This phase is phamiliar.

School is pwning my life. The past couple weeks, I haven't left work until atleast 7PM. I'm adjusting to a new grading policy, and I'm already behind on interventions and such. I'm not saying I hate it, I'm just saying I need more time. Time has always been my achilles. I'm out of sync with my world, the people in my world, and myself.
Last class, I posted this Stephen Crane poem on the board and told the students to write down a reflection:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
My point was to get them to acknowledge the overwhelming generation me attitude in the high school world. Everybody is performing, and no one is listening.
Even at my age, I still feel like I'm performing, like the world is my stage, and I'm the protagonist. I imagine I will eventually save the day. I imagine the players in my story will provide me the challenges and support for my role to grow. My major character flaw is placing too much expectation on my players. That sounds lame. It's kind of like saying your greatest weakness is working too hard. No, my major character flaw is hubris. My arrogance is a defense mechanism for when I feel insecure, which is a lot of the time. I'm out of sync. I'm waiting for everyone else to grow up, while they are waiting for me to do the same. I'm so afraid of being an extra in someone else's story. I don't want to be a lesson learned. I don't want to be a minor set back or the moral of the story. I don't want to be a forgotten phase in a sea of faces.
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

Phailblog part V

One of my colleagues came into my room today to show me a quiz she got back. The quiz was over dimensional analysis which is a simple way of organizing numbers and units in order to carry out multiplication and division. It's spectacular but gets a terrible wrap from lazy, ungrateful children. Anyways, a question on the quiz read, "convert 5 inches to feet." The response to the question read, "12-5 = -7" NEGATIVE SEVEN!! HAHAHA, I laughed soooooo hard. The negative sign was like the little cherry on top that let me know it would be an awesomely highlarious day.
This morning at 9 AM, I had an online assignment due. You guys remember that UT online homework system we used in physics and in college chemistry? Oh yes, I am using it now to torment my minions. Anyways, I gave them 9 days to complete a 30 question assignment. Three students hadn't even registered with the website yet even though I posted instructions on how to do that on my school blog. Everyday, I reminded them that the assignment was open, and I even added on an extra day. They feel like I am abusing them, but shit! The economy is down and China is kicking our asses in math and science. Someone's gotta break them and their generation ME attitudes. MUAHAHA! Honey badger all day errday. Also, I've been giving out asset to class clementines everyday to instill some competitive edge in them. Let the games for my favoritism begin!

Phailblog part IV

I created a teacher facebook separate from my personal facebook account at the end of the previous school year because I kinda missed my annoying students. I don't check it very often but fortunately, I received a notification of a certain event. This year, the school is very aggressive on dress code policy. The students obviously object to this. One of my former students was told on the first day that he could not wear his sleeveless tshirt. I don't care either way, but if this gives me the chance to take some fools down a notch or two, I'm taking it! Anyways, the event I was invited to was titled "Sleeveless/Tank Top Wednesday!" There was about 100 confirmed attendees and the point was to silently rebel against establishment blah blah blah, nothing too impressive in terms of civil rights. My student posted on the wall, "uhh guys, I think I accidently invited Mr. Pham to the event," to which his comrades appropriately responded, "fail," etc.
Instead of snitching on everyone in the group, which I totally would, I would rather them all get in trouble on Wednesday and see how aggressively the faculty and admin would stick my our dress code policy. So I posted on the wall, "I dress like a boss errday, so I never get dress coded. GETONMYLEVEL!" Needless to say, I am very excited to bust some chops on Wednesday.

Phambroiled Whopper!

My flight out of Saigon to Seoul was 5 hours, so I planned on watching about 2.5 movies. They added some newer releases since my last flight so I was a bit excited! FastFive topped the list, and Julia mentioned that action movies were fun for plane rides. Also, I've liked the Rock since my WWF days. IT WAS AWESOME! After that, I watched Hanna, starring Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, and soixiEOOIEFSDkla girl from lucky bones. It was a bit dull for an action movie about a girl trained to be an assassin. I'm sure Colombiana will be better. Next up was Kung Fu Panda. I fell asleep. The plane landed and I had 5 hours to kill before the next flight. I laid down in the unused terminals and watched Korean television while the clean up crew vacuumed. I listened to some more Moth and TAL reruns. Finally, I hopped on another plane. I started this trip watching Battle Los Angeles, which Julia said was good. I remembered that I already watched this a long time ago, but nothing else intrigued me so I kept it on. Next was Arthur, starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, and some girl that might as well have been Zoe Deschanel. I would have glossed over this one had it not been for some article that Russell Brand wrote about the London riots. Anywho, it was a decent comedy. I fell asleep soon after. This plane was super crowded and hot. The old lady next to me kept making noises and elbowed me a couple times. RUDE. The 11 hour flight came to an end. I landed in LAX, spent an hour or two in customs, then ran to the closest Burger King! It was delicious and fatty and greasy and flame-broiled to perfection. AMERICA! 3 hours back to DFW on Thursday at 5 AM, passed out in Arlington, woke up at 3 PM. Jet lag was a b and remained one for the next 5 days.
On Friday, I decided to go back to Austin and surprised Mel and Thomas. When I walked in, Thomas was in his underwear with gloves on and a bottle of blue dye, "this is not as kinky as it looks!" He was dyeing mel's hair again. He told me there was a surprise waiting for me in my room:

That night, we got the group together for some dt fun. Also, Hot Ashlee was in town, and she's totally into me.

The next day, I saw Zilker Summer Musical's Footloose, and it reminded me of how awesome Gia Wright was in MHS's production during her rendition of "Let's hear it for the boy."
The rest of the weekend, I tried to rest, despite my severe jet lag and anxiety about the following work week which meant the end of Summer of Pham...to be continued...

Let me let you go.

I know I was supposed to blog next about the plane ride and my homecoming, but I was just inspired by some bat shit insane neighbors at my bat shit insane apartment complex.
It was 11:15 on a Saturday night. I was watching the 4th installment of The Fast and the Furious marathon. The fourth movie, according to wikipedia, is actually chronologically the 3rd movie, so I watched it after 2Fast2Furious. This marathon was started because I watched the 5th movie on the plane, and to my surprise...I enjoyed it. Hate on me, haters! It's better than Tron. Also, this was the first weekend in a while that I could do absolutely nothing. Mel left for Vegas, and Thomas left for Dallas. Anyways, I was enjoying a nice nap until I was suddenly awakened by knocking and yelling. "Unlock your door!" *knock knock knock* "Unlock your door! I'll keep knocking all night and embarrass you in front of your neighbors." (Oh, please do, crazy lady. I eat this stuff up.) "I'll go around to all the doors and knock until you open your door!!!" (omg, what if she knocks on my door?!) Finally, some guy answered. The guy living upstairs had a couple friends over. I heard a lot of yelling so I shut off the loud air conditioning unit so I could increase my eavesdropping capabilities. Soon the footsteps headed toward the back patio so I hastily followed. I ran into Mel's room for a better vantage point. I could only hear tidbits so my side of the story may not be accurate, but here goes. Apparently, the man living upstairs had been separated from this crazy lady. She was super pissed because she found out that he had been sleeping with some girl named April. The crazy lady was also pissed about 400 dollars he owed her, I believe from a tax return. He had a history of borrowing money from her, and she found out that he used some of that money to pay for dates with this poor April girl. Also, he forgot the crazy lady's bday because according to her, he was "too busy fucking April." I think they have a 13 year old son together.
-OH SHIT I THINK THEY ARE BACK ON THE PATIO, BRB-
Aw man, I think she just left. Her final words, "you wanna fuck with me, I can fuck with you."
OK, so if you think it's amoral to eavesdrop on crazy people arguing, then I am sorry. It's not my fault I live in a shitty apartment with paper thin walls. It's not my fault that crazies like to get loud on balconies. It's not my fault that my life isn't as tumultuous and exciting...well, I guess it is.
Anywho, his car is under her name so she can do whatever she likes! "April doesn't even know we been sleeping together. We've slept together 5 times this month!" Oh poor naive April! He's been hittin up both of them before the divorce is even finalized. SHAME! He tried arguing that she was doing the same thing to him. REBUTTLE!...rebuttle failed. He said that she went on a date with some realtor. She got a text one night while watching TV with her son. It was this guy that her friend introduced her to that was going to show her apartments and houses, but I do believe he wanted to do more than that ;) He said, "when can I meet with you? tonight?" She said, "not tonight" because she thought it was reallllly creepy. Instead she met him the next day to have tea at Starbucks on the patio. She explained to him that she had just gotten out of a "16 year fucked up marriage" and that she had no intention of getting into another relationship. She had only met this man as friends! THIS WAS NOT A DATE! "No one here would say that was a date!" Then she said something about 500 dollar child support, yikes! Then she said, "if I want to drive recklessly and total your car, not my problem." Reminded me of a Mary J. Blige song. Then it got a little Alanis. "YOU FUCKED UP WHEN YOU FUCKED HER!" Finally, it quieted down a little, and I could barely make out any words. "Let me let you go. Stop sucking me back in." Aw! That is such a sweet sentiment. I'm sure that's a song or movie line, but I don't care, it's beautiful. Love makes crazy people do crazy things. I hope they had some crazy breakup/unbreakup sex after that whereby foregoing any intention of letting her let him go. Sad. In closing, I hope I never get divorced because $500 a month in child support for a kid I never get to see is just upsetting.

Murpham's Law, Everything that can go Pham, WILL go Pham!

I left off last time with my trip to Hanoi. Jeebus, I am so behind. OK, so after Hanoi, I went with Cau Nam (Uncle Nam), who is, as my little sister calls him, "Superman," to Ha Long Bay. This place is like one of those wonders of the world that Andrew Zimmern would visit or probably already has. Let's backtrack, we refer to Uncle Nam as Superman because he is probably won of the most intelligent and versatile beings of our time. He is currently working as the Chief of Technology for Vietnam Airlines. He is trying to get a direct flight from US to Vietnam in order. Oh, also, he is working on a project to remove all the agent orange from the ground water and top soil. NBD. Anyways, he pays for the whole trip, and we get on this old boat thing off the coast to get to these awesome islands.


Here is me out-Corona shot-ing all your asses.


Here are the famous islands. Ha Long means "dragon landing."


These two rocks are said to resemble a cock fight.


We also climbed up Yen Tu Mountain. There is a temple at the peak so many people make pilgrimages up there.



Um, did I mention I went parasailing?


In my next entry, I will conclude my trip with the exciting plane ride and my return to ATX!

Good morning Vietpham!

It's 4 AM. My first day back at work starts in 4 hours and I can't sleep. When I try to sleep at night, my body thinks I'm taking a nap and wakes up 2 hours later with a head ache. I hate jet lag. I'll be crashing during the day because I already have a knack for falling asleep during professional development presentations. On the agenda for today is "formative assessment strategies" ZzZzZz. Hopefully, my colleagues will be able to keep me awake with their snarky comments. I have the best coworkers.
I keep having to go back and delete the "extra space" after sentences because Jack the Lawyer informed me that two spaces after a sentence is a "time-honored mistake."
Well, because I can not sleep, I've decided to finish up my Vietnam posts. Last time, I ended on my first night in Hanoi when I went out with David to the discos.

Hanoi is a very interesting city. It is a much more modern metropolitan area than most of Vietnam. The citizens seem to dress much nicer than other parts. The women are beautiful. They are all slender and tall and keep up with the latest fashion trends. The dialect in the north is very difficult for me, a southerner, to understand. Mel's family speaks this dialect. I jokingly refer to it as bourgeois. The men in Hanoi sound like a mix of Orochimaru, Mario Cantone, and Lil Wayne. It's quite flamboyant. Every word spoken seems to begin with a "Z" sound. For example, if a racist such as Thomas ever visited Hanoi, he would pull back his eyes and say "zing zong zing zong."




Okay, so here is a photo of my sister, mother, uncle, and I as we were leaving the airport. You may notice I am as big as a house due to all the food my relatives keep throwing at me.


Later that day, I went fishing with my uncle, and we caught absolutely nothing.


This night was also the night that I went out on the town with Mel's brother David. You can see those pictures in the previous intoxicated post.

The following morning, we went sightseeing. I saw the corpse of Ho Chi Minh at his Mausoleum in the middle of Hanoi. Don't tell my dad that I went here. He'll probably beat me. He's still pretty sensitive about the whole war thing. I dunno, something about the whole being forced to reign hell fire down on his own countrymen really ground his gears.


Here is the pagoda built on a single pillar. It's supposed to be some kind of engineering marvel.


In the center of Hanoi, there are two lakes. In Hoan Kiem, or Lake of the Returned Sword, there lives a 100 year old turtle who is currently very sick. The name of the lake refers to a legend of a king who was given a sword by a giant turtle, and after the king defeated his foes, he returned the sword to the giant turtle.

This much like the King Arthur/Lady of the Lake legend, or the much more famous Lion Turtle/Last Airbender legend. ENERGYBENDER!