Finally, the Livin is Easy

So I realize I've been on an extended blogging hiatus, but I severely underestimated how much my life was going to change once I started school. My first semester, my entire life was dominated by classes and papers. This past semester, I was not only taking classes, but student teaching at a middle school as well. So my schedule looked something like this: during the week I taught all day then went to class at night and on weekends I wrote papers and lesson plans and graded papers.

As a result of this crazy schedule and constant exhaustion, not to mention the fact that any time I did have interactions with normal adults all I could talk about was my students, I did not have much of a social life this past year. In fact, this past semester, I can count on one hand the amount of times I went out with my friends.

Although this probably sounds severely depressing and you're probably feeling bad for me, I have to say that it wasn't as terrible as it sounds. There were a few nights when I had mini-meltdowns, thinking that I would never finish grading all the papers I had to do and I was never going to see my friends again, but for the most part it was the most fulfilling few months of my adult life.

Anyways, since I was too busy to even think of writing and I had no material to write about to begin with, the blog took a backseat. But now that it's summer time and I am on vacation for three months, I'm hoping that I will actually have a life now and enough blogworthy experiences to make up for the dearth of a social life this past year.

My (limited) dating experiences for the past six months are gonna have to wait until next week, though, so make sure you tune in.

And the Livin is Easy

Today being the equinox, the longest day of the year, (and the anniversary of my sister's birth), it marks the official beginning of summer. Which seems to be an arbitrary distinction since New York has already seen half a dozen days in the 90 degree range, but whatever.

And since that means I'll be spending more time by the pool and out of town (and later in the summer in Europe for a few glorious weeks), it means that I will have less time with my computer. So, unfortunately, I will be taking a summer hiatus from blogging weekly, but worry not because if anything blogworthy comes along, I will definitely be throwing it up.

In the meantime, happy equinox and summer to everyone! And a very happy 23rd birthday to the little one out west!

It's A Girl!

In honor of Father's Day, I am going to tell the story of how the men in my family became fathers, particularly my own dad and my grandparents.

Now, my parents were immigrants from Taiwan and my sister and I are the first generation of Taiwanese-Americans in our family. So a lot of the customs that my parents grew up with have been lost with us. But one them has been particularly pervasive in our lives.

Patriarchy, aka girls are worthless.

My grandfather on my mother's side is a very successful tycoon in Taiwan, so after he reached a level of success in business, all he wanted was a son to pass his name, legacy, and business onto. Unfortunately for him the first offspring was a daughter (my mother) as were the subsequent four girls. At the fifth girl, my youngest aunt, when the nurse told my grandmother, "It's a girl!" my grandmother literally burst into tears at the prospect of having another child.

Because there really was no other option. My grandfather was (and still is) he patriarch of the family so if he wanted a son, a son was what he was getting. Eleven years after giving birth to my mom, with four other daughters in between, they finally had a son, the son who would carry on the family name and who would be the proud offspring that would care for them in their old age and bring the family pride. It's almost like the story of Henry VIII, except with fewer beheadings.

Except...my uncle JoJo was so spoiled throughout his life that he is now 41 and unemployed, never having had a job in his life, and his wife and three children all live on a stipend from my grandfather. I'm not still not sure what the kids say when their friends ask what their parents do for a living. "Grandpa sends Daddy checks every month because he was born a boy?"

Not that I don't love JoJo. He is far and away my favorite uncle, partly because he lived with us when we were growing up and since he was only 13 years older than me, he always seemed more like an older brother than an uncle to me. Just as now, I feel much more like an aunt to his three children than their cousin, especially given that I am 24 years older than the youngest.

My aunts were not given any of this special treatment and have all turned out to be successful women with families of their own. I think it's pretty awesome that they have all become successful in their own right with minimal help from my grandfather, whereas JoJo is a homemaker for his kids and doesn't have to work since he was born with a penis.

No, I find this whole patriarchy nonsense kind of hilarious, because if you look at it any other way it really is just tragic. So I just listen to this kind of stuff and laugh. But my sister E, oh my crusader the sister E, thinks this is the most unfair thing ever and gets heated up when we discuss JoJo's situation. She wants to sit down our grandfather (once again, the patriarch of our clan), wag her finger in his face, and say, "Well, I hope you have learned your lesson that spoiling your son does not amount to anything good."

I'm sure he'll be quite receptive when she gives him that piece of her mind. I just can't wait to watch.

So the next reasonable assumption is that my parents were hoping for at least one boy in their family. My paternal side was hoping for a male to carry on our family name and my maternal side just wanted a boy because boys are better than girls. (Duh.) They got pregnant only about a year after getting married and even though my parents were struggling immigrant graduate school students, they were ecstatic to have a baby and never considered any other options but keeping it.

Since they hadn't lived in the country long enough to even have health insurance, my mother skipped any sonograms that were available at the time and they opted to wait to find out the sex of the baby. Her mother (my grandmother) and my uncle JoJo flew out a week before her due date to be there when the baby was born. After all, it was to be the firstborn of the new generation, the eldest child of the eldest daughter.

So, on this momentous occasion, they were all crossing their fingers that a healthy boy would be born. And out pops, well, me. It was the first in a long series of woes I would bring to my parents.

My grandmother wasn't allowed in the delivery room, so through the glass window of the waiting area my father had to convey to my grandmother what sex the baby was. So he chose a thumbs down. And my grandma's face fell.

That's right. All those hopes, all those dreams, all that time out the birthing canal, and all I got at the end of that long ride was a thumbs down because I didn't have a penis.

Eventually, they all came to terms with the fact that I was a girl (kind of) and found other things to criticize instead, like the fact that I had naturally dark skin (like the farmers' kids do), and that I was extraordinarily fussy as a child, so much so that I wouldn't let anyone but my mother or JoJo carry me. And later I would start hitting, biting, and throwing fits, but that's a story for another time.

Four years later, my little sister was born, putting an end to my parents' attempts at continuing the family name. Unfortunately, my father's only brother had three girls, so my paternal grandfather is devastated that we are the end of the line.

My mother claims that my father is happy that he had two daughters, but I find it highly suspect that there isn't an ounce of disappointment that he didn't have a son to pass his genes and name onto. I'm pretty sure that this is why my parents chopped all my hair off when I was six and I was mistaken for a boy for the entirety of first grade.

So, sorry Dad, on this Father's Day, I apologize again for being born female (and for being so adamant that I only wanted a little sister, not a brother, which obviously had an impact on the outcome). But I leave you with this tidbit of wisdom, which I am hoping my sister will also impart to our grandfathers:

Girls rule.
Boys Drool.

Oh, So Awkward

So last weekend at S's birthday party, I had another run-in with the most awkward man alive.

Just to recap, I met this awkward specimen a few months ago, when he stunned me with his new levels of awkward conversation. Then he attended my birthday party and suggested we get together while we were both in California.

We texted back and forth while we were both in San Francisco, but never ended up meeting up since I was busy finding a giant donut with my sister. Strangely enough, he even called me one Saturday night at 2AM, which I would usually take to be a booty call. But considering he was staying with his parents and I was crashing at my sister's, that would've been out of the question. Which just makes me think it was another awkward maneuver.

So I was excited to catch up with Awkward when I saw him at S's party. And surprisingly, he seemed excited to see me too. He gave me a very friendly greeting and hug and then proceeded to once again display his unprecedented power to bring conversations to a standstill.

Me: Congratulations on graduating from law school! How's bar studying going?

Awkward: Studying?

Me: Yeah, you know, for that big exam you have to take to practice law...Didn't you start taking the class this week?

Awkward: Oh yeah, the class started, but I don't need to study.

Me: Errrr...why?

Awkward: Because I'm brilliant.

This was said with no irony or facetiousness whatsover, which led to a brief uncomfortable silence.

Me: Sooo...have you gotten placed at the law firm yet? Because someone else mentioned they're having trouble reaching them.

Awkward: What do you mean?

Me: I guess they're not picking up his phone calls?

Awkward: Oh, they always pick up my phone calls. I'm really important.

Another beat.

At this point, I excused myself and found my friend R to roll my eyes at her and ask if he could possibly be for real.

"Yeah he seems really full of himself, and not in a kidding way," R said. "I had no idea what was going on over there, but it looked like he was hitting on you."

I laughed her off: "No, no way. I think it's literally impossible for him to be interested in me."

"No seriously, he was leaning into you and standing close to you. I think he might really have been hitting on you."

I figured she had to be mistaken until I passed him again and he stopped me to ask me, concerned, "You're not leaving are you?"

Which, unless it's coming from the mouth of someone you're actually friends with, is boy-code for, "I hope you're not going anywhere because I'd really like to spend some time with you and bang later tonight, or at the very least drunkenly make out in the corner of the bar."

I told him I was just going to the bathroom and since I was a few drinks deep at this point, figured there wouldn't be any harm in trying to talk to him again.

Boy, was I wrong.

Awkward: Are you excited to start at that shithole school?

Me: You mean the school you just got your law degree from and that I start in the fall? Yes, I'm pretty excited.

Awkward: Why?

Me: Because I am really looking forward to going back to school. What do you have against it?

Awkward: I don't know. I guess in the law school it was just a bunch of Type-A, arrogant, competitive assholes all trying to get ahead.

Me: Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that describe you to a tee?

Awkward: Exactly! That's why I hated everyone there. You can only have one of those types in a crowd and there were just too many there that I had to compete against!

Me: I see...

Awkward: Plus they were all socially backward and awkward.

Me: Once again, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that also describe you?

Awkward: No! I'm not awkward at all!

Me: Um, sure.

Awkward: Just because I have strong opinions and voice them in dissenting crowds which makes me unpopular doesn't make me awkward.

Me: No...but that doesn't really help.

Awkward: What are you talking about? I'm not awkward!

Me: I have to be honest with you. I think you're one of the most awkward people alive.

Awkward: Most. Awkward. Person. Alive?!?! There's no way. S, do you think I'm awkward.

S: I love you, but you really are the most awkward person I've ever met.

Me: Ha, see?

Awkward: No way!

At this point, he asked another one of their coworkers if he is awkward to which the guy answered without even thinking about it, "Yes, absolutely."

I had previously thought that awkward people have to know that they're awkward, like it's some sort of self-awareness that you couldn't possibly miss, like fat girls knowing that they're fat and short guys knowing that they're short. But my major mistake was forgetting the Spare Tire Girls in college.

You see, my college was notorious for having heinous girls (which it did), which gave some of the ugly girls a distorted self-image where they thought they were much prettier than they were. Which led to a lot of fat girls wearing way too little clothing. Seriously, as soon as spring hit, there were eyesores everywhere. It was painful.

The worst were the Spare Tire Girls, who had giant rolls of fat around their waists but due to their sorority sisters saying, "Nooo you can totally pull that off. You look hot!" would walk around wearing shirts that were many sizes too small. Instead of hiding their spare tires, this would have the opposite effect of flaunting their bulges to the maximum. Just thinking about it today gives me the chills.

Anyways, apparently awkwardness works the same way. And although we thought it was common knowledge that Awkward is so awkward it makes your teeth hurt, he had been in the dark. He proceeded to rant about it for some time and turn to the gay guys in the crowd for consolation.

They petted him on the head and assured him that they didn't think he was awkward at all (false), and before we knew it he had left without saying good-bye to any of us. With the gay guys.

My friend T, being the friend that he is, turned to me and said, "Did he just choose a bunch of gay guys over you? That is a BURN! I can see the disappointment all over your face. Do you need a hug?"

I hotly replied, "I'm not disappointed or upset! I just think it's strange that he left without saying bye!"

"It's ok. I know that you're upset that you just got ditched for guys. You let me know if you need that hug."

I know I probably injured Awkward's ego by calling him out for being in awkward in public but I really thought that he knew.

Especially since after leaving with a bunch of gay guys after possibly expressing interest makes it even more awkward than it was before, which I previously had not thought was remotely possible!

It just goes to show you, just when you think you've seen it all, some fat girl with her gut hanging out of her XS tee or an awkward guy will always prove you wrong.

Home Sweet Home

I am enjoying my first week at home after a whirlwind month of May. I flew out to Vancouver at the beginning of the month, then went to my parents' house for a few days, and returned to the city only to head out to Martha's Vineyard last week. I'm just starting to get into the rhythm of my daily life at home and enjoying sleeping in my own bed.

My week in Canada was filled with family and nonstop eating of amazing food. (E and I sampled some pigeon, an Asian-Canadian specialty. It was surprisingly juicy and delicious and even the head is edible. I grossed E out by munching on the skull and beak.) The highlights, in addition to finding out that I am cool, are below:

1) Attending a Mathlete competition, complete with a lightning round and buzzers. As if that wasn't nerdy enough, my 8-year old cousin actually won the fifth grade division (he's only in fourth grade). He won a new Wii and got an awesome trophy and an even awesomer t-shirt.

2) My attempt to start an Olympic curling career. Since I am getting on in years, I figured out a few years ago during the Beijing Olympics that the number of events I could actually compete in are getting pretty limited. At this point, they're pretty much limited to archery and shooting in the Summer Olympics and curling in the Winter Olympics.

So I conveyed my desire to curl to my uncle, thinking that's what Canadians do for fun, right? Well, he called around to all the curling rinks in the area and they were already closed for the season. Apparently it's too expensive to keep the ice frozen during the summer, so they shut the rinks down in the off-season.

Which means my curling career was thwarted right from the very beginning. I was really looking forward to it: the weird shoes, the giant stone, the yelling, "Pull! Pull!" without understanding what it means, everything.

Even more embarrassing than my inability to find out if I am a natural curler, my 8-year old cousin doesn't really grasp sarcasm yet, so he asked me in all seriousness, "Why do you want to win an Olympic medal so badly? Why don't you try figure skating?"

To which I had to explain to him that I was just joking about the whole Olympic thing because I am far too old to really win a medal at this point. And that if I had wanted to compete in figure skating, I would've had to start training over twenty years ago. Especially since Yuna Kim and Mao Asada who respectively won the gold and silver medals this past year in Vancouver were both 19. I'm pretty sure that alone puts me out of contention...not to mention my inability to skate.

3) Spending time with my three-year old cousin, who is a technological savant. The kid can't speak in full sentences, but he can operate an iPad faster than anyone I know. He does everything on it: watches movies, plays games, watches YouTube videos on video games he likes.

One day we went to the mall and assuming he was like every other normal kid on the planet, I stopped at the kids' play area to see if he wanted to play. But he ferociously shook his head and pointed down the right. So I followed his directions and pushed his stroller right into the Apple store. Turns out he wanted to play with the iPhones. I would've been sad about it if I wasn't so busy being impressed.

I hadn't seen him for about a year and what was most fascinating was that since I saw him last, he's developed a personality. He is funny and inquisitive, has active likes and dislikes, and has a penchant for being violent (he likes to throw things and has a history of beating up his brother and sister, who are both about four times his size). He already loves sports, especially baseball and hockey (after all, he is Canadian), so they plan on enrolling him on teams in the near future in the hope that it will be a healthy outlet for his aggression.

Perhaps the best part of the trip was the way he would wake sister E and I up in the morning. Usually he'd wake up and call for his Mommy, but during our stay, at 10:30AM promptly in the morning, while E and I were still in bed, the doorknob would start rattling and a little voice would call out to us. He'd eventually stand up on his tiptoes and maneuver the handle to find his way in and then would climb into bed to talk to us in his barely comprehensible baby babble. It was utterly adorable and I still miss his morning wake-up calls.

The subsequent week in the Vineyard was the epitome of relaxing. S and I spent our days sitting out on her porch and beach, eating the best food New England has to offer (How do they make their clam chowder so good?! I'm convinced they put crack in it. Seriously, I don't even know why we bother with this "Manhattan clam chowder" nonsense; it's so inferior it doesn't even deserve the title of "chowder.), and booking our trip to Europe in August (Our itinerary consists of: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Croatia and yes, we can't wait!).

After all the traveling though, it is nice to be home, especially since it is my favorite time of year when it's warm out and I can spend my days sitting in Central Park or out by my parents' pool, but it's not so humid and warm that yet that I don't even have the energy to go outside (I'm talking about you, August, but luckily this year I will be in Europe for the majority of the muggy NYC season.).

And since I don't have another weekend away planned until July, it looks like I will be spending the majority of June enjoying summertime in the city. Couldn't be happier.

Middle School Musical

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Meet the Browns

So my friends and I have this running joke that Brown University isn't a real educational institution. There's no particular reason for this other than the fact that the students there are permitted to create their own majors and when we were driving through Rhode Island once, we were going to stop at Brown to get something to eat but weren't able to since there wasn't one sign on the highway alerting us to the exit for Brown University.

Which has led us to believe it's some sort of invisible or imaginary school, somewhat like Hogwarts, but with a lot less magic and awesome.

A few Saturdays ago I was hanging out with my friend L. She had just been set up with this guy and had made tentative plans to hang out with him that night, but when she texted him to see if they were still on, he replied, "Playing beirut all day, so don't expect anything fancy tonight."

Which is just a bizarre response, unless he was kidding, but I'm not sure that he was. So after some back and forth they decided on a bar that isn't very conducive to a date - it is on a boat in the pier, sells buckets of beers, and tends to be the meeting ground for ex-still-wannabe-current-frat boys. So she asked me to tag along since his friends would be there as well, and therefore she'd have backup if it was awful.

So after getting there and acquiring a bucket of beer, L and I met up with the guy, who turned out to be pretty nice but announced that twenty of his closest friends were about to join us because it was his birthday.

Pause.

That's right, he had made a date with L on the night before his birthday and then tricked her into attending his birthday party instead. I was somewhat puzzled and more curious to meet his "friends," because now I wasn't sure if he had any.

True to his word, ten girls and guys showed up shortly and a flurry of awkward introductions were made, since they all asked how I knew the birthday boy and I had literally met him ten minutes prior.

It turns out they all went to Brown together. Like all of them. As in L and I were the only ones that couldn't join the Brown University Alumni Association. Apparently they still hang out together all the time.

Now, I have no problem with people staying close to college classmates. Some of my best friends are my friends from college. But I said some. As in I have made other friends throughout the years and now my social circle consists of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Which is natural in a city like New York where there are so many people.

That is why I am slightly wary whenever I meet people that exclusively socialize with their group of friends from college. I know some guys like that from my own college, guys that were fraternity brothers and still live together in disgusting apartments with kegs. Basically, they are trying to live out their fraternity years as long as physically possible. And I personally find that wrong and weird on multiple levels.

So yes, I was slightly weirded out by the Brown kids and felt incredibly awkward and out of place, so I started texting my friend S to come up with an exit strategy.

Me: I am surrounded by these really annoying brown people and it makes me want to vomit.

S: That may be the most racist text I've ever seen.

Me: No no!!!! I meant people that went to Brown University! It wasn't racist at all! If anything it was schoolist!

S: Uh huh.

Me: No seriously! I mean it! They're all really white and really really preppy! Popped collars!

S: Sure.

Me: Really! There's a guy here wearing those Brooks Brothers khakis that have stuff all over them. His have American Flags. He keeps standing up and pointing out how patriotic his pants are. And it's nowhere close to July 4th.

S: Oh, gross.

Me: Yeah, I know.

S: That sounds terrible.

After my escape plan failed due to my accidental racism, I struck up a conversation with the birthday boy's roommates, during which they let me in on the fact that they have lived together since college, for seven years now (warning flags, anyone else?).

I informed them that is almost long enough to be in a common law marriage in NY, at which point they got VERY excited.

Roommate 1: Ohhh I'm going to use your health insurance!

Roommate 2: You better start making some money so you can support me!

Me: You two are pretty excited about this. Have you guys ever been, ahem, more than friends?

Roommate 1: That's my girlfriend sitting over there.

Roommate 2: But yeah, there was that one time.

Roommate 1: Which time?

Roommate 2: You know, the time, in my bed.

Roommate 1: Oooooh yeah! That time!

Me: Are you guys messing with me? What time is this?

Roommate 1: No, no. There was this one time when my sister was staying over so I let her take the bed, and I was going to sleep on the loveseat in the living room, which was really uncomfortable. So when he got home he told me I could sleep in his bed.

Roommate 2: I have a really large king bed, so I didn't care if he slept in my bed as long as he stayed on the other side.

Roommate 1: Yeah, and I didn't want to sleep with my legs in the air on the loveseat, so I was all about it. So we go to sleep, on opposite sides of the bed. And in the morning I wake up, and I feel a hand rubbing me on the chest. And it feels really good! So I let it go for about a minute. Then I open my eyes.

Me: And you saw that it was the hand of a man and freaked out?

Roommate 1: Welll I opened my eyes and I saw these bamboo sticks he has on his wall, and I got confused and was like, "Where am I?" And then I looked over and realized it was him.

Roommate 2: So I can't help it. I have these sleep issues where I all into such a deep sleep that you could punch me and I wouldn't know it. I've sleepwalked other places and have no recollection of it. Plus I wake up every morning spooning my pillow, so I guess that night I thought he was my pillow.

Me: Yes, because the hairy chest of man has the exact same feeling as a pillow...

Roommate 2: I don't remember! I guess he kicked me and woke me up.

Roommate 1: I shook him and said, "Dude you were touching my chest!" And he just mumbled something and went back to sleep.

Roommate 2: Whatever!

I was pretty amused by this story. I don't know too many comfortable heterosexual guys that would tell this story to a stranger and laugh about it. In fact, the last time I heard of two hetero men sharing the same bed at a hotel, they made a point of telling me that they slept on the opposite sides of the bed on the edge and had no contact whatsoever.

I should've just called it a night at this point, because clearly things weren't going to get better. However, on my way off the boat to go to another bar, I saw a girl slip in a puddle and as I started to laugh at her, I slipped in the exact same puddle, and totally wiped out.

Full on, legs in the air, skirt flew up, crashed onto my back on the ramp bit it. And somehow in the process, I also managed to unlock my phone and speed dial my parents. So they received a voice mail of me screeching and cursing. My mom was quite confused and asked me later if I had been drunk. I responded that I wish I had been because it would've hurt less and been less embarrassing.

In retrospect, I was obviously being punished for my racist text message earlier. But really, it was all a misunderstanding. I'm not a fan of Brown people, Brown with a capital B!

The giant bruise on my back will be a reminder to never again make that mistake.