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Generally, colonoscopies do not sneak up on you. They are very much not like, Oh, hello. When did you get here? Colonoscopies do enjoy a certain amount of silent horror as the long snake-like tube with the headlight-tipped end approaches closer and closer, aiming to penetrate your most sacred orifice. If you don’t know what a colonoscopy is, let me just say that there’s a giant machine, a 20 foot tube and a large glass jar involved.

I took my father to the doctor’s today to provide manly comfort, while he had this procedural examination. Sitting in the same room as this went on, had me wince, recoil in horror, and feel more empathy for a man that I’ve only been able to communicate through a series of grunts and hand gestures.

In all sincerity, I told the doctors this was required as a routine check up. His blood pressure was a bit high, so they opted not to administer the sedatives and gave me a heads up that there would be slight discomfort, to say the least. I will spare you wonderful readers the gory details, but you should be confident in knowing that, should you ever be presented an option, take the freakin’ sedative!

To date, I’ve heard my dad swear a lot. Usually to me, or any other unfortunate child that didn’t find his missing left slipper in 10 seconds or less. But I think in one hour, he managed to break all those records and called the doctor who was busy jamming that long tube up his… colon, various wretched things; things not even I could translate.

Seeing this I felt sorry for him immediately. Poor guy. Eighty-eight years old and having to have this done to you. So close to living a full life, free from anal penetration. I know that is my goal (as it should be yours). And then I got home and talked to my mom. It turns out that my father, in fact, volunteered for this.

So here we go. Try to follow along, yes?

My dad loves Tim Horton’s. He loves the coffee so much he will suffer for it. He is of course, lactose intolerant as are most Asians. But he will be damn to admit it! Defying all symptoms, signs and advice from those around him, he refuses to admit that he is lactose intolerant. He is adamant, that there is something in his colon that is preventing him from enjoying his warm, tasty, creamy coffee. “One more sip, and then to the washroom,” such is the mantra of those who suffer from lactose intolerance.

We told him about this wonderful invention called Lactaid™ pills that he could take with his coffee, but no! That is a waste of money! What about coffee with no cream? No! That is complete bullshit! I will have cream in my coffee, thank you very much.

He instead heeds his backstreet Mahjongg crew’s advice. What did they recommend? Why, a good ol’ colonoscopy of course! Upon hearing their testimonials of how amazing it was, he was set on it. Typically, you would not hear the words “amazing” with “colonoscopy” but in this circle of friends (though I would use that term loosely), this was the case.

I kept thinking, perhaps they had actually confused “enema” with “colonoscopy”. The only difference of course is that with an enema, stuff comes out and the law of nature is preserved: that particular road is a one-way street!

To top it off, they told him it was free. Free! Imagine that. And so now, I understood why he was so amazed that there was no line up for this at the doctor’s office.

“We have to get there early, in case there’s a line,” he said. Why on earth would there be a line-up for one of these? I wondered. Well, of course — because its free! Why wouldn’t there be a line-up?

My sister had tried to convince him not to do it the day before, and warned him how painful it would be, but true to his nature, his only response was, “Even if its that bad, at least it was free.”

Ironically, his colon was cleaner than a test-tube. I am sure that he will head downtown tomorrow to knock out that guy’s teeth who told him how amazing this procedure would be, right before promptly heading over to the local Timmy’s and ordering a medium double-double.

After spending 30 years living in the land of opulence and enjoying the spoils of Government assistance, my parents, sister, recently inducted brother-in-law and I decided to return to the motherland. In Vietnam, many things have changed since it saw the end of the Vietnam war. I could never imagine what I would see returning home or what wonders fate would present to me there. Of these, I would like to recount with particular fondness, my experiences of finding a working toilet that didn’t require an 18 gallon bucket of water to be carried up 3 flights of stairs.

My family had left one week prior to Vietnam, while I was to meet up in Saigon on my own. I flew out on an early Friday morning before the sun had risen, ready and eager for the 24 hour journey.

While I was stuffed in the plane, I spent the precious hours learning key phrases. It is always a benefit to learn the language of the locals before destroying their habitat, and then taking photos of the destruction in the process.

Going on vacation with your parents leaves for two unfortunate consequences: 1) No binge drinking and 2) no random hooking up with live-in house servants. Though aside from my perfunctory duties as a morally righteous and law-abiding son, I have had opportunity to enjoy a secret beer or two, while winking at the occasional toothless sweetheart.

My parents will insist and swear that the intention of bringing me to Vietnam was not to find me a bride (or even a not-so-distant-cousin that couldn’t find a suitable husband), but in fact, for me to witness the site of my birth. I have yet to find evidence to the contrary. No sooner had I landed in the jungles of ‘Nam that my aunts and uncles were arranging a meet-n-greet with the neighbour’s daughter which they would be more than willing to part for no less than one ox, two dozen chickens and a papaya.

I was not amused by this arrangement, and sought refuge in the kitchen, where I found the kitchen staff preparing dinner. One in particular, a cute Cambodian girl, was busy washing fruit and scrubbing her feet at the same time. I offered to help, to which she looked up at me with an expression I can only describe as chagrin and disdain all at once. I suppose being ridiculed by the help does not inspire heroes’ songs, but for some reason, it fueled my chase.

I barely slept that night, wondering what could possibly go wrong, if I were to sneak off into the maid’s chamber and steal a midnight kiss. Would I be disowned? Or worse, force-fed Hepatitis-carrying ice cubes! I resisted the urge, but stayed awake nonetheless, in case she had the same thoughts and came through those doors either snuggle-ready or ready to serve me tea and crumpets. I surely wasn’t one to turn away crumpets.

My pursuit ended shortly after a few days as we were to continue our journey to my birth site. I left, bade farewell to the help, and made off like gallant Odysseus, on just another ordinary day, on my way to Ithaca. The prospective brides trailed behind hoping to catch me on an off day, when I would be weakest and accept their offer to marry them and bring them to the promise land. Luckily, we were in a mini-van so they gave up chase after a few short miles.

Of things to note, the value of vacationing in an impoverished or third-world country does have its due merits. For one, the price of a beer (like Heineken) is 20,000 VND which translates to about $1.25 CAD. Oh the irony, that I would be in a country where beer was pennies a glass, and yet I could not have a single drop. A bowl of Pho is about 7,000 to 10,000 VND which is about 0.50¢ to 0.75¢. The cost of contracting Typhoid or Hepatitis, however, cannot be measured in any currency — but 0.50 cents a bowl! Obviously, I was willing to take my chances.

Pho is generally eaten in the morning for breakfast. Yes, pho for breakfast! In my early college days, I had always considered myself brilliant for discovering that pho tastes better in the morning after a night of drinking and debauchery, however, it is now clear to me that I must attribute that to my genes; somehow, I always knew when the right time was to eat pho.

The village where I was born is called Gia Ria — a sparsely populated town without the facilities or amenities of which we take for granted. These people have never seen a computer before, so imagine how difficult it was to explain what I do for a living. No, I don’t go fishing at 3 in the morning; no, I don’t sell housewares or dried cuttle fish on the side of the road; yes, I really do brush my teeth every day. What amazes me is the level of sanitation that they can go without.

The streets were narrow and cobble-stoned. There was definitely a lack of any improvements in the town’s infrastructure. I’d always imagined my hometown to be more like Harlem or the Bronx, which would then explain my hard-knock life, but it wasn’t much more than a modest fishing town. The shops and houses lined up against an eroding riverbank where fishing boats would coast up and down to the yawning sea out of the Mekong delta. I was glad to have seen it, but I found I was more emotionally moved when I had gone back to Barrie recently to see the house I grew up in, then to see the house that I was born in.

We left without much fanfare, much the same way that we left 30 years ago, only this time in a mini-van.

With the few remaining days in Vietnam, we spent them touring the South-East coast of Vietnam, ending up at the resort town called Mui Ne in the province of Binh Thuan province. This province is known for its mountain range of sand dunes — white and red sand — throughout the land. Its a beautiful province, and the coastal scenery is breathtaking. Virgin beaches stretch for miles, while an unimaginable oasis called White Lake appears a few miles inland. This area is not known very well at all, and so there is very little tourism here. It is most likely, Vietnam’s best kept secret.

I found out many things about the history of Vietnam and the people that live there. I know the sacrafice my parents made to get us here to Canada, and for that I will forever be indebted to them.

My sister’s wedding took place over the past weekend. The weather was barely accommodating; eager to move onto Autumn it blanketed the scenery with a thick fog and mist. We seated the guests outside the country club in neatly aligned rows of white plastic chairs. The gazebo was ornately decorated and a white fabric laid upon the aisle of grass between the bride’s side and the groom’s side. She looked beautiful in a white gown, coming down the aisle with my father accompanying her on the left. His lips were pursed and his eyes stayed focused. Certainly he was feeling unfamiliar with this customarily western tradition. Thick bifocals sat crookedly on his face. Their pace was deliberate and came at measured beats while a trumpeter played the processional music.

The ceremony was delivered in English, though they exchanged vows in Vietnamese. I couldn’t catch much of it, as I was sure they were speaking formally to each other. I could only make out the last sentence where he said to her, “Anh yêu em” which according to Babelfish means, “Big brother loves little sister.” Seemed a bit odd, but I’m sure a lot got lost in translation.

The wedding proceeded with cocktails where I was MC for the evening. I was originally supposed to translate for my Vietnamese counterpart and we both had our scripts. While I continued to read from my copy, my Vietnamese counterpart decided to deviate a bit from the script so then suddenly, I was no longer translating, I was just reading what was written, which may have confused anyone in the audience that could understand both English and Vietnamese. I’m sure it was fine but I really had no idea what he was going on about. Thus, I realized a couple things about being an MC: 1) Things never go as planned, and 2) always have a couple of shots before going up to the podium.

The highlight of the entire night was when my sister’s new husband decided to dedicate a song to my sister, and then proceeded to rock out with his band. It was pretty much awesome. He performed two songs with the band and it inspired me to learn to play guitar and sing in Vietnamese to my bride, whoever she ends up being — even if she turns out to be a Polish mail-order bride no doubt, she will love it!

I’ve survived my first week in Toronto and it has been met with veritable stress and calamity. I’ve reconnected with my parents and my room is as it was, as are the dust mites. They had a little party for me last night, all bunched up in their little dust bunny clouds. So far, I haven’t seen any of my friends yet, and I’m certain half of them don’t even know I’m still alive, let alone back in town.

There seems to be a lack of office supplies here, and I’ve resorted to using my neighbour’s gym bag as a garbage can, and his face as my notepad. He doesn’t seem to mind as much as I thought he would. Across the room from me sit the other developers — mostly php developers. They’re all quite similar to the interface designers and I’ve socialized briefly with them, if only to show them my stupidly awesome wolf shirt.

I realized last night how many people I don’t know anymore. After two years, seldom do people remember what fun it was to take your shirt off at a bar for their birthday. Rarely does that novelty ever give a lasting impression. At least, not a positive one.

Last night, I ended up having dinner by myself at Kim Jung Il’s Kitchen of Pho, nestled amidst the cookie-cutter houses of suburban Mississauga. The dimly lit neon signs decorating the restaurant entrance gave me the uneasy feeling that I was somehow stuck in a B-movie. I stared out the window, half-expecting to see a giant angry red tomato with sharp fangs, come rolling down the empty, wide 10-lane residential streets. The other patrons of the establishment seemed too calm at the prospect of this inevitablity. I quietly ate my dinner and left.

I’ll probably last 6-months living with my parents again, then I’ll have to move somewhere on my own. Being close to my parents is important to them, but being in the next room with only a thin slab of drywall between, might present awkward situations.

Living at home has brought to mind a few things; certainly things that I have too soon forgotten, since the last time I lived at home, but nonetheless, I need to document these in case, I ever, in all my infinite wisdom, decide that living at home “seems like a good idea” ever, ever again.

There are questions you need to ask yourself from time to time, in times of trouble, or in times when your mom walks in on you making kissy-face noises on the phone, or just in times of pure unadulterated chaos when the fire alarm goes off and for the love of God, it just won’t stop. Don’t find yourself in these situations and not know what to do.

ITEM 1. When your mom says, “Yes of course I know how to make spaghetti” the first thing that should come to your mind is, “Did I manage to hide all the cans of tomato soup?”

Perhaps more wistfully than anything, I always end up buying all these jars of Prego™ just hoping for the off-chance that maybe one day she might use that instead of a can of Campbell’s® Tomato Soup to make the sauce. Dare to dream.

ITEM 2. When paper towels go on sale for 45 cents, it can only mean one thing: It is time to rid the world of it’s supply of paper towels. No matter how daunting that task may be, we will single-handedly do our best to own up as many rolls of paper towels as humanly possible, and as luck has it, they’re all Equality™ brand.

Never mind the fact that Equality is synonomous for sand paper, the damn thing is on sale for fourty five freakin’ cents and tomorrow it might go up to 99 cents and then what will we do? What, pray tell, WILL we do? Nothing. There is nothing we can do. We must buy it now, and buy it good. Drop those chopsticks, we’re going to Food Basics.

In order to defeat their clearly unreasonable, 2 packages per family limit, we need reinforcements. Call your brother, get the van; call grandma, call your sister, and your aunts and your uncles and your cousins, call them all in.

Like a pack of hill-billies, we’ll load up in the jalopy, and scoot on down to the nearest Food Basics just to load up on paper towels. Two packs per person. And remember, we don’t know each other. Never mind that we’re a clan of 20 Asian people.

ITEM 3. When instructing your father that your pizza takes 45 min to cook, you should allot enough buffer time for Panicking Father Who Does Not Speak English time, otherwise, you’ll end up with a half-cooked pizza or very unhappy firemen. If you say, “This pizza needs to be cooked at 425 degrees F for 45 min”, he will instinctly, shut off the oven at exactly 22 min, and panic, and his reason to you is: “I didn’t know if it would shut off later when I really needed it to.” 

That’s like stopping 5 miles short of the traffic light, because your car might not stop at the moment that you really need it to. That’s like jumping off the plane in Boston because you’re not sure if it’s going to really land in Chicago when you really need it to. 

Then he tells me what he saw, in his mind’s eye, if the oven didn’t turn off in 45 min: yards of flames shooting from the oven, pepperonis flying out like ninja stars and plumes of black smoke enshrouding the apartment. This is his vision, and you can’t fuck with it. How about the deep, resonant voice of a Frenchmen laughing out hysterically from the gaping mouth of the oven? Was that in his vision? We’ll never know.

Consequently, instead of walking home and being met with the faint musk of pepperoni and cheese, and a crispy dough aroma raising up into your nose, lifting you off your feet, your pizza turns out to be one big white doughy mess sitting there in the cool darkness of the otherwise bare oven for at least 23 minutes now.  In general, “Panicking Father” time usually requires at least 15 min buffer.

ITEM 4. When the building’s fire alarm goes off at 4AM as it is wont to do, the following procedures should be taken: Lock your father in his room. No, scratch that. Sedate your father, then lock him in his room. His panicky ways will surely lead to his and your own demise. Things that are good sedatives are Benadryl caplets - he’ll sleep and be hive-free. Drugging your own father with anti-histamines is not a crime; I’ve checked. 

If you fail to do this, he will run up and down the hallway screaming that you need to do something about this. But instead, you remain very still hoping that maybe he won’t see you lying in bed, half-asleep and doing your very best to ignore a) the blaring air horns piped through the building’s PA system and b) your father’s heightened voice now talking rapidly on the phone to your sister telling her that he thinks you’re dead (due to your unresponsive nature) and that there’s some strange noise coming out of the ceiling that just won’t stop. Sleeping through a fire alarm is tough, but if you put your mind to it, it can be done.

Fire alarms are #2 on the list of Things That Make My Father Panic. Burnt pizza is #6.

There’s more but I’m afraid I would just depress you, and you’re probably depressed enough as it is. 

You read these and you think, this boy does not love his parents enough, and I can only ask you people one thing: do you like eating spaghetti with tomato soup? No? I didn’t think so. And if that isn’t a priority in your life, I don’t know what else to say to you.

Appendix A: Things That Make My Father Panic

10. Planes that might not land in Chicago as intended.

9. Failing car brakes

8. GO Buses that go awry (i.e. not to Cooksville).

7. Missing his television show (Monday Night RAW)

6. An oven that has been left on for more then 25 minutes.

5. Missing a bowel movement (see #3)

4. Losing his wallet

3. Running out of orange juice

2. Loud air-horn type fire alarms

1. My mother