Random Roommates

When signing up for housing you may feel a bit hesitant about moving in somewhere, especially if you are signing up to live with a bunch of randoms. Which you should be, as your odds of ending up with someone descent are worse than the odds of staying awake during church.

Remember star wars kid? Last summer I moved in with him. Except that the boy that we all loved as a golf ball retriever dancer had decided to dedicate himself full time to supporting the Japanese anime industry instead of investing his time working to perfect Yoda's double backflip reverse. I think he was taking the summer off to find himself. He wasn’t working, going to school or having friends, rather he would spend every waking hour and more than half of the sleeping hours locked in the apartment watching Asian cartoons. This didn’t bother me tremendously. I just knew never to bring women back to my apartment and to not plan on spending any time there myself whatsoever.

One day I stopped in for a brief moment to get my shotgun. Unfortunately, so-and-so was awake and as I was trying to rush out he says to me, “You know you’re not supposed to have guns here.”

“Neat,” I responded.

“But I’m not going to tell anyone… I have my rapier. I use it to cut watermelon sometimes.”

Thanks for that comforting moment we shared. I hope there is never another one.

This latest semester my best friend, Jake, and I again tried our luck at random roommates. I got lucky and we were placed with Josh, a solid kid that was trying to better the world by bringing good looking girls around the apartment, making fun of the disabled, and entertaining me with youtube videos of cats being thrown off buildings. A few weeks later we were notified that we would have one additional roommate, Thomas, who would be moving in that next day.

I wasn’t here when Thomas arrived. But when he did, my friend Jake was in the kitchen cooking up some oodles of noodles when Thomas walked in. “Hi, I’m Tommy.”

Jake took one look at the kid. Decided that the safety of the kitchen had been compromised, marched back to his bedroom, loaded his Springfield .40 caliber XD, and sat on his bed dreading what might happen should that door open. I then received a phone call. “What is this child rapist doing in our house? I’m terrified.”

“Yeah they said that we were getting a new roommate today. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Dude, I’m moving away, like, today.”

One of my chick friends is contemplating dating some dude. She used to not like him at all but now she is warming up to him. I don’t know if this is a regular occurrence for girls to change their minds about guys. My personal opinion is that it doesn’t happen all that often. Possible explanations of why this may occur:

Guy reveals a hidden musical talent.

Guy came into a lot of money.

A third party girl started spreading rumors about how he is “not a nice” guy.

Guy recently acquired a dark ski goggle tan.

Girl has realized she is not as marketable as she thought and now knows that she can’t do better.

I am suspicious that my chick friend falls into the latter category. And of course, me being the classy unfiltered person I am, called her out on it, “The only reason you think you like this guy is because he’s your last resort and you can’t do any better.” She immediately started defending herself trying to convince me that she was better than that.

Let’s be honest though, that is the only reason that you should ever date someone. You should date them, because you don’t think you can do better. If you think that you can do better, than why are you wasting your time with someone less good? Am I right? Of course I am.

Banks

I went to the bank the other day. I bank with US bank. They are my Bank. They hold my money. The whole banking thing is very curious to me. I understand the concept well enough; I let them hold onto my money while I am not using it. Then, whenever I need it, I give people my special number and my bank gets a notification on their news feed that says they have to pay $39.95 on my behalf for a kangaroo scrotum money pouch. The thing I am unsure about is how I feel about the tellers. I get this eerie feeling that they think they are my best friends, or that they are having an affair with my mom.

“Chase, how is your family?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“How is school? Are you still at the Y?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“Yeah? How about your mom? Marie? Right? How is she doing?”

“Yeah, how..do…”

“Oh Marie.. She’s great. She always comes in here right after her jog. Tell her I said hi.”

“Umm, okay, mike.” After I awkwardly stare at his chest to see his nametag.

I feel like I have a step dad; some guy trying to be your best friend while moving in on your mom.

I did my teacher evaluations and left this as a comment for my pre-tenure teacher.

Coach Bangerter is more than just a teacher but is a giant in the community, and an asset to the University. He is valued very highly by the Students here at Brigham Young's University. Coach wanted everyone in his class to understand the material, and I would dare say that he wanted us all to get an A in the class. Unfortunately, the university wants a strict bell curve for the grading scale.

Coach Bangerter has equipped me with various techniques for dealing with real life every-day situations, such as "What do you do if someone comes up to you on the street and asks you to find the impulse response of a particular input output relationship?" Before I took coaches class, I would have gone about this situation all wrong; trying to solve for an h(t) without even knowing if it could be done. I now know that I first need to check this stranger’s input-output relationship to determine if it is indeed linear and time-invariant. This is 2011; you can't just trust that every input output relationship you are handed is LTI like you could back in the nineties. And if it is not LTI than I have no business finding an h(t).

Coach explained things very clearly, and was very sensible to the student’s workload. On more than one occasion I visited him in his office just to be in his presence, and feel his awesomeness radiate to every corner of the room. He is a true American Hero and an inspiration to all of us. No lie, on more than one occasion, I left his class wanting to be a better person. Coach has done things that not many have and has cast himself into the caliber of people such as Elisha Kane, George Washington, Coolio, and I would even daresay, Mr. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier himself.

Coach Bangerter knows both his signals AND his systems. And he shared that knowledge without refrain to his students, in an attitude and pace that was respectful to all of his students. He was bold, but not overbearing. Nor did he ever require that a student should run faster than he had strength. Coach was a leader. And not one of those crappy leaders, like my first missionary companion. He was a leader that led by example, and never required anyone to do a convolution that Coach himself could not do. Coach was a master of incentives. He knew that while grades were a great motivator for most of the class, not everyone responded the same to this particular incentive. He wanted maximum participation from everyone, and this concern for his pupils led him to the discovery of yet another incentive that could reach out the few in the class that were unresponsive to grades.

When posed with difficult questions in class, Coach Bangerter didn't cower, no. Rather he felt the thrill of challenge and tackled great transforms with his class supporting him the best they knew how.

Coach had vision, and more importantly, the ability to create vision in his students. On more than one occasion he took the day to depart from the usual in order to educate us on big picture topics. He would show us how what we learned applied to MRI, building a stereo amplifier that would blow the pants off of any audiophile, blowing up a picture to twice its original size, and dealing with strangers on the street that need complex signals converted back to analog.

Although the best Athletes do not necessarily make the best coaches, I will stand as a witness that Neal Kepler Bangerter is not only one of the leading experts on signal analysis but has also earned the title of “Coach” in the rawest meaning of the word.

Just some random thoughts running through my head that I need to type out and send to the world.

Sometimes I feel really Emo. I found this new band, "We are in the Crowd." I think I am drawn to emo bands with girls in them. I found this video on youtube and I am in love with this girl. Hailey Williams has some competition for my heart now.

I was talking to my dad today and we were talking about a couple of my friends who are getting married and one of them who had bought a ring and spent a pretty penny on it and then she ended up giving it back because she prayed about it and her answer was "no." Well now he is stuck with this way nice ring and doesn't know what to do with it. My first reaction was to just hold onto it until he meets someone else that he wants to give it to. "No, no, no, bad idea," my mom cut in. I guess giving a ring to a girl that you originally bought for someone else is taboo. (Did I use the word taboo in the right way?) My dad suggested that they should have some type of insurance/return/trade in policy if stuff like that happens. I was just thinking that it needs to be a given though. Noone expects that is going to happen to them. Nobody is going to lean over the glass when your wife is looking at the case 10 feet away and ask the manager,"So, what happens when if she can't go through with this?" People just don't think that could happen to them. Maybe cubic zirconia is the answer...

If you know it's not going to work out it is better to break it off during the engagement than to wait til you're at the altar. How awkward would that be? "Do you take him to be your husband?" "Ummm....yeah.... about that. I don't think I can go through with this. Lunch was great though. Thanks for that."

I have been thinking a lot about stand-up comedy lately. There was a big thing down at BYU a couple weeks ago, my friend had actually tried out/attended open mic night, and I went to wiseguys comedy cafe last week for my buddies mormon bachelor party. I kind of want to give it a whirl. I thought I was funnier than half the guys from wiseguys. But I am also full of myself.

Guys and girls are not equal.

I was sitting around yesterday with my best friend Jake and he started doing this incredibly immature thing to his girlfriend, naturally I was a big supporter. He sealed his mouth around her nose and had her open her mouth. When he blew air up through her nose it would come out her mouth and make this really goofy sound. I was laughing uncontrollably. Not so much because of the goofy sound but because he was acting like he just discovered this little trick. In reality I remember him doing this to a girl in high school. Maybe two or three girls got to experience this lovely trick. I almost chimed in and said, "Hey Jake remember when you used to do that to Amanda?" But I thought that I might be crossing some sort of line. It's odd when a guy and girl start dating the guy has to pretend that this is his first relationship with a girl ever. He is forbidden to acknowledge that he has ever so much as spoken to another girl besides his mother. Even said guy's best friend is somehow forbidden to bring up the existence of previous women.

Changing Our Lives

It seems like we are constantly on the prowl for new ways to change our lives. Every day women are starting new diets, programs, and exercises that they are convinced will change their lives for the better. And we all know that these kinds of resolutions are about as good as saying that you are going to stop picking your nose. Besides New Years, the most common time you can find people trying to change their lives is church. Every week some kid at church prays and asks, “Please help us to learn something that we can apply and change our lives.” Come on, Really? This is dumb. Why would I need to change your life? I’m already at church dammit.

I mean, I could understand if you were plastered, sitting over the toilet in the back of Sammy’s Saloon and you started praying, “Oh, lord, please help me to change my life.” But if I am in church, why change?

Cows in Cambodia

The other day I went with a group of friends who had free tickets to go see the movie “Tooth Fairy”. It was one of those movies that you walk out of and you want to demand your money back plus time and a half. It was so terrible that I was embarrassed for everyone that was in any way involved with this movie, including other people in the theatre. I did, however, meet a friend of a friend, who changed my life by opening my mind to something about my country of Cambodia I had never consciously thought about. When people hear I went to Cambodia I get a lot of different reactions.

“How was it?”

“That’s crazy!”

“What was it like?”

“Now that’s in South America, right?”

But when CL was told that I had recently returned from the homeland of Angkor Watt, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, open sewers, and bamboo huts, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Oh, I heard there is a shooting range there, where you can blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Yeah, and I heard it’s only a couple hundred bucks.”

Now while serving in Cambodia I found a lot of problems and things that bugged me about the country. It was slowly dissolving as the land was taken by Vietnam and Thailand, the government is among the most corrupt in the world, the people are poor and stupid (this is not a mindless personal attack. This is true. During the war Pol Pot killed off anyone that knew how to read, the only survivors were as dumb as the people who funded the film “Tooth Fairy”). Cambodia is my country. It is my second home. I love the place and the people almost as much as I love a good booger joke, but at times it was hard to be patriotic about a country with so many flaws and no hope of progress.

Finally I had found something that I could brag about. I found something about Cambodia that made me want to stand tall and be a better human being. I discovered a set of values that has been lost to Americans, but still highly valued somewhere deep in Asia. “In my country of Cambodia, you can purchase and blow up a cow with a rocket launcher. Live long Cambodia!”

These guys are lame and missed the cow. But you can get the idea...

Laser Tattoo Removal

I have invested a lot of time and emotion into a T.V. show called, “How I Met Your Mother.” In a recent episode Ted Mosby meets a beautiful but somewhat sketchy girl, and under the influence of much alcohol, Ted allows this women to talk him into getting what many people refer to as a “Tramp Stamp.” An episode later he invests in 10 sessions of laser tattoo removal, to clean up the mistake he shouldn’t have made.

The Bro Code (1) clearly states that no bro will allow another bro to get a tattoo. I do not want to go into the details of the Bro Code but it is important to know that measures have been placed by bros everywhere to prevent tattoos in the first place. However, in the event that a bro goes behind the back of all fellow bros and gets a tattoo (2), it is a required to correct your bro by way of excessive taunting. This action will force your bro realize how much he needs to keep his bro’s around in order to not make mistakes like this again (3). However the damage done by abandoning your bros has been done. Now what?

The answer lies in Laser Tattoo removal. This is a very painful process that can last several sessions (4). In order to support your bro to continue having weekly visits with his laser tattoo removalist, it is much encouraged to continue taunting said bro and his “Tramp Stamp” in order to induce more emotional pain than the physical pain that he experiences at the doctors office from the flesh eating lasers.

Not all mistakes can be cleaned up. However, this is a mistake that with a big enough investment of time, money, and pain, can be corrected.

(1) The Bro Code is a set of statutes set up by our founding fathers on how Bros should govern themselves amongst their fellow Bros.

(2) Incidentally, the overweight man with the Fu Manchu inking you up, is not your bro.

(3) The time he woke up wearing bunny ears and a tutu was bad enough.

(4) For more on Laser Tattoo removal please see: Tattoo Removal Guide.

Sporting Events

Yesterday was Saturday, the day of the BYU Sand Diego football game. When we got to the game we found our seats which were actually so good you could count the little dots on the field to confirm that there were truly eleven people per team, a luxury I am not used to. Soon our friends came over suggesting we move over towards the center of the field and sit near them. We liked this idea and moved over. We were having a good time folding up the advertisements that were taped to the bleachers (I think these are the same bleachers which are used for torturing afghan P.O.W.s). We made paper airplanes and tried to throw them onto the field. I think my best plane flew forward total of 6.3 rows before hitting someone in the back of the head well I ducked down giggling to myself. Soon a young woman wearing a yellow shirt came up to us, "We are random checks, can I see your tickets?" She asked. I knew this 'random checks'' crap was a lie. She was just being discriminative towards good looking white people. "Yeah, but I'm not going to lie, these aren't our seats. We just came over here because no one was sitting here." (John was really generous to call those washbooards 'seats'). The girl honestly begged us to go back to our seats asking "well what if the people show up? " I thought she was going to cry. So we went back to our original section of the washboard planks where people were packed in together like 15 year old Cambodians in the back of a factory truck. As we sat there we could hear the fans yelling, and Jake made a very good observation, "I love how every fan would be the team MVP. They just know and see everything in the game," he said. I took this message to heart when Sand Diego then scored a touchdown after faking a dive play and throwing an easy pass to an uncovered receiver. "I knew that was going to happen," some kid bragged to his friends. I turned to him, "Dude." I said "Did you really know that was going to happen?" "Yeah man," he said. "Why didn't you tell coach? You selfish homo."

Factories

The other day I was shopping and I noticed a shirt that was made in Cambodia. I only noticed because of my personal affiliation with the country. Most American’s don’t care where their clothes come from any more than they care where hot dogs come from. However there are a small number of Americans who do care about where there clothes come from and where hot dogs come from (1). In Cambodia, many women between the ages of 14 and 40 wake up, day after day, to go to a factory and work long shifts for less than 100 dollars a month. Many people think that this is a huge tragedy. I however, see it as a huge success. Americans can purchase clothes for really cheap and Cambodians have money for food. I think the biggest offense is calling the facilities these girls work in “sweat shops.” O.K. These are large warehouses containing hundreds of girls sewing all day. But come-on, most of the warehouses have a fan.


(1) Personally, I think we should get rid of these people.

Asian Food

One of my favorite foods in Asia is Phở, which is Vietnamese for “noodle soup.” The only important letter is the "ở" signifying that it is in fact noodle soup, as opposed to fish eye soup --Phö. As I sat down to eat my Phở for breakfast one morning, I noticed a long black hair in my soup. This is not an unusual sight for me. I have spent a lot of time in Asia and know that a long black hair in my soup is about as common as an NBA approved seat. With my newly acquire chopstick skills, I was able to remove the long black hair in a record time of about seven and a half minutes*. However my little sister, not knowing anything about common Asian soup ingredients, instantly started to make a ruckus about the black hair in her own bowl of soup.
“Eww, there is a hair in my soup!”
“Mackenzie, it’s OK. There was one in mine too. It’s a standard ingredient over here. Stop complaining about their culture,” I responded, “It’s rude.”
“It’s disgusting!” She protested.
“Mackenzie,“ I said, “I’m sure they wash their hair.”

* Why the hell did I ever give up spoon and fork?

Asian Markets

When I am in Asia I often feel like everyone wants to show me how much English they know.
“Hello,” someone yells at me from the side of the road.
“Hello,” I respond.
“Xing xao ching choang di do chrah baiy.”
That’s about as far as I get with 98% of the people here.
Apart from wanting to use every English word they know, Asians want to extract every last dollar from you. In Asia, a lot of things are associated with America. For some people it’s relatives, others think of WWF wrestling, others think of the leading arms country of the world.
“You guys can bomb the shit out of anyone,” a man once said to me.
However, I think most people think of streets paved in gold and green on the trees, yes --pun intended. Because American’s are so famously wealthy, Asian’s have adopted a unique type of racism when it comes to prices. So while Asians are paying market price for a product, we have to beg and bargain to find the market price. For this purpose Asians have a secret formula for how much to charge you:
[Actual price * tourist dumbness level * (how many bags he/ she is currently holding+2) - 23] (converted to the local currency and adjusted for inflation) (1)
With a little math, this is a can be a great for figuring out how dumb you look. Once who have a ballpark idea of the actual price you can simply solve for your “Tourist Dumbness Level.”
I walked into the Bun Thang market in Ho Chi Minh with intent to do this. I found a fabric I liked that I knew market price had to be two dollars a meter. I was holding one water bottle which counts as a purchased item so we will count it as a bag.
“Thirty two dollars” she said.
I started to do the math, “Okay, so thirty two dollars plus twenty three that’s fifty five dollars minus two..wait… no that’s my water bottle plus two divided by twenty three?” I gave up with the math and decided that on the Tourist Dumbness Scale I have a TDS rating of, “Really Dumb.” Fortunately, I’m only dumb looking, and do pretty well at “The Price is Right.”
“I’ll give you 7 dollars.” I said.
“Deal!” She said without missing a beat. It’s one of those times I wonder if I should have gone lower, I mean how do you know? My attention is then drawn to the posted sign “silk $2.00/meter.” Oh, it’s all coming together now. That’s how I knew market price was $2.00 a meter.

(1) This is how Natural Selection insures that Asians are the best at math and not English.

The Sand Dunes of Muy Ne

On my trip to Mu Ne, Vietnam, pronounced Moi Nea(with the Nea said with an rising tone, sounding similar to Fei Long delivering the uppercut in early versions of Street Fighter), Diane and I decided to rent a moto for the day to go see the sand dunes and whatever else Mu Ne had to offer.
When we got to the sand dunes we were ambushed by 12 year old Asian’s holding sleds that look like they were stolen from raging waters.
“Mister, you slide?”
“No I’m straight, thanks.”
“You slide? I give you real cheap.”
“No thanks, I have a girlfriend,” I lied.
“Just try it one time.”
“I don’t think I could.”
“It’s easy, we will find a small one for you.”
“How cheap are we talking?” I slowly started to entertain the idea.
“80,000 dong.”
“That’s so expensive!”
“How much you want?” The kids continued. I walked all the way to the top of the highest dune which took a whole seven minutes while these kids followed me threatening, “If you don’t slide we are going to leave you by yourself.”
“Oh, please do.”
Unfortunately, their threats were empty.

Traffic in Asia

Asia has the craziest traffic you can imagine. There are only two rules, don’t crash, and avoid the police. There are no speed limit’s and no expectations to stop at stop lights, and if you do see police officers the worst thing to do is hesitate.
A note on hesitating -- No matter what you do, hesitating is not a good move. When was the last time you heard somebody say, “I hesitated -- and it saved my life.” No. Those words have never been spoken. However I just the other day I heard a man recall, “I hesitated -- and I died on the spot.” As you can see the evidence is clear --hesitating never brings about good results.
One Asian morning, as I passed by these honorable men of the Asian law on my moto on the way to my place of residence, I did not stutter but sped past the Asian Police as nonchalantly as an American in a country made for people under 4’7” can be. I then turned and saw a less fortunate youth stutter, yes, stutter, before deciding to dodge the officer. The officer wound up and ..“PANG” (Pang is Asian for bam.) Yes, if Asian police officers try to pull you over, for which reasons can include anything from not wearing a helmet, to having the wrong color of skin, to wearing actual clothes as apposed to pajamas, and you stutter to think maybe I should pull over you will be hit on the head with one of their plastic nightsticks that resemble those giant candy canes you buy at the dollar store for Christmas gifts that no one likes.