Pixel Pushing Monkey

For most of my childhood, I was a scrawny little boy that didn't eat very much. I developed a habit of eating junk food before dinner, eating while watching TV, and leaving half bowl full of food sitting around while doing homework. Even when Mom forced me to sit at the dinner table, eventually I'll find a way to migrate over to the TV and my desk. Neither Mom or I could've predicted how much I would grow to love food. Oh, the miracles of puberty.

As irony would have it, my puberty wouldn't arrive until I moved to America to live with Dad. It's almost as if all those years of begging to finish my dinner was completely pointless, as Dad took all the credit for my healthy development into a young adult with little and no effort. Not that my Dad was a terrible cook, in fact he was a terrific cook when he had the time; but it was also a fact that Dad could've fed me anything remotely resembling human food, and I would've gladly shoveled them with complete disregard to the actual content.

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Writing about passing of someone who's close to you is never easy, especially when it's your parent. I was looking for the perfect thing to say, to create the perfect moment akin to some Hollywood cliché. After spending months writing and deleting several drafts, I've finally accepted that there is no perfect way to say goodbye, and there is no way to encompass everything my dad meant to me with words. Structure, flow, logic, presentation, none of that is important anymore, at least not here.

Our lives as a family, has been a series of comedic, if not tragic timing. My father had, at several different points in his life, prominent career that seemed to point towards the ideal of success. He was once a manager of human resources at RCA of Taiwan, subsequently owned a very successful company with a few partners. I don't think my father was ever a business genius of any sort, rather his rapid ascension at almost any given opportunity had more to do with his genial personality. Family might be his priority, but friends were a close second to the extent of seemingly eclipsing the first. However, that forgiving personality would prove to be his flaw as well.

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My father passed away on August 12th, 2008.

I just got back from Taiwan from all of the funeral proceedings. There are way too many thoughts and memories to process at the moment.