Perspective

I'm writing from California. I got in late Thursday night and woke up with an unscratchable itch in my right ear canal. Since only my right ear bud works on my ipod, the wax factory has been working overtime in my right ear. You could say that I learned this interesting factoid about my anatomy "the hard way."

On Friday, I had the best DMV experience. I had made an appointment a few weeks ago for 10 AM. As I entered the DMV that morning, it felt like Scorsese's extended goodfellas scene as the main guy gets seated at the table. I jumped to the front of the line. Filled out an application for a new driver's license and was out in 5 minutes. I went for a run and ate an in n' out burger.. It was a great morning.

That evening, my parents and I picked up my grandmother to go to a pleasant korean restaurant for dinner. I was to buy dinner and I had hoped for conversation in line with the mood of the morning.

As soon as my grandmother saw me, however, the veil on my utopia lifted and dystopic badgering ensued. "OMG, you are so fat! I need to come with you to New York to feed you properly. Get Married!!" (That was actually pretty funny. If I lived with my grandmother, I'd be really curious to see how much weight I would have lost after a year. I've never eaten a meal at her place where I left without feeling comfortably full. ) Then it felt like my grandmother's comment somehow gave my parents some sort of free adventure pass to trample my self-esteem. I had to call time out later that evening.


After I had eaten my grandmother's dinner and my own, we went back to her place. I was looking at some of her plants and a big salt rock, supposedly mined from the Himilayas by a Christian missionary, when she emerged from the kitchen with fistfuls of cucumbers. (The salt rocks looked satanic but I was told that they're good for allergies and removing smells.)



I looked at the cucumbers in disbelief and told her sternly that there was no way I could eat cucumbers after eating as much as I ate at dinner. Luckily, she was just packing up some for my mom to take home later.

Anyway, to the point . . . I found a little ear picker on the table and started to scratch the itch that I've been living with since coming back to Cali. Nothing impressive came out. But, I must have lodged something a bit loose because when I woke up the next morning I heard a rattle. EUREKA!
The pen is placed there to give a sense of perspective. I proudly showed "the merchandise" to my mom who shrieked and started hitting me. At first, she was confused and asked me what it was. When I told her it came from my ear, she shrieked "Gwee Bap!!" which I thought was hilarious because the literal translation of that is "Ear Rice!!"