I wondered today, when a whole day will pass and you wouldn't have crossed my mind. I wondered when that day would come.

These days I just try not to think about you, what you're doing, who you're with.

And I think, maybe I'll go on one of these dates with these guys I can't even bring myself to be interested in.

I don't know what it's all about.

A year from now, everything will be different.

Waiting for one day.

An Obiturary: Losing you

"Have you cried?"

Knowing what to say was never his strong suit. When he asked, he was looking away. And when I was on the verge of tears, he changed the subject. He never said the right things, but then, in that moment, somehow, he got it right.

You passed away at 10:30 p.m. pacific standard time. 3/9/2013.

When I was a kid, I was always scared of you. You were my great uncle, you were stern, you never joked or seemed to laugh. And then I grew up, and you got sick, and my perception of you changed, or maybe you changed, with age and illness. You came to America first, during the war. And in the months and years after, you got the paperwork done for your nieces, nephews, wife and kids you'd left behind. You are the reason I'm here, living the life that I do now.

After you got sick, your marriage fell apart, things fell apart. She stayed with you because she owed you that much. You never traveled. And finally you did, before things got really bad. And that was when you realized, you'd waited too long to see the world. You'd worked too hard for too long, and had put it off for so long, that, at some point, it did seem like, too late.

In the later years, you smiled a lot, I'd even say you were kind of funny. Entirely different from the man I knew growing up. I wonder if that's what age and the knowledge of death does to you sometimes. You suffered for a long time. I know in the end, you just didn't want to be in pain anymore.

It'll just be strange now, going back, and you not being there. But I understand.

Rest in peace Ong Bay.

We weren't friends, not by the real definition of the word. We'd only met on a few occasions, and had one real conversation, at this little coffee shop by Logan Circle. It was windy and sunny that day. You talked a lot, you told me a lot, and you were so excited about... everything. The latest project you were working on, ideas you had, a food truck with your brother, visiting your girlfriend in Italy. You wanted to talk about everything. You weren't the most articulate, but you had passion.

When he told me, he was still in shock. I started to cry. But he said, if he wasn't crying, then I couldn't.

I don't know what happened. Most of us don't. But at the very least, we can say this, you lived. More than most people do in an entire life time. And you were loved and talked about. I heard more about you from your friends prior to meeting you than I've ever heard of anyone else. They called you Du Ma, for reasons that've slipped my mind. When we met, I had to ask you again, what your real name was. They said you were this great chef. That during a period of unemployment, you spent a month drinking with another friend who was unemployed. That your drink of choice was Jameson, but you guys had to switch to Wild Turkey because you both were too broke. That you'd managed to move to Singapore to cook. That you always managed to make the things you wanted, happen.

Rest in peace.

blue skies, broken hearts

"Sometimes we expect more from others because we would be willing to do that much for them."

I don't know where this quote originated from, but there are about 30,000 people liking it on Facebook currently.

We were sitting in my room a few weeks ago, having one of those conversations that would either be the end of us or would mend what had been broken. Thankfully, we're on the road toward mending, but she'd spoken of expectations, and how she'd learned not to expect things out of people. That way everything was under your own control, and I guess, you wouldn't blame others or resent others for when things didn't go as you'd thought they would. That way you'd hold yourself accountable. It makes sense.

I've always been a fairly good friend. Despite my faults. I'm the kind of person who'll wake up at 3 a.m. to help a drunk friend in the house, or pick you up from D.C., the kind of friend who'd pick you up from the airport so you wouldn't have to take public transportation, the kind of friend who'll try to bake you cookies even though they suck or listen to you cry over an ex-boyfriend time and time again. And so, I've always expected the same out of the people who I choose to be in my life, the people whom I proudly call my friends. And trust me, I choose them carefully. And I'm aware, we choose our friends, knowing what we're getting into, knowing how they are, what they're capable of, and the kind of friend they're able to be.

But it's still sad sometimes, really sad, when you realize, as much as you love them, you're just no longer okay with that much less than you'd give.

What's with the tattoo?

On my wrist, is a tattoo of an envelope with a heart on the flap. Strange, I know. Most people don't get it. Most people don't get me.

People always ask. We'll be in the middle of a bar, or a party, or eating in a restaurant, and they'll ask. And I'll shrug, and say I don't want to explain.

Anyway, I had viet coffee again. I drank it at 1 p.m., which I thought was a safe hour, but here I am, awake at 3:22 a.m. So here's what it means.

It's for my inability to be happy in any one place for too long. It's for this need I always seem to have with running away, for the sake of growing up, for the sake of sanity. It's letters home, for everyone I always find myself leaving behind, for everyone I've ever loved that I can't be near. I'm consistently leaving people behind. It's letters to everyone that can't be here, in this moment. It's for everything I could never say to my mother, for our language barrier, for our differences, our inability to understand the worlds in which we grew up in. It's for everything I could never express to my dad. It's for everything I will never say to the father, who was once married to my mother, who loved me as he knew, who I hope is happy somewhere. And it's for everything I could never say, written in a letter, to you. I was never good with words in the verbal medium.

This is why I don't explain these things when people ask. It's rather a long story.

Taking only what you need from it

We were sitting outside this coffee shop in Vienna yesterday. Jammin Java has the best cappuccino I've had since Italy.

But we were nonchalantly talking about death. And Angela and I wondered, what if one of us passed, how would we want our friends to mourn. What would we want out of them. And it was odd because it was just as if we were discussing any other topic because of course, we didn't really think that any one of us would pass any time in the near future. But we've also never really had this conversation before.

We're not old, but we are pretty much grown. As much as we'd hate to admit it, as much as our lives beg to differ from a real grown ups. or the usual definition anyway.

And at this time, mortality starts to get realer.

People die. And I will lose a friend or a parent or a relative one of these days, or I may go. And though we'll never be able to prepare ourselves for it, it's terrifying that this is what real life is about.