Last night we were invited to a birthday party. A Surprise Suarez for our upstairs neighbour. Our neighbours are very nice people from the Philippines, and we thought it would be a nice thing to go do. The kids could have other kids to play with, Irish could get some Tagalog-time in with other Filipinos. Great time all around.

Now one thing I keep forgetting is that the Philippine culture is very social. Now if you are Filipino, this is great. However, I find myself in these parties that tend to isolate me. The only people that talk to me at these events are the host, who feels compelled to talk to everyone, and my wife. The other guests, group together away from me, and won’t even look at me. Now I am used to this and actually have been living life in this way for most of my life. But I want my wife to be able to go and socialize without worrying about me. I was perfectly happy with the Sunday funnies section of the newspaper, and the puzzles section of said newspaper.

I talked to an Irish man who worked at the restaurant for about an hour. He was a nice guy who had a lot of things to say about the government, and attempts by the government to quell the masses, but mostly it was political. So most of it I spend in wonder, as I have never been able to keep up with, let alone understand politics. I tried to keep up with him as best I could but all I remember from his conversation was that apparently fluoride is a neurotoxin (It is actually a developmental neurotoxin, which means it only affect children whose brain is still growing). And that the government has been forcing this on us, in the water, to pacify us for 50 years.

At that time JD was trying to integrate himself into the group of children, like Jane Goodall did with the Apes, trying desperately to be one of them, knowing that they were just different. It was heartbreaking. His sister has no problem integrating into any group of children with ease, JD tends to analyze them and try to understand them, first. Ann 8 year olds understanding of other children is always filled with questions, which he immediately returns to his senior research partner (Me) to ask questions about. “Why is Jacob climbing the fence?”,“Katie just stepped on an ant” “Samantha’s dancing funny” he would observe, as if trying to comprehend this culture of children. Then the Tablets happened (dun dun duuuuuunnnnnn)

In my opinion, parents that bring iPads (or any tablet computer) to social gatherings for their children, need to be smacked with a vengeance. We make a point never to do that, because (and our children know this) when you’re with other children, it is social time, and it’s rude to be stuck in front of a screen. Well some parents at the party decided to whip out their 2 iPads that they had brought, and of course, 12 kids tried frantically to crowd around to play Minecraft. So my son came and sat with me, bored and not really sure what to do. I gave him my phone to watch game walkthroughs (He has discovered an “edge” walkthrough that has helped his game a lot).

There were 3 cakes and a Mango float there. They had a small chocolate cake, a small vanilla cake with fruit on top and an ice-cream cake. Of course the moment they opened the box, the Ice-cream cake started to melt, and so we rushed to get the kids some of it before it was a puddle on the tray. They ate most of their pieces before they was drinkable. I didn’t have cake, but my wife and I had some mango float, which is like a frozen, ice-cream, mango, and graham crumb casserole. At the end of the night, we were given a section of the vanilla cake to bring home.

I had texted my brother to let him know that we had cake for him. But when we got home he wasn’t there yet. He arrived shortly after, looked at the cake, made a comment about the fruit, closed the box and got himself a bowl of ice-cream. I’m guessing that he doesn’t like cake with fruit on it. (It is not fruitcake, which is different). It was a mostly enjoyable party, but by the end of the night I was ready to take the kids home to bed.

I am very much like both my fathers, it seems, in a very interesting way. Keeping busy keeps me sane, or at least keeps me from being certifiable. Some people fight stress by watching TV, some do it by sleeping, some by arguing and fighting. Some deal with stress by drinking, but my stress relief is projects. I have at any point in time 5 projects at least on the go. Some never get finished, some get lost for various reasons, and some do get finished. Projects keep my mind focused, and helps me deal with life without hurting others emotionally or physically.

When I was young, I had a very bad temper. My whole family can attest to this. They have stories of me trying to strangle my baby brother when I was 2 years old. I would just explode at people for apparently no reason. This side of me used to terrify me. Now it takes a lot to bring this side of me out, and very few people in my adult life have seen it. I am thankful for that.

How do I keep stress from releasing this part of me? I keep busy and focus the energy on a project. When I was in Korea I had a Linux Red-hat server running with a radio station playing on it for my friends and I was programming a MySQL/ PHP based Role playing game. I would come home from work, and sit there for hours just staring at code. It relaxed me. Strangely enough, it seemed that the once or twice a month I would go out for a drink with a friend, THAT was when my family would call me. So I’m sure they felt that I was always out partying. I have lost the backups of this game that I was working on, which is alright, because when I look back upon it very little of it was mine. I had used copyright free graphics, code patches made by other programmers, and the whole system was built on a free to download package, so it served its purpose, and I feel no real loss of it.

When I lived in China with my family I built board games. I would find print and play games, and put them together. Games like “Smallville the board game”, “ Bewitched the card game”, “Hot death Uno” or “Dora the Explorer: Dora Rocks”. I would also find games from my past that were not available in China, like “Sorry” or “Rummoli” and I would hand draw, print, laminate, the pieces and cards. I was making them for the kids but the kids were too young to play them. I had to give those up when we returned to Canada, but I still have the digital files to start again with later.

Here in Canada I find myself collecting free digital comics. Some of them already compiled into the CBR (ComicBook Reader) format, some of them are webcomics that I have to design cover pages for each issue for. I locate, download, resize, page layout, cover design, made little adverts for the other comics I work on to put in the issue, and then combine into the CBR format. Any comics That are professionally made, and paid for I do not edit, that would be rude of me. But I do sometimes take older comics magazines that have 4 or 5 different stories & Heroes in them, and separate those into their own issues. I also try to translate foreign comics to English before I combine them. I started to translate Cybersix from the original Italian, but there was too much nudity and sex for my liking, so I removed it from my list. (The animation was awesome, but I don’t keep “Adult” comics.)

Over the years I have written quite a bit, lost some of the writings, and re-written. These are the ones that I regret losing. I am currently trying to write a book, using expanded and clarified versions of my old Psychosix stories. It is fun, as I have to introduce the characters before they can jump into the action, whereas before they didn’t need that. If anyone out there has any of my old stories backed up somewhere I would love to get copies of them back, I find that some of the ones I want to work with the most are missing. In fact anything I have written in the past would be greatly appreciated.

Working on these projects is both relaxing and fun. I always look forward to the finished project and sharing the projects with others, so feel free to ask what I’m working on at any time. But please do not ask the one question I hate when I’m in a project “Is it important?” because that is a mean question, and I will begrudgingly say “no… no its not”. Because it is not important to the survival of my family, it won’t pay the bills, but it does keep me from exploding. And non-explosive Chad is a good thing.

Yesterday I was walking just outside the Metrotown Mall in Burnaby B.C. I was late for a meeting, so I was powerwalking as I do, when this man came up to me. He was dressed very casually, not dirty clothes like he was homeless, but not clean. He looked like he had just been out on a hot day hanging out. He asked in a very police voice if I had any extra change for him to buy Ice cream with. I quickly said that I was unable to help him right now and continued on my way. As I passed him I heard him scream out “I WANT ICE-CREAM!” in frustration.

This incident has made me think about the people I give help to, and I do. I have doggy-bagged food to people who needed it in Vancouver while I was downtown, and a couple of bucks to people who looked like they needed it for food, here in Surrey. I give to charity groups when I can, which is not often. I even get the children to give if I am with them. (I give Sammy & JD a buck each and have them go and give it to the person). In my mind Ice cream is not a reason to be donating money to a 30 to 40 year old man for.

I have made appoint over my life to give when I can, because I have had to sleep in the street in my past, and can guess what it is like to be in that position on a long term basis. My first time sleeping in the street was in Korea. I had taken the train from Pusan to Seoul during my first trip to Korea. I got to the City after midnight and the buses had all stopped. So I walked to the area north of the train station to where the Canadian Embassy was, and had to sleep on a bench that night. This was the time I had had my apartment emptied by an angry ex-employer. The next morning the Canadian Embassy helped me by contacting my family and arranging for my flight back to Canada.

My second time that I was forced to sleep outside was a much more positive experience, I had taken the boat over to Japan from Korea, I had gone to extend my visa. When I got on the boat, I had asked the crew of the boat if they knew where I could exchange my money from Korean to Japanese, they did not. When I got off the boat I spent the day trying to find a place to exchange my money, and I could not find a place as the Korean Won is not an international currency. (So I found out). By the end of the day I realized I could not pay for my hotel reservation, and had slumped down at the local Subway / Train station in Hakata.

A Japanese man walked over to me and sat down, and with his broken English asked me what was wrong. So I talked to him for a while. He was having a bad day too. Someone had stolen his bicycle, and he couldn’t go home until he reported it to the police in the morning. (He lived to far away to walk at night) So he, myself, a group of 4 homeless Japanese men, and a young lady who had just returned from India, and was waiting for the trains to run again in the morning, sat together, pooled what we had and managed to scrape enough together to by some ichiban noodles and sake from the 7-11. We sat and talked and (The girl and the 1^st man translated for me) and I had never felt safer with a group of strangers in my life. The next day I took the boat back to Korea. I returned the following week with my money already converted and extended my visa with no problems.

In China I would see a lot of people begging for money and they usually have a sign scrawled down in front of them explaining their situation, or they are street musicians or something. These people I have helped when I can. I remember a case that I had just bought our first family DVD Player, and was walking back to the house with it. A young college age lady wearing designer clothes and carrying an iPhone came up to me and asked if I spoke Chinese. I responded that I don’t, and then she said with a sad voice “I’m hungry” and held out her hand. Now I realize that she could very well have been in need. But after seeing that she had expensive clothes on and an expensive phone in her hand, I said “Sorry, I don’t have anything to give” and continued on my way home. I saw that same girl a few months later, helping out at one of the many food stands along that road. Wearing not so expensive things, and I thought. “good for you.”

Just a few months ago here in Surrey, Irish and I had gone to the local Walmart to buy a few things, including cough syrup, and for reasons beyond this article’s scope, all of our cards were rejected. We felt embarrassed, and apologised to the cashier and told her we’d be back. A man behind us offered to pay for our things. This was really sweet of him, and I declined his offer. I told him that for us it was just a minor setback and we’d be ok, but that he should help someone who was more in need than we were.

I am aware that my few times being stuck on the street for the night could have turned out very bad for me, and I feel blessed that they didn’t. I also feel bad for the people who actually need help, like in China, where there is no Social Assistance for people hurt on the job, or lose their job for unexpected things. I am however upset at people who try to take advantage of that charity in other for ice-cream or because they believe they deserve a hand out. I don’t want people to just give us help, and for those of you who have helped us over the years, I want you to know that I have been keeping track and I am budgeting out a way to pay you all back. Even if you don’t expect it we will repay your kindness somehow.