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The title has nothing to do with the content of this entry. I just felt an inexplicable liking for the phrase. Well.

Two things.

As many have known, I have made a point of giving as less personal information as possible in this blog, and have also been trying to make it stop turning up on google when someone searches my school's name (which didn't seem to succeed by the way, although I haven't really checked). However, as many have somehow sensed something between Jin and me, it's perhaps alright for me to leave some words about that here - although for many of you this "news" is already months old. So what happened? Nothing happened.

Nothing happened. Tendai once said that there was a difference between doing nothing and nothing happened, and doing nothing then something happened - and this occasion is exactly the latter. So nothing happened, and that was exactly the problem.

Second thing.

When walking out of the staff room the other night, I was in a completely different state of mind: not in doubt but almost certain, not just knowing but kind of understanding - and above all, I was left contemplating how unstable the most seemingly stable people could be. Had I always missed the point before, or did I just never take his words seriously enough?

When I walked into the staff room just before that on the same night, my intention was the emails I sent Ken and what they were about - but actually, we never talked over that. We did mentioned it; but on thinking back I always realize: (hm,) that wasn't the problem. Well, maybe it was, but not the one I had had on my mind when pressing that "send" button on yahoo mail.

So Quique just missed it. Or Ken missed it. Or I did, in the first place.

So what was the problem? I'm not sure if it's still important enough to be told. These days I have heard from friends everywhere around the world, and soon realized that comparing to many others' situations, mine was much better to be in. It amazed me how many times I had told this story over and over to different people; and it seemed that for virtually everyone, there would be a time - sooner or later - when they just need to hear it. So here it is, this time written down, for YOU. Maybe this is the right time for you to read. Maybe now it just goes over your mind, but at some point later, it will do its job. So...

Almost one year before, last June, I transited in Miami for two hours before flying to Dallas. Two hours wasn't a redundant amount of time, considering that there were many things to be done: checking in to the US, switching to the domestic line, getting and re-checking my luggages, and getting to the right gate at the right terminal. I was, however, stopped at the check in counter and asked to wait in a room with some other people (later on, I found out that a Vietnamese guy with the same last name Nguyen had lost his passport). Time just passed by, the waiting seemed to be forever, and the officers weren't seem to be doing anything in spite of my keeping reminding them that my next flight would take off soon... and not until there was only 30 minutes left had a black officer gestured me to his office.

"What's the problem, sir?" I asked him after sitting down.

"There's no problem." - he answered.

"There's no problem? But..."

"There's only a situation, like all other situations we're working on."

I was really perplexed, so he went on, "look, young people's problem is that they see everything as problems. You have to understand that there are different situations in life; and when something happens, you're just in a situation. A problem is intimidating and hard and pessimistic, a situation is not - and sometimes the difference is just your own attitude towards what happens. So, do you want to rephrase your question now?"

He talked so fast that it took me some seconds to really digest what he was saying, after which I said skeptically: "So... what's the situation, sir?"

He picked up my passport from the drawer, and started to explain. It was about 25 minutes to the flight.

(FYI, I did missed that flight. I got free dinner, hotel, and breakfast, and was still on time for the flight after that since I would have to lay over in Dallas for 14 hours, according to the initial plan. That whole trip from Costa Rica, to Miami, to Dallas, to Toukyou, to HCMC, was just crazy. Believe me, this incident was just one of many things happened.)

"You hurt me every time you say that, because it means you don't value me as a friend. And friends should bother each other!" So he said in reply to my saying that I shouldn't have bothered him. I immediately wanted to say "You never bothered me." Don't get me wrong though, I had no doubt about the sincerity of his words or his intention behind them - which was the reason why I chose not to say that. They were just words, after all.

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"Why are you always counting us in? Let me count!" - Ksusha

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"I love you babe. It's been years since I last seen you."

"It's been three months and 27 days, dear."

- 'Random' phone talk

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"There are two sides of everything: my side and the wrong side." - someone I can't remember

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"What can I do about politics? Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

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"Have you ever performed so terrible that the audience demanded you to go away?"

"No."

"So you've never been on stage."

- 2006, Jazz Cafe

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"There is no problem in life. There are only situations." - an airport officer in Miami.

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"What did these soldiers come here for?
If they're for peace why is there war?"
-Michael Jackson, "We've had enough"

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"Paul C. has met the second most awesome person he knows... after himself, of course." – facebook status

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"Look at the horizon."

"Huh?"

"It keeps reminding me that although no one can escape from their past, you shouldn't think back to it too often. There's the road ahead."

- 2007, after Natchan's incident

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"Grief? That's the best emotion in the world."

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"Sadness is an emotion, just like happiness. I personally don't prefer any emotion to others."

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"It sucks to be me." - Avenue Q

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"You know, they don't require a high school diploma. That means technically I can just drop out of school now."

"Yeah, why bother?"

"Well, it's good to finish what you have started."

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"One night you pick up a cigarette, and the grief goes away instantly. But you've got a burden for all your life."

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"It's normal. It's up and down."

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"There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."
- Gertrude Stein

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"Conservatives? What kind of conservatives is that?"

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"The time came when I realized that I was not what I had been. I wasn't even what I'd thought I had been. And I wasn't capable of caring for everything or everyone. And I didn't understand people, and I had never been understood. And then I realized how foolish all these things were."

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"I'll fall."

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It looks like rain.

Rain whitens the sight of green bush and red-floored corridors outside of my window. Rain dances on the rooftop cheerily and tirelessly. Rain chills and slows down the outside, and warms the inside. Rain reminds me of many things: Monday evenings jumping over puddles, running after "the guy next door"; afternoons sitting at the veranda listening to "Pieces of Peace" (and day-dreaming); hours sitting on the back saddle of my father's motorbike - making its way through the flooded streets - in one rainy season, heading to the nearest convenience store. I often hid myself in a dark corner, pretending to be indifferent to the harsh sounds of people cursing and water-invaded motorbikes' engines. I also liked to fold tiny origami boats and stand at my high-enough doorsteps, looking at them floating (with a self-introducing letter inside) - just to find them lying tattered on thick layers of mud when the water had all gone down in the next days.

Some memories are more vivid and well-remembered than others; some others are so well-forgotten that I don't even know that they have been a part of me. I somehow believe that time will come when they're rediscovered and reminded of - but it suddenly occurs to me that many of the memories that I'm embracing so tightly today, will also one day be covered by a membrane of mist and time. Some of the people I care so much about might cease to play an important role in my life, and some values I'm dying for will soon become ridiculously insignificant.

So, why do you have to grieve that much, boy? You're too used to getting what you want and you are foolishly defeated by your first major failure in life - which, in fact, will not remain "major" when you think back of it later. You should sit down with a cup of coffee, in a rainy day, to realize that the situation has offered you much more than what it has taken away from you, to remember that a door shut means another door's opened, and that you are not moving backward - you're just progressing in another direction. You should say to your friend too, that his decision is by no mean a proof of "a man's dream and honor", but just a foolish, childishly romantic vision of life. Say that to him, for he's craving blindly to get into Harvard - but he doesn't know anything about the school beside its name. Say to him too, that one day he will regret his decision to turn down other great offers just to wait one year and again run after the reputation.

Or maybe I'm thinking too much about other people's business. But then I think of her... and everything is just so different.

She's trapped. She's trapped by the contradiction of this school's Mission Statement/ promises as an SOS school, and what it offered to give her. She may be torn by seeing the opportunity again slipping away from her without being able to take any action. But why? It's not her fault to be poor. It's not her fault to dream big. I know that by being here, she will face many difficulties than what everyone can imagine - but I want her to be. But I could not do anything more than wanting her to be here. I could just stare at the computer screen as she thanked me for something that I could not do anything about.

And yet, it won't stop raining.

"It's the beginning of the end," he said, knowing that school is ending in just a few weeks, and our class is graduating.

"Oh no. For me it's the end of the beginning."

It startles me to see how true it is. It's like two different people looking at the rain outside like this, recalling different things in their pasts. One only sees the greenness, while the other see a vivid meadow. It's called perspectives.

Thousands people would pay anything to be able to see that meadow.

I only see the greenness in her eyes.

She is another remarkable person. Whenever I look at my "new" room now, although I'm not terribly bothered by her absence, something indeed touches me. It's the empty space in the middle (made available by taking her bed out), the distance from the beginning to the end of the room - the distance between MJ and me, the faintness of the yellow-dim bed light in Saturday evenings, the quietness, the absence of different people on campus that have stopped coming here ever since she left. And a lost piece of me in it, as well. And we're just some streets away from each other.

I realize that so many "last times" are coming - and many of them I will miss a lot, a lot. (Now it feels like the beginning of the end.)

I have a feeling that there are many things he wants to talk to me about. But we just stand there, looking at each other, being diplomatic, conversing about trivial things - and it's been a while since the depth of our conversation matched the depth of our relationship and understanding. Sometimes I want him to speak, but then I realize that I am not speaking myself. Why don't we both understand that we only have 5 weeks left, and it will be a long time until we see each other again?

Everything can be explained with two cows. This is the two cows version of me: I have two cows. It doesn't really matter, but yes, I have to cows.

What's wrong? No, seriously, what's wrong? Nothing is wrong. Sure.

The expropriation of individual expectations. The repercussion of caring. The volatility of the minds. A discrepancy between me and those of my type.

Soy sauce and green tea. Cold water and tattered origami boats. Drum sticks and an eye to the dark. A nothingness that lasts to infinity.

Chin up and stride, kid.

---

When I woke up at 8, I felt a strong (and strange) need to check my emails immediately - not sure whether it had something to do with the fact that there had been a power cut since early morning. But when the power came back again, this was what I'd received since around midnight:

From my father, about my gap year

From thay Kenny (Stanford), in reply to my email about my admission to MIT weeks ago

From Raphaela, my German cousin, about the same thing (and some other things as well)

From a current sophomore at MIT

Thay Kenny and Raphaela are my two occasional contacts who write in a seasonly basis (which means every three months or a little bit less). So, after the initial delight of hearing from them, I was left with some amounts of things to read. Then I had to think about what I'd read and its corollaries.

It was funny how thay Kenny and Raphaela's stories and suggestions of what I could be doing during the gap year came at the same time as my father's reminding me of how my whole extended family really disapproves of the "taking a break from school" idea. Maybe I'm just too young to understand - because although I know they're referring to a family member's real experience, I find it really hard to accept their reasoning that something, such as international conflicts or terrorism, might happen in that one year and prevent me from keeping this opportunity. But by the same token, as they have kept on reminding me of how MIT's prestige will help when I apply for a job in the future, or that I must carefully choose a major that will be trendy and lead to a well-paid job... I know that there are also certain things that they do not understand. Despite having been abroad for many years, my grandmother's mindset is still very typical Vietnamese when it comes to education; and my mother is even thinking that here in Costa Rica I'm living the same life, exactly the same way as in Vietnam ( she didn't want me to go abroad in the first place). I totally understand that, but don't want to see myself compromising. Actually, I have given a lot of reasons why I wanted to take a gap year, but they didn't even bother to refute - they just simply ignored - except for their insisting that "We understand that in your gap year you can study and prepare for the maths and sciences that you will be doing and thus gain a higher grade, but....". Practical much?

Maybe I am being too idealistic, maybe I still have no idea of how harsh life can be without money and status, maybe I'm too immature when thinking that I can stride in life without pragmatic concerns - you can call me all that and still I won't change my way of thinking, at least for now. But, isn't it because I do understand the importance of the coming four year, that I want to take a gap year? So that I can begin my first day at MIT with a clear mind and some ideas of where I am, and where I want to be, in life?

But when my father said that "If you want to travel during that one year, it may be costly for us", I knew that I was not in the position to make the decision. And I felt like it was a crime to hesitate, to contemplate, to doubt, to differ, to desire, to be idealistic, to object.

I thought about what I'd like to do if I could have one year off.

I would work on my environmental project (The GH project), which I'm truly inspired about and have been planning for months but didn't have time to carry out. As I saw those of various of my friends left the papers and became real, I couldn't help thinking that I was a liar falling behind and didn't really do anything good. Not that I took it as a competition.

I would read. As I watched the list of "books I'd like to read" becomes longer without getting any shorter through months and months, I felt like I couldn't even keep my promises to myself. I would re-read The catcher in the Rye and The God of Small Things. I would finish Atlas Shrugged, Crime and Punishment, Great Expectations. I would start reading The fountainhead, Waiting for Godot, Beloved, Norwegian Woods.

I would come back to my province's Service of Sciences and Technology's chemistry lab to finish my agriculture research. Unfinished research is a waste of public money and individual's time.

I would love to volunteer in the army. Every time I told my friends to stop their unfair judgment on people doing their military service, they shut me up with the question "What do you know about them?" I want to be a living proof of what I say, and shift the Vietnamese society's prejudice against this.

I would play and write music as a hard-core.

I would apply for a job for the first time, and would earn my first bills. I did make some money in the past as a freelance journalist, but it's really hard to think of that as a job. It's really hard to say "it's work" when you're doing something you enjoy.

I would sit down every afternoon, and sketch, and paint, as I have wanted to do.

I would plant a tree.

I would continue to learn Spanish, French, and Japanese.

I would learn to cook, to swim, to dance, to fix electronic things, to bake cakes, to knit, to photograph, to play the zither better. I would drift. I would just stroll, and if I came across somewhere or someone that needed me, I would pause.

And I would write.

And then, hopefully I would be ready for higher education.

All that I had been excited about for the whole year would then come to me. I would step on the soil of the place that I've been wanted to be for years, being even more eager for all the opportunities awaiting. I would be in Mission 2013, I would enjoy my staying in iHouse or MacGregor, I would try to join a UROP, I would take all that physical education classes and private music lessons. And play in bands/ ensembles/ orchestras if I was good enough. And be happy. And think about what I want to do afterwards.

I want to continue doing research, however well-paid (or poorly-paid) it will be.

I want to be an non-professional musician.

I will learn to drive, but I won't have a car. I will cycle, or walk, or use public transportation to get to everywhere I want.

Maybe I will have a cat. I will write to people about how my cat's been doing.

Can be really contradicting with the idea about money, but I want to travel - with aims and without aims. I want to spend some years away from the cities and civilization. I want to talk to people sitting on the shores or sailing at sea.

I will remain unknown (maybe).I will drift. I will just stroll, and if I come across somewhere or someone that needs me, I will pause.

And I will write.