Nemesis: Part Deux

Now for an update on Din-din, the puppy (demon hound) that has been making my life miserable. Let me start by saying that I really do hate that dog.

I can add "wrecked the truck" to the list of offenses this dog has committed.


While my sister was driving Din-din to the vet, Din-din decided to jump on her lap and start playing. This resulted in my sister losing control and swiping a telephone pole. Fortunately, my sister is fine. I can't say the same for the truck.

I know it's ridiculous to blame the dog for this. My sister should've had the common sense to put the dog in the truck bed instead of keeping it in the front with her. However, I can't help but think that this dog is seriously out to get me now. Next thing you know, it'll be chewing my brake lines in an attempt to murder me and make it seem like an accident.

I Can't Drive 55

Last night was my first speeding ticket. Shocking, I know.

I've never considered myself a speedy driver. I don't follow speed limits to a tee, but I'm never to the point where someone can't overtake me. In fact, most of my friends call me a "granny driver." Imagine my surprise when I got pulled over.

I was just leaving Honoka'a and on my way back home to Hilo. I had just passed the gas station and figured that it was safe to go a bit faster. Up ahead I could see the the "Minimum 40" sign, so I didn't think anything.

Damn. I knew I should've made my sister drive home.

After blue lights lit up behind me, I immediately pulled over. At this point the "Minimum 40" sign was right in front of me, so I thought I'd been in the 55 zone. I had no idea as to what I could've done wrong.

I figure if I'm nice and don't give the the officer a hard time he'll let me off with a warning, it's late and the streets are empty. I'm pretty sure there are other things he'd rather be doing. I give the cop my license and registration and he tells me that he pulled me over for speeding.

Speeding? Seriously?

I apologize. My sister who is sitting next to me in the passenger seat is in disbelief. I can't believe it either, but I know flipping out is the worst thing I could do.

The officer starts talking to me. Asks me where I'm from and if I'm employed. I explain to him that I'm from Hilo and that I'm not currently employed, I'm a full-time student at the UH.

And then he hands me the ticket. $122.

Why would someone ask another person if they are employed and then immediately after finding out that they're not, write them a fine for $122? That just makes you look like a prick.

I know that being unemployed doesn't excuse someone from breaking laws and facing consequences. But really, if you're going to fine someone, don't get all buddy-buddy with them and ask them about their employment status.

The officer gave me three options to deal with my ordeal.
1). Pay the fine.
2). Write a letter to the judge to get it contested.
3). Show up to court.

I really don't want pay $122, especially when I don't believe that I did anything wrong. I'm not going to write a letter that will probably not even get read by the judge himself. I'm not going to show up to court. The idea just freaks me out, especially knowing how passive aggressive I am. I'd probably just nod my head to whatever the judge said.

Instead I have three alternatives to the options that were given to me.

1). Incite a race riot.

It's clear to anyone that the only reason why I got the ticket was because of my Portuguese heritage. And if it wasn't my Portuguese heritage, then it was my Filipino. And if it wasn't that, it was because I'm Haole. And if wasn't that, it's definitely because I'm a weird mixture of Portuguese, Filipino, and Haole.

Surely, the officer was thinking to himself, "Damn hybrid kid. I don't even know what ethnicity he is. Everything is his fault. I'm going to write him a ticket."

Rodney King ain't got nothing on me.

2). Sue the County for sexual harassment.

With the way the officer was making eye contact with me, I'm sure I could. The way his eyes met mine, it was if he was undressing me in his mind. I know he was imagining the solid abs and chiseled chest that were underneath my shirt. I'm definitely traumatized from all the eye contact he was making with me. And it wouldn't be about the money, it'd be about keeping that monster off of the streets and preventing this from happening again.

Pervert.

3). Go into exile in a foreign country.

I could leave my life here and become that mysterious white guy that lives in some far-off exotic place. The locals would make up stories about what I did and why I'm living amongst them. No one would know my name or about my past. I'd keep a few pictures from my past life in my cabin, only to have it found by a local curious about my past and further the mystery that enshrouds me.

I would have a job taking rich tourists on adventures and have a monkey for a pet. The woman I love but left behind would eventually track me down and beg me to go back home with her. Instead, we'd go on adventures together and end up settling down and raising our family in this country.

Mysterious white guy in Africa...

...Mysterious white guy in South Asia

...And really bad movie.

Nemesis

nem⋅e⋅sis [nem-uh-sis]

1.	something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc.: The performance test proved to be my nemesis.

2.	an opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.

While I don't really consider myself much of an animal person, there has never been an animal that I hated. Until now.

I remember watching "It's Me or the Dog" on Animal planet and thinking that those people were silly for letting an animal strain their relationships. Now, I totally understand.



Meet Din-din. She is my nemesis. Never in my life have I had so much hate for something so tiny. She may be cute and fluffy, but this dog is Satan's puppy. This dog makes Cujo seem like Lassie.

This dog has eaten a number of my books. It has begun eating the furniture in my house. It has peed on my laundry. It has peed on my bed. It has peed on my school bags. It has peed in numerous spots in my room. It has pooped in numerous spots in my room. The dog literally goes every where except for the puppy pad or outside of the house. The dog bites everyone. The dog never shuts up.

And now, the day before school, Din-din has pissed on my text books for this semester.

I am ready to set this dog on fire.



When Din-din first arrived at my house I was upset. We already have one dog eating the house, we didn't need another. And then I saw her sleeping in her box, being quite possibly the cutest puppy I've ever seen. For the first week, all she did was sleep. I thought to myself, "How could I be upset with something that cute?"

Now it's a fight for territory and I'm losing. I've done everything short of pissing all over my stuff to mark my area. This dog just has it in for me.

Remember all those cutesy dog movies like Beethoven, Marley and Me, and Turner and Hooch? Yeah, not so funny any more. Those movies weren't comedies, they were warnings.

In Japan, Marley and Me was actually a horror film.

Oh Summer Where Art Thou?

It feels like I've just gotten out of a six week coma.

The last six weeks have been spent at the UH dorms as a residential manager for the Upward Bound program.

It's funny how I've started as a shy teenage student six years ago and now I'm managing 90 high school kids running around the dorms. If someone were to tell me that I'd be a manager for Upward Bound back when I was a student, I would've laughed in their face. It's funny how the world works.

The last six weeks have also been the most stressful. I had my first panic attack. I found my first grey hairs.

I had to send kids home. I lost a worker. I literally lost a student. I should've lost another worker, one who deserved to have been fired, but for some reason my supervisors did not follow through with my recommendations and would not explain to me their reasoning. There was a lot of misunderstanding and confusion.

Despite all of the bad stuff, I feel this program has still made a difference in the lives of the students. I feel there is more we could do and somethings that program should pull back from so that the students could learn for themselves.

At the end of the program, students did not want to leave. I feel like we did our job. Hopefully, next summer we can do an even better job.

Work has Been Invading my Dreams

I work for an Academic College Prep program that has a summer school/dorm program each summer. It's a chance for high school students to get a taste of college by taking summer school and living at the university dorms. Quite recently I have been promoted to the Resident Manager position for work this summer. I'm pretty stoked because it means I get paid more and I get an opportunity to put leadership/managerial experience on my resumé.

However, lately I have been having a lot of worries about messing up as an RM and ruining summer for the 92 high school students that I will be in charge of. Underneath the calm facade I throw on at work is a jumbled mess of fear and insecurities. I guess that I've been having so much stress in my work life, now it's starting to spill into my dreams.

For a good laugh and some much needed stress-relief, here are some of the dreams I have been having about work.

Dream 1:
The Summer Residential Program has started and on the first day one of my RAs is killed. His death is very mysterious and his body is never found.

Instead of canceling the program, my boss states that, "we can't let a little thing like this sideline us." And so the program continues on. However, each week more and more students and RAs begin to disappear. Everybody is depending on me to find them and I'm like, "I did not sign up for this! Get me out of here!"

Finally it's down to just me and a handful of students. I'm still clueless as to why my boss has yet to cancel the program. So I'm going to bed when all of a sudden the final handful of students burst into my room screaming about how Julius, the RA who died on the first day, had attacked them.

"Impossible! Julius is dead!" I tell them. Then Julius appears holding this huge, ridiculous knife. He just stands there, laughing like a madman.

They could totally make a movie out of the stuff I dream about.

My dream ends with me and my students being chased by a knife wielding back-from-the-dead RA.

Dream 2:

The Summer Residential Program has started and right off the bat there is one particular student that I hate. I absolutely cannot stand this student. Words cannot express how much I loathe this kid. And I don't know why! I just know that I hate the poor guy.

This kid is a tall, redhead with a fro and pasty white skin. Every time I saw this kid, I just wanted to punch him in the face.

So the Summer Program is rolling along and we are escorting the students from the dorms to one of the lecture halls. This redhead that I can't stand and his roommate are at the back of the pack of students and are just taking their time. I'm in a big rush to get the students to where they belong and so when I see the two of them just goofing off I totally lose my cool.

I start screaming at them to hurry up and they just roll their eyes. I'm yelling at them, "Hurry up! We're leaving you two! Goodbye!!" hoping to get them moving a little faster. Instead, the redhead with a fro and his roommate just turn around and start heading back to their dorms. This just pushes me over the edge.

I run up to them and I tell them to go and pack their bags because I am kicking them out of the program. My boss magically shows up and is telling me about how I need to give them a 10 day probation period before sending them home. I tell my boss that he can forget the probation, because if they don't go right now I'm going to lose all self-control. So while I'm having this argument with my boss, the redhead with a fro decides to set the dorms on fire.

So far, I don't know of any redheads with fros that are actually in the program in reality. If there is, I hope they decide to go on a family vacation instead of enrolling in the Summer Residential Program.

Holding Doors Open (Doing my Part to Stop Feminism)

Sorry that I haven't updated in a while, things have been pretty crazy.

Originally, this was going to be a post about the night my grandmother died. Writing it down really did help, however, I don't think I need to share those details.

Then, I decided that this should be a post about all my thoughts and feelings about my grandmother being gone. Once again it helped and I feel I don't need to share those details either.

So instead, you get this. Enjoy :)

About three to four weeks ago I went to Borders to go find a book about automotive repair. I'm at the entrance to the store and I hold the door open for the woman behind me. Before entering, she stops and just looks at me and then rolls her eyes.

"Women aren't as meek and helpless as you men think we are, you know," she tells me.

"I'm just trying to be courteous, no offense," I tell her. She rolls eyes and stands there. She stood there for an eternity before I realized that she wanted me to enter first so that she could open the door for herself. I entered and laughed it off.



Now fast forward to today.

Today I took my youngest brother to the movies. As I'm about to enter the theater, I hold the door open for two older women who were behind me.

"Oh my goodness, chivalry is not dead!" one of them exclaims. Both of them are just so impressed with me.

I don't think chivalry really ever left. Just like sexy.

One of them grabs my arm and tells me, "I'm kidnapping you from your girlfriend, she is never gonna get you back." Both of them proceed to then tell me about how they rarely ever see young men with manners and how my girlfriend is the luckiest girl in Hilo.

The situation was pretty awkward and depressing--those ladies could not stop touching me and would not shut up about my lucky girlfriend, even after telling them I had no girlfriend.

I'm just trying to be courteous. I know what it's like to walk into a door just as it closes because some jerk decides to hold it open for those few moments that I'm walking towards the door and then let it go without any warning. Man or woman, old or young, I don't care--walking into doors suck. I'm not trying to put progressive women into their place and I'm not trying to be chivalrous, I just don't want my door slamming into anybody's face.

Just trying to prevent this from happening.

Action Movie Saturday Night!!!

Saturdays are strictly devoted to over-the-top action movies in the Carvalho home. So instead of watching Die Hard for the gazillionth time, my brother and I opted to go watch the new Jason Statham flick, Crank: High Voltage.

The movie was awesome. It was beyond awesome. There was no plot or any character development-- it was just gratuitous amounts of action.

But what made the movie such an experience was what happened outside of the movie.

It all started with my brother and I walking to the theater. As we're waiting for cars to pass so that we can cross the street, a lifted truck passes and the passenger is sticking his little head out and screaming bloody murder at my brother. The guy just shouts, calling my brother out and saying how he's going to mess us up, but in much more colorful language.

Not quite what I meant by "colorful language."

As soon as we get into the mall I ask my brother if he knew the guy.

"Who?" he asks.

"The guy that was calling you out because you were staring him down," I tell him.

Turns out that my brother was spazzing out the whole time we were crossing the street. He was totally oblivious to the guy calling him out. It was just our dumb luck that the same direction that my brother was staring off into nothing was also the same direction of this guy. For the rest of the evening I was constantly checking over my shoulder for the guy.

So we finally make it to the movie. Everything is going good. It finally gets to the climax of the film and I can hear screaming behind me.

My initial thought is, wow, the surround sound here is amazing. But it turns out that it isn't surround sound. An actual fight broke out in the seats behind me. Some lady is amping out on some guy. As the violence in the movie escalates, so does this lady. It was pretty crazy having an actual fight behind you while you got the sounds of heavy metal, gunshots, and shouting in the background.

Prince Kuhio Stadium Cinemas surround sound

Now, Crank: High Voltage is definitely not the greatest action movie ever. However, this was one of the few movies were I felt I got the FULL cinematic experience.