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.

We were just discussing the Ideal-Gas Law...

This was no pV=nRT.

Physics class had just started and I had leaned over to get my textbook out of my bag. Just as I reached into my bag I felt the rumblings of a fart coming on. No big deal I had thought to myself, I can just let this one pass silently.

However, instead of the quiet whisper of passing gas, a thunderous roar was unleashed. Even after it was done, I could still feel it reverberating off of the classroom walls.

This was what I was aiming for...

...But I got this instead

The professor was stunned, only his shiny gray ponytail moved for those few moments. A few of the students turned their heads. There was only silence. I sat as still as possible.

Within a minute, life began to return to the classroom. The professor returned to his lecture and everyone else went back to writing their notes or texting. That was when the smell settled in.

For a second time the professor paused the lecture. He just stood silently in front of the class, as if he had lost his train of thought. Soon enough the smell had diffused through the entire classroom and everyone knew what was going on. I looked around and tried to act as if I too had no clue as to where the smell was coming from.

This is what happened when the smell settled in.

Soon enough the smell faded away and we returned to discussing pressure-volume diagrams and the ideal-gas law.

What surprises me is how no one said anything, there were no laughs or any outcries of disgust. There was just a silence that hovered over the classroom.

I haven't been this embarrassed by a fart since elementary school.

The Fag Raptor Rides Again

June 28th, 2009 will be my first ever half-marathon.

The goal has always been to become a marathon runner, this half-marathon feels like I'm actually making progress towards my goal.

I really need to do something about my wrists.

Cat AIDS

Last week my uncle took his cat into the veterinarian's because it has been very sickly. The vet's first impression of what was ailing my uncle's cat? Cat AIDS.

According to my uncle's veterinarian, there is an epidemic of cat AIDS going around the Big Island.

Seriously?

Were all the cats on the Big Island sharing needles and having unprotected sex? Well, technically, yes all of the feral cats were going around and having sex and that is how it has been spreading. To the best of my knowledge, cats haven't gotten around to using condoms yet.

Claws: makes opening condoms a bitch and one of the main causes of unprotected cat sex.

When my uncle told me about Larry's (the cat) visit to the vet and what the vet was concerned about, I couldn't help but laugh.

I started to imagine how Larry could have possibly aquired AIDS. I pictured Larry has a slick Wall Street business cat during the 80's, experimenting with heroin and other drugs. After wall street took a dive in '88, Larry was out on the street and forced to maintain his habit by becoming a gay prostitute in Los Angeles. After many years of this kind of lifestyle, Larry eventually found God in a soup kitchen, became born-again, and eventually settled in my uncle's family. And now, after all these years, the sins of his past has finally come back to haunt poor Larry.

After imagining this, I also began to imagine cat AIDS on a much more global scale. I began to picture the cat AIDS epidimic in Africa, gay cats finding out that their life partner is infected, sex education in cat middle school. At that point I shook my head and realized my imagination was getting out of hand.

And then my uncle mentioned that his vet is also worried that Larry might instead be suffering from cat Leukemia.

Chemotherapy sucks.

Any Way You Want It

For those of you following (which is like one person, if my blogger dashboard is correct) I've been flirting with many different blogging avenues. For a little while I was going through my facebook notes, but I hated that because of it's lack of personality. Then I went back to my old myspace, but that isn't working out because of the number of high school students that visit my page. I really don't want to be one of those idiots you hear about on the news getting fired over something stupid that they posted on myspace. From now on my myspace will be more kid friendly and aimed for the students I work with. Here on blogger, I'll be able to post more adult topics and not have to worry about one of my students getting their panties in a bunch whenever I drop an F-Bomb.

Now to the topic on hand.

The Waikaloa Journey Concert. It was amazing. Never has there been so much Filipino pride, marijuana, and cougar desperation packed into the Queen's Court at Waikaloa. Plus, I got to punch dance to "Separate Ways." It was amazing.

What really impressed me was Arnel Pineda. I knew he was good, but I didn't realize he was that good. I was really amazed with how cool he was. He kept running through the crowd and bringing people on stage. He ran up to us folks in the general admission seats so that he could do running high-fives. Running high-fives. He even sings better than Steve Perry. Arnel Pineda is my new hero.

Awesome.

The only un-amazing part of the show was the stupid couple that was next to me practically the whole time. I wish I recorded some video of them so that I could show the world how crazy they were. I'm pretty sure that alcohol wasn't the only thing in their system. When they started to dance and grind up on each other, I was grossed out, but didn't mind too much because I could just look the other way and ignore it. Then, they started to get all kinky. After "Lights," they lady took her heels off and started sticking it in places it didn't belong, namely her boyfriends ass. It's pretty hard to ignore someone getting sodomized by their girlfriend's high heel. Then when I made an attempt to move away, the lady started hitting me with her heels! I've never wanted to punch someone so badly in my life. Luckily for the both of us, her boyfriend decided to go to the beer garden and she followed after him.

Despite that, the show was still totally amazing.

If you listen closely during the part the camera gets all shaky, you can hear me say, "You're hitting me with your shoe."