Sad April Fool's Day
Today started out really really crappy.
I woke up and got ready for school. Checked my email and learned that Gabriel Chin, the man that taught me old school Yang Shi Taiji Quan & Qi Gong and helped guide me to a path that I have religiously followed for the past 4 years and plan to continue on, passed away of a heartattack yesterday. I chatted with Matt briefly before class and he mentioned that the woman, Terry Schivazo, the woman on life support past away the same day and that the Pope was on his way. Happens in 3's i guess. One thing I started to worry about was how last nite, i was cleaning up my harddrive and I deleted a bunch of duplicate fotos of Gabriel. One had a corruption in it that was causing my harddrive to act really weird. Then when I deleted those files, it freed up 15 gigabytes of space. Then this morning I get this information. I sure hope its just a coincidence.
At first I was like, "Crap, I am gonna miss that crazy chinese dude." The fact that he is really gone didn't start to hit when I was sitting in the office in between classes. So, teaching wasn't really a super concern eventhough I tried to use it to get thru. But, I haven't been feeling good. The kids were relatively ok. Coco and Lucy were both gone today for a seminar so I was alone and I was able to get the kids involved enuff that they didn't go nuts, but a couple did and I had to deal with that. Didn't help me to feel better. :D It also doesn't help that I had to ride my bike home in the rain. While I was out, the sky decided to dump buckets. So, I was getting drenched and then my bike chain popped off. ARGH! This morning has sucked!
I spent lunchtime moping and stuff. Chatted with John and a couple others. I started this journal entry during lunch. I got two more 3rd grades and 1 kindergarten class and then a chinese instruction with Daisy's folks. I just started talking with Chad online, my friend and coach who was very close to Gabriel. This is how the convo went:
Me: was it a heartattack?
C: Well
C: Hard to say
C: It was what sent him to the hospitol
C: It was just time I guess
Me: oooh.
Me: yeah.
Me: maybe another stroke.
C: no
C: He just gave out from what I hear
Me: this isn't an April Fool's Joke from him is it?
C: Funeral is week from sat
C: Heh
C: I wouldn't put it past him
C: :-) 
Me: damnit, now there is no way I can avenge him.
C: Heh
C: We can spread his style all over
Me: yeah.
C: And beat the **** out of (incompetent teachers)
Me: giggle.
C: Show them the error of their ways
Me: GREETINGS FROM THE OTHERWORLD, BIOTCH!
C: DO NOT MOCK THE CHINSTER!
C: Our kung fu is strong with him
C: Now that he is dead he is more powerful than you can imagine
Me: is that birthyear correct?
Me: i figure it is.
C: It gonna take some gettin used to
C: Well best guess
C: That's official immigration
C: Bd
C: I wanna get them to show your photo presentation at the funeral
C: An I am writing a uelogy
Me: good. i was curious if they would use that.
C: It really good and would be a cool thing to show
C: I got a cool mail from jess too abt it
Me: yeah. It would be wonderful. i am gonna watch the thing today
C: I just fwd it to ya
C: Check yr mail
Me: ok.
Me: thanks
C: Needless to say I have been thinking abt reagan a lot today **
Me: LOL!
C: It does help!
C: Lol
** when Jess interviewed Gabriel for his book, Gabe started talking about his younger brother who passed away 2-3 years earlier. He started to cry and then he started to giggle and smile. He said, "Whenever I talk about my little brother, I start to cry. When I start to cry, I think about Ronald Reagan. That man looks so funny you can do nothing but laugh. It always makes me feel better."
Here is the other email from Jess, the man that interviewed Gabe and wrote about him for the book that he had published:
I am very sorry to hear this news. I regret that I only got to meet your teacher once. He was a unique
man, and I treasure that meeting. I learned a lot that day about Tai Ji, life, old age, and what it
means to be oneself. To me he seemed like a much younger man in an old man's body. He was like any of us, just smarter, better educated and vastly more experienced. Yet his love of martial arts and all the stuff we also love was never diminished. I suddenly saw myself 50 years from now. I wonder if I will still have a fraction of the zest for life and continuing inquiry that he had at that age. I won't
forget him, ever.
Much respect to Master Gabriel Chin. They sure as hell don't make 'em like they used to.
Thanks for being there for him and catching as much as you could. I think the seeds he planted in you will grow. Perhaps in ways neither of you forsaw. Please keep your practice alive and in that way Gabriel Chin will never be gone.
Sincerely,
Jess
So those were the emails. My afternoon classes went ok. I guess I was pretty obvious in my upsettedness. Lily asked what was wrong and I told them that my Taiji Sifu passed away. So, they all knew now. I played hangman with my kids in 3rd grade as part of the lesson. I have two big irritations with the way they play the game....well, the shouting over each other is just expected with kids, but some of them, when they say a letter they will add a Guangdonghua "aaaah" to the end of it. The "aaaah" usually means its a question. But its also used to accent stuff. So they would say, "C-aah, B-aah, O-aah, K-aah!" And I have started to ignore them when they do this or I yell at them if they don't stop it. Another thing they do is say the letter twice very fast. So when they say, "T" they say, "TT". This bursts my bubble as well and I treat it like the "-aah" addition. And for some reason chinese people pronounce the English "L" without using their tongue so they make it sound like "O" or sometimes "R". I don't understand this either because chinese has an "L" sound and they use their tongue to pronounce it. Go figure. They also constantly confuse N and M.
During my class I also have students go to the front and point out the words that the kids need to practice to help get everyone involved and enjoyable. So, I then took the kid's seat and caused trouble at certain times like they do to me. I would also say the words with the "-aah" on there. That got the gets more involved cause they were having fun.
After class, I was heading out and saw Coco so I asked her about how to say, "passed away." She said,
die = si. Afterwards she told me a nicer way to say it, "chu la". Then I went to the Bond office to get paid. They asked how I was and I tried to say, "wo de taiji sifu chu la"(my taiji teacher passed away) and they gave me confused looks. I SAID IT RIGHT! Bie ding zhe wo kann! (don't stare at me). They then gave me many other ways to say it. You know, you are doing nothing but confusing me.
After kindergarten which I wasn't in a great mood to teach, I ate some dinner and met up with Daisy's folks to practice some Putonghua. I told them when I got there "wo de taiji sifu chu la" and the grandfather just stared at me confused. UGH! I am saying it right. And I know because Daisy's mom understood me when she showed up.
Afterwards I came home and watched the DVD of Gabe's fotos that I put together. I really like thiis version better than the one I gave to the family. I put Mozart on their copy because Gabe loved Mozart. On this one I had the endtitles to Bubba Ho-Tep becuase the soundtrack of that movie was very beautiful and that song is very emotional. I think.
I am also putting a little something in front of the DVDs now. A little shout out for, as Ali G always says, "Respect". The rest of the night sucked. After I put on a little memorial thing for Gabe in front of the other DVD material, when I was trying to burn a disc, "HARDWARE ERROR!" The disc only got halfway thru. ARGH!
I shut down, rebooted, did some things and burnt again and it burnt the whole way. Good. I popped it into the DVD Player, it got as far as the menu screen and when I hit play it died. NO! WTF!
I was so angry and upset. I checked the DVD on the computer, same issues. Ugh. All that hardwork. THis day has seriously sucked.
Good night all and God bless.