I played soccer for one season when I was 5 years old.

The absolute worst soccer player. Not that anybody was really good, but I was particularly clumsy.

To explain how bad I was, let me first clear up what playing soccer is like when you are 5 years old. Once the game starts all the kids, except for the unfortunate goalie, would scamper towards the ball in hopes to score the heroic goal. The kids would huddle around the ball, trapping it in one location as they all desperately try to gain control over it. At some point the ball would escape the anxious crowd of children and become the target of glory-hungry soccer players once again. This process continues for a grueling hour.

Among those kids I was the worst. The only way that is possible is if you don’t partake in the huddle. I passively watched the kids fumbling with the ball, waiting for the perfect moment to snatch the ball and score.

I ended up doing that for almost a whole season without touching the ball.

My parents were mildly concerned about this, and so my father made me a deal. If I could score a goal, he would buy me the gameboy advance. Take heed, readers; this was the greatest piece of ingenuity that mankind could fathom back in that time. Possession of this gadget would basically give me the title ‘coolest kid on the block’, one that every child of my age in my neighborhood dreamed of.

On my last soccer game(yes, even after that deal I still never touched the ball until the last game), I gathered all my courage and lunged for the ball in the moshpit of confused kindergardeners. Attempt after attempt I kept getting deflected out of this huddle. Just as I was getting hopeless the goddess of soccer gave me a miraculous opportunity. The ball popped out of the crowd, like usual, but this time it rolled right into my legs. After staring at the ball in disbelief for a split second I booked it towards the goal.

The goal was getting closer, and I could see the expression of the terrified goalie. At this point there was nothing the opponent team could do against my fierce charge into their goal. I shot, and scored. Cloud nine.

I looked my dad expecting the “I’m proud of you, son” look. He just shrugged.
I looked at my coach for regcognition. He just shouted:

“That’s the wrong goal, Kai!” 

Sometimes I want to be Christian just so I can avoid the resentment I get for not being one.

My 3 Keyboards

I own two keyboards: one a grand piano, two electronic keyboards.
In order in which I got them:

Leonard is my old, screwed up Yamaha PSR-260 Electronic junk that I got when I first started playing piano at the age of 5. I love him. He’s always there for when I have an idea but I can’t just simply hear it in my head… and i have to play it once. He always watches me as I do homework.

Aria is my beautiful grand piano. My parents bought her about 4~5 years ago once I began getting serious into piano. I searched so many piano stores to find this one, and she sounds lovely. She is made by Mason and Hamlin, an american piano brand famous for their handmade pianos. However nobody is really sure how handmade it has to be in order to be called handmade.

Eleanor is my keyboard that I bought recently. She is a slim Yamaha P85 piano, designed to perform. Although it doesn’t have any fancy tracking functionalities it sounds gorgeous. An ideal jazz piano, if connected to a good amp. I’ve been searching everywhere for a good case for her, but I can only seem to find $500 bulletproof piano cases.

Random fact: if you change the “d” in Leonard to an “e”, you can switch up the letters to make “Eleanor”.

People have asked me how I knew the gender of a piano. In all honesty, I don’t. The genders and names are completely done out of my selfishness after playing on each instrument for a while in order to just connect with them more. Just me having fun i guess, but nothing too deep/sophisticated.

That ended in an awfully un-inspirational note.

Tutoring

I tutor two 5th graders. I teach the boy English, and I teach the girl Piano.

The girl is very shy. For the first few lessons her mother would spectate the piano lessons to observe her progress, and this proved to be a great obstacle for me. I could not go more than 5 minutes without feeling self-conscious of whether I acted like a pedophile or not. Even smiling casually could possibly be seen as a “sign” to her mother; there was no way of telling how overprotective she was. 

“so, how was it?” She had just played her piece. I was definitely not listening that one time. I was definitely worrying about her mother just then. I was definitely not capable of giving legitimate advice right then. “It was pretty good. Let’s play it again from the beginning and I’ll stop you at a certain part though.” Pretty smooth, Kai.

The boy has ADHD. Without a doubt. Sitting still for this boy is impossible. And although I do not face the same predicament as I did with the girl, this boy’s mother is just too nice; she brings snacks and drinks to the boy’s room as I’m teaching him. The snacks are great. I love them. But the boy loves them too much. I would make desperate attempts to catch his attention but all I can do is just politely call his name as he puts his hands and legs inside his shirt and rolls around his chair spastically. 

I gently take away his Caprisun(classy, huh?) and resist the urge to make a passive-aggressive statement that many of my middle school teachers attempted to use on me. We continue working.

Such is tutoring.

Beauty is Random

started out my friend, apathetically. “If you look into the molecular level of everything, people’s sentimental values are created solely out of chance; we therefore love and adore completely random objects.”

He then asked me: “isn’t that disheartening? It makes you feel like love and beauty is almost worthless.”

I wasn’t moved by that. I told him that I agreed that genetics and influence from the outside can generate a human with completely random beauty sense. I then clarified that that didn’t make beauty any less valuable.

Because one of these days you will meet some people that just so happened to be generated with a beauty perception either just like or very close to yours. And the rarity of that, created by the randomness, makes the meeting of common minds just that much more significant.

Drama

Just doesn’t really happen to me. Instead it just barely skims me without ever actually hitting me. I can feel how close it’s happening around me, but just doesn’t happen to me.

So what’s the talk of the town right now? lol

My cat turned 20 on January 9th, 2012.

He is so old. Every step he takes he wobbles; he can just barely walk. So whenever he can, he avoids going up and down the stairs. Because of this sometimes he gets too lazy to walk all the way to his cat potty and he just takes a dump on of my family members’ beds.

This is incredibly inconvenient. If any of the family members ever are lucky enough to witness him attempting to take care of business on top one of our beds, we would have to swiftly carry him to a hardwood floor, where it would be far easier to dispose the cats’ droppings.

Unfortunately for my mother, my cat ruthlessly peed while being carried once. The urine sprayed everywhere, and as the rest of the family watched this horrific scene in shock my cat maintained the classic “innocent” look. 

Small tragedies like this are not uncommon in the Ono residence.

First two opuses

I needed to organize my music, so I labeled opuses.

Op. 1 - Promenade. A suite of four pieces… all about walking. Because I love to walk.
Movements are:
Pacing
Sauntering
Traipsing
Dragging

There aren’t movement numbers beside them because I don’t want them to be played in any particular order.

Op. 2 - Weather. So far I have four movements again, but I think more can be added.
For now I have Rain, Fog, Clear, and Breeze.

I will not be uploading them because I’m too worried about getting intellectual property stolen. If you’re interested in listening to them you can somehow contact me and I can send a recording, once I’m done.