ode to a long summer day

On the second day of Genomics class, I met with my group members for the semester. One was a freshman exchange student from South Korea, one was a permanent student (like me) from Honduras, and one was... well, he wasn't at the meeting, so we'd assumed he'd left early or hadn't come to class at all. Until Carlos, the Honduras student, called his name across the room, and he popped his head up and asked, "What?" Turned out he had simply gone to the wrong group.

"So what's your name?"
"Toby. I'm a second-year grad student."
"Nice. Where are you from?"
"Cornell."

Cornell? My first question, of course, was why in all that is holy would you come to a place like NTU for graduate school after graduating from an Ivy League university? The connections you build from an Ivy alone would be enough to land you a starting job, or a paid internship, in the Ithaca or NYC area, fresh out of college. I never asked him this outright, but it wasn't until he came into the group discussion that I suddenly felt very intimidated.

It was easy to disappear in high school. I only had to do my work quietly in most of my classes, never make a peep during school rallies, and never attend football games. It was easy not to participate, and it was so easy to become a nobody. That changed when I came to college at NTU. I became "that girl from California," and it became less easy to disappear into the shadows. One, my Chinese name is two letters long, and really easy to remember. It's both a blessing and a curse, with professors and TAs and my friends. Two, I enjoyed the newfound attention. After sitting in the background for a while, having the spotlight is a major step up, and altogether very addicting.

In college I have been given an environment where some people are actually intimidated by me. I'm aggressive and very forward, and if I have something on my mind, I just say it. I ask questions when I'm unsure and I'm not afraid of strangers or people older than me. It's unlike the character and personality that most Taiwanese girls adopt when they enter college. Appearing weak, air-headed, and dainty is still their method of choice, but I have never been able to appear delicate or anything "cute" because I love to be loud and obnoxious. English became my weapon of choice, and I could win any argument by shooting rapid-fire English in the other person's direction, and they would be at a loss at how to respond. I played badminton, knew how to swim, played the piano for 13-ish years, and spoke French. Suddenly very mundane accomplishments become magnified when I am surrounded by people who spent the majority of their high school years studying and spitting up on examinations.

Which brings me back to how I was intimidated by Toby and his shining Ivy League education. I would have never enjoyed this kind of status in California; never been given this much attention at anything I do and anything I say. I don't shine in any particular aspect when surrounded by my high school friends, most of which have gone on to Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and the Ivys. I'm average in every respect, and from where I come from I might always be that way.

But when dwarfed by Toby, it makes me feel powerless again. It's like Prince John being dethroned by King Richard when he comes home from the war. The status and the power gets to your head, and you feel infallible, until the day the true claim to the throne comes home and you are forced to live a humble, shadowed life once again.

Of course, I exaggerate.

But the power play and hubris I have enjoyed so much for the past two years cannot last forever, since I don't plan on staying here after university. I need to find a way to get rid of that attitude in order for me to be able to get right on track when I get back home to California after university.

Otherwise I'll just be a nobody, again.

close as close can be

So after a while of camping out on Wordpress, changing my theme every few days in a manner that can only be described as OCD, and never satisfied with the results... after a while of realising I will never be satisfied with a blog with which I have no control over its stylesheet/CSS, I've decided to move back here. Yeah. I know. I decided not to say anything about this move because people would kill me, and I'm fine with no one reading what I write.

I want to document a strange dream I had last night. I dreamt that I was getting married—or in the process of doing so, anyway. I woke up one morning and remembered I was getting married that day. Suddenly, it's fifteen minutes (or a short time) until the ceremony and I have no make-up done, I don't know where my dress is, and my bridesmaids are either gone or drunk and I have no idea what's going on. I remember I kept on thinking I have more time, it's no problem...

I don't know, or don't remember, who the groom was. Someone from high school, probably? I remember I was on the verge of tears because I really wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to marry him. I decided to go through with it for the sole reason that my parents paid a fortune for the wedding and I didn't want the money to go to waste.

The dream can be interpreted in a variety of ways. My bad procrastination habits are highlighted in my failure to be ready fifteen minutes prior to the ceremony. Being unsure about the groom highlights my fear of commitment.

I woke up with one of those "wtf" meme faces.

go ahead and play me your sad song

Too Taiwanese to be American, and too American to be Taiwanese. It's not like I have to choose one and stick with it, because there's both in me and there always will be, but I'm sick of wanting the former when I want the latter and vice versa. I'm tired of trying to fit in wherever I go and not being satisfied with anything or anyone I become. I'm so tired of trying to maintain a dual personality. I want to be me. Is that so difficult, so much to ask?

New beginnings, or endings.

This photograph is taken from an Anthropologie e-mail that I received early this morning. I really like the theme of "balance," which is something we're always, always trying to master, especially in college, when we're working to find a direction as well as a balance. Going back to school, going back to Taiwan, is especially hard for me this time because of all the emotional attachment I have to California, and all the feelings that have been allowed to return with a month's vacation here. It's difficult to put it all aside and go back to a life that's lonely in comparison, and a life that I lead on my own. Even so, I vow to make this a good semester. I really do, this time, I mean it.

come here, pretty

One of my personal goals in life is to always be skinny. Why? Skinny is healthy if you do it right—good portion control, moderation of food, eating wisely and exercising regularly. Skinny is beautiful. Skinny makes clothes shopping one heck of a lot easier. And skinny enables me to live fully because there are no limitations on my body's physical mobility.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we've had today.

I think this is going to be my "word vomit" post about One Day. The movie, and the book: the former of which I've seen, the latter of which I'm currently reading.

I'm blatantly unaware of the popularity of the movie or the book or how well it's done in the UK and in the US. I mean, the whole reason both were especially captivating to me was because I saw the movie first, and any love story with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess is mine to nom. The movie wasn't exactly praised on Rotten Tomatoes, but after years of seeing movies that I actually really enjoyed panned for terrible acting or terrible storyline on the site, I have no faith in RT anymore, anyway. In this case, the critics were whining piteously Anne Hathaway's British accent, which I actually thought was fairly decent. Not excellent, but not crap, either.

I'm going to try not to disclose spoilers here, but the basic synopsis is as follows. Two college graduates, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, meet on the day they graduate. In the movie they attempt to sleep together on the night that they meet, but after Emma sheepishly confesses that she's "not good at this kind of stuff," Dexter suggests that they become friends. The scene ends with them cuddling together on the bed, smiling contentedly. Every scene thereafter has a date inscribed on the corners of the screen: July 15th, 199X, with the x+1 for every changing scene. The movie, and the book, follow them for twenty years on the same day of every year, and show us snippets of their relationship and how they develop, and eventually... well, you have to read the book.

Anyway, 1 2, your main characters.

From what I understand, people who see the movie either hate it or love it. Those who hate it dislike it because they see no direction to the story, and as a result, no depth. They believe that the idea of following them on a day of each year is, well, stupid. I beg to differ: I think I'm part of the latter group. I also think a part of me is scared to say I love it, because I risk being the type of girl who falls in love with chick flicks because of the "perfect story" they portray: a.k.a. your typical Team Edward girl. I do think it's something more than that, though. The movie felt like poetry to me. It felt realistic, and not in the least bit idealized. It details the story of two people who are trying to find their own direction in life, starting from the one point that I, personally, fear the most: straight out of college. They're so caught up in trying to find that one something that will trigger all happiness, that they don't come to the conclusion that the happiness they seek is the joy they find in each other. It's basically another cheesy way of saying "they found what they were looking for right in front of them."

One Day is one of those I Fell in Love With My Best Friend stories, but it's so beautifully written, and beautifully set in London, then in Paris, that I can't bring myself to write it off as a cliché (making me a sucker for anything set in Europe). There is depth to the story not in words, but in actions. I believe that the thing that makes this story so powerful is the fact that we follow two very ordinary people, neither of them celebrities, who believe they can conquer anything, who have the highest ambitions and the wildest dreams, just like our generation does, but things don't fall right into place for them, and they make many, many mistakes as they try to scale even the smallest feat. But in the process, they found one of the things that make life most rewarding and fulfilling: deep compassion for another person.

Furthermore, I think something special about One Day is that David Nicholls wrote both the book and the screenplay. It's rare that an author will be given control over what parts of his book will go in the movie, and it's one of the reasons why the parallels between them are so beautifully done.

Well, I do need to finish the book, but after seeing the movie, the ending is already obvious. Still, I love the way David Nicholls writes, and there were sections that made me smile, and eventually burst out laughing, in the book. The two make such a lovely pair, and such a lovely story. I will submit to cliché and say that I hope I have what they have someday, too.

California chronicles

I'd like to say that coming home to California for a month did exactly what I needed it to do: allow me time and space to re-charge my dwindling energy supply and to sit back and reflect on the directions and improvements I need to take when I return to university. I'm now a little more than three days away from my departure back to Taiwan, and there are some things I'd like to bring to light, that I've been doing or thinking about all of winter break. I think this post might be embarrassingly long.

I had these long, long, and I mean long discussions with my mother (sometimes over tea or coffee and a nice slice of homemade cream tart) while my father was at work and my brother at school. I talked to my mother the most over the course of this month, because she was the one who took me grocery shopping, clothes shopping, and the one who taught me the basics of cooking, things I know I'll put to good use when I return to Taiwan.

My mother is in a sense, a conservative mother. She allows me the freedom to make my own choices and to go my own ways: in school, with friends, and she trusts me with my own time. Whether I'm worthy or not of this trust is another issue that I need to discuss with myself. She loves to lecture me (and I mean this in a positive tone) on the values of family, marriage standards, and the consequences of the choices you make. I love to listen to her. It works out both ways.

A topic that came up early in my visit started with a question. My mother asked me if I had noted any differences between NTU students and myself. Culturally, academically (only too obvious), spiritually—everything. I started a huge rant about how I felt Taiwanese children were immature for college students, and always few years behind American children—not in academics, but in mentality—partly influenced by their upbringing, education, and the way Asian culture raises their children. I wasn't trying to berate anyone. I was merely expressing a sort of frustration—frustration that I felt I couldn't connect with some of my Taiwanese classmates on the same wavelength, that their thought processes were slightly more shallow and less well-rounded than that of some of my American classmates. A worldly view, if you please.

Then my mother asked me, but, do you ever see any of your classmates doing drugs, or going out late to drinking and clubbing and not coming home until 4 a.m. in the morning? I had to admit that the answer was no. Then, she pointed out, isn't that a problem that Taiwanese students, particularly NTU students, have succeeded in avoiding? It's such a problem in American universities that drugs and alcohol are becoming a norm in every college community. But for NTU students, who compose the top one percent of every region in the country, it's not a problem, because it's not the norm, and never will be, with NTU's high academic standards.

She continued to ask me if I felt especially lucky. She pointed out that if I had not been brought up here and made the decision to go to Taiwan for university, I may have never realized how fortunate I was to have been raised in the United States. I may have never realized that the opportunities available to me here are so much better than the ones my classmates have ever been able to reach. I'm sure, she continued, that all of your friends, the ones you deem "immature" or "shallow," would have loved to have been raised in the same place that you were—here. I'm sure their parents would have wanted all the opportunities you had for them, as well. But being raised in the United States, particularly Silicon Valley, a blossoming high-tech community, is a very expensive affair. Not everyone has what you enjoy.

My mother made me realize that night that given the limitations of their upbringing and the way their education system works, my Taiwanese counterparts probably have done their best to get where they want to be. My rather harsh criticism (which I have never disclosed to anyone apart from my family) of them is out of place because it's not the criterion they were raised to value.

It's a lot of food for thought ( to be continued )

the valentine's day photo dump

A wonderful 情人節 to you! :)

lots of cookery

So lately, I've been doing a lot of work in the kitchen with my mother. Here are two samples:

I first saw this dish at the delicatessen at Whole Foods, and it looked so awfully delish! I was on the lookout for my dinner that night, so it was so tempting. But it was some ridiculous price like $5.99/lb., and I sighed, looked at the ingredients listed on the price tag, took note of them, bought them (for much less!) elsewhere, and took them home. I think I ended up getting Chipotle (which is right next door to the Almaden Whole Foods) for dinner that day. And voilà, a few days later, this is what I have! The dish is called German potato salad, took about one hour to prepare, and consists of the following ingredients, in appropriate portions:

• red potatoes
• apple vinegar
• red onions
• chopped parsley
• green onions
• salt & pepper

The salad's a mere appetizer, though. I'm still far from a full-course meal, but I did manage to cook up some more: pasta alfredo with artichoke hearts and mushrooms!

The pasta contains:

• linguini
• mushroomies
• parsley sprigs
• (frozen) artichoke hearts
• alfredo sauce w/ garlic and red onion
• appropriate amounts of salt and pepper

I ate until I was ready to burst tonight! Cooking for yourself and for your family is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. Of course, the cooking is only one half of the story... because after you've stuffed yourself to the brim, then comes the clean-up and the dishwashing, which my mother very graciously took over (that meant I had to clean the living room instead, and I'm totally fine with that).

Cheers! And hurrah for cooking; hopefully more dishes are to come in the future :D

La vie par les étoiles

I'm going back to Taiwan soon, but I'm trying hard to enjoy my last few days here. In a way, it's my last few days of freedom, but in another way, in six more days I must return to a much more simple life, a life much less luxurious than the one I once enjoyed in California. However you want to interpret the less luxurious part is up to you.

Less words, more photos, namely only four of them:

freshly pressed (teehee, pun)

Heh, well, I'm starting over. Like I always do. This blog was made back in high school and sat in my Google account unused for over two years. I'm finally reclaiming it and bringing it back to life. Let's just put it this way: I'm not really serious enough to be paying to customize my CSS stylesheet on Wordpress, and even though people rave about how great it is and the advantages it has over Google Bloggers, over 90 percent of the blogs I've run into and shown interest in are hosted on Blogspot. I've finally made a decision to move back and have full control over how my blog looks before forking over money, because I just can't stand not being able to change the theme appearance. Excellent customization, my butt.

It'll be a few days until I can get this blog up and running, so let me direct you, please, to a few of my daily reads and excellently designed blogs:

jennifhsieh · honeythumbs · ohhellofriend · thedaybookblog · ppppapertissue

Have a lovely day!