The International Examiner

Dear everyone, every year around this time, the leaves are so brilliant and colorful, as if Mother Nature ate a giant bowl of Southwest-style salsa and threw up on our city. (Sometimes, the poetry just comes to me). Around this time, I start becoming reflective, pondering the passage of time, the shortness of life, the [...]

Every day I come home exhausted after a grueling three or four hours of work, and there is one thing I look forward to. Flo, the Progressive Insurance commercial lady. She’s hilarious. “Unicorn and Glitter?” That gets me every time. Recently, however, our commercials have been hijacked by political ads, especially by Patty Murray and [...]

Dear readers (both of you), Today I am taking my new wife to see “De Mai Tinh,” a Vietnamese romantic comedy that just came out this month. Vietnamese movies for me are like arm-wrestling a bonobo while inebriated: Sure, it sounds like fun at first, but it’s just embarrassing when you review the whole thing [...]

Recently the wife took me to a ballet performance, where I promptly fell asleep. It was some sort of story about a doll that came to life and fell in love with a guy. Or something. The production values were quite high, and the dancing very good, with the dancers spinning and pointing their toes [...]

Now that Jameelah and I are married, people come up to us and ask “So what’s it like being married?” Being married, like being in love, or running for Senate, or eating your first slice of Italian black winter truffle, is something that cannot be understood unless you’ve experienced it. It is magical, like you’re [...]

I realized I could have described our travels better in previous posts, telling you of women gracing the streets in white dresses bordered with colorful embroidered flowers, and cafes where mariachis in full regalia serenade sighing lovers sipping margaritas while the scent of roasting meat wafts over from street carts selling tacos and tostadas, pungent [...]

I am sitting at an internet cafe in San Cristobal, Chiapas, scratching my toes from numerous ant bites and typing these words while trying to navigate the Mexican keyboard. Please excuse in advance the terrible punctuation (I cant find the apostrophe key! But look, heres this cool upside down exclamation point, which lets me say [...]

This is my last column as a bachelor. By the time you read this column, I’ll be a married man, which is almost an incomprehensible concept to those of us who have never been married. I might as well say, “by this time next week, I’ll sprout wings and turn into a unicorn.” Three years [...]

Volunteering at a food bank or soup kitchen, like paying taxes and flossing, is something that everyone should do. Much like flossing, I felt ashamed that in all my years, I had never done it, so to make up, I went and spent a couple of hours at the Rainier Valley Food Bank. I was [...]

Dear readers: Mentorship with 17-year old Kevin has not been going well. He emailed Oprah one day asking for advice on how to be a great leader, which totally violated the mentor-protégé exclusivity clause, so I had to ditch him. Plus, one day, he showed up at my workplace and said, “Mr. Huy, do you [...]

For some reason, I feel extremely appreciative of stuff lately. It’s a very strange feeling, since I’m so used to bitterness and sarcasm, but it made me realize just how lucky all of us are, to be alive, to have shelter, Netflix, access to flushing toilets, and tiny jars of jam at hotel continental breakfasts. [...]

Dear everyone, This weekend Jameelah and I went to the tulip festival. Surrounded by peaceful fields of colors, we were able to resist the urge to strangle stupid kids and couples who plucked tulips left and right. For some wacky reasons, there were a lot of Indians and Vietnamese people there. Apparently they really love [...]

Dear readers, every once in a while, even a silly humor columnist must delve into serious issues of national importance. Now that the Democrats have passed major healthcare reform, they should use the momentum to pass other important measures. Comprehensive immigration reform, for example, may be the next policy that the Obama Administration tackles. However, [...]

My friends, I am trying to write this early so I can go to sleep at 10. There is a meeting of Asian nonprofit directors tomorrow at 7:30am. These other nonprofit directors are all morning people, who, along with Tea Party Republicans and hipsters, are ridiculous. They have unexplainable, weird behaviors. For example they wake [...]

Dear everyone, Tomorrow my little nonprofit will be putting on a community forum to ask people what they hope to see in the community 10 years from now. Already some rumors are swirling around about an epic power play, about our organization trying to grab leadership. I might be called a communist, and I’m sure [...]

Dear everyone, Buying a house is like slapping yourself repeatedly in the face with a sock full of melting chocolate: sure, it sounds like a good idea at the time, but once it stops, you just end up sweaty, sticky, and people think you have something else all over your face. It has been a [...]

Dear everyone, Yesterday, I soaked morel mushrooms in water and salt, hoping to drive away gross, horrible creatures that tend to make homes in them. No, not Tea Party Republicans, but little bugs and insect. We were saving them to eat in celebration when our offer on the house is accepted, but hearing no such [...]

The wedding is the first big project that a loving, committed couple tackles together. It is a test of how well they can work as a team. All that said, most guys would rather poke ourselves in the eye with a plastic fork and run screaming into the wilderness than to go through with planning [...]

Dear everyone, Jameelah and I bought some morel mushrooms! Half a pound’s worth! And we might have also bought a house. All these months of house hunting have been fun, and exhausting, and heartbreaking, honestly. After we withdrew the offer on the last house, the listing agent called back, begging us to resubmit the same [...]

Dear everyone, Today is my birthday, and this post will probably be depressing and rambling and unedited, as usual for the annual birthday post. I find writing can be very therapeutic, like acupuncture, with words as needles. A month ago, my friend, “Flora,” committed suicide. She was an eccentric writer with six dogs, two turtledoves, [...]

My friends, Buying a house is like slapping yourself repeatedly in the face with a sock full of Jell-O: It’s messy, but kind of fun. Try it. This week has been eventful for Jameelah and me. We found this cool little house on a hill in a neighborhood we like, filled with light, with a [...]

Dear everyone, Jeeze, I’ve never had writer’s block this bad before, if you can consider blogging writing. It’s like my sense of humor has been drained by a…by a…damn, something funny should go here. By a Dyson vacuum cleaner? See what I mean? It’s awful. I blame it on stress. And Netflix. But mainly stress. [...]

Hi everyone,
Some people are getting angry at M. Night Shyamalan, who made “The Sixth Sense” which is an awesome movie. Why are they mad, you ask? Because he’s casting all White people in his next movie, The Last Airbender, which is a popular animated show where the characters are mostly Asian. They think he’s racist. [...]

My friends, I chaired my first neighborhood council meeting today, attended by about 25 people in the neighborhood, and I think I might have offended an elected official by telling him, in so many words, that his time was up and I needed to get back to my agenda. If I’m giving up American Idol [...]

Dear everyone,
These days, it’s been easy to get irritated. I realized I have gotten more jaded and impatient than usual, even at work. “What? Little Kenny is crying at our after-school program because his grandpa is ill? Argh! If only these kids would think about the inevitable progression of age before they bond with their [...]

Dear everyone,
Jameelah and placed another offer on a house, this time for an extreme fixer upper. I mean extreme. In fact, it’s threatening to dissolve right now due to rain. And ironically, it’s only ten blocks away from the house we got outbid on. This way, we can always drive past the beautiful house we [...]

Dear everyone,
On Christmas night, when the world was rejoicing at the birth of baby Jesus and families gathered around the fireplaces in the spirit of love and togetherness, Jameelah’s car got broken into, and they took her backpack, which had my camera. But even worse, Jameelah is a teacher, and her backpack contained 28 fourth [...]

My friends,
This week is Christmas, a time for us to celebrate the birth of Jesus by giving and receiving gifts. And if you’re anything like me, you haven’t started shopping yet. Of course, if you’re anything like me, then you should congratulate yourself for undeniable sexiness. I’m just saying; it comes with the territory.
Gift giving is [...]

My dearest friends, and the Obnoxious Republican,
Before I begin this week’s ramblings, I want to say that I hate, hate, HATE that STUPID Levi Jeans commercial where the idiot narrator says, “Pioneers, oh, pioneers” repeatedly while a bunch of moronic half-naked young people parade about, drenched by rain and living life. You haven’t seen it? [...]

Dear everyone,
Today I went to talk to Al and Arnie to strengthen our backup offer. There is a one percent chance that the deal could fall through, so we should be ready in case it does. We increased our offer to exceed the accepted one by just a little bit.
Since yesterday though, I have started [...]