months old, on her back. We went out the back door, through the fields and brush, and hurried to the river.

We walked up by the river and saw a neighbor who had dragged himself there and died. My mother ordered us to keep walking, to not slow down. My legs were numb.

Barack is President!

Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States last night. I watched in a room full of Obama supporters and one Republican who thinks he's the antichrist. I teared and I was so moved. I woke up today to a new day. Things feel so different now. Reading the comments on nytimes.com from all over the world moved me too. So many people around the world have more hope than they had before, more of a sense of a future that is good. I'm so glad to be part of this history.

You know what's Awesome?

Awesome is having your roommate wake you up 2 hours earlier than you normally wake up to help her jump start her car only to find out that she decided to use your other roommate's car because it's parked next to hers.

Awesome is fighting the urge to go back to sleep and going to the Rose Bowl instead to enjoy the rising sun.

Awesome is coming back and having a delicious breakfast of quinoa, edamame beans, shitake mushrooms, taiwanese style eggs and tomatoes. Plus chili garlic sauce of course.

Awesome is getting on your vintage bike which is a little too tall for you even at the lowest seat setting and riding to the local Episcopal church to pray in the open sanctuary.

Awesome is getting back on your vintage bike and riding to Europane, your favorite local bakery, only to trip up on a curb and fall over into a side plant on the pavement in front of a shiny new BMW whose driver is trying not to be embarrassed for you but clearly is in the way he looks away.

Awesome is rubbing your knee, laughing at yourself, and walking the rest of the crosswalk.

Awesome is deciding beforehand that you will only eat half the massive blueberry scone and packing the rest away...and actually keeping it that way.

Awesome is enjoying that deelicious coffee of yours and 2 hours later, realizing you spilled a whole bunch in the middle of your fitted tee chest. How did I not notice that?

That's my awesome day so far. Awesome.

Photographs from Bali

I thought I'd peruse my Bali photo album and post my favorites. I loved Bali. Looking at these pictures brings it all back for me.

breakfast at Sri Sunari

holy day festivities with the barong

a traditional balinese dance on an outdoor temple stage

roast pig (babi guling) from ibu oka....i'm salivating looking at it

the view from my room

the lovely students at Ubud vocational tourism high school

fruit salad at Putu's Wild Ginger

in the rice terraces

An Awesome Idea

cycling across europe and staying in monasteries.

It Runs in the Family

In my brother's room, there are books stacked in three columns around one corner of his desk. The rest of the desk is littered with headphones, cd covers, an alarm clock, a lamp, a bottle of lotion and aspirin, a bell souvenir from Jerusalem, an Israel Army wallet, a standing calendar, business cards, a bag of Goldfish, postits, a box of kleenex, a lint remover. The Israel stuff are gifts from my dad's recent trip. But the thing that makes me laugh the most is the half open plastic Dr. Scholl's Dual Action Freeze Away box For Large Warts. My brother is avidly fighting away his warts with freeze away action, while I slave away at my plantar warts with podiatrist visits and a bottle of salicylic acid, and my dad just clips his away with his nail clipper. Warts...they run in the family.

WTF

"Increased African-American turnout is all the more important because of Obama's tougher challenge in more conservative, rural areas. In the Missouri Ozarks, a roadside billboard shows a cartoon of Obama with a turban, his middle name "Hussein" in bold red letters."

from "African-American enthusiasm could tip scales toward Obama," CNN.com