I always wanted to have a book of memories that listed all my memorable experiences, ranging from life-altering to random, mundane doings. I would save this book and pass it onto my grandchildren so that I won't have to sit there talking to them. But now that I have this blog, I will give them this URL instead and say, "Ok kids, you can bore yourselves. Hami has to get ready to go to the NSync reunion concert. Laters bitches." Ha, just kidding... I doubt NSync will get back together in my lifetime.
So here we go:
Flashback #1
Back when I was a kid my family was piss poor. I'm not trying to get any sympathy and as a kid I thought things were just ok, but now that I look back, yeah we were poor. Up until about I was 12 we lived in a variety of one bedroom basement deals. I shared a room with my parents until I was about 7 and then my bed was moved to the livingroom. Then my cousins from Korea came to the US and they moved in with us too for about a year (so that's about 7 people in a 1BD/1BR sublet).
I don't want you to think I lived in the projects or anything like that. It was (still is) a relatively ok neighborhood in the Sunset district of SF (46th and Quintara to be exact) close to the park and really close to the beach. The actual house we lived in was pretty big. We lived in half the main upstairs area for a couple of years, but later moved downstairs to the rooms in the garage.
Then around 1989 the big SF quake hit. I remember I was in the kitchen eating lamyun ("ramen" with the correct Korean pronounciation) and everything started shaking. My other cousin (6yrs old, who didn't live with us) was in the bathroom taking a shower. The reason I mention the shower bit was that when the earthquake came all the electricity went out so the kid was stuck in a windowless bathroom with the water running, the lights out, door locked, nekkid as the day he was born, and screaming his head off. Man, that's funny shit right there. (note to self: make fun of him next Christmas)
After it was over we all went outside where we met another family. I hadn't seen them before because they lived in a van and they had parked in front of our place sometime in the last week. This wasn't some random vagrant. It was a whole family of four with a daughter and a son. My dad had a conversation with the other dad... he truly tried even with his broken english... and we eventually all had dinner together outside on the sidewalk. I know as a kid I didn't think it was a big deal, but now that I look back, that was pretty cool. They were gone by the next day.