Filed under: Personal
Sometimes I realized only afterwards that I had behaved like a snob. I am indeed a big snob, because I have been surrounded by so many people of high superficial accomplishments since Berkeley. Yet, I would think they are the “high quality” people, and before I knew it, my belittlement of some people I knew in the past would slip out of my mouth. That is why my chats with my little brother put me in check.
WiftyBananaist (12:38:56 AM): I am surrounded by good looking people who are good looking and extremely smart. When I came back to LA, I saw that the guys there are not very high quality
Raymmmmond (12:39:12 AM): whats a high quality person?
WiftyBananaist (12:39:15 AM): actually, I wouldn’t say I am that high quality….but I have some standards
Raymmmmond (12:39:19 AM): -_- i must be very high quality too
WiftyBananaist (12:39:30 AM): you asked a good question
WiftyBananaist (12:39:42 AM): perhaps the people I am surrounded by aren’t that “high quality” after all.
WiftyBananaist (12:39:52 AM): high quality only in appearnace!
Raymmmmond (12:40:08 AM): good from far, but far from good
Raymmmmond (12:40:09 AM): legit people are hard to meet
Raymmmmond (12:40:21 AM): most usually fail the chillax test-_-
Raymmmmond (12:40:28 AM): buncha fakers
High or low quality? Don’t overestimate yourself! I am such a snob. In the end, it is LA which I go to when I need a shoulder to cry on! Where are my oldest and most trusted friends? All in LA?
After all the “higher” society that I had seen since college, where do I find the most real things? LA!
Where do I find myself acting and laughing without a worry? LA!
Why? I am suddenly confused.
What is important?
Yesterday I had conversations / caught up with 4 friends, and while the topics discussed with each are strange:
Friend 1: why is there 6th sense?
Friend 2: lots of scary details on laser hair removal
Friend 3: the good, regularly life
Friend 4: kindred spirits
They keep me grounded and the next day, I was still mulling over the reminders they served me.
And I am amazed at how many people somehow have faith (although, might be misplaced) in me. It is flattering. But I am the only one who knows it.
Yesterday I went to a friend’s house for dinner, and the dish made specially for me is, cashews with celerie, chicken, green onions, and carrots. Every single ingredient has a significant meaning and I am quite touched. Furthermore, the dessert is a raspberry cheesecake with white chocolate topping — whao! I will be thinking of her as I chew on the cashews she gave me.
Yesterday night I discovered another of my hidden talents: opening doors.
And I do mean, literally, opening doors.
And this is not the first time that I evinced a talent for opening problematic doors.
Back in 2003-2004, when I lived in a 60-girl coop house in Berkeley, I was known in my house as the GO-TO person for problems related to being locked out of rooms. It was typical that sometimes people left their rooms without bring their keys and then locked themselves out. When the person in charge of the master key wasn’t present, I would be called upon to open the doors for them. How? Well, back then I discovered a way to open locked doors with cards. So I would swipe the card in a specific way to open the lock. It always worked. And I did it many times for my housemates.
But back to the present day.
Yesterday night when I came back home, my friend I discovered that the front door locked had been destroyed (meaning that some component inside got jammed). As my friend decided to use the backdoor, I said, “Stop. I think I know of a way.” Then in one swift movement, I placed my foot on one side of the door, and using my opposite arm, yanked the door out. Viola! It opened.
Today, as I came back home again, another girl was locked out at the front door due to this jammed key lock. I demonstrated my prowess again:
Girl: “The key is locked. I got my friend to come down to open for us.”
Me: “Wait… I got a trick.” Then I looked back behind us to see if anybody is watching (for security purpose). Then with another one swift movement, I yanked open the door, to the surprise of the girl (funny thing was, she had the same surprise look as my friend who looked on yesterday).
Viola!
Call the Anna-hotline whenever you are locked out of your house and I’ll come to your rescue.
P.S. Perhaps this door-opening ability of mine signify something else about me — I don’t let things get in my way! If you get in my way, I’ll find ways to crawl through!
How does one get used to saying things that one does not believe in such that one makes others feel pleasant and comfortable? How does one withhold one’s tongue for saying things thats one feels is correct and fears that the other person does not know yet could potentially affect the other person? After this winter break with family and conversations with various friends, I now realize that practicising this task is an absolute priority in getting my character in shape. Doing this task well could help advancement in life, in general. If I don’t do this, family members and some will convince me that I am stubborn, which is another trait I am trying to correct.
According to the “How to communicate” book I read over the weekend, one has to do 6 steps of enhanced listening to really get to the emotional layer behind people’s words; one has to ask oneself: What is the aim of his words? Why is he telling me this? What is he trying to tell me?
Here’s my selfish fantasy:
Oh why can’t people just be homogeneously more insensitive. It is because there is such a mix of sensitive and insensitive people that makes life so difficult for either type of people. When insensitive people naturally act insensitive because they simply could not emphasize with why the other sensitive person would take offense, the sensitive person would get offended but wouldn’t tell the insensitive person this because his/her sensitive instincts instruct him/her that doing so would make the the insensitive person take offense,! And the sensitive person would avoid the insensitive person, and then the insensitive person feels bad and actually still continues to be clueless because the sensitive person does tell him/her what he/she did wrong. Here both sensitive and insensitive people got hurt. Life becomes complicated.
Insensitive person told the truth which hurts the sensitive person. The sensitive person gets hurt but would not tell the insensitive person what went wrong, thus not incurring face-to-face damage but incurring long term damage in the insensitive person’s life.
If only life were simplier, so we can take each other’s words as they are — no extra interpretation. Just take it as it is. No need to read behind words, decode the emotions behind the words. What you are saying is exactly what you are telling me.
A result of my personal endeavor to try to think like a sensitive person is that I am beginning to stop believing in what people say. When people say, “that’s nice” — they are just saying it to make you feel better. It is disgusting and sad.
Which leads to another personal struggle for this new year — to smooth out the ups and downs of life. When people say something that makes you happy — you don’t need to feel so happy. Vice versa, when people say something that makes you sad — you don’t need to feel so sad. Emotionally, practice feeling calm and immune to BOTH ups and downs of life (not only down). Afterall, you really don’t need to take people’s words so seriously.
Filed under: Personal
Mother once said this phrase to me. And time and time again, I experienced the truth of the statement. But being such a stubborn and unyielding ingrate, I would quickly discount it when another situation arises.
Today, I bumped/met with two different classmates. Each of whom had their distinct situation. We shared our grievances. With just that, I was already lifted from my cloud. I am not alone. There are people who understand me.
Yes — I will keep coming. That girl whose paper you use as scratch paper will keep coming and let you use her paper as scratch paper.
Yes — you’ll see. You — who are young, old, famous, not famous.
Thank you, M&M.
Filed under: Personal
The last two days of the ASSA meetings were a whirlwind, as you can imagine as I remained silent for so long.
For a quick recap, here is to keep you up to date as to what happened since winter break began:
1. It was a very eventful winter break. I met and made friends with several new people — this I could not have imagined before, thinking that it’s going to be same old christmas break. It began with the girl sitting next to me on my flight from Chicago to Japan. She went to University of Chicago and got her PhD in Sociology and currently is an assistant professor at Michigan State. I found out that we worked on a similar field. In Hong Kong, I got to reconnect with various childhood friends and other friend’s friends. In San Francisco, in the hostel, I encountered many people and made friends with some (since most of them are there to attend the ASSA meetings anyways).
2. I just realized that regardless of how many papers I have written, never has one reached the final stage of readiness for publication in serious journals. To push it to that last extreme, it requires a lot of patience and work. I wrote two papers in rapid succession over the last month, and this week, to my frustration, I realized that those papers are not remotely even close to 40% done (on top of that frustration is that my advisor used my paper as scratch paper….*sob*!). It has been the case when you are just a student writing a paper just to turn in, that after you spend a couple all nighters you can wash your hand forever of the paper. Not as a grad student, where the process goes on and on, and despite several all nighters, it is not remotely even close. It is a rather trying process. I am not sure I’ll get a paper published at this rate. But I’ve come too far to turn back.
3. Winter quarter is the perfect time to work hard. February is the month to talk a lot.
4. In the Harry Potter books, the deatheaters’ “death mark” would pain them whenever Voldermort is close by. Well, I have a similar death mark. I realized that the itchy spot on my right arm tends to be itchy and all that rash will return whenever the demon that is called stress begins to creep in.
Filed under: Personal
Every year around the weekend close to 12/22, the Chinese usually gather their family around and have dinner to celebrate the coming of winter. This year, my family invited a couple of our relatives for a casual Chinese dinner. Conversations on the dinner table are typical of what happened when a bunch of loud Chinese people came together:
1. Abalones
When Chinese come together, the most likely topic they talk about is FOOD. My uncle started telling a joke about how my aunt (his wife) accidently ordered a VERY EXPANSIVE beef dish when they had their first dinner with the boyfriend of their daughter (my cousin). The beef was imported from Japan, where the cows were fed BEER and MASSAGED, consequently their flesh has built up much fat and according to people who have tasted them, those beef DISSOLVED in your mouth (I tried it once — the beef was not bigger than a 4 by 4 by 4 cm cube and costs $100 USD per piece — it tasted like a piece of fatty meat which I could not chew). When the boyfriend and possibly future son-in-law paid the bill, they were surprised that it costs almost $4000 HK dollar (about $500 USD).
I had always expressed derision toward those beef because the production process of those cows made me think about the horrible inequality of the world. When cows are fed beer and massaged, people are dying of hunger. All because there are willing consumers of these special cows. Yet these special cows are only one example of how much some Chinese people are willing to spend on food. There are also Shark Fins (which my father would happily buy for like $10,000 HKD, about $1200 USD for a meal), “flower plastic”, Swallow’s spit, abalones and other similarly exotic food with dubious nutrition benefits that people would shower a lot of money on. So I said to my family and relatives: I think HK people’s value system toward food is seriously problematic.
After being jumped on for my view, the table turned to the topic of how to spot good abalones. Well, while I detest those special beef, I love eating abalones (call me hypocrite…but at least the abalones are cheaper than the cows and do not require special production). My family grew up my the sea, my grandmother is a fisherwoman, my father is an expert on seafood, I grew up on seafood — yet I know nothing about picking good seafood. I said this to the family — that someday when my father is gone his knowledge of seafood would be lost.
So a lecture by my father about abalones ensued. He brought examples of good and bad abalones. It turned out that the absolute best abalones came from Mexico! (Yet the Mexicans themselves don’t know anything about abalones!) The Mexican abalones have been famous for several decades already. The next best abalone next to Mexican abalones are Australians abalones. Several jokes about abalones ensured. It happened that one of the dish served is an abalone dish, in it mixed with fake abalones in the shape of a strange mushrooms that are named “drumstick” mushrooms which looks just like that. Then followed a funny conversation about my relatives and family’s attitude toward these expansive food when they were young and poor.
2. Night Piss
One of the dish on the table is chestnuts and chicken. As my uncle grabbed the piece of chestnut and enthusiastically said, “Chestnuts are great! They stop night piss.”
Then my Dad enthusiastically said, “Abalones also stop night piss!”
My cousin said, “Chestnuts are a certainly much cheaper solution to stop night piss. But fortunately I don’t have this problem.”
I said, “I also don’t have this problem.” All the young unmarried people on the table similarly said the same thing.
It turned out that night piss is a thing that bother 50+ married men. Why?
A couple days into December, I have received several surprise Christmas presents, which are surprising, which I extremely appreciate and makes me happy because of the thought (similar feeling as receiving replies from my former “chicago ham” emails). I piled them up into a little mountain on my dining table to appreciate them everywhere I walk in my apartment:
1. A ginger bread house and a big box of chocolates! (coincidentally I saw a program on food network about building ginger bread houses and fantasized of trying….and viola, it came. Thanks Hunnie.)
2. A fly-shooter gun. Yes, it means what it is — a tiny gun that shoots flies (kind of like Will Smith’s gun in Man in Black). Who gave it to me? Here is the surprise — Prof S. from my Intro to Macro class. It is clear now that the professor sees his TA still as kids by giving them play guns. It is hilarious, and I absolutely get a kick out of it! Thanks Prof S!
3. A handbag made of a hardbook cover of “Short Stories of Mark Twain” — I love it and especially love the thought! It is so original but mostly it’s the thought. Thanks A,P,B,C!
And I look forward to the surprise christmas cards in my mailbox!
Snowing resumed yesterday night, and continued throughout the day. The road is snowy and icy. At these times, I felt it is EXTREMELY unwise for me (specifically, me) to be on the road. Here is why:
1. If I drive, my car skids. Yes, I know I know…my car is supposed to be “SUV”, meaning it should skid less than normal cars. But it does not. Comparing my car’s skid rate at the same driving speed as other sedans on the road, I felt my car skids much easier. By now I know enough about my car such that when I drive, I know it is extremely unsafe. The feeling of the car losing control is very scary, trust me. So at this time, I should not drive, unless the road is empty at least 200 yards within the vicinity of my car.
2. Even if I were a pedestrian, cars that skid will crash toward me. Even in snowy places like Chicago, cars don’t put on snow chains. And the scene on the road is not like Lake Tahoe, where all the cars are SUV and have snow chains. CARS DON’T PUT ON SNOW CHAINS HERE and they drive like 30mph on a snowy road. Which means that they do skid, and when they do and if I happen to be within the vicinity of those cars, I’ll die. So I also make sure that I won’t be such an unsuspecting victim by staying at least 200 yards away from any cars I see on the road. And on a street with normal traffic flow, this is impossible. So I should not be on the road.
Conclusion: better stay home to work.
P.S. the reason why I wrote this post is because I am on the road right now, and contemplating the wisdom of it.
