My dad sounded *so* disappointed earlier! He trudged up the stairs and
said, “Sacha, I’m so sad…”

I looked up from my computer and asked him what was going on.

The second World PyroOlympics is coming up soon, and he had really
wanted to go and shoot it. He was so excited! He had shot it last year
(a story in its own right), and he wanted to talk his way into press
access for the event. But my dad didn’t want just any kind of press
access. He wanted to find out if he could get away with, say,
representing a horse breeders’ magazine… ;) Why? Just for the sheer
heck of it!

So he… obtained… a press pass (don’t ask how) and was about to hit
them up for access when one of the organizers recognized him, shouted
his name and called him over. It turned out that the organizers had
lost my dad’s business card, so they couldn’t get in touch with him,
but they wanted to invite him to the VIP area for the fireworks
festival. With dinner and everything!

He went home with an envelope containing an invitation for “John Chua
and Family”. Just for showing up. He didn’t even need to talk about a
fictional horse-breeder magazine. But he was *so* disappointed!
Imagine that! Preparing an outrageous setup, getting all excited about
seeing just how far he could push the universe, and the universe just
handed him the prize on a silver (or at least nice porcelain) plate!

Ay, my dad… You think I’m crazy? ;) You should meet *him!*

Random Emacs symbol: minibuffer-local-map – Variable: Default keymap to use when reading from the minibuffer.