My university campus, ASU West
Chapters:
Introduction
My classes
Campus employment at the Fletcher Library and the computer center "Technopolis"
The Asian Pacific Islanders Association
Fun with friends
The summer of goodbyes
A photo gallery of campus I took in '99
Introduction
Some of my work experience with those temp jobs was torture. I spent half a year stuck inside a portable trailer in the back parking lot of the SRP power utility company working as an admin assistant for some project that was winding down, and I had to listen to the grumpy project manager farting in his office next to mine. Then things got a bit better when I started doing project coordination/project financial jobs for IT departments. I spent years inside of office cubicles, primarily at IBM and Wells Fargo. I had fun with coworkers, exchanging stupid haiku via IMs during boring phone meetings and cracking up. I was a facilities coordinator at IBM at the American Express account, acting as a liaison between the IBM employees and the AMEX Facilities department. This one program manager asked me if candles were allowed to be lit in the building. I asked, "Why? Are you going to hold a seance? If so, I want to contact the spirit of Jim Henson." She just looked at me and slowly said, "Um, no... I was thinking more like a birthday cake..." "Oh. Well, in either case, the answer is no. It's against building fire code. You can have candles, but just not light them." I used to clean out old storage cabinets and such, and that's how I scored my very first digital camera (with my manager Monique's approval, of course). That was great. I found one of those leafy office plants where you can just cut off a segment and put it in water and it will grow new roots. Someone gave me a segment and I called him Steve the Plant. I went up to my manager Monique and said, "Hey, do you like my new plant? His name is Steve." She smiled and said, "Yes, it's lovely." I then asked, "So... are you jealous?" "Yes Greg, I am jealous." "That's great!" I repeated the same conversation with others in my area to make sure everyone knew I had a new office plant and that they were jealous of him. I shared a cubicle with a biker guy named Robert who was a project manager. He would get exaspirated easily. I said to him, "Steve the Plant thinks you should calm down and try to relax." "I think Steve can shove it." "Steve says that you have anger issues you should resolve. If you're open to talking to plants, Steve would like to volunteer to listen to your feelings and help sort out your emotions. You may feel better afterwards." Robert started to lunge at my plant and said, "I'll show you what I'd like to do with your stupid plant!" I exclaimed, "No! Steve is a pacifist! He's against violence!" I think Robert was crazy. But you know, I respect that. I really do.
During all of those years I spent monkeying around with Excel Spreadsheets doing IF/MATCH and VLOOKUP commands, my heart yearned to go back to Japan where I was happier, and working with kids. I never wanted to teach kids in America. The thought really frightened me, especially these days. This work has nothing to do with my college major, but English always was the subject I was the strongest in. I took an online certification course to get EFL/ESL certified, started teaching evening ESL classes to immigrants as a volunteer at church and later working at Rio Salado College, and then in 2012 I moved my family back to Japan and haven't looked back. So many people doing the work I do here in Japan are doing it just for the ability to live in Japan. They have no heart for teaching, nor a heart for the kids. Here in Japan, you can find people who have just found themselves in a cul-de-sac of life. I guess that would describe myself too, I suppose. It's not like we get pay raises here. At least the work is stable and I can continue year after year, and I'm not sinking deeper and deeper into terrible debt like I did in America with the rampant unemployment due to downsizing and contract time limits. I'm more or less satisfied with life. But these past few months, I've been in a rather nostalgic phase, and I'm looking back at my life as a college student.
Starting in the 7th or 8th grade, I had decided that I wanted to become a computer programmer. Computers are cool, after all. I took some programming classes in high school, starting out programming in BASIC and then later Pascal on Apple II-GS computers. Oh boy, those late-'80s computers are total nostalgia. I continued this when I attended Glendale Community College, taking another Pascal programming class my second semester there, the Spring '95 semester. The next one I took was that fall semester, and I ended up dropping out. Not only that, but I had to drop out of Calculus in spring '95 because I really had a hard time comprehending that crap. I was always advanced in my math ability, but Calculus really kicked my ass.
I was realizing that a degree in computer science was not for me. As big of a nerd as I am, computers tend to frustrate the crap out of me when they don't behave. It reminds me of my favorite quote from Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes: "Oh drat these computers! They're so naughty and so complex. I could pinch them!" So what did I do when I didn't know what to do with my life? I did what everyone else in that situation seems to do: major in Business instead! That way, I ended up taking Brief Calculus instead and passed. The problem with my major is that it's just different from other majors. Get a degree in Nursing and you become... a nurse. Get a degree in Programming and you become... a programmer. But if you get a degree in Business Management, you just don't start managing a business right out of college. Well, nuts. The one goal I really knew I wanted to do after graduating was to teach English in Japan, and I knew I only needed a four year degree for that. I figured I'd get a degree at ASU West, teach in Japan for a few years, and figure out what to do with my life later.
My major was Global Business Management with a specialization in Marketing. So here's the problem with such a degree: once you mention in an interview at a job placement agency that you have "a degree in marketing," they equate that to, "Oh, we have sales positions for you." Um, NO! If you want a sales job, all you need is a G.E.D. for that. What I was studying was international market analysis for global business expansion. Like I did a big report on the market feasibility analysis of what it would cost to set up a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo depending on how much rent per square meter and such would cost, as well as advertising costs such as paying people to stand outside of train stations with tissue packets including advertisements for the new bookstore etc. That is what my college major entailed, not just selling people crap. It was about research, not extroverted, phony "Hi, I'm your new best friend now, so let me sell you something" crap. Eventually as I struggled to find employment after I returned from Japan in 2002, I learned to drop the "marketing" part off of my resume and just say that I had a degree in Global Business Management. I really should have done a specialization in Finance instead, since it was more practical and I ended up doing financial analysis for project coordinator positions for IT departments anyway.
When I began classes at Arizona State University West, the school occupied about a half square mile in the Glendale/North Phoenix area. It was surrounded by desert, and there was even a pack of coyotes that could occasionally be seen roaming around in that desert. They apparently lived off of hunting the jackrabbits found in that desert surrounding the campus. Sometimes early in the morning, I'd see the jackrabbits on the lawn. Wild. Whereas GCC was bustling with people everywhere, ASU West felt comparatively empty. Despite it being a university, the classes were about the same size as GCC's. It was a satellite of ASU Main in Tempe, but it felt far more intimate.
There were so many great things about going to ASU West. Perhaps the best was that ASU West provided a private school atmosphere for a public tuition. At that time, ASU West was upper-level classes only. So no 100 or 200 level classes meant there were no annoying 18 year old kids. The school was 300 and 400 level classes, plus graduate school. As a result, it had a mature atmosphere. Plus, since it was a satellite campus away from ASU Main, there were no jocks. All of the sports crap was at the main campus in Tempe. Plus, there were no dormitories on campus back then. The school really had a great ambience. For the Fall '98 semester, I took one class at ASU Main. I took the shuttle bus everyday to take a JPN101 Japanese language class and I ended up dropping out when I realized that my level had already surpassed the scope of the class. I had just come back from my first trip to Japan that summer and already my level was more advanced than probably both 101 and 102 classes. During that month and a half, I got to experience the crowded ASU Main campus quite a bit, and all the immaturity that I was not accustomed to. Even GCC had a more mature environment than ASU Main. ASU West was so quiet and peaceful in comparison. I had some dumb freshmen in that JPN101 class trying to even make fun of me for whatever reason. Stupid freshmen.
Due to the jobs I had on campus as well as seeing familiar faces every semester, I could feel a sense of community at ASU West. I would be able to see the same students in various classes, which made it easier to do group work as we were able to get a feel for how we worked together. I could walk across campus (not very far) and have people say "hi" to me along the way. For once in my life, I felt like I actually belonged. I loved attending ASU West.
ASU West campus, 1999
My classes
I enjoyed that Japanese history class, but the teacher couldn't pronounce Japanese worth crap. Oda Nobunaga was the feudal lord who had united Japan during the Sengoku Era, and the teacher couldn't pronounce his name "Nobunaga" but instead she'd always say "Nobunga" instead and it killed me every time. I mean, the letters are right there in front of her eyes. "Yamato" somehow became "Yamamoto" all the time, and so on. She really didn't know much about the language, really. I didn't want to be a snotty know-it-all. She was a member of the Phoenix Sister Cities program, so I had to be tactful and political about the situation. But really, her Japanese langauge ability was pretty hilarious. She was rather "book smart and street stupid" when it came to Japan, and made many assumptions that were just wrong. The class was still good though, and I did learn a lot. And since she was with the Phoenix Sister Cities, she asked if my family and I could be a host family for a visiting junior high teacher named Morita-sensei from Himeji. It's cool that he came to stay with us, because I ended up working at his school a few years later when I became an ALT in Himeji through the Sister Cities teaching program. I worked with him after Mayu and I were married, and we spent time with him and his family on a few occasions.
In that class I got to know a guy named Chris had a rather interesting history. He was a foreign exchange student in the Philippines and while he was there, he ended up dropping out of high school, "went native" for a few years in the Philippines, then came back and got his G.E.D. I have no idea if he went totally M.I.A. or if at least he'd let his parents know that he was just kicking around the country there. I think he ended up getting a job there somehow, maybe teaching English and getting paid under the table or something. He could speak Tagalog fluently. Anyhow, he was an interesting guy.
In my GLB300 Introduction to Global Business class, I sat next to a guy named Raymond from Hong Kong and we became friends. I had some Ranma 1/2 enamel badges on my backpack and he started a conversation with me about that manga. We started talking about import Playstation games and soon enough, we became friends. Through him, I got to know a lot of other students from Hong Kong. There were many students from Hong Kong as '97 was the year that the country fell into the hands of China. Those with the means could move to America to avoid that change of ownership from the UK to China. I got to make lots of Asian friends at my university, and they were so nice. I became involved with the Asian Pacific Islanders Association at the school, and I'll go into detail on that involvement later.
One notable class I took during the Spring '98 semester was MGT301: Principles of Management. The most notable thing about that class was that I was now 22 years old and I had my first crush on a teacher. her name was Dr. Afsaneh Nahavandi, from Iran. Her family had fled the country once the Shaw had been deposed when I was just a child. I remember the Iran Hostage Crisis when I was about 4 years old because every time I heard "hostage" on the TV news, I thought they were talking about "sausages." Yeah, I thought that somewhere in the world, there was a country called Iran that had a sausage crisis. Maybe not enough sausages? Ha. Anyhow, Dr. Nahavandi was so beautiful, with short black hair. Oh gosh, she was so beautiful. (Apparently she now works for the University of San Diego and she is still beautiful). Chris was in that class with me. Chris could tell I liked the teacher and I think he liked her too. Also in that class was a cute girl named Nikki. She was half-Black, half-Cacasian with pretty hair and she appeared much younger than her age. I thought she was a teenager, actually. Anyway, she was cute. I didn't hit on her, though.
During Fall '98 I had a full load of classes, but that was the semester in which I dropped out of the Japanese class, making Fridays available for me. My GLB301 class had a trip to Mexico planned for November, but I was unable to go due to my work schedule and frankly I wasn't very interested in going to Mexico. (I really should have made a way to go though, as it would've been a life experience since I've never been to Mexico. I just thought I'd get depressed as hell seeing little children coming up to me trying to sell me crap I don't need.) Instead, I had to log 16 hours of a foreign language study in the language lab to compensate for that. So when that class ended, I only had classes Tuesday through Thursday for the last month or so of that semester. I believe Nikki, Raymond and I had the Operations Production Management class that semester, and that was actually a rather practical, interesting class that I wish there were more classes like that at the school.
The bane of marketing majors was class MKT410: Consumer Behavior. It was taught by a jackass professor, Dr. Fuat Firat. People couldn't figure out what country he was from and he wouldn't tell anyone, but apparently he was Jordanian or something. Every frickin' class he would complain about how horrible Americans and American culture are. The prevailing attitude was, "If that guy hates America so much, why doesn't he go back to where he came from?" Keep in mind that although nowadays it's practically a requirement for college professors to hate the USA because of "MUH SLAVERY ONCE EXISTED" and other such short-sighted feldercarb, but this was in the late '90s before the whole "woke" culture really overtook college campuses. I think I am at the point in my life, after having two decades worth of experience with Japan and comparing the two countries since then that I would probably agree with Dr. Firat's opinions on American consumerism as far as excess gluttony and such. Fortunately for me at the time, Dr. Firat was on sabbatical or something when I took that class in Fall of '98, and the woman who taught that class instead was alright. Although we teased her mercilessly once for saying "discomboobilated" instead of "discombobulated" once. God, that killed me.
Raymond and I later had Dr. Nahavandi's GLB303 Relationship Management class together, in Spring '99. I remember once we had to form groups and do a skit which illustrated a chapter out of the book on management problem solving. I was with Raymond and a girl named Angela, who was also from Hong Kong. Since English was not their first language, they were nervous about having to memorize their lines act out a skit in front of the class. They were terribly shy, even moreso than I was. So, I had the idea of making our skit into a puppet show. I asked Dr. Nahavandi if that would be fine to do so, and she allowed it. So instead of acting out a skit in front of the class, we surprised the class when we tossed a sheet over the table in front of the class, sat down behind it, and out came the hand puppets! One was a shark, one was Cookie Monster, and I really cannot remember the third one. I was the shark, playing the role of the manager having to delegate responsibilities. This way, Raymond and Angela could just read their lines instead of having to memorize them. Our skit had people in the back of the room getting up on their chairs to get a good look, and we held everyone's attention. The class laughed and enjoyed the puppet show! There were a few nitpickers who said that their Chinese accents were hard to understand, etc, but thanks to my creativity and eccentric nature, I found a way around the difficult barriers and helped my Hong Kong friends do well. Dr. Nahavandi liked our skit, and of course I was happy to help my friends overcome their stage fright. It was the one skit that held everyone's attention the most, so I took a bit of pride in that.
For my GLB301 class, Raymond and I learned all sorts of stuff about the IMF, the World Bank and other crap like that. At the time, I didn't really think too much of it, but I later learned how evil these organizations are. I mean, look at what happened to Ukraine in 2010. The duly elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected the IMF and bossy American corporations and instead sought peaceful unity with Russia. So the USA instigated a color revolution with Nazis, the whole Euromaidan thing happened, false flag murders of protestors, and Yanukovych was deposed and replaced by Petro Poroshenko who then began a war of genocide against the ethnic Russians in the Donbass region to the east. At the time, I remember that Dr. Meznar had mentioned that there were negative aspects to the IMF and such controlling countries, but at the time I really had no concept as to how rotten they were. He was a pretty clever professor and I wish that as an adult I could somehow quantum leap into my younger self and ask him more about his opinions about these corrupt, globalist organizations. This was over two decades ago, and people weren't as awake to organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum back then as they are now. Society is being propelled towards the event horizon in terms of a great awakening worldwide as their tyranny is exposed.
Like I said, once I got to know fellow students, I tended to gravitate towards the ones I knew I would get along with well for group work. There was a girl named Margarita from Russia I got along with. We had a class together that was after lunch, and she would always have an iced tea with lemon that she'd take to class. Every class I would watch her meticulously eat the lemon that had been squeezed into her tea, eating the inside first and then she would slowly nibble the rind until it was all gone. I'd never seen anyone do that before. This guy Roger who graduated a semester or two before I did would tease her by singing the "Margaritaville" song by Jimmy Buffet and it would piss her off every time. "Shut up! I hate that song!" She said her name meant "little flower" in Russian. She was alright. Roger was a hoot too. I missed him when he was gone, as he graduated that semester.
I did get a dose of Leftist shitlib crap in a few classes, but only two which is pretty minor by today's standards. There were a few closeted conservatives who did not reveal their biases for fear of retaliation. There was one conservative professor named Dan Aykroyd (lol) in the School of Management, but I never had him for any of my classes. My PHI360 Business Ethics class (Fall '97) was essentially a "why capitalism is evil" class. Her attitude was like, "Well you know, true communism has yet to be successfully implemented..." Well shit. Let's bulldoze this mountain of corpses into a mass grave and start all over again, shall we? Let's just keep trying until we get "communism" right before we run out of people to kill! I swear... But, it wasn't all bad. We watched a video on the aluminum company Alcoa dumping orange mud into the rivers of South America. The class is about how companies should be responsible, differentiating between shareholders and stakeholders. But the teacher really went onto tangents. The dumb teacher was so freaked out over nuclear power and I told her that my dad worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power plant and that the workers there are exposed to less radiation than people working in hospitals, because at least at the power plant the radioactive rods are in solid lead containment. The dumb teacher didn't know anything about nuclear power, thinking that the clouds of steam given off by the power plant are somehow radioactive. (They aren't... they're just steam clouds. The radiation is contained.) I told her that radiation detectors aren't called "Geiger counters" there but are actually called "friskers." Ignorance breeds fear, I guess. Plus I had an AMS321 American Cultures class (Spring '99) that was pretty batshit stupid. We had to watch a stupid video glorifying Margaret Sanger. Another student and I told the teacher that Sanger's motivation for promoting birth control was because she was a complete racist eugenecist and a Nazi sympathizer, but the teacher claimed that such talk was "unsubstantiated rumors" or something, despite actual quotes from Sanger's own literature about eliminating "undesirable" races, "useless eaters" and such. The teacher was desperately reaching for her confirmation bias to appease her cognitive dissonance, I guess. (It wasn't until more recent years that I learned that the true birthplace of Nazism was in the USA with the whole eugenics movement spearheaded by Prescott Bush and the likes of IBM and Wall Street that propped Hitler up as the Bush family directly profited from slave labor at Auschwitz. I highly recommend reading Roger Stone's The Bush Crime Family and Dinesh D'Souza's The Big Lie for good information on the American orgins of Nazism.) One required book reading was one about prostitution in the USA. Oh God, was a dreary book. I read the first two chapters and then used the index in the back of the book to find the info I needed to write my paper on that. The book On the Road by Jack Kerouac was required reading. I couldn't get past the first few chapters because Kerouac was talking about these lazy-ass beatnic conmen who inspired each other artistically. I ended up doing my paper on how stupid the Beat Generation was and I got away with it. The teacher may have been a libtard, but at least she was fair about it. I don't think I really enjoyed anything from that class, except reading the book about Sitting Bull was alright.
I took an AMS394 Freelance Photography class that was only for three Saturdays in March of '99. The teacher's name was Gary Johnson and he was a freelance photographer for the famous Arizona Highways magazine. He saw that I had an eye for night photography, and I took this picture of myself on ASU West campus using a tripod, timer, and using slide film. One of the other photos was an 8 minute exposure at an aperature of f16 of a place on campus at night. The teacher liked it a lot, and the student next to me was the vice provost of some department on campus and said he wanted to use my pictures for future brochures for the school. I dunno if that ever happened.
I mentioned way back in essay #8: Getting ready to graduate which I wrote in July of '99, about how I was just so anxious to graduate. I'd find myself reading the same sentence from a book over and over again without understanding its meaning. I was getting burned out, and my heart felt like it was being catapaulted towards Japan. I wanted to hurry up and graduate. My heart was on its trajectory towards Japan at full speed... but just the prior month, I'd realized that my dear friend Lisa whom I had been friends with for years by that point had been in love with me and I hadn't realized it, even though my parents could see it and had tried to tell me, but I foolishly wouldn't believe them. She never showed any interest in what I was passionate about, so I was comfortable with being "just friends" and I assumed that it was mutual. It felt like emotional whiplash and it crushed my heart because that month I found out that her dad, who was also an ASU West student at the time, wanted me to marry his daughter. It was a sentiment precisely three years too late. I ended up losing her as a friend, and I'd hoped to hold onto her friendship forever as she was so dear to me. It was like a starship colliding with an asteroid at the speed of light and it left me reeling and questioning my future, my direction in life, and my own heart for a while. I felt so guilty and ashamed. I felt so terrible, as though I'd betrayed her somehow because I had secretly loved her all along but did not act on that love. I had a hard time even talking to her after then as the sense of shame overwhelmed me.
My final semester was Fall '99. The most fun I had was a multimedia class in which we used Macromedia Shockwave to create CD-ROM media. For my final project, I made an interactive slide show featuring photographs of my trip to Japan during the summer of '98. I made it as a gift for my girlfriend Mayu the next time I would visit her in Japan. I think Chris took that class with me. I elected piano music as background to the slide shows. The teacher had a sort of narrow-minded idea that I should use traditional Japanese music for the slideshow, but I had several reasons not to. 1. I needed longer music for the slide shows. 2. Japan is a modern country and the piano belongs to it as much as the USA. 3. I even had piano music from Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi as well Vangelis, etc. 4. Piano fit the sentimental ambience to the presentation more appropriately. 5. It's my media presentation, so neener neener. It was a fun class and an easy A.
For my GLB401 Global Business Integration, I had developed the ability to sleep while still paying attention in class. It was always after lunch in the afternoons. Often Raymond and I would get some crappy fast food burgers or whatever before that class. He liked McDonald's fish sandwiches which I admit aren't too bad... better than their gross burgers. But I'd be in class, nodding off with my hand propping up my head. I did alright in that class, though. Raymond and I did a big report together on some company I can't remember. The other class was MKT413 Marketing Research Concepts and Practices. I honestly cannot remember much about that class either. It was my final semester of college and all I could think about was graduating. Funny though, since now over two decades later, I'd love to rewind life like a VCR player and re-experience those years of my life.
I graduated December of '99. Chris graduated with me, and I believe Raymond, Alex, and Nikki did too. On Sunday, December 19th, I wrote this in my journal:
The last time I saw Chris was when Mayu and I visited San Diego in 2001 when we visited California that summer. We had dinner with them at Luigi's on Mission Beach, the fantastic Italian restaurant there by the ocean. I guess I lost track of him. I hope he's doing well. I had good memories with him and so many others in the School of Management program there. It was good to have them so often in various classes. I wish them all well.
On December 27th, my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme burst into flames and died in a blaze of glory. That old car lived just long enough to get me through college. God provided for me. On January 20th, 2000 I flew to Japan to propose to Mayu. For the Spring 2000 semester I retook the Freelance Photography class since it was only one credit hour and therefore I wouldn't have to spend much on tuition to take that class to remain employed on campus for another semester. I had taken a roll of slide film on my trip to Tokyo in January as I had flown to Japan to propose to Mayu, so this time I could show the pictures I took in Tokyo for that class. For the Summer I semester, I took an aerobics class. After that, my days of ASU West were over. I had good times there.
Campus employment at the Fletcher Library and the computer center "Technopolis"
The library job was perfect for an introvert like myself. I was shelving books that had been checked in. I became rather familiar with the Library of Congress, and after a while I could figure out where in the library a book belonged just by looking at it. I'd always wanted to work in a library, and it was so calm and serene. I found so many great books with that job, too. Books that I would not normally have discovered if I hadn't worked there. It was a great job.The best part about working in the library was that I didn't have to talk to anyone. I just shelved books. I don't remember checking them back into the system with a scanner. I think Erica and the regular staff did that. I worked there a few days a week.
I worked there Sunday evenings, and there was a foot fetishist who was a student from the Thunderbird School of Business Management. Students from that school could use ASU West's library (and vice versa) as well as enroll in classes there. So anyhow, this foot guy would be sneaking around the library, constantly peeking at women's feet from around the corners of book shelves and targeted any woman wearing sandals. Then he'd come up to them and offer to give them foot massages! Then the women would come to the front desk and tell us that some creepy guy was offering them foot massages, and then we'd dash about the library trying to find the guy so that we could laugh at his face. I mean, I have some fetishes of my own. Heck, I like girls with glasses. And cyborg girls. In college, I was in love with Battle Angel Alita. The closest one can find these days is a girl with hearing aids. That's sort of cyberpunk, I guess. I mean, I'm a Pisces, so I'm a bit perverted by default, I guess. But I can't wrap my head around the foot thing. Feet just look like...feet. It's weird. Anyhow, we never could catch the elusive creep.
I got along well with a girl named Erica who also worked at the library. She was Japanese-American and this was at the height of the whole late-'90s anime popularity boom. I remember she had tried to procure some Sailor Moon fansubs from some group and she got rooked somehow. It turns out her brother's wife is a woman from Japan named Mamiko, and she's essentially the "Kevin Bacon" of Japanese people living in the Phoenix area. I mean, every Japanese person living in the Phoenix Valley knows Mamiko somehow. It's weird. It turns out my friend Lou's wife is good friends with her. I've known Lou ever since my BBS days from the mid-'90s and since his wife is Japanese, he visits Japan often and he's the only friend of mine I have seen in-person in the past 11 years. Anyhow, Erica was a riot and she would send me lots of hilarious emails. She'd send me some weird crap, too. She was always fun. Erica was also hoping to get a job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program after she graduated. I remember her getting rejected (I was too), but I do not recall if she ever got a job in Japan after that.
The technology job was working at the student computing center called Technopolis, located in the basement floor of the library. For that job, the main responsibility was to answer questions that students may have and to help them with any computer problems. If there was nothing to do, we'd clean the computer desks with glass cleaner. But otherwise, we were "paid to sit around and know stuff," as I would put it. We were free to study and do homework too, as long as we appeared available to the student customers. It paid well, too. Particularly because of this job, I managed to become rather prominent at school and classmates would recognize me and greet me. I got to know a lot of people and it was great. I actually was fairly popular around school, for the first time in my life. I felt liked and appreciated.
The guys from the A/V department would kill time in Technopolis too, particularly Chris (the guy who lived in the Philippines) and Lorenzo. It was a pretty chill job to have, and I really enjoyed it. At first, I couldn't really answer anyone's questions. But in short while, I gained the experience to answer most questions and I enjoyed helping people. It was a bit frustrating when some new people who started working there after me did not have the humility to come ask for help. They'd lead a student customer astray and waste their time for a long while before I would have to intervene and solve the problem quickly. Must have been a pride issue. I just wanted to humbly help people and be good to them.
When I first started working there, there was an underclassman kid named Jon I worked with. He was an ASU Main student, but lived in the West Valley, so he worked at ASU West. He'd installed Ultima Online on the employee's Mac station and just parked his ass on that computer. Every time he was asked to help someone, he acted put off. At first I thought his name was Joan though, actually. He was a skinny twerp and wore tight shirts. He had long hair and had moobs and I thought he was just a nerdy tomboy girl. I was surprised when my supervisor told me Jon was a "he." Maybe Jon was overdosing on soy or something. He would use the ladies' restroom because he didn't want his ass kicked, and the ladies didn't want him in their restroom either. God... I never knew if he was going for the whole trans-jenga thing or not, but eventually he got his ass fired because of his rotten work ethic. The boss would ask him to do sutff and the sullen kid was always put off, especially when he had to get away from his Ultima Online game. (That game predated Everquest, which predated World of Warcraft.) I remember the day he got fired. I treated him to lunch at Kyoto Bowl and I introduced him to unagi (eel). He thought he would hate it, but I let him try a bite from my lunch and he liked it so much he had to get it for himself. He really deserved getting canned because his work attitude sucked, but I still felt sorry for him. I was one of the few people who tried talking to him. Jon was one of the few employees who really understood MacIntosh computers too. I took him to my house and we played some Dead or Alive on my Playstation in my room for a while before I took him home. You know, it sucks... I was going through my old email and I found an email he'd sent me after he was fired. I had sent him an email first to ask him how he was doing. He thanked me for showing such kindness to him when so many others wouldn't. I always had friendly conversations with him and tried to get to know him. In that email, he told me he didn't have many friends, and said that he considered me to be his friend and he wanted to keep in touch. I feel badly now because after I had sent him an email and he told me this in his reply, I don't think I ever got around to emailing him back. He wanted to remain friends and for whatever reason, I just didn't reply. I regret that now, looking back. Just like I regretted not writing more email to my dear friend Lisa when she transferred to Berkeley a year later. Incidentally, about a year later, Jon's father got hired working in Technopolis too. He was not what I would have expected to be a father to such a troubled son, because he seemed to be a rather jovial guy. I really hope Jon straightened his life out. Hopefully he was just going through a phase in life. I assume he was gay, but I never asked because it was never any of my crummy business.
Technopolis was more or less 3/5ths Windows computers and 2/5ths Mac computers. It was basically the Business students vs. the Education students at that campus. I really hated using Macs and I felt that they were really designed strangely. Why the hell isn't there an eject button on the 3.5" floppy drive? How the hell do I eject the disk? "Well you see Greg, what you do is click the floppy disk icon and drag it to the trash can." Wait... won't that erase all of the files on the disk? "No, it ejects the disk." Oh, to hell with this crap! And why isn't there at least a second mouse button? "Well, you don't need a second mouse button. Just click and hold the button and it brings up the menu that a Windows computer's second mouse button provides. Why bother with instant access to the menu when you can waste precious moments of your life holding the mouse button to get you the same result?" Oh to hell with this crap! Stupid Macs. To make it worse, sometimes you could put a disk into the drive and the lousy computer refused to recognize it. If there's no eject button and no icon appears for you to drag it to the trash, how are you supposed to eject the disk? Well, there were tiny little pinholes in which you could poke in order to force the computer to eject the disk. I straightened out a paperclip and taped a post-it-note to it saying "high-tech Mac disk ejector." When a student had this problem, I would show him or her the straightened out paperclip with the note attached and ask, "What do you think? I fashioned it myself with my wit and skill." Oooh, aaah. I remember that there was a virus that infected the Macs called "mouse droppings" or something like that which would cause the mouse pointer icon to take a crap on screen and make a farting noise. So the room would be quiet with people doing their work, and occasionally you'd hear some stupid, random fart noise coming from the Macs. Oh, brother.
Since the Technopolis job had a lot of down time, particularly late on a Sunday night, us staff would just get to gab with each other and we got to know each other fairly well. I have a personality that either people like me or they hate my guts. Some people just get irritated with my bizarre behavioral patterns and my eccentric way of interacting with people (such as my attempts to impress people with my ability to straighten out a paperclip as I just described), and this one guy who worked there totally lost his shit with me once. It was really over nothing big, but the guy just hated me so much and was apparently the only one who felt that way about me, so he just went apeshit and shouted at me in front of everyone inside the computing center. I had plenty of witnesses too. The asshole didn't even lose his job for it. You see what happened was that there were only two scanning stations there for students to use scanners to scan documents, photos, etc. The guy was parking his ass on one of those computers and there were students waiting in line to use the scanners. He was using it just to check his damned email. The night crew lead had already asked him to get off of it so that a student could use it, but he didn't budge. The girl who wanted to use the scanner looked perplexed and apparently short on time, so after a few moments I backed up the night manager and told him that he could just as well use another computer to do his email on. That's when he exploded at me. That student was essentially a customer, right? Seeing me get verbally abused by Mr. PMS like that made her feel even worse. She even apologized to me, but I told her it wasn't necessary. The guy was convinced somehow that I was an imbecile. He also was only about 10 years older than me and had a daughter in high school even, not that much younger than myself. I can't remember the actual math, but he apparently got rather busy with a girl when he was still in junior high or something like that. I forget what his major was, but he was always so highly stressed-out, and I was always so mellow and he resented the crap out of me. Fortunately, I was usually working the night crew, so I didn't have to put up with that asshole often. The night crew lead (I forget her name) saw what happened and she backed me up.
Everyone else besides that unhappy turd seemed to appreciate me, I guess. We had fun working there in that basement at night. When we got bored, Jose and I would swap our name tags and try to get each other fired. "I'll have you know that my name is Jose and I think you are no good! Your computer skills are lackluster and I'll never be your best friend!" Then we would crack up. Since we knew what each of the computers' numbers were in the computing center, we'd dick around with people we knew. What we'd do is pull up the DOS command prompt and by using the "netsend" command, we could make pop-up windows appear on their screens with whatever crap we could think up. It was great fun. Like this girl Nikki I knew from my classes. I used the netsend command to make a popup appear on her screen saying, "The Matrix has you, Nikki." Then as I was watching her, she looked up and had a rather paranoid, surprised-looking face. She didn't make eye contact with me. So I'd send another message like, "The old woman who just walked through the door... she's one of THEM. Whatever you do, do NOT make eye contact with her!" Then Nikki had had enough and came up to me. "Greg, I'm getting these weird messages popping up on my computer screen..." Then I admitted that I was playing with her. It was fun.
Although there was a language lab somewhere on campus, I sometimes offered to proofread some people's compositions since English was one of my strongpoints. One time this girl asked me to proofread this essay she had written, and it was about how she had overcome anorexia. In her essay, she describes that when a woman drops below a certain bodyfat threshold, she stops menstruating. She described how she struggled to make herself eat at times. Oh dear God, as I read this, it expanded my compassion and empathy. My dear friend Lisa from church and GCC was also anorexic, and by reading this girl's essay, I felt like I could finally empathize with my friend and what she was going through. It just made me so sad because she was such a precious girl. Also after I started living in Japan, there was a woman named Junco who attended the church I went to. She had overcome anorexia at some rehabilitation camp in Arizona, but I think it was my fault that she became anorexic again. She was a few years older than me, but I think perhaps she may have liked me. We'd gone to an all-you-can-eat buffet and she saw how much I could eat (I hadn't yet reached my mid-70s metabolic speed bump yet), and I think I must have wrecked her. Anyhow, I'll always remember that girl and her essay she asked me to assist her with. I've had two girls who were dear friends to me who suffered from anorexia and it makes me sad.
In the evenings, we had to look at the schedules and go to the various computer classrooms to shut down the computers after the last classes of the evening. We'd have to wipe down the stations with window cleaner too. The CLCC building was where the computer labs were, as well as life science labs. I swear, this one room reeked as they students were breeding fruit flies with rotten bananas soaked in ostrich piss or something. Every time I'd walk by with Jose or somebody, we'd get a whiff of that ghastly smell. Sometimes I would remark that if I'd fart in the hallway, it would improve the smell. So gross. I hated walking by that room because even with the door closed, you could smell whatever the hell that crap was.
It's funny... In April '99, I made the mistake of mentioning to my coworkers in Technopolis how student government is so phony and pointless. I learned that at least seven of my coworkers had voted for me as a write-in candidate for a senator position for the student government. Ha ha, real funny, guys. Thanks a lot. Good thing I didn't win.
Jose, Lorenzo, Kathy, Mark, Betsy, Chris, Bobby... we had good times working there at the Technopolis student computing lab. Those were great days and I miss the times we had together, just talking shit about crap and enjoying each other's company. And after I visited Japan the summer of '98, those friends at work there were very positive about my trip, about Japan, and about my relationship with Mayu. If you've read the essay about my love story, you'll remember that I mentioned about how my church friends were not very positive about my long-distance relationship with a girl in Japan, except for a couple. My friends at school, on the other hand, were largely positive. It kind of disappointed me that most of the friends I'd had at church for years were not positive and encouraging, and it just made me withdraw from that group. Like they felt I was making a mistake. Betsy was always positive. She's flash a smile and ask, "And how is Mayu?" As if I talked with Mayu on a daily basis. I appreciated her enthusiasm though. She was nice.
Ha! I remember the first night Betsy started. I had my electronic key card in my back pocket, and when we went out through the door into the break room that night, all I did was rub my butt up against the sensor plate to unlock the door. She asked, "What did you just do?" So I was full of crap and felt like pulling her leg, so I told her, "Well you know how everyone's ass is unique, right? Behold! This is the Ass Scan 9000, the cutting edge ass technology. Instead of using fingerprints, this sensor can analyze your ass and open the door for you." She knew I was full of crap and laughed. Wait.. does that count as sexually harassment?
The Asian Pacific Islanders Association
Here's our picnic. That's Chris wearing the white shirt with his Filipina girlfriend (can't remember her name). Hey look, I used to wear jeans back then. Weird. That's Eric wearing sunglasses. He's married to a Vietnamese woman, who may not have been there that day. I can't remember. I think the girl standing over to the right from me is Ahnthu. I can't remember.
It's not a very good picture, but this is me with Kee, our faculty advisor. Kee's striking quite a debonair pose, isn't he?
I think Erica graduated Spring '98. Her VP, a Vietnamese gal named Ahnthu, became president and I somehow ended up as her VP. Really, I didn't even want to be the treasurer, but now I was the VP. I said that since I wasn't even Asian, it was weird that I was now VP. Ahnthu said that because I am not Asian I was ideal for the job. She was a sweet gal and she had the group surprise me at my job in Technopolis on my birthday in '99 (but didn't realize that she'd sent me the notice to my email address).
I actually found this email from March 31st, '99 from Ahnthu that I found rather touching.
That meant a lot to me. She was a very nice girl. Ahnthu graduated at the end of that semester, in May '99. I barely even remember Lynn, other than she was a petite Vietnamese girl. I was hoping that she would take over as president of the club, but I don't remember whatever happened to her.
For my final semester, in the fall of '99, we had a new president, a Chinese-American gal named Sherry. We also had a new faculty advisor for the club, and I won't mention her name. The thing is, this faculty advisor somehow felt it was appropriate to corner Sherry in her office and get in her face about the Lord Jesus Christ and all that. It flustered Sherry and she quit. Alright, so I am Christian myself, but this woman's behavior was completely unacceptable. If Sherry was open to such a conversation, then that's great and I'm all for it. But Sherry did not welcome this as she was not religious (or at least not Christian), and their relationship became totally strained. So Sherry quit, saying that being a mother and a full-time student was too much for her and did not have time for the club, and she then named me president of our APIA. I cannot remember if Sherry lodged a complaint or not. I hate to say it, but since this faculty advisor was a black woman with a PhD, she could probably get away with bullying students with religion like that. Holy crap, I wanted to quit too as I did not feel comfortable working with that woman. I liked it more when Kee was our advisor, but he was more of a support role for some reason.
So it was the APIA club on campus, with a White guy as president, and if I recall correctly, Nikki (the half-Black girl I was friends with) became vice president. We also had these two beautiful African girls, one from Somalia and one from Ethiopia, in the club. I was like, wait... this is supposed to be a club for Asians by Asians, and look at what was going on. We non-Asians seem to be taking over. This was weird. I mean, I liked Nikki and all (and something tells me that maybe she might have had a crush on me), but this was turning into a crazy experience. Chris was also involved. So it was supposedly an Asian club, but we were short on Asians. My Vietnamese friend Bic from GCC was also attending the club (whom I knew definitely had a crush on me) when she transferred to ASU West for an Education degree, and there were other Asians, but nobody wanted to step up... it all fell on my reluctant lap. So we had meetings maybe once a month, but due to my class schedule, I wasn't even able to attend. Was I even necessary? Did the club even need a president at this point? The whole situation was weird. After I graduated in December '99, the club went on hiatus. I retook the freelance photography for the Spring 2000 semester and then an aerobics class for the Summer I 2000 session in order to keep my jobs working on campus, but the club basically faltered. Sorry, Erica. I guess I broke your club.
It was a learning experience though, as we put on performances every May for Asian Week. A stage was set up and we had martial artists, musicians, dancers and crap like that perform. There were times it felt like we couldn't get it done, but with my limited connections I was able to contribute to make the events happen. It was nice and I had good memories. Plus Nikki was cute, but I think I mentioned that already. I was glad she joined the club.
The last thing I managed to do for the club was to co-sponsore a Kurosawa Film Festival in the Kiva lecture hall building, along with that Japanese history teacher. That was in early 2000 and that was pretty much it. I really cannot remember why exactly the club fell apart at the end, but it was probably my fault. I was not able to pass the torch on to a successor. I think the unfortunate thing was that bossy bear faculty advisor who kind of botched things for the club. Nuts. There weren't enough Asians to take leadership roles in the club. Most just wanted to have fun but not get directly involved. Oh well.
I made some nice friends from my experience with the APIA club. Hideyuki was an ASU Main student, but he was involved with the APIA club at ASU West. We became friends past graduation, and I visited him in January 2000 when I visited Japan to propose to Mayu. He got a job working for Honda. Hide attended our wedding in Tokorozawa in March 2001. There was a guy named Lymeng who taught English in South Korea for a year or so and he was able to give me advice on looking for teaching jobs. His family was from Cambodia and we got along well. And I remember Brian, a guy from South Korea. He was a graduate student and he gave me advice on how to handle Mayu's overly-controlling mother as he said that Korean mother-in-laws are the same way. I remember once when a group of us were in my car driving across town to some function and I was playing my Lush cassette on the car stereo. He told me that the song "Hey Hey, Helen" was a cover of a song by Abba. I didn't know that. I'd only heard the Lush version.
Fun with friends
My parents were active with an organization called Welcome Partners in which American families could act as sort of mentors for the international students at the Thunderbird School of International Business Management, which has a strong relationship with ASU West. It's how I met Hiromi, and also a gal from Thailand named Sherry, whom my uncle married about 10 years later! Through Hiromi, I got involved with the Japanese club at T-bird and I had some fun times with that group. In May '99, Hiromi invited me to a BBQ for the Japanese club. There I got to meet some interesting students from Japan as well as a few Americans who were former teachers in Japan on the JET Program. In June, they had an anime showing, but the American guy running the show was a bit of a dork and had some crappy tastes in anime, I have to say. The only one I liked was Ranma 1/2. Later that evening, we had another BBQ. This was at an apartment complex, and we were pretty rambunctious. This dude Toru from Osaka was real fun, and I told him I'd visited Osaka the year before. Toru was pretty drunk, and from him I learned that Japanese guys often refer to their privates as their "son" (musuko) and I got a kick out of that. Another guy named Taku was downing a lot of beer. His friend Tim kept telling him, "Please don't puke in my car," and I learned how to say that in Japanese. We all went swimming in the pool, even though we didn't have swim trunks. We just stripped to our boxer shorts and dove in. "Please don't puke in the pool, Taku!" After a while, we discovered a nearby Jacuzzi and got in. Along the way, Toru noticed how my wet boxers were clinging to "my son" when we relocated from the pool to the Jacuzzi and he started talking about how much bigger American men's penises are than his own. I told him he was drunk. (But actually, it is usually pretty true about the whole Japanese men's size thing. After I moved to Japan the first time, I got to hear a lot about that once I joined a Konami sports gym and had strangers coming up to me and telling me about their insecurity, as if I even cared to listen.) Those guys were fun, but I realized that evening that many Japanese guys need to drink alcohol in order to loosen up before they can be any fun.
In July, Hiromi had told me about a special presentation at the T-bird school on working for a Japanese company, both in America and Japan. I took lots of notes and learned a lot. There was also a big event put on by the Japan club, and Kee and I attended. Kee was surprised at how many Chinese students were there. Kee was a single guy, but he was too picky. He always said stuff about how girls from Beijing and Hong Kong are too materialistic, and how girls from Shanghai are snobs. There was a pretty Chinese girl named Joyce at the calligraphy table and was painting artwork for people. I noticed she didn't shave her arm pits, and I told Kee I think it's cute and pretty, and how cool it is that girls from China are like that. He said she wasn't pretty and that she was too thin, and suspected that she was anorexic. I don't know about that. I thought she was very pretty, but I think she just didn't like him. That night I also met an ex-Jet guy named Steven, who was also did hiring for the JET the previous year. He became a mentor to me, and he told me that I'd be a shoe-in for the job. (However when I interviewed for the JET the next year, I didn't even make the back-up list. Oh well. I still found employment through the Sister Cities program.)
So many people have stories of the debauchery they indulged in during their college years, but I have no such stories. I really was never a drinker in college, and instead was the designated driver. My dad never really drank alcohol, and only rarely ever had beer as the yeast would put him to sleep every time. I really didn't grow much of an appreciation for beer until I started living in Japan. American beer just tastes and smells sick to me. The Technopolis/IT student worker crowd would have parties and such and we all got along pretty well with each other. Because I had such a goofy sense of humor and would crack people up, the idea that several had was to get me drunk because their theory was that I'd be even funnier if I were to get intoxicated. It never really happened because usually I was the designated driver. Especially since I drove that big, old Cutlass Supreme car that could seat four other people besides myself. There was a guy named Jason who was also a marketing major who worked for the A/V media department with Lorenzo. Once in January '98 I was getting over a cold I'd caught soon after the second time Mayu came to visit me in America. I had to come in to work to fill out my time sheet, and ended up staying until 6pm chatting with others. Everybody was going drinking after work. I declined to go, because I wasn't feeling well. Jason snickered at that. He'd offered to take me to a bar a month prior and get me drunk, but I had declined. I think he took offense to that. So that night I really wasn't interested, and furthermore I was still getting over a cold. So when he left that night, he condescendingly told me to be sure to take my vitamins. I replied, "Jason, did I ever tell you that I am supposed to be cool? If not, don't get so disappointed when you find out that I'm not." He didn't reply.
We IT guys would have backyard parties at Mark's place or Jose's place. The house across the street from Mark's was a crack house, he said. There were always sofas and such on sale in the front yard. Crazy. I remember once we had a fantastic backyard party at Jose's place, and his mom from Mexico was making some fantastic carne asada that night. Holy crap, even the tortillas she had to wrap it in were fantastic. She couldn't speak much English, but she was a fantastic cook. Chris wanted me to get drunk with the rest of them, because he was convinced that I'd really get goofy. Alas, I did not. I'd have some Jell-O shooters and such, but not much. Alcohol is an acquired taste, and I really did not have much of an interest in acquiring it. I was careful not to get too much into my system because I'd be driving home. That night, we were sitting around on plastic chairs and Lorenzo was totally drunk and laughing his ass off. We were like, "You're drunk, dude." Lorenzo was like, "Oh yeah? If I was drunk, could I do THIS?" And he stood up on the plastic chair to try to surf on top of the arm rests, and the damned chair snapped under his weight and he fell down on Jose's lawn and spilled tequilla into his eye. He was nearly screaming. "Oh GOD, MY EYES! IT BURNS!" We were all laughing at him and told him to go wash his eye out. I ended up driving him home that night. Lorenzo and I got along well and would often discuss music. He was really into Paul Oakenfold's trance music, Lush, and other bands. In November of '99, he and I went to see Princess Mononoke at a theater in Scottsdale that would often show in foreign films. Lorenzo would crack me up by doing impressions of people. His impersonations of our coworkers Sandy and Betsy were particularly hilarious.
On Friday, August 27th, a bunch of us went to a place in Scottsdale called Kyoto's. It was right on Stetson Drive where all the art galleries and gift shops are. We carpooled, and I was the designated driver. Everyone got to enjoy riding in my un-airconditioned, big-ass Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. When we got there, we pulled up next to some dork getting out of his Nissan Infinity. He saw my old car and said, "Now that's a fuckin' car!" What an idiot. He was missing an adjective. Maybe if he had said, "Now that's a big fuckin' car," it would have made sense. I snarkily replied, "Well, I've never seen it 'fuck' before..." I was afraid he might have wanted to kick my ass after my sarcastic response, so I made sure we hurried to the restaurant.
I had the impression that Kyoto's would be a quiet restaurant, with waitresses in kimonos and peaceful Japanese music playing in the background. Nope! It was really a loud teppanyaki place with a bar-like atmosphere, complete with bouncers. I later found out that the son of the pastor of the church that Mayu went to in Japan had worked there once when he was an ASU student. While we were waiting for our table, my coworkers were drinking "sake bombers," which is a shot of sake you drop into a glass of beer. Big whoop. The sake was served warm too. Why serve warm sake in summer? Weird. The other carpool driver, Merlin, didn't like drinking alcohol either. Yet for some reason the others respected his decision to not drink. They kept insisting that I drink too. Bobby and George kept insisting. So I had a sake bomber, and it was alright. I can't remember what type of beer it was, but I'm sure it was a Japanese brand. I really didn't develop a taste for beer until after I started living in Japan.
Some chick was having a bachelorette party that night. She wore a bridal veil, a low-cut dress, and rubber penis-shaped earrings. She started talking to some of the guys I was with. She asked me something, but I couldn't hear her since I kept looking at her stupid earrings. I just asked, "Are those penises?" One of her friends was making eyes at me and was interested in knowing my name, but I couldn't care less about talking to her. I just kept thinking that Kyoto's was not the type of place I'd ever want to take Mayu to. After an hour or so, our table was finally called. The service was kind of crappy, because $16 worth of sushi we didn't even order was added to the tab. We had to bicker about that with the server. Meanwhile, some of the bachelorette party girls followed Mark into the men's restroom. I don't know what they did or said to him, but he was really pissed off at them. Bobby's girlfriend dropped his share of sushi on the ground, but he was too drunk to notice.
On the way out, there was some techno music playing at a pub next door. Lorenzo and Bobby's girlfriend danced around in the street like goofballs while Bobby pissed on the tire of a Hummer that some rich guy parked in the middle of the sidewalk because apparently he was too rich and important to park his phony vehicle where the rest of us peasants parked. Before we left, Mark rolled around on the hood of the Infinity belonging to the phony "fucking car" guy. We kept telling him to get in the car, but he kept jumping up on the car. Once he jumped onto the roof and rolled onto the hood of the car. As I drove off, George's wife swore she saw dents on the car's hood, but I didn't see any. On the way home, Mark was complaining about how he couldn't ever seem to find any decent girls. Whatever the Penis Brigade girls said or did to him in the men's restroom at the restaurant really pissed him off.
As I mentioned before, after I graduated, I re-took the simple freelance photography class in order to keep working at school. The class was only for three Saturday nights in March or so, like the last time. It helped me remain employed at school with both jobs. In January 2000 just before I flew to Japan to propose to Mayu, I bought Dave's Sega Dreamcast that he'd only played a bit. He bought it on 9/9/'99, the first day it went on sale, along with a few games, and ended up not playing it much. After I got back from my trip to Japan, on February 12th, we in the Technopolis crew had a farewell party for Carla at a restaurant/bar called Bobby McGee's. They also wanted to celebrate my engagement to Mayu. Everyone congratulated me and told me that our love story was romantic. I swear to God, that really meant a lot to me and made me feel so much better because my singles' group at church never responded so positively, except for a couple of people.
On Friday, March 10th, I had dinner with Han and Lorenzo from work at Takamatsu, a Korean/Japanese restaurant with great Korean BBQ and sushi. Han was from Korea and we had a great time. We had bibimbap and Han told Lorenzo and I a lot about Korean food. Plus the sushi there was pretty great. I'd been there a few times with Bobby, too. The next night was Saturday, March 11th. There was a billiards bar called Six Shooters that I'd been to several times with friends from church and such. It was all-ages place up until a certain time of night, and after then we'd get carded. So I shot pool with my coworkers there and had a great time. There was free refills on iced tea, so that's what I was drinking. Bobby was always trying to get me drunk, so he offered to buy me an alcoholic drink. I asked him to get me a Long Island iced tea, since I'd had those before and it was the type of booze I liked at the time (something a little sweet). After that, he offered to buy me a second Long Island, so hey, why not? Well, that may have been a mistake, but I didn't realize it at the time. Later in the karaoke room, Bobby sang Credence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and was a total cornball about it, totally hamming it up. His girlfriend kept shouting, "YOU SUCK!" at him and it was hilarious. Bobby would respond to her and say, "Dude, I shred!" I laughed the whole time. At the end of the night, Bobby asked me if I needed a ride home. I was like, "It's alright. I've just had a few Long Islands. I feel fine." "Are you sure?" "Yeah, totally. Don't worry about it." I drove my dad's truck that night since my Cutlass Supreme car had died a fiery death a few months prior, after I had graduated. Fortunately, I got home just fine. I came in and Dad was watching some stupid movie like Earth Girls are Easy or some crap like that on the USA Network. I sat down on the sofa next to him and suddenly that was when it hit me. My head suddenly felt so heavy and the room started spinning. I wasn't aware of it, but I had driven home drunk without even knowing I was drunk until I got home. It didn't hit me until I got home. I thought that Long Islands were actually sweetened iced teas with just a squirt of whiskey, but Dad told me that they are made of gin, rum, vodka and such with a splash of cola for coloring and a sweet taste. Oh my. So that is why Bobby was so concerned about me. He had his girlfriend to drive him home and had offered to have her drive me too. From that night on, I made sure to be more careful.
The summer of goodbyes
On Saturday, July 8th, the Technopolis crew threw a farewell party for me. We had dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant, called Fu Sing Garden. My aunt Sherry from Thailand loved that restaurant too, but unfortunately it closed a long time ago. So we had a group dinner there and Jose got a kick out of the "Pu Pu platter." That became quite a running joke the rest of the night. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only immature person around. Gosh, I loved that restaurant. Their Yui Shang eggplant was my favorite ever since I went there with my friend Raymond for lunch between classes once and had it there for the first time. It was so spicy and I loved it. Anyway, dinner was just the first phase of the farewell night for me.
On to Pink E's, a pool hall bar in which all of the billiards tables were pink. True to the establishment's name, everything was pink and gaudy there. I liked it. I always enjoyed playing pool, and we played some air hockey that night too. It was great. Kathy used the ladies' restroom and came back flustered. "Oh my God you guys. You aren't going to believe it. The women's restroom walls are plastered with pictures of naked men masturbating." Whaaaaaat? "Yes, they are all naked and holding their hard-ons with their hands. And none of the have any pubic hair. It's disgusting." Someone said that the men's restroom is the same, but instead with naked chicks. So eventually I when I had to use the restroom, yes, I saw for myself that the walls were plastered with pictures of naked women with big, fake-looking tits and alarmingly hairless pussies. Not a single pubic hair in sight. I can't stand bald pussies. It's so disturbing to me and it's one of the factors that has kept me from falling into the trap of watching porn because the pseudo-pedo aspect to it turns me off. I mean, I'm not a total prude. A woman can pose nude for a photograph and can be all cute and charming and pretty and I wouldn't consider that pornographic; it's more like a celebration of femininity and the feminine form. Fine. It can even be artistic. But when some woman with phony tits poses nude with a sleazy look on her face and spreading her childish-looking hairless taco wide open like a slutty whore, I guess the normies like phony crap like that, but I don't appreciate it. As Mr. Horse says, "No, sir. I don't like it." So after I came back out, I told Kathy that none of the women had any pubic hair in the room of photos and it was quite disturbing. She agreed that the whole hairless obsession is pretty stupid. It's sick. So I'd been drinking Long Islands that night, and Kathy bought me a strawberry daiquiri and thought that she was doing me a favor by making it stronger. Ugh, I hadn't yet developed a taste for alcohol yet at this point in my life, so it tasted just a bit too strong for me.
I had a lot of fun that night. I think Jose took these pictures of me.
I never realized how attached I was to my coworkers until I had to say goodbye. That night really meant a lot to me. I was in good company with my fellow IT workers on campus there (and in the library), and they were so supportive an encouraging of my long-distance relationship with Mayu. Working at ASU West was a real blessing because those two jobs hired me when nobody else would. My efforts to get jobs at places like Best Buy were to no avail, and such places would not have worked so well around my school schedule anyway. I could go from class to my job without having to get in my car and drive anywhere. Working on campus was a good experience for me.
Left: This is Kathy and... I forget his name. He worked for the media dept. with Lorenzo. Right: George and his wife. (I'm sure she had a name, but I can't remember.)
Left: My Technopolis boss, Craig. He was alright. Actually, my last year I got a bit pissed off at him for not making me the student night shift lead because I was there nearly every night and was the one who everyone went to for advice. He gave the position to Kathy instead, even though she was only there two nights a week. Oh well. I soon had peace about it. Right: This is Jose. He and Chris were good friends, but Chris had left when we graduated in December.
There was a reflection pool between the Sands building and the Kiva lecture hall building, about a foot deep. I had vowed that once I graduated, I would take my shoes and socks off and run through the length of the pool.
Here are some songs that were played a lot in that old car of mine full of friends on our way to have fun somewhere, by Shonen Knife, The Ramones, and Lush.
BONUS: Here is a gallery of photos I took on slide film for my freelance photography class.
"Life moves by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." ~Ferris Bueller mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net
~From a photo album cover my Japanese mother-in-law once gave me
When I was a kid, I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I am now 47, and I guess I still don't know. Oh well, what the hell? When it comes to teaching English in Japan, it might be something that people usually do for a year or two, and then go back and figure out how to readjust to their life in their home country. Readjusting to life in America was not something I was able to do. I've talked about this before a few times in these essays of mine. After I got married, I moved to Arizona with my wife Mayu and it felt like a part of myself was left behind in Japan. I did not feel the same. I even had a bit of a breakdown, if you could call it that. I had no idea in which direction I wanted to take in life. I had to fumble my way through several temp jobs for years until I wound up doing process compliance, fiancial analysis, and project coordination work for IT departments in Fortune 500 companies. The most important skill I had for those jobs was not really my college degree, but just being proficient in Microsoft Excel. It just shows how phony the insistence of hiring college graduates can be. 
My first semester at ASU West was fall of '97. I had one more class to take at Glendale Community College (GCC), and it was ACC212, Managerial Accounting. I hated accounting, but I managed to get a B for that class. It was just one last pre-requisite the class scheduling advisor discovered that I needed to take. It was nice because although I only had one class left to take at GCC, I still got to see my friends Kevin, Lisa, and Bic. A year or so after, Bic and later Kevin attended ASU West, and Kevin also got the same degree as I did. So for that semester, the plan was to take that Accounting class at GCC, a Japanese 116 class at Phoenix College, and a semester of classes at ASU West. I was going to be bouncing between three college campuses. The thing is, the Japanese class was cancelled and I wasn't even notified by mail by the college. They didn't even notify the teacher! So to prevent from becoming a part-time student and losing my parents' health insurance status, I signed up for a Japanese history class at ASU West on Thursday nights. That meant that my usual Thursday night of Therapy Night with my friends Richard and Steve at the Coffee Plantation downtown went goodbye.
When I graduated high school, there was no love lost. But this time, graduating college, I felt sad. I know several people graduating, and I was sad to think that I'll never see them again. I've really enjoyed the years I've spent at ASU West. I've enjoyed college.
So at the start of my first semester at ASU West in Fall '97, I was unemployed. That summer, I had a crappy mall food job and I quit. It was a place called "Cajun Grill" at Arrowhead Mall that was not at all real Cajun food at all. The main selling point was their "bourbon chicken," which was probably teriyaki chicken with a bit of bourbon in the recipe. It was owned by a cranky woman from Hong Kong whom I got along with splendidly at first, but it went downhill and I quit in August. So in September, I was rather distraught about how I could find employment that could work around my class schedule, and that September I found the perfect solution to my dilemma. I applied for a library aide position and a technology support specialist position. Both jobs were in the same building, the Fletcher Library. I got hired! Because I was a student, I was able to work my shifts around my class schedule, and I wouldn't even have to leave campus either. These jobs were perfect! The library job paid less than the IT job, but even that job paid better than the mall food court job.
Erica, my friend who worked at the library with me, invited me to join the Asian Pacific Islanders Association chapter she had begun at ASU West, since I was interested in not only Japan but Asia in general. Plus I was already making friends with several Asians on campus. This was the Spring '98 semester, I believe. Before I knew it, I was named treasurer of the club, and I really wasn't even interested in having such a title in the club. I was just there to socialize, you know? We had our own little club room on campus for meetings and such. We did fun stuff together, attending different functions with other APIA clubs (which were much bigger than our small club from our small campus), we attended events put on by the Asian clubs at the Thunderbird school, we went to see an Asian comedy group perform somewhere, we'd go out to dinner together, and once we went to Gameworks at the AZ Mills mall. Once since I was an employee at the school, I was able to request an ASU West van to borrow for one evening. It was Erica's idea to go to the Indian casino and enjoy all-you-can-eat crab legs at the buffet there, so I drove the APIA club to dinner and we had plenty of crab legs, and I suggested we request a table in the smoking section so that we wouldn't have to deal with the long wait even though none of us smoked. Yeah, we had some fun times. We had a faculty advisor named Kee, a Chinese guy from Malaysia, and he and I became friends. He even wrote a letter of recommendation for me to use for applications to the JET Program and the Phoenix Sister Cities teaching program. (Kee and I remained friends even after I moved back to Arizona from Japan in 2002). We once had a BBQ picnic at a park for Veterans' Day November 11th, 1998. 
This is a clarification about the nomination of Lynn Van to be the Vice President. This does not mean Greg is being replaced at all. If replacing anyone is the issue, then Greg is one of the first person who should not be replaced at all. He has been through a lot with the club.
He has done so many things for the club. In fact, Greg is one of the persons who gives the positive perspective whenever there is a tough time, not sarcasm like some people would.
Libraries are cool. I always enjoyed hanging out in libraries, particularly on rainy days. It was so cool to work at the library and see so many people I knew there. I saw Brian from South Korea constantly in the library as he practically lived there. The library is where I would meet Reiko to tutor each other in '97, as I tutored her in English and she tutored me in Japanese. Lisa's father had introduced me to her and she attended our church for a while. Then later in '99 it was Hiromi, who was a student at the Thunderbird school. We tutored each other at that library too. She too attended my wedding in 2001, and even flew from Hiroshima to attend, if I recall correctly. That big library was good for when I wanted to really focus on studying, to get away from my parents' TV sets, my kitty Agent Cooper, and my fish Steve who was always so elegantly distracting yet soothing to me. I have so many fond memories of times spent at that library.
I was hired to work in Himeji, Japan on Wednesday, May 31st, 2000. I took an aerobics class for the first summer session so that I could remain employed for a few extra months at ASU West. I felt stupid, but it was good exercise. I continued working in both the library and Technopolis in June. On Friday, July 7th, my boss at the Library, Milli threw me a small farewell party at work. It was her day off, but she still came in to do something nice for me. She always appreciated me. My final day working at Technopolis was Sunday, July 9th. I filled in for Betsy because she had to study for her GRE test. 
Next: My trip to Gold Coast, Australia in 2019
Go back to the "Greg's Life" Table of Contents