Nick Hwang

My flight home at the start of Winterbreak from Baton Rouge had just enough passengers for each to have their own row. Now, both flights on the way back, Tampa to Atlanta, Atlanta to Baton Rouge have been packed. I didn’t have much breakfast so I’ve been pounding the airline peanuts and a couple packs of trailmix. Maybe if Delta offered candy bars or Steak dinners, they could pull themselves out of bankruptcy.

The break has been good for me. I almost had too much free time. Unlike most of my friends who only had about half my break, I spent an entire month off. It was long enough for me to consider taking a semester off sometime in the future, reconsider, and consider again. Since graduating high school in 2000, I’ve only taken 2 summers off and have otherwise taken class.

This past week I went back to Gainesville to visit friends and hang out with some old Ultimate buddies. The ultimate Frisbee community in Baton Rouge is completely lacking, with the majority of players being in college, and still yet, they are only 18 serious college guys. My old team, UFUCT hosted their annual tournament, Florida Winter Classic. LSU brought 10 guys, which is an abysmally low number, consider most college teams have 20+, and you need seven on the field at once. Substituting was horrific. We pretty much ran ourselves to death. And we lost all the games we should have won, always leading in the beginning.

I spent a lot of time with Tiffany- a tenant in my parent’s condo, sister of a friend from UF. We spent a lot of time talking and getting to know each other, but in the last couple days, several things (which I won’t get into) happened, causing me to question 1. my self-proclaimed ‘great judge of character’, 2. my ideals in datable females, 3. whether to trust any female for the rest of my life. Now all of a sudden, it seems like I’m supposed to act like last week was last year. At any rate, I’m returning to Baton Rouge with the same rule of ‘not getting attached to anything in Baton Rouge that would change any decisions on getting a Ph. D’ renewed.

I did not get to spend as much time with my friends as I had planned. We did get to dance our freaking faces off at UC on Monday. And that’s about it. Every other plan fell apart. I had lunch and dinner with quite a few people though. Stog, Xuan, Tiffany, Heather, Minkoff. April and I saw Brokeback Mountain, which is good sad movie. Jake Gylenhall on Leno, said it’s more about what they don’t say.

Tomorrow is the first day of class. And I have yet to get books or materials. I haven’t paid my power bill this month, and I’m hoping it’ll be one when I get back.

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Everytime I go home, I realize how little I know about my parents and grandparents.

My Grandfather, on my mom’s side, has diabetes. Nothing too serious, but he’s always been thin. He wasn’t diagnosed until he moved to the US, well after my family moved to Florida. His grandparents owned a general store and spoiled him with sweets when he was younger.

My grandparents were matched by a friend of both families. By tradition, the guy visits in the girl’s family to check her out. The girl serves tea and if the guy think that she is the one he wants to marry, he presents them with a fat envelope with a lot of cash. My grandfather cheated- he went to check out my grandmother at the school she taught at before he went to visit her family. He gave her the envelope at the meeting.

But my grandmother’s father didn’t like my grandfather- saying he was too thin, looked sickly, and there must be something wrong with him. The Matchmaker said it would be nearly impossible to give back the money, offered to take my granfather to the doctor to prove there was nothing wrong with him, said if she turned down my grandfather her family would lose the matchmaker as a friend because he would lose face.

Needless to say, my grandfather and grandmother got married. They are one of the nicest people I know. It makes me sad everytime I think about it, that I can’t communicate well with them. They’ve been taking English lessons for several years now and we talk with a mix of English, Taiwanese, and Madarin. But I always wonder how much more I would get out of them, if I spoke better Mandarin or Taiwanese.

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