disalarming

I grew up in a house where every member of my family would gather around the dinner table every night for a hot meal and eat together. My mother would suffer no excuses when it came to eating dinner as a family; it was a constant in her household. The only exceptions I can recall is that if one of us were not at home during dinnertime (frowned upon) or if one of us were sick (excusable).

I think a lot of her insistence on eating dinner together as a family is because it was a part of the day where everyone would gather ’round and eat, talk, and bond. It was her time to catch up with her children and for my brother and I to argue about something stupid. As my mom always cooked dinner, eating dinner together also had something to do with politeness and manners. She cooked the meal; it would have been the height of rudeness if one of us had taken a plate of home-cooked food and eaten it on our lonesome in our bedroom or something.

Now that I’m on my own and have a packed schedule, I find that I’m often eating dinner on my own, and usually on the go. I’ll grab a burrito at Chipotle and eat it once I get home from my internship. I’ll eat a bagel sandwich from Einstein’s Bagels during my afternoon shift at work. I’ll eat a bowl of Special K in the morning before I take off for the day. I’ll cook dinner for myself and eat it in front of the TV, saving leftovers for the next day. My schedule often allows me to get dinners with friends, but we almost always go out to eat.

I love the food and conversation I have with my friends when we go out to eat, but I miss the dinners at my house. I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up in a house where family dinners didn’t exist. It’s not even the home-cooked factor (although I miss that dearly!), it’s the fact that I can’t understand how families don’t, or can’t, or won’t, come together for dinner. It makes me sad, because I have some great memories of dinners at my house when I was growing up!

Question of the Week: Does your family have family dinners where you all eat together? Or is dinner an individual occasion?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It’s okay to let people in. You don’t always have to hold people at arm’s length.
It’s also okay to let people love you.
But it’s not okay to continue loving someone who doesn’t love you back.
Friends are always there for you. Always. This is an unquestionable fact.
Don’t let anyone give you anything less than what you deserve.
Never settle. It’s never worth it.
If you won’t be fair to yourself, no one else will.
Smile. Laugh. Wish. Dream. Love.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve noticed something while traveling with my grandfather in mainland China: he always favors sons over daughters.

My mom once told me that my grandfather favored her brothers over herself and her sisters. I know that it is very traditionally Chinese for the males of the family to be favored over the females, but I could never quite understand why, even after all these years, my grandfather still favored my uncles over my mother and my aunts. His sons are the ones that have given my grandfather the most headache and grief out of all of his children; his daughters have done better for themselves in comparison. His daughters also look out for him more than his sons do. Whether that is because of a better sense of filial piety or because they are more capable of doing so, I can’t tell, but the fact remains that his daughters have caused less “trouble” (for lack of better term) than his sons.

This mentality of my grandfather’s has also passed down to how he views and treats grandchildren. The first of his grandchildren to go to university is male, the first who will get married is male, the first that went to study abroad is male, etc. Most of this has to do with the fact that most of my male cousins are older than my female ones, but even so, his granddaughters have done well for themselves but the grandsons are still favored.

The summer between high school and college, I went to Hong Kong to visit family. My grandfather congratulated me on getting accepted to university and I thought I had finally done something that was worthy in comparison of my male cousins, as I was the first granddaughter to go to university. Alas, turns out that wasn’t the case. My brother will start university in the fall, and my grandfather gives him extra care and attention that I never got the summer before I started college.

It’s not just about achievements like going to university, though. It’s about when we are at famous sites like Tiananmen Square or the Great Wall, my grandfather will want a photo with my brother, his grandson. Not with me, or my mother, or my aunt; he wants a photo with just my brother. Or when we are at dinner, and my grandfather will offer the last portion of rice or last piece of chicken only to my brother. If no one wants it, then he’ll take it for himself.

It’s not that my grandfather doesn’t love his daughters and granddaughters. He does, but it’s not in the same way he loves his sons and grandsons. It’s disheartening to know that no matter what I do or what I achieve, I’ll still be seen as inferior by my grandfather because I’m female. Not wholly unworthy, but not as worthy of attention and praise as the males in my family. It doesn’t matter if I get a doctorate or travel to Mars or become the first female president of the United States – I simply won’t ever be able to get the same kind of love that my uncles and male cousins receive.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Problems will always be there until you deal with them; running from them accomplishes nothing.
Never make one person your whole world, because if you do, you will always be holding yourself back.
Love freely, love largely, love with all your heart, but never give your love to someone who doesn’t care for it.
Never underestimate the strength you can draw from having amazing, supportive friends.
You have to learn to love yourself before you can love and be loved in return.
Inner strength is a thing of beauty: never forget you possess it.
Everything happens for a reason.
The only person responsible for your own happiness is you.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Problems will always be there until you deal with them; running from them accomplishes nothing.
Never make one person your whole world, because if you do, you will always be holding yourself back.
Love freely, love largely, love with all your heart, but never give your love to someone who doesn’t care for it.
Never underestimate the strength you can draw from having amazing, supportive friends.
You have to learn to love yourself before you can love and be loved in return.
Inner strength is a thing of beauty: never forget you possess it.
Everything happens for a reason.
The only person responsible for your own happiness is you.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

They say bad things happen for a reason
But no wise words gonna stop the bleeding
‘Cause [he's] moved on while I’m still grieving
And when a heart breaks, no it don’t breakeven, even, no
- Breakeven, The Script

I can say with confidence that the best part of me is not him, despite the fact that he is a huge part of my life, but that doesn’t make the situation any less painful. Or complicated.

It should be fairly straightforward – boy breaks girl’s heart, girl moves on. But life is never that neat and tidy. Or simple.

Tom: Did you ever even have a boyfriend?
Summer: Of course.
Tom: What happened, why didn’t they work out?
Summer: What always happens? Life.
- (500) Days of Summer

It’s one of those things where you know you deserve better but you’re afraid you won’t find better. So you settle, and you hate yourself and the boy for it, but you can’t bring yourself to do anything else.

This is what defines “pathetic.”

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been a little scarce of late and when I have been around, my entries haven’t exactly been the most personal or insightful. This is because I seem to have fallen into a bit of a state that, well… I don’t know. A state that involves a lot of feeling discouraged and worthless, I guess. It’s complicated.

I’m not satisfied with where a lot of things are in my life right now. I need to fix this, but I don’t know how, because so much of this dissatisfaction stems from things that are out of my control.

I wish there was a button I could press and magically, everything would turn around.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

This is something I’ve always wondered – how do people define the term “hooking up”?

I looked it up on Urban Dictionary to see if there was a general consensus about what the term defines, and this was the first definition I found:

Hooking up: An incredibly ambiguous phrase that drives me absolutely insane when people use it.
Example: John hooked up with Mary. (So what did they actually do? Did they meet at the park? Did they talk? Or did they duke like viagra-injected rabbits? Who knows…)

In junior high, “hooking up” essentially just meant making out. But as I got older and my friends and I got more experienced with all the possibilities of the definition of “hooking up,” we never adapted a new term. Let it be making out, messing around, or sex – no matter what it is, it’s always described as “hooking up.”

Sometimes, though, my friends and I clarify what exactly happened while hooking up. Take a conversation I had last night, for example:

Friend: I can’t go to that club tonight. So-and-so will be there and I don’t want to see him.
Me: Oh? Did you hook up with him or something?
Friend: Yeah. But we only made out. Nothing more.

In that case, what hooking up meant was crystal clear. But more often than not, I’ve found myself using “hooking up” as a blanket term for my experiences. I think it’s the safest term to use when you have to ‘fess up about something but don’t want to be in a position of kissing and telling. The ambiguity is a godsend, sometimes; if a group of girlfriends are insistent on finding out what happened, saying that you “hooked up” is enough for them to know something happened. The rest can be left to the imagination.

Question of the Week: How do you define “hooking up”? Has the definition of the term changed over time for you? Do you say you hooked up with someone, or do you use more specific terms?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Some people can matter little to others, to the point where it doesn’t matter what gets risked because it’s not like they’ll be cut up over things ending badly if they never cared deeply in the first place.

Some people can matter so much to others, to the point where everything is played safe because the thought of risking something with someone so important and it ending badly is more than they can bear.

I’m not sure which is better.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’m curious as to how people choose to dry their hair after washing it. Blowdryers? Air dry? Wet-to-dry straighteners? Some other form of hair drying that I am not aware of?

I ask because when I stayed with my godmother for a weekend, she was shocked to find out that I hate using anything to dry my hair. I’m all about air drying; it’s the least amount of bother and it works well enough for me! I think part of my aversion to using hair dryers is that when I was little and used them, I had a tendency to get bits of my hair caught in the back of the dryer (the cylinder bit where the fan spins to generate the hot air).

I suppose what people choose depends on lifestyle, too. Like, if people are pressed for time and need a hair dryer to quickly dry hair before heading out. Or not wanting to wait hours for hair to dry before they can go to bed. Personally, I don’t have any qualms with going out with wet hair (unless I have somewhere fancy I need to be) and I’ve been known to go to bed with wet hair from time to time.

Question of the Week: What do you use to dry your hair? Or do you use nothing at all and let nature do its work?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

This past week (keep in mind it is only Tuesday!) I have done the following:

Had dinner with my entire extended family
Had dinner with my godmother and her family
Had 6 Skype dates, the shortest of which lasted an hour
Had lunch with a childhood friend – the last time we’d seen each other was over ten years ago (!!!)

For the remainder of the week, I have plans to do the following:

Have at least 4 more Skype dates
Call my long-suffering mother, who undoubtedly misses her wonderful daughter
Hang out with the awesome Melody
Respond to Facebook messages, emails, etc

I seem to have become very social all of a sudden. Of course, I’m always social, but having the time for this many Skype dates is unheard of during the semester!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Here are my thoughts on having kids of my own:

Awesome. Great. I do want kids of my own… just not now.
Or at any point in the near future, actually.
But when I’m settled and am ready to have them, I want them.
I think.

The reason why I’m suddenly unsure of whether or not I actually want kids (regardless of whether or not they are my own) is because I have been staying at my godmother’s for New Year’s festivities. She has two adorable, yet terrifying, little boys, ages 5 and 8. Needless to say, I have spent much of New Year’s weekend chasing around after these two, trying to keep them entertained while also attempting to have some private “alone time” to salvage my sanity.

It’s not that they always tag along after me; I am a girl, after all, and they are far less interested in me than they would be in my brother, if he were here too. It’s the fact that I am another audience for them, another source of entertainment. I’ve done everything from watch movies with them to play games to have them “help me” check my email and Facebook. Hell, they even want to “help me” read when I’m reading on my Kindle by pressing the page turn button every time I need to turn the page! These boys are full of boundless energy; I get tired just watching them jump around and shout hour after hour.

Last month, when I was traveling around China with my best (guy) friend, a lot of people asked if we were married. Which was a little surprising, but seeing as most of the locals we encountered during our travels thought we were 4-7 years older than we actually were, it was a question to be expected. However, once we got asked how our kids were! OUR KIDS. My friend and I are both twenty years old; if we had kids, we would not be able to afford to go explore China for a month. We wouldn’t be able to afford to be in China, first of all. Once I got over the shock of the question, I laughed for a good five minutes over that one.

So… kids. I still want them in the faraway future, but right now, the idea of having them is a little overwhelming. As it should be, for where I am in my life right now. I still have the rest of my youth ahead of me!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t have any qualms with being single; I never have. I especially have not had any problems with my single relationship status with my quest to detoxify my life, as there are certain ex-boyfriends that are included in that detoxifying equation.

But sometimes there are days when I wish I had someone. Someone to hold me, someone to make time to spend with me, someone to make me feel special. These days are rare, but they exist. They are the days when I feel a pang in my chest and, for a few seconds, forget about all the things I strive for every day: independence, strength, maturity. In those seconds, I am transformed from all the qualities that make me who I am and dissolve into a needy, clingy girl. It’s only for a few seconds, but those seconds are more than enough for me to to feel discomfited.

I know that I won’t get any sort of validation from being in a relationship. That’s not what a relationship is about, and seeking self-worth from someone else is never going to get one anywhere. But there are days when I think that even though I know I don’t need a man – and I hope to never need one – sometimes, having one would be nice.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Taking a break from my recent Europe-themed posts to pose a question that I have pondered for a while:

Whilst I’ve been traveling around this month with different family and friends, I’ve noticed that there are many ways people eat eggs in the morning. I’m not talking about whether eggs are scrambled, poached, fried and whatnot; everyone knows about those differences. No, I noticed that people like to put different things on/with their eggs in the morning.

Salt, pepper, salt and pepper, jam/jelly, ketchup, cheese… I am sure there are many more, but those are just the ones that come to my head first. Personally, I like to put soy sauce on my eggs. I’ve always thought that was normal, but apparently that’s considered weird to non-Chinese heritage folk…?

Question of the Week: What do you like to put on your eggs?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been following the website Post Secret for quite some time now, but this was the first secret (from this week’s post) that struck a chord with me:

All my life I’ve felt I’ve been caught between the worlds of the East and West. I’m a half-American, half-Chinese girl who spent early childhood in Hong Kong and formative years in Western countries. I speak the language of my home (Cantonese) and am minoring in Mandarin Chinese at university, yet I won the award for highest marks in English at my Australian school and got top grades in my English classes in the US, both in high school and college. I know the ins and outs of both Asian culture and Western culture, from the importance of displaying modesty to bragging about one’s achievements. I go out and have fun with the best of them, yet study hard with the discipline of a person whose parents have repeatedly stressed the importance of studying and education. I have Western friends who perceive me to be more Chinese, Chinese friends who perceive me to be more American, and flip-flopping opinions from both sides of my family in regards to which nationality/culture I “belong” more to.

To some, all of the stuff listed above matters; it’s as though putting people in categories and pigeon holes are matters of life and death. It’s like when it comes to checking off what ethnicity I am in the census: why isn’t there an option to choose more than one race? Can’t I qualify as both on paper when I do mentally and emotionally? Why do I have to choose what I “feel more like,” Chinese or American? How can I pick between two cultures I have grown up in, two families that I have, two parts that make up who I am? None of this should matter, although sometimes, people insist it does. What really matters is that I am me and nothing, no category or description or label, can define what makes me, me.

I feel like I sent this secret in myself.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I am home from my trip to the East Coast! Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip. I visited friends and family and did a lot of sightseeing, as well as shopping. The best part was when I got together with my friends from school and we were all reunited – the last time we’ll be reunited for a year, as I’m going abroad for the year and most of them are going abroad for at least a semester.

Anyway, now that I’m home again, time to return to my regular blog programming. Stephen Colbert interviewed Vampire Weekend on his show in June 2010 and the following interview took place:

Stephen: Can I take you to task for something, for a second?
Everyone: Sure.
Stephen: In one of your songs, you have the lyrics: Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Ezra: Yes.
Stephen: I’m here to tell you, I do. Shall we explain what an Oxford comma is to the people?
Ezra: Oh. It’s always a little tough to explain… an Oxford comma would be a comma that you’d put before the and or the or, at the end of a list.
Stephen: Red, white, and blue.
Ezra: Exactly.
Stephen: I mean, red comma white comma and blue.
Ezra: Do you really need the comma?
Stephen: Yes, you do need the comma.
Ezra: Why do you need the comma?
Stephen: Because otherwise it’s: red, white and blue. Our flag is not red, white and blue. That’s red and baby blue!
Ezra: There are situations where it’s necessary.
Stephen: All situations. All of them except it’s, like, a law firm. That’s every other— No, listen, have you heard of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style?
Ezra: Yes.
Stephen: Heard of that? I refer you to… (opens book) page fucking two: In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term. (snaps book shut in Ezra’s face)
Ezra: Yeah, but I mean -
Stephen: Does that sting? That’s E.B. White, you heard of him?
Ezra: Respect to Strunk and White, but it’s just protocol. It’s not— there’s no real reason.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s language. Why don’t you just take all punctuation out, be like the Romans?
Ezra: Sometimes we do.
Stephen: Really?
Ezra: I mean, we’re a band. Y’know? (shrugs)
Stephen: I weep for our nation. But, I do enjoy your music. Will you stick around and do one of your songs that is properly punctuated?
Ezra: We’ll see.
Stephen: All right, we’ll be right back with a performance from Vampire comma Weekend!

I always used to use an Oxford comma, but then when I started taking journalism classes in college I had to stop using it because AP style forbids it. Still, I prefer an Oxford comma over none; it’s what I was taught all throughout school (until college) and I think sentences look neater with one!

Question of the Week: Do you use an Oxford comma?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Whenever Asian parents get together, it is customary for them to evaluate their kids and do a comparison. One parent’s kid will be smarter, but the others will be prettier/skinnier/more successful, etc. Usually these evaluations and comparisons occur right in front of the kids, as if the kids couldn’t understand what they are saying – oh, but they do understand; what’s more, they even expect this to occur every time Asian parents get together for a reunion!

When my mom got together with her Asian friends over the weekend, us kids braced ourselves for the inevitably degrading comparisons. A parent can compliment someone else’s kid, but they always have to put down their own child. The etiquette in this situation is surprisingly rigid, and the kids have to sit there and take it all in. It’s not that every parent believes what they say when they diss their own kid, but protocol dictates they must put down their kid after they receive a (probably over generous) compliment.

One aunty complimented me on how pretty I was. I was about to thank her for the compliment before my mother cut in and hurriedly made an argument for how not pretty, or ugly, I was. Another aunty asked me if I had lost weight, to which I truthfully replied I hadn’t. My mom once again cuts in and says I’ve gained a lot of weight, isn’t it obvious?

By the time the rounds were over, my friends and I (who are all either teenagers or in their twenties) had been reduced to a far, ugly, stupid and lazy group of kids. And I hadn’t expected anything less. Culture is culture, after all!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

When it comes to leg hair removal, I am a sufferer of the following things:

Sensitive skin. Like, SUPER sensitive, to the point where if I scratch my leg a rash will break out.
Pale, pale skin. Think blindingly white.
Dark, dark hair. Think jet black. ¹
Thick and/or coarse hair. (This one is pretty self-explanatory.)

Waxing: It works okay on my legs, except I’m not willing to shell out the money needed to see a professional regularly. Therefore, my experiences with waxing are those kits designed for you to use at home that you can buy at any good drugstore. I like the longer lasting effects of waxing, but since I’m not a professional, I don’t always rip the hair out at the root, which means I don’t get to enjoy one of the best benefits of waxing.

Shaving: Shaving is just… ugh, horrible. I don’t like the cuts and nicks, I don’t like the fact that hair grows back faster and thicker and I hate the feeling of stubble on my legs. To top it all off, my legs had a tendency to break out in a rash whenever I shaved, so it was just awful all-around. I could only shave once every two weeks, tops, because of my skin’s reaction to shaving, and because the hair grew back so fast I’d only be able to wear skirts or shorts for about two days. Definitely not worth all the trouble.

Epilating: I tried out epilating for the first time several nights ago. It’s an “electrical device used to remove hair by mechanically grasping multiple hairs simultaneously and pulling them out.” Basically, it’s most similar to waxing, minus the messy wax part. Hair takes about an estimated four weeks to grow back in and you don’t need to wait for it to grow out the length that waxing requires. Because there’s no blade, there are no burns or cuts. Yeah, epilating is going to be more painful than shaving, but I have a high pain tolerance so the pain didn’t bother me. The pain is also supposed to diminish with regular epilation.

Verdict: With the help of a little witch hazel, exfoliating body scrub and moisturizer, epilating is my favorite type of hair removal (already!). The best part? You can also use it on most areas of the body that require hair removal, so I’m only going to need my epilator and nothing else. Talk about convenience and saving money² while enjoying long-lasting hair removal!

Disclaimer: I do not look like a goth, despite my pale skin and dark hair. It’s just the result of my mixed heritage and which set of genes won out over the other in the looks department! [↩]
The epilator doesn’t need any replacement parts (e.g. you don’t need to replace the epilator head) so while the cost is higher up front, you save money with repeated use. No more need to shell out for professional waxing appointments, do-it-at-home wax kits, razors and/or shaving cream! [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I called 911 for the first time today.

I was in the backseat of the car, with my mother behind the wheel and my brother in the passenger seat. I was looking out the window, listening to my iPod and not paying attention. All of a sudden, I heard my mom scream, “Oh my God, oh my God,” and I yanked my earbuds out of my ear and frantically tried to figure out what on earth was going on.

There was a sedan two cars ahead of us that randomly pulled out of our lane and angled his car so that it was perpendicular to the flow of the traffic in the opposing lane. I’m not sure what was his train of thought was or if there even was one, but next thing I knew his car had collided with an SUV that was driving in the other side of the street. The front of the sedan crumpled and the fender of the SUV fell off; the airbags deployed and everything seemed to happen so much faster than it actually did.

The SUV pulled over on the side of the road and the two passengers climbed out, both unhurt. The driver of the sedan wasn’t in great shape; his face was bleeding profusely. However, he was well enough to get out of his car and take his shirt off so that he would have something to stem the steady flow of blood (I’m assuming he had a broken nose as there was a lot of blood). My brother went to go talk to the SUV passengers and the man in the car in front of us went to talk to the driver of the sedan. Meanwhile, I placed a call to 911.

Help arrived within several minutes. The cops arrived first, then an ambulance pulled up and the medics checked on the driver of the sedan. After that, there wasn’t much else we could do, so we hoped that everything would work out okay for those involved and then drove away.

It’s so strange to look at my list of recent contacts in my phone and to see 911 listed.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

This past week, it’s been my job to keep house while my mother recovers from surgery. Even though my cooking skills are nowhere near as superb as my mother’s, I am definitely a pretty capable cook. Here’s a sampling of this past week’s menu a la Manda (with all the savory dishes served with a side of pasta or rice):

Spaghetti bolognaise
Garlic lime chicken
Broccoli stir fry
Lemon pepper salmon
Thai green curry
Variations of eggs and toast (comfort food!)
Caramel apple upside down cake
Chocolate chip cookies

I’ve been unusually behind the ball when it comes to taking photos of my culinary creations, so you’ll just have to take my word that the food served in my kitchen this week has been incredibly delicious! I do, however, have my most ambitious dish yet on the menu for tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled for the documentation in the coming week. If anyone can guess what it is, I’ll send you some ;D

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

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Dinner With the Family

More Things to Remember for the Future

I Will Never Be Favored Because I’m Female

Things to Remember For the Future

Things to Remember

Breakeven

Soul Searching

The Definition of “Hooking Up”

My Heart Is In Pain But I’m Smiling For You

(Blow)drying Hair

“Catching Up” Engagements

On Having Kids

I Don’t Need a Man (But One Would Be Nice)

I’d Like My Eggs With…

I Am Me

The Oxford (or Serial) Comma

Apparently, I’m Fat and Ugly

Waxing vs Shaving vs Epilating

On Calling 911

I’m a Pretty Capable Cook

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