Better Than You

Regarding Special Snowflakes...

2009-01-06T16:22:00.000+08:00

You are not one of them.

Sorry.

The end!

Why I'm Awesome (Part 26 of 7412): YOU

2008-11-07T17:23:00.001+08:00

Those of you to whom I've spoken recently are very likely aware about my rather precarious position at present, and by aware, I mean you know that I have made vague and unspecific references to such happenings as of late. Those of you who know me well also likely know that me being vague and unspecific is wildly unusual, and you'd be right.

Now, I believe in talking, in communicating openly, with friends, significant others, and family. I believe that if people knew what was going on in my life, they would understand certain aspects of my behavior, the change in my priorities, and how to accommodate me. It was a courtesy, if you will, and one that is of course applicable were our positions reversed. I appreciate knowing what's going on much more than I would appreciate avoidance and silence.

I have failed woefully at holding up this ideal.

Over the past two weeks I have restricted my deeply personal communications to a very obvious target, and I have made the excuse that since I have him, I shouldn't have to burden my friends with the same tired stories about my job, about my money, about any number of things that have been going wrong lately. I would not bring my friends down, so to speak, in terms of mood or personal high.

I reprimand my friends when they shut themselves away from me for fear of ruining a good mood. I now reprimand myself for the same.

I feel like I have insulted my friends and their integrity deeply, by somehow implying that they are not worthy of supporting me, by somehow implying that they cannot help me, by somehow implying that I thought they didn't care about me. While I may have wanted to keep my proverbial shit as far away from everyone else's imaginary fans as much as possible, the end result is that I appear to not want to deal with anyone, or that I am wallowing in self-pity.

I always want to deal with everyone, and I do not know how to wallow in much of anything.

So, to the question many have asked, this is what's been up.

My friends are the most important thing in the world to me, and it is heartbreaking that we are coming to a point where we are soon to part ways. In fact, it is because the majority of you are leaving Shanghai next year that I have chosen to time my departure around a similar period. I've already lost a lot of you, at least physically, and I don't know if I can handle it when the rest of you go. Understand that while I am excited to be laying down the groundwork to move on to another part of my life, I do it with a deep-seated wish that we could've all somehow managed to meet in a more stable city at a more stable part of our respective lives.

It is because I so greatly fear this eventual and inevitable parting of ways that I appear to have distanced myself from many of you, that I have latched on so tightly to the person who's located at my next destination, that I have spent increasing amounts of time building connections via the internet. It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but this has, historically, been how I have always dealt with moving away and moving on. Call it a defense mechanism born of the Third Culture Kid lifestyle.

But I guess that this time, I've realized how poor, childish, and perhaps downright stupid such a defense mechanism is. So I am resolving to change that.

I have also outgrown Shanghai, so to speak. This place is wonderful as a stepping stone, but as Alicat mentioned back in the day, "it's really just Never Never Land." We all know it. We all know our lives are at pause here. We all know it taxes our patience, bit by bit, the longer we stay here. Whether socially, personally, or even professionally, this place is one of the temporary for people like us. It's time to move on.

The final nail in the coffin of my self-ostracizing is the fact that, yes, in fact, my job is sitting on an increasingly uncertain precipice. At a time where I am craving stability, where the need for a stable environment drives my plans to relocate, the idea that I may or may not have a job by the end of this month is nerve-wracking. It would be easier to bear if I knew yes or no either way, but to not know is chipping away at an otherwise chipper personality. (The fact that I also heartily dislike certain things that have been happening at work doesn't much help, either, but that's another story for another time.) As few people want to talk about work when we're out hanging out, having all this on the forefront of my mind for the majority of my conscious hours is hardly ideal in a social situation.

Now, the most hysterical thing is that I am a very positive person. You may not see it when I'm bitching at a cab driver or an insulting waiter, but my attitude is one that chooses to focus on the things that I have rather than the things I don't. I despise defeatists in all their forms (which might make my current state of mind a highly hypocritical one, I'm not sure) and often choose instead to shake it off and do it right the next time, or shrug and smile at something that I do have to smile about.

There is no point, after all, in lamenting the bad things that have happened or may one day happen. You might as well focus on the things you have control over at present and do the best you can with it. Because of this mindset, I'm pretty much always happy about something.

Okay, you say to yourself even as you wonder how you made it this far down the page, she says she's going to fix it. What the fuck is she going to do to fix it?

The truth is that I've been doing it; I have been doing what it takes to bring me into a more positive state of mind, and that's helping people in any way that I can. It was enough for a while as I advised and counseled through the digital walls of the internet, but now I also need something more hands-on, something more tangible. It's a selfish, self-therapeutic thing, I admit, but the idea that it will also do some good for somebody out there other than me makes it that much more powerful.

I want to make the effort to spend more time with my friends, to be more social, because the clock's ticking and, well, now that I have a deadline, my time with those of you in Shanghai is running out. You guys, the ones both still here and the ones who have since moved on, were my first friends in a part of my life where my family wasn't physically present to be my safety net, where we weren't all enveloped by the giant charade of independence known as college. That shaped me, significantly, and I am always grateful that I could be shaped by people of your very high caliber.

As for those I know strictly through the internet, that's where we built our friendship and so our primary mode of contact remains untouched no matter where I go, and it's perhaps for that reason that I value your friendship just as much I do those friends I have nearby.

And to those that I've already left behind in too many places around the world, I still remember pretty much all of you and the impact you also had on me, and I'm pretty sure I always will.

I love you all very much.

Shanghai Shorts: Racial Silliness Redux

2008-10-24T19:29:00.001+08:00

So, I yelled at a white guy today.

I was on the metro, playing on my DS, and at Nanjing West Road station, on comes this white dude and his Asian coworker. They talk mostly in English but with snippets of Chinese, and from what I can tell the dude is either American, Canadian, or possibly Dutch.

Anyway. Jingan Temple, my station, comes up. I step forward to the door as the train slows down and the station appears beyond the train window. I very softly murmur "excuse me" to the white guy, who was standing just in front and to the side of me.

No response.

I say it again, slightly louder, still with polite tones.

No response.

I say it a third time and he responds, but not with a reaction I'd become accustomed to in all the other parts of the world I've visited or lived in. He moves out of the way and snaps, "We're not even there yet" in Chinese. ("我们还没到。")

So I frown and without turning to look at him, I say very casually but clearly, "Well, we're close, and where I come from that means you move toward the door so that you don't hold up traffic when it comes time to exit."

No response.

"I thought I was very polite. No need for the attitude," I add, with the unmistakable aggressive tone that I often use when crossed.

The doors swish open and I step out, hearing his Asian coworker (who sounded like he was from Hong Kong from his accent) laugh as I do so.

What I was tempted to say was, "If I were a white chick, you'd have gotten out of the way the first time I asked instead of thinking you've better manners than me just because I'm Chinese. You are the kind of foreigner that gives all the rest of them (us?) a bad name."

But I didn't. I had better things to do than deal with stupid little boys.

Now I don't go around looking for reasons to be mad (when I'm sober). But I don't think any of you can deny that if I were in fact a white chick, he wouldn't have had the nerve to snap back at me for just politely saying "excuse me" while getting ready to get off the fucking train.

Where *I* come from, when someone says "excuse me" to you, you apologize and get out of the fucking way.

This sort of silliness really does come from both sides. Sigh.

Shanghai Shorts: Horns a'Honking

2008-10-16T10:24:00.002+08:00

I flipped off a taxi driver this morning.

Knowing me, you're likely thinking to yourself, "what else is new?"

I don't actually run around flipping off random strangers, you know. Today, I had a particularly good reason.

I woke up a little late for work so I had to cab it instead of taking the metro. My office is inside a hotel compound and its main entrance opens to this single-lane, one-way little paved bit of street.

So the cab pulls up to the main entrance and before he even comes to a full stop, I hear that noise that all of us in China have since grown accustomed to hearing whether it's necessary for it to be produced or not: the honking of a horn.

Once, twice, three times more as I get my cash out of my wallet to pay my cabbie. I am getting annoyed. It's not like I'm being slow like some of the other people we also see in this city, taking hours on hours to get out of a cab (and even then you are generally courteous and wait on them if necessary, you don't want them to leave shit behind just because you're an impatient little cocksucker, there is usually no reason to rush someone getting out of a cab no matter how long they take).

I whirl around in my seat and glare at the driver through two sheets of glass. The honking stops.

I thank my taxi driver, step out of the cab, and walk round to the back of it to stand right in front of the honking taxi behind us. I stand right in front of his cab so that he can't go even as my own cab takes off. I lean forward, and, with a nasty look on my face, up goes my middle finger.

And off I go into my office, making it to my seat with minutes to spare.

Why this city feels it's necessary to honk at EVERY SINGLE THING in the goddamn street, I'll never know. I recently heard a story about a bus driver honking at a bike rider who'd fallen off his bike after a collision with another cyclist and couldn't get back up, and because the dude on the ground was "in the way," the bus driver then, very annoyed, steered his bus around the obviously injured man.

What the fuck, Shanghai.

Shanghai Shorts: Racial Silliness

2008-10-10T11:53:00.000+08:00

Recently I've been getting a lot of calls at my current workplace. All of them call, speaking in English, looking for the owner, a foreigner with a very Western-sounding name. He's not in the habit of taking calls from people he doesn't know so I do what I can to deter them. (I am, for the record, not his secretary; my phone number just happens to be his old contact one.)

Sometimes they'll catch on and realize that okay maybe this dude isn't the way to go, maybe I can give them the name of our company's CEO instead?

So I'll prod and pry and see how likely it is that it is a sales call and sometimes I'll go, okay they seem legit, I'll give them my boss's name.

My boss, like me, is also a foreigner, but he's Chinese by race and his name reveals as much.

The second the person on the other end hears the name, their reaction changes. They ask "Oh is he Chinese?" Expressions of shock abound!

So I'll ask them, in a very sharp tone, "Is there a problem?"

They'll stammer and mutter and you KNOW there is a problem just based on a violent shift in their attitude, but they'll eventually realize they gave themselves away and then recollect themselves and say "No, there's no problem, I would just like to know if he's Chinese."

Then I get playful. "What difference does it make?"

"No difference, ma'am, we would just like to know."

I decide to test my theory. "He's a foreign-born Chinese."

"Ahhhhh, foreign-born Chinese. Okay okay. Yeah it's just... *lots of hesitant stammering* no problem, no problem."

"Would there have been a problem if he wasn't a foreign-born Chinese? I would imagine if you're sending business documents that they should go to the right person in the right position."

"No ma'am, no difference. I'll send the documents within the hour. Thanks for your help, goodbye!"

This is just the tamer of the phone calls. Once I got a call from a Chinese speaking woman asking if any foreigners worked at our office. I said yes, there were two, me and my boss. She asked for our names because she wanted to send us a free expat-only magazine. I gave her our names. She said, "Hang on, are these people Chinese?"

I snapped and said, in English, "You asked if we were foreigners, and I answered you honestly. Neither of us hold Chinese passports. We are expats working in Shanghai. Is there a problem? Are you calling me a liar?"

She stammered, clearly not fully understanding what I was saying nor how to react, and told me, now in English, to "hold on" as she'd talk to her manager. She returns some minutes later saying, "I apologize, there's been a misunderstanding. Sorry, I didn't mean to waste your time." And she hangs up.

Don't get me started on a rant about how Chinese people are treated like second-class citizens on their own goddamn turf BY OTHER CHINESE PEOPLE. I thought this shit was over and done with last century, guys.

I know that expats are a target group for specific marketing campaigns and initiatives. That's fine. That's narrowing a target demographic, everyone does it. But racial profiling WITHIN the group of expats, just because we're not white or not visibly distinct from Chinese people? We took the fucking time to learn to speak multiple languages fluently, to understand multiple cultures, and this is the thanks we get?

Shanghai may like to call itself "modern" and "progressive" and "multicultural" but man the shit some of these people pull is pretty fucking archaic, if you ask me.

Shanghai Shorts: Squat Pots and Sexy Legs

2008-10-08T12:54:00.001+08:00

Anyone who has ever visited Shanghai (or, frankly, any city in China or Southeast Asia) has likely come across what we as English-speakers have affectionately termed "squat pots." These are toilets which are essentially a porcelain-lined hole in the ground, over which you squat and do your business.

Westerners often call them archaic, obsolete, outdated, dirty, and, well, let's face it, a bit physically taxing. Squat pots are generally uncomfortable as you don't get to rest your body down on anything solid, and instead must remain in a squatting position for however long it takes for you to do what you gotta do. On top of that, you're probably worried about the Splatter Effect.

The Chinese, on the other hand, refer to them as clean and efficient. The reason? Well, it does make sense: your butt doesn't actually come into contact with what other people's butts have touched.

The truth is that while Westerners would argue that a proper toilet seat and bowl are "advanced" versions of toilets and generally preferable to squat pots (I myself wander through various Chinese public bathrooms until I find a toilet with a seat), many Chinese argue the opposite.

It is not rare for a Chinese woman to approach a "Western" toilet and stand up on the toilet seat and do what? Squat like they would over a squat pot.

While most modern facilities and buildings do provide the seated toilets rather than the squat pots (because quite frankly the increased Splatter Effect of a squat pot does give also increase a bathroom's the Odor Factor), this doesn't quite change how the toilets are used once the doors are closed.

It's a changing, evolving habit, to be sure. I'm not saying ALL Shanghainese women stand up onto a toilet seat to pee, but a good portion of them do it enough that, well, it makes a good story.

Plus I guess if you have to remain in a squatting position for however long it takes to pinch out a good ol' Numero Dos, you probably come away from the experience with fantastically fit thighs.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 25 of 7,412): NAÏVETÉ

2008-09-12T10:46:00.001+08:00

This post is brought to you by an unnerving lack of jetlag.

Some recent events have brought to light something that I've known for a long time but never openly owned up to: I am an unbelievably naïve person. More often than not, I find myself trusting others with little to no question, always giving the benefit of the doubt. This is, in fact, part of the reason why I am a very open person, as I generally assume people are not out to get me. Naturally, this can sometimes get me into trouble.

I can get screwed over. I can be lied to. I can be deceived. I can be misled. I can be made to look like an absolute fool. I can be ridiculed. If I wanted to be melodramatic, it could also one day put me in a dangerous position. There’s a lot of bad things that could potentially maybe sort of one day possibly happen. I know it. Some nasty things have happened as a result of it. But I also know that this is true of basically any other kind of personality trait one can possess, and it comes down with how I as an individual choose to handle it.

I don’t have a problem admitting that I am very naïve, that I am too trusting. More to the point, I don’t have an issue with staying that way. But why, if I am well aware of the risks involved, or if I’ve already gone through the downsides thus associated?

My answer is simple: I know that if proverbial shit should hit the equally fictitious fan, I can take care of myself. It's easy to give the benefit of the doubt until the person actually gives you a real reason not to trust them. It's better than taking the chance that I may insult, hurt, or vilify someone else's intentions just because I was being paranoid.

Sure, there may be tears or shouts or pouts or even punches thrown for a little bit if things come up tails when I called heads, but I am a strong enough person that I know that once tensions have cooled, I’ll be fine. I bounce back quickly, efficiently, and with as little impact on those around me as possible. It’s in fact why it’s so important for me to have someone around who knows to let me vent and not try to stop me in the middle of a tirade of emotional release. I need someone who knows that once it’s out of my system, the next step is for me to recover on my own and get over it and move on. I am lucky, then, to have so many of those people in my life.

I often find myself feeling sorry for those who are always suspicious of others or are always afraid to trust and thereby potentially get hurt. I know it sounds elitist of me, but that is truly how I feel and usually I respond to such personalities by being someone they know they can trust.

The fact of the matter is that you’re going to get hurt. It’s part of life. It will happen regardless of what kinds of measures you take to prevent it, if any at all. It can be intentional. It may be unintentional. Sure you can have your guard up, as past experiences should always be learned from, but at the same time, you can’t always assume people are out to get you, either, otherwise you just end up inadvertently hurting those who meant no harm. What you can do is let those shitty experiences make you a stronger and better person.

Is your definition of strength being self-reliant and not needing anyone else, and that’s how you justify your mistrust? If yes, then we shall agree to disagree. Strength, to me, is to know how the people around you are able to support and help you while you yourself find your own way to solve the problem or resolve the conflict and learn from what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s a mix of self-sufficiency and humility (i.e., knowing that there are some things you just don’t have to do alone, nor should you).

So for every nasty thing that happens to be as a result of my naïveté, I at least know how to read the signs a little better than before. That said, I know I may still be naïve and fall into easy traps, but I’m all right with that. I don’t learn from my mistakes as easily or as efficiently as I probably should, but I deal with it by knowing that no matter what, I’ll be just fine and I will likely come out of it a stronger person.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 24 of 7,412): SEVEN

2008-06-17T15:34:00.001+08:00

Oh man I hope you guys are ready for a cuteness overload.

This post is brought to you by the little girl who lives on the 24th floor in my building.

Well, okay, how adorable this actually ends up depends on how well you know me and my capacity for being adorable, your ability to imagine me saying certain parts of this post in that 4-year-old Cantonese girl’s voice, and if you have ever seen a picture of me when I was 4 or 5 years old.

When it comes to things that I deem my "favorites," it is perfectly normal for me (i.e., an insane person) to load that favorite thing with all kinds of personal meaning and history. I'm not necessarily unique in this respect, but when I saw my favorite color is that particular shade of blue-green you see right in between the shallow coastal waters and the deep blue sea as you fly over a particularly clean patch of ocean, that color is my favorite color for a multitude of reasons well beyond "I like it."

For instance, that color is my favorite not just because it looks good on me and not just because "I like it," but because it is exactly the shade of blue-green that you can only see in the situation I just described above. I saw this once while flying overhead in Hawaii and I have never seen yet another perfect duplicate of its color. It is barely describable, and no it is not that cheesy bright turquoise you see near the coast. Anyway, my love of all things the ocean is well-documented, so this should really require much more explanation.

Another example is, well, go back to the post where I tell you why I like backs. Oh god. One moment please while I let some images flash through my brain.

Aaaaaaaand back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Perhaps the most in-depth "favorite thing" that I have in my laundry list of "favorite things" is the number 7. Seven, sept, qi, pito, siete. Funnily enough (and contrary to what might have been mentioned way back when I explained the number 7,412), the fact that it is regarded as a "lucky number" by Westerners doesn't particularly matter to me.

First and most obvious is that it is the month in which I was born. July. Best month. Next.

Second is that if you rotate the number, it becomes the letter V. Also obvious. And I swear I came up with that idea long before I ever saw the movie Se7en.

Third, and closely related to that, are the seven deadly sins. It's not so much the fact that they are sins so much as I view them to be seven things that need to be balanced. I've always thought everything in moderation is a healthy thing, and this is no different for the 7DS. A little wrath is nice to release those pent-up emotions. A little sloth is nice to relax and slow yourself down. A little gluttony is nice because goddammit eating is one the best things about being alive. Too much of any and that's how they become "sins." I use the 7DS to often remind myself that there is no absolute right or wrong, that everything is relative, and that it ultimately comes down to what you are able to deem the best balance that suits you.
There are other reasons, too, but the one I wanted to share with you today is one that I don't think I've ever mentioned aloud or on paper to anyone other than myself.

Back when we lived in Hong Kong for the second time (i.e., from the ages of 4 to 7 for me), my family and I lived in this apartment building on Kotewall Road. Number 9, I think it was. Anyway, we lived in apartment 7B.

Now, I cannot for the life of me remember how tall I was back when I was 4 or 5, but I sure as hell remember being TINY and constantly wishing I was taller. I was so short that I, in all my pig-tailed glory, could not reach the 7 button in the building's elevator.

I would stand right by the elevator's button panel and gaze longingly at the 7 button, declaring in my mind that TODAY WOULD BE THE DAY I OWN YOU. Then I would reach up and barely make it to the 3 button. I would bounce up and down and make little whiny noises until my nanny or my daddy or my mommy would either hit the button to shut me up or, were they in better moods, pick me up and then I would press it.

Every time I failed to reach that button, I vowed with all my non-English-speaking mind that I would eventually get tall enough to press that stupid button without any help. I would even jump up and try to slam at the button but I'd never quite reach it or hit it hard enough for it to light up.

Of course, there were days where I just didn't care about that button because my face was buried in a zhi bao dan gao (or tsee bao dan gou in Cantonese I guess), which, back then, was a sponge cake with a chocolate topping that was wrapped in paper and was as big as my head. My nanny got me one every other day right before I got on the bus back from school because I was the best little kid EVER until of course I got home and my parents yelled at me for spoiling my dinner. (Plus I recently went back to that cake shop and got one and man it's about as big as my hand now. What the hell.) The cake served as such a magnificent distraction from all my shortcomings as a midget, however, I didn't particularly care.

Slight tangent aside, I remember the glorious day in question. I was 7 years old and, as my parents had noticed, in the middle of a growth spurt (that would eventually leave me at 5'8" at the age of 14). I stepped into the elevator, face covered in the crumbs of what was once a sponge cake, and looked menacingly at the button panel.

Then, like it was nothing at all, I reached up, hit the number 7 button, and it lit. My nanny gave me a pat on the head and said I was getting tall.

Me, well, in my head I had reached some divine level of strength and power, like I was unstoppable. No longer would people tower over me and press buttons I couldn't reach! No longer would I rely on the strength of others to reach the number 7!

Of course, little did I know (or care) that 7 was not the highest number in the elevator. But that day, I was GOD.

Last night as I returned home from my haircut, the adorablest little anklebiter and her mother (I presume) stepped into the elevator with me and pretty much did exactly what I described, only her sights were set significantly higher: the 24th floor. Eventually I smiled at her and helped her use my ridiculously huge umbrella (courtesy of Michelle and Parkway Health) to press the button. Her mother was highly amused. The little girl gave me the hugest grin and for one of the few times in my life, I didn't feel like loading a little spoiled Chinese kid into a cannon and blasting him/her out to sea.

Being that it made me super happy, that 7 is my birth month and that 24 is my birthday, I took it as inspiration to write this post.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU, ANKLEBITER OF THE 24TH FLOOR. Jia you!

Why I'm Awesome (Part 23 of 7,412): ANIMALS

2008-06-12T18:01:00.000+08:00

This post brought to you by Shorty who inadvertently led to me asking this question to a bunch of queers on SE++.

Originally, this was going to a satirical compilation of questions that I would actually think about asking, as Shorty puts it, "potential mates." Realizing that advertising these questions would in advertently kill my game ("OH NO VIV ASKED ME IF I LIKED PICKLED EGGS SHE IS WANTING ME OH NO"), I instead focused on one particular question that I did end up asking a bunch of queers on SE++ and am genuinely curious about.

Simply put, I took a joke and overthought it to the point of irrelevancy, as only we with those two X chromosomes can do.

List your five favorite animals (be as specific as you like).

The provision in parentheses is of course to make allowances for those who are almost obsessive in their attention-to-detail, but I suppose what I should have added was “and explain why.”

Let us explore my own answer to this telling question and what that might imply about my personality, based nothing on my own inflated sense of self-importance and dire need to inform certain individuals what my preferences in the animal kingdom happen to be.

5) Blue shark. I remember when the family and I were at El Nido resort in Palawan, Philippines, and suddenly everyone by beach suddenly freaked out and ran out of the water. (The resort, for references sake, has a small little private cove of a beach formed by a breakwater.) My sister and I go to look and there, gliding around in the shallow waters of the little beach, a small blue shark had made its way past the breakwater and into the cove. I was mesmerized, mostly by the shape of its tale and the way it glided through the water with seamless grace. It was too small to be terrifying (being that blue sharks are a kind of groundshark and therefore supposed to be huge, I was baffled, but upon asking the guys at the resort they confirmed that I was right in guessing that it was a blue shark), but to be fair I have always loved sharks, this is just the one I prefer above them all, simply for the shape of its tail. Tiger sharks are perhaps my second-favorite kind of shark.

4) Siberian white tiger. Of the five, this is the one animal I find the most beautiful. I cannot explain it, I have just loved the way they look. I spent half an hour staring at one the first time I saw one alive.

3) Gray wolf. I love wolves. Every Jack London book I have ever read has made me love them. Their pack mentality, their resilience in the wilderness, and their innate sense of teamwork have always been appealing to me. Plus they are pretty-looking. I honestly sometimes wish I could own one as a pet, one with two different colored eyes (a motif that appears in many places in my writing project, by the way).

2) Black panther. More specifically, the black Melanistic jaguar. It’s a deadly predator that moves with the grace of a cat and all the sinister visual connotations of a shadow. It’s graceful and beautiful and honestly I would give anything to be able to pet one, even if it might snap my hand off.

1) Dusky dolphin. Really, any kind of dolphin will do it for me. This should be of little surprise to anyone who has actually been to my apartment (either in the States or in Shanghai), what with the old dolphin shower curtain and the dolphin statuettes and Lilienne’s drawing of a girl and a dolphin hanging on the wall. My favorite thing about our trip to Hawaii all those years ago was that I got to swim with and pet the dolphins. It was beyond amazing and, even better, later on during the same vacation, while we were fishing with our grandfather on this super-nice boat (called the “Marlin Magic,” I recall), we happen to sail right by some dolphins! Wistful reminiscence aside, however, my love of dolphins stems purely from the fact that I love the ocean, plain and simple. They are cute and soft and warm-blooded and they are also vicious when provoked by the right kind of predator. Much love.

So, really, except for the dolphins, I just noticed that my favorite animals are all, well, predators. Angry ones. Though technically the wolves can be considered scavengers as well. It also appears to be the reason I like them. Deadly yet gorgeous animals, some capable (or even preferring) to hunt alone while others move in skulks and packs to take down a target together.

I wouldn’t call myself an animal lover, but more of a deeply respectful admirer. Man I could only hope to be so beautifully badass. I COULD ONLY HOPE. But nooooooo I only get so far in presentation but when push comes to shove I am the softest kind of softy. Sigh.

Got any favorites you’d like to share? I will admit that this is something I am always curious to know about pretty much everyone I meet.

PS. I just realized that this is the second "list a bunch of things" post I have made in a row. I promise next time I will post something more interesting.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 22 of 7,412): SUPERPOWERS

2008-05-28T19:22:00.000+08:00

This post is brought to you by a comic book overdose.

Everyone, comic book/graphic novel fan or not, has pretty much been asked what kind of superpower they'd want if they could have any one they can possibly imagine.

After having read a ton of graphic novels/comic books over the last couple of weeks (from the very excellent, non-superpower-related-unless-you-count-a-penis Y, The Last Man to Ultimate Fantastic Four to Runaways to Cable & Deadpool), catching up on existing series, seeing the Iron Man movie, and mounting excitement over the upcoming The Dark Knight and Watchmen movies, I naturally find myself idly pondering this question every time I get up from my seat and go get a glass of water.

Being that I am poor and cannot afford much to else to drink and since water neutralizes hunger pangs, this actually takes place pretty often.

I fondly recall that, in such discussions in the past, my sister would almost always choose the powers of Lifeguard (c/o Marvel), who can borrow/assimilate the powers of pretty much anyone else. THIS IS CHEATING, DAMMIT.

Before I go into ultra-geek mode, however, let me just add that anyone who thinks graphic novels/comic books are for "kids" or are for "nerds/geeks/dorks" or are "immature forms of literature" or really anything along those lines should really pick up Y, The Last Man or the Watchmen. Either one of these will change your mind in an instant and they currently rank among my top two favorite stories in the medium. (SE++, feel free to add your recommendations, as I know you will.)

Okay. Justification over with, I think I should also mention that I like powers that are simple but have a wide range of practical and creative applications. None of that reality-shifting nonsense.

Without further ado, I present to you now my top nine favorite superpowers. (Why not ten? Because "10" has two digits and throws off the alignment of the list and man that kicks my OCD-like insanity into overdrive.)

9) X-ray vision, a la Superman (Justice League). Though not technically X-rays, but more like being able to see through layers of solid objects. Like clothes. I constantly fantastize about being able to see through someone and see them punch in their PIN at the ATM.

8) Durability, a la Luke Cage (Avengers). Not really invulnerability, but I can take a ton of hits before going down. I've always thought this was badass, though I'd be hard-pressed to explain why.

7) Healing Factor, a la Wolverine (X-Men) or Deadpool (Marvel). Finally, my fear of fire defeated if I know I could just heal back from it. Plus, staying young forever? Yes, please, absolutely. It'd take care of this stupid skin nonsense of mind, too.

6) Teleportation, a la Nightcrawler (X-Men) or Blink (Exiles). This way I can cross the damn street without standing around waiting for a car to slow down or a light to change. Yes I am constantly in a hurry. No I do not like waiting. Yes I would love to be able to teleport across oceans.

5) Underwater breathing, a la Namor (Marvel) or Aquaman (Justice League). My love of the ocean should leave this as no surprise.

4) Forcefields, a la Invisible Woman (Fantastic Four) or Violet (The Incredibles movie). Not invisibility so much, but definitely the forcefields. At least the spherical ones that can slice through anything if you toss them into a solid object. That be bitchin'.

3) Animal morphing, a la Beast Boy (Teen Titans) or technically Wolfsbane (X-Men). People who are familiar with the UNIFIED game we were prepping for on SE++ will know what I'm talking about, as I created a character who could transform into any animal (with the limitation of only one species per genus). If you want to see what kind of uncanny supernerdery I'm talking about here, check this out. And no, smartasses, furriness has nothing to do with this.

2) Intangibility, a la Shadowcat (X-Men). I dream constantly of walking into Shanghai traffic with this superpower. That, and sweeping an arm into an ATM and yanking out a stack of the red stuff. Ooh, ooh, or walking off the subway without having to shove people out of the way. Imagine what that would do for my anger problems!

1) Photographic reflexes, a la Monica Dawson (Heroes TV show). Aka muscle memory, where you just look at someone do something and you know how to do it, too, though not including superpowers. Stuff like playing a piano, busting out a wrestling move, craaaaaaazy Guitar Hero skills, firing a gun, piloting a helicopter, etc. All awesome. Basically went straight to my number one spot after I saw it on Heroes, haha. Bumped shadow manipulation (a la this character I also did for UNIFIED) right off the Top 9 list.

A lot of my thinking is done at an ATM, honestly.

So sure, while it may seem childish to fantasize about being super-human or whatever, I think it's sometimes therapeutic. And you can't tell me you never wondered about this stuff, either.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 21 of 7,412): SHANGHAI

2008-05-12T18:49:00.001+08:00

I have been here since November 2005 and I have to say, in that time, there is one thing I have come to appreciate about Shanghai that is far more precious to me than its vast selection of food.

[ This post is brought to you by my posse and fellow volleyballers. ]

Putting aside things like low-cost housecleaners (we call them "ayis" or "ayi" in singular), cheap food (street food oh my GOD), incredible nightlife, mass amounts of bicycles, stupendously unpredictable weather, fake EVERYTHING, polluted air, horrendous traffic, ridiculous phone manners, and, of course, the insanity that permeates the entire population, perhaps the one thing I like about Shanghai is also present in other such cities.

I am talking about how easy it is to make friends and build a social circle from scratch in this city and others wherein foreign diasporas are prevalent. Most common in developing cities, these are situations where expatriates and other foreign residents flock together and form their own communities within a host city.

What this means is that in cities like this, it's simply easier to get yourself settled in socially. You show up, go to any number of "expat" activities, and you are almost always welcome to hang out with them as friends. It is easy to meet people who speak your language and build lasting friendships based on the fact that you are all going through the same sorts of headaches that come with living in a foreign host city.

I compare this to, say, a city which is relatively well-established, where the host city's language is prevalent enough that all foreigners are able to speak it, and where expatriates are much more easily camouflaged into the local flock.

Going into such a city knowing few or no people beforehand becomes a daunting social task. Friendships have long since been established, and groups of friends tend to be settled in their ways so breaking into an existing circle is difficult. Often, if a friend or relative brings you into their circle, you are classified as "so-and-so's friend/sister/brother" rather than as their own friend.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Having done the expat thing my whole life, I (and I'm sure Romain will back me up here) would kill to have stable groups of friends who don't leave after a few years or get kicked out of the country because of stupid visa rules.

I am simply making an observation. My first year in Shanghai was incredibly antisocial for a wealth of reasons, but a lack of social contact was not one of them. I simply didn't ever go out. But once I accepted a few invitations to go hang out, I found myself with a group of friends that are now some my very closest.

Were I to move back to a more stable city, where international schools do not exist, I would have a hard time adjusting not to the fact that people do not spit at my feet or smoke in elevators, but to the fact that starting over and making new friends is a tedious role regardless of how socially adept you are.

It's not impossible, it's just harder. I know some of you will disagree with me, but I'm also willing to bet that you have likely never lived in a city like Shanghai. When you see how easy it is to get settled in a city wherein you don't speak the local language, it really does blow your mind.

This, more than anything, is one of the reasons that I think I will always be at home in a city like Shanghai. I grew up in these cities, where we are thrown into an expat bubble, where expats are always willing to help one another out, even if they have never met before or know each other names, because we can all sympathize with being away from home, with the culture gap, or even just the language barrier. It's not an easy thing, it is always a comfort to know that the people sharing your boat are at least willing to help you out.

You could, in a way, compare it to college, where there is something fundamentally similar about everyone there that makes it easier to make new friends when you first get there. You're all freshmen, you're probably all living away from home for the first time, and it's the little things that come with those two facts that make it easy to build a foundation for a friendship or at least a social connection.

I probably have this sort of lifestyle to thank for the fact that I do not believe anyone should ever walk alone. I've said it before I know and I'm probably not all that unique in thinking this, but I guess that's why I love it when I am basically doing my Dr. Phviv thing for five hours out of an otherwise uneventful day.

Quite frankly, I am staying in Shanghai because of the friends I have made here. Prior to this city, I always had my family as a home base to return to when friends came and went or when we moved on to a new place. Here, this is the first time I have had to build a social network relying solely on my family's own business contacts, and I have to say that all you guys made it so easy for me to come to love this city.

This does include the volleyballers, by the way. I only see you guys twice a week now but SO MUCH LOVE to you guys.

That first year? Hated the city. Hated it. Now I don't want to leave.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 20 of 7,412): GIRLIFICATION

2008-05-08T14:26:00.000+08:00

So absorbed I have been in my story as well as a HOST of games (such as GTA4, a renewed addiction to Guitar Hero AND Viva Pinata, and various others on the DS Lite) that I've neglected to write about, you know, ME!

Fear not. If there is one thing I am good at, it's talking about that topic in particular.

[ This post is brought to you by Michelle, Jaya, and the pearl market lady. ]

Just over a month ago, right around the point at which I wound up in this abundance of free time that resulted from an untimely departure from my old company, I decided that much shopping was needed to alleviate the stress.

Yes, spending money when I am no longer making it. IT'S CALLED SAVINGS.

I am not and have never really been an avid shopper, certainly not when I am in Asia. And before you deplore me for what I'm about say next, SENIORS NAVIN AND KINDER, I will have you know that I am speaking purely from fact and not some deep-seated level of self-deprecation. It sucks to shop in Asia when you just aren't built like an Asian.

I really don't have to go into detail here, but basically, I am of a noticeably different shape from my dwarven, elvish countrymen. It really is the same story whether it's Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, etc. It is simply frustrating to walk into a store, try something on, only to get depressed because the XXXXXXXXXXXL size doesn't fit.

On top of this, I am also, well, tomboyish. I was never "into" the more effeminate pursuits of make-up selection or constant haircare (my hair is flawless on its own without my trying, believe me). I never get my nails done, either. I did not own much jewelry, nor do I wear any beyond a pair of earrings and a watch. These just weren't things that I was interested in.

Then along comes my darling Michelle. Michelle, as many of you know, is one of my favorites and, loathe though she may be to admit it, a SHANGHAI STAPLE. She is now located in Washington, DC, which, some of you may be savvy enough to note, IS NOWHERE NEAR SHANGHAI. Disappointing as this fact may be, rest assured, Michelle, that you are missed, I love you bunches, I hope you are enjoying yourself.

(Which honestly, can't be very much because I am not there.)

BUT TO THE POINT. In Michelle's final weeks in Shanghai, we journeyed to the Hongqiao Pearl Market, a typical Chinese market were fake purses and genuine pearls abound. You really have to see it to believe. She introduces me to her trusty pearl lady, who sells jewelry of all sorts, not just pearls, and, in the span of four or five heartbeats, VIVIENNE BECOMES A GIRL.

Almost like my body just up and went "oh hey that there is a vagina, huh."

I went nuts. I bought so much stuff (for very cheap, I will have you know) and effectively increased my accessory selection eightfold.

I also bought three pairs of sunglasses.

Mere days later, to H&M, where I picked up more necklaces and bangles and bracelets.

Michelle departs. Depression sets in. What do I do?

I go to the fabric market to get a suit made. In getting those suits made, I bring my friend Kelly along, and what do we find while wandering around there? A silk tailor who makes clothes from some really gorgeous silk. And what do I get made? MY FIRST DRESS PURCHASE IN OVER FOUR YEARS.

Truth! The last dress I bought was in my junior year of college! (This also reminds me that in exactly one week from today, I would have been graduated for three years. Wow.)

Moving on. Two more silken creations follow.

In between these trips to the fabric market? Salon hair washes! Head massages! Manicures!

Then, on April 27, 2008, the unthinkable happened. I put aside my razor for the last time and walked into a little beauty shop and got my very, very first waxing session.

Yeah um if giving birth is more painful than THAT, then no thanks. Adoption ok.

I also got my eyebrows shaped. Not as painful, but man she was plucking hairs out that I couldn't even see with my naked eye.

I walk out there honestly feeling incredibly good. Tingly, but good. It is an odd sensation.

The second driver for all this is, of course, my dear Princess Jaya. It is no surprise to those of us who know here that she is, in our little group of hoodies and jeans, the slinky black halter dress. Always chic, she is.

And I felt I could learn a thing or two about dressing myself up from her. I even pester her for make-up tips! "What's that you're putting on your face? What's that stuff? And that stuff? What colors would look good on me? How much eyeliner should I wear? What kind of mascara do you use? Do you have a brand you'd recommend?"

To be fair, I still do not often wear make-up. That stuff costs. But I guess now when I do use it, I feel like I know what I'm doing. It's odd. I need more practice. I think I've used more make-up remover to get rid of smudges or mistakes than I have actually used in make-up itself.

All in all, it feels good. And I would imagine it is pretty odd when I walk into a barbecue wearing a silk top and jeans and stuff and geek the fuck out when I see that they are playing Rock Band RIGHT THERE IN THE LIVING ROOM AND OH MY GOD CAN I PLAY CAN I PLAY CAN I PLAAAAAAAY and of course whip everyone's ASSES at it.

Shit I ain't gonna lie. I love that feeling. I also love the fact that I haven't had to shave my legs in TWO WEEKS.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 19 of 7,412): SPORT

2008-03-30T23:34:00.003+08:00

I'm not an athlete, at least not in the super-impressive, super-awesome, super-sexy sort of way. Ask anyone who plays volleyball with me, and they will validate that I am one of the slowest-moving people on the court and if I didn't have a pretty decent spike and serve, I'm not much use, really.

Ask anyone who has ever swum with me or against me, they'll confirm that my butterfly stroke is abysmal in that my shoulders barely make it out of the water, my backstroke is hindered by a chronic fear of smashing my forehead into the wall in the event of a turn, and that I cannot seem to plunge/dive with goggles on as they constantly get pulled off by the force of impact with the water.

[ This post is brought to you by dinner at Zoco (Spanish food) with my Daddy and Vicky. ]

I will say, however, that while I am far from ace in any sport that I have ever attempted to play, the fact that I participated on some intermediate to advanced level in certain kinds of sports certainly had a positive impacts on me, and I don't mean physically.

I got into a discussion recently with my father and his secretary, with whom we had dinner at Zoco (attn Shangers, it's the Spanish place on Julu Road near the Velvet Lounge, pretty good food but I think Azul on Hengshan is better), about the importance of team sports and individual sports.

Less recently than that discussion, I was talking with a variety of friends regarding what kinds of sports are most beneficial to you in terms of mental agility, and, more importantly, personality development. I basically asked: which kind of sport is better: a team sport or an individual sport?

Stepping away from athleticism or skill level and focusing solely on your brainfood, let's clarify exactly what I mean here. A individual sport is what I'd classify as a sport wherein the focus is on you as an individual. This includes swimming, even though there are relay events in swimming... ideally speaking, the faster you yourself as an individual are, the better off your team will be. Any sport (or event within a sport, for argument's sake) that involves just you and your blood, sweat, and brains, is classified as an individual sport.

A team sport is any sport wherein you cannot win on your own. It doesn't matter how good you as an individual are, it matters how well your team plays as a whole. In this particular case you hear things like "the team is only as good as its worst player." Sure you can be better than your teammates in certain or all aspects of a sport, but you cannot win without them, you cannot win without trusting them, you cannot win it by playing over them or pretending they aren't there. They are necessary not just owing to the rules of the game, but to playing a good game.

To further clarify, the value of a sport is not just in winning. Winning is nice and all, but what it always boils down to is playing a good game. You played hard, the other team played hard, and you are satisfied with your performance (whether as a team or an individual). I say this just in case any of you thought I was being all "LOLZ WINNING IS AWSUM."

Now, the majority of the time, people told me that team sports are, by and large, more valuable than individual sports. Why? Because of what they teach you. Teamwork, trust, the value of the whole over the individual, sacrifice, putting pieces together to make something better, etc. Very cliche, I get it, but stick with me here.

You learn not to blame one individual for a mistake because, well, anyone could've made that mistake. You learn that it's not about having the best players, but the best players that play together. A team that is more likely to bank on its strengths as a whole will almost always win over a team that has one or two stars that never communicate with one another. (1982 Miracle Team! or, better yet, the 2000 Lady Dragons Volleyball Team!)

While these are valuable skills, I do feel that individual sports are just as important, but on a completely different level.

In an individual sport, you rely on little more than your own drive. Sure you have your coach, teammates (i.e., they are the people you train with), family, friends, fans, etc cheering you on, but the effort is mostly your own. You push yourself not to beat the people around you, but to beat yourself. To constantly and always better yourself against the clock or your old scorecards. Golf, swimming, track and field, singles badminton, etc, are all good examples of what I'm talking about.

The skills you learn, then, are how to push yourself harder in anything that you set out to do. Good enough is never good enough. If you don't beat your old time, then you have not trained hard enough, did not perform well enough. You are driven by a sense of self-improvement, and you do what you do to see yourself do better. You don't perform as a component on your team, but you do it for yourself. All your training, all your time, all your blood and sweat... it was all spent for you.

If you are doing it JUST because a coach or a parent is pushing you, you might need an attitude adjustment... or possibly a long talk.

Skills from both kinds of sports are necessary and absolutely positive to your development as a person. They are not mutually exclusive, though they certainly may seem so at some point.

An individual sport teaches you how to play hard for yourself. A team sport teaches you how to play hard with your team... and how to trust the team to play hard for themselves. Put the two together and you basically develop a can-do, self-starting, self-motivated, and team-oriented way or thinking.

Focusing too much on one set of skills can naturally have some drawbacks. Get too self-involved and you may find it hard to work with other people. Relying too much on your team may lead you to be complacent and let your team do all the work. Worse, it may even lead you to be pressured by your team to do better, which builds resentment and likely causes you to be less willing to work well with them.

Now, to be absolutely fair, I am not saying that you should play one individual sport and one team sport to get the best of both worlds, nor am I saying that if you just played one kind of sport YOU ARE SCREWED AND ARE A TERRIBLE PERSON. These are skills that come naturally to anyone who pays a lick of attention to what's going on around them and within them.

What this is, then, is an admittedly convoluted way to explain that working with other people and working with yourself are two things that are equally important. You cannot rank one over the other. Put them together in a way that suits you best means that you will never cheat yourself, but you are willing and able to play on a team.

Whether it's sports, work, friendship or even a relationship, this sort of thing goes more overlooked than I like to think.

You are there for your teammates, coworkers, friends, or significant other just as much as they are there for you. Don't sell yourself short, don't sell them short. Please please please never forget that.

I part you now with an amusing story my father relayed to me about how an individual sport can become a team sport if you're willing to thinking tactically.

My dad used to run the 400m sprint for the track team back in college. His tactic would be to sprint out super fast at the beginning and go all out, scaring the opponents to speed up as well to keep up. Other runners in the event that were also with his school, however, only kept pace. What happens at the 200m mark? My dad is burned out and he drops back... and so are the people he had encouraged to stay with him... but the other runners from his track team would then break into their respective sprints and win the points for the school!

Naturally, he admits that this defeats the whole purpose of training to get the best time for oneself (as that is ultimately what would win the overall meet), but hey he owned the 200m sprint, apparently.

Ah, Chans. Always thinking outside the box. I wuv my Daddy. :)

Why I'm Awesome (Part 18 of 7,412): REAL

2008-03-24T15:40:00.000+08:00

People, people, we need to talk.

[ This post brought to you by dumb people. ]

Anyone who actually thinks I'm a bitch deserves to keep thinking I'm a bitch. What I am, is a very loud, outspoken person with a strong personality and a stronger attitude who actually doesn't give much of a fuck about what people she doesn't care for or respect think.

You know how you lie or embellish a story when there is no need for embellishment or lies? Whether it's to make you look better or not as dumb or whatever, you edit the story somewhat?

Stop that. It's stupid.

Real life is interesting enough without you idiots sassing it all up with dumb stories that are designed only to make you look more badass or make you look more like the victim or what-have-you. False modesty is also pretty fucking stupid... if you did something great, IT'S OKAY TO FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT AND IT IS CERTAINLY OKAY TO TELL THE STORY EXACTLY HOW IT HAPPENED.

If you were dumb, own up to that shit. If you were awesome, own up to that shit.

Seriously. Sooner or later you'll do something that is ACTUALLY badass or you'll do something that is ACTUALLY stupid. Bank on those moments to share your stories in all their realistic glory, because guess what.

What actually happens in life, the real shit... there's nothing in your imagination that can rival it when it decides to get in your face.

Enough bullshit. Whether it's to get validation or to make people like you more, enough bullshit. If they like you, they'll like you! If they don't, they don't, and why the fuck should you care?

So knock it off.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 17 of 7,412): RECHARGED

2008-03-05T16:00:00.000+08:00

Our office moved way out to Pudong from Hongqiao. For those who don't know, we basically moved from the most western area of the city to the most eastern area of the city. For those who DO know, we are now located in Chuansha, which is fifteen minutes northwest from the Pudong Airport.

[ This post is brought to you by Element Fresh's wireless connection. ]

It takes an hour by car to get out there every morning and an hour and a half every evening to get back (traffic, yay). We get picked up and dropped off and lunch is on the company, but it is an undeniable bore. Today was our first taste of this...and we had no furniture or internet access set up at the new office. Splendid!

I have, however, been trying to make a concerted effort to focus on as many of the positive aspects of this change as I can.

By far, the best part is the simple fact that we really only need to have one meeting a day, and that cuts our work day in half.

For instance, a meeting in the morning means we don't go into work until after the meeting is over, but since we would miss our morning ride out there, it's best to schedule a meeting in the afternoon. A meeting in the afternoon generally means it takes an hour for us to get there and an hour to get back and then another hour to go home afterwards, which makes little logistical sense, so that means we just get to go home after the meeting is over and work from home.

Well, not exactly.

I am currently sitting in Element Fresh finishing up a day's work and let me tell you, a refreshing atmosphere (free of my boss and graced with an awesome glass of fresh carrot-apple juice and with lots of eye candy) makes all the difference in the world.

No, this is not an ad for Element Fresh (which, for those non-Shangers, is a new age sort of western restaurant with locations all over the city), but I'm just saying how easy it is to get work done when you don't have a boss like mine literally haunting your every single move.

It's easy to recharge when I am getting work done (and, better yet, WANTING to get work done) at a faster pace than I would if I were in the office, even with distractions like carrot-apple juice and ridiculously hot men sitting at the next table.

Tomorrow the plan is to sit on the balcony of the office (where the only table in the whole damn place is located) and enjoy the sun while working. The farther away I am from my boss, the more productive I am, and the ultimately, the happier I am.

I just wanted to say that I wouldn't have been able to make this attitude change if I didn't have all of your support and many e-hugs and donations of e-love. Thanks for everything, even if it was just letting me know you were there for me. I really appreciate it, and I am so lucky to know you.

I am a firm believer in the fact that you're never meant to handle anything alone. I always thought that in my case it meant that I would never let anyone else walk alone, but I guess it took something like this and people like you to help me realize that it's a two-way street. Thank you, sincerely.

TL;DR - how is that long? My god you are lazy. Go the fuck back up there and read the whole damn thing you BUM.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 16 of 7,412): LIMITS

2008-02-26T11:36:00.000+08:00

Everyone's got them. I hit mine.

[ This post is brought to you by my boss. ]

I am a strong individual, particularly in the emotional department. Sure it looks like things get to me easily and whatnot but the truth of the matter is that these things seldom bother me once they're done flitting in and out of my vicinity. I find this to be healthy, because if I don't express my feelings about something immediately, I tend to hold onto it and not let go until I've had the satisfaction of letting the world know how I feel about it... and this is ultimately more destructive.

Anyone who's hung out with or been around me over the last couple of weeks knows full well that I have had a song stuck in my head pretty much every day. I hum it, I dance to it, I try to sing it in my undoubtedly brutal, songbird-butchering voice. That song is The Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani.

If you don't know the lyrics, here they are:

If I could escape/and recreate a place as my world/and I could be your favorite girl forever/perfectly together/now tell me boy wouldn't that be sweet?/If I could be sweet/I know I've been a real bad girl/I never meant for you to get hurt forever/we can make it better/now tell me boy wouldn't that be sweet?

While I know how unawesome it can be to use a song's chorus as a springboard for the breaking of a dam of verbalized emotion, you are all pretty aware by now that I never do it, so there's a damn good reason I'm doing it now.

Honestly, most of the song's appeal exists only in the very first few lines of the chorus.

I would dearly love to escape and recreate a place as my own world. I don't really to be anyone's favorite girl (forever, perfectly together), but it would be pretty sweet all the same. The rest of chorus I guess is less self-explanatory, so you're going to have to plow through what promises to be a lengthy divulging of my burdens on the written word.

Over the last three weeks, I have been thrown under the bus of life's fagatronics. I know I used that word in last time's post, but here it is again, if only to establish an allusion to that post.

Those same things listed in that previous post (the breakup, the tragedy involving a friend, the effects of that tragedy on a larger circle of friends, work, multiple emotional upheavals involving friends both close and distant) have been trying to beat me down over and over again, trying to crush and bury me under an enormous, steaming pile of life's best work.

Now, I'm not trying to imply that my pain is anymore extreme than anyone else's; everyone has their own little defeats that they take harder than other people would. Your pain is individual, and the degree you feel it given an incident is solely up to you, and no one can judge you for how bad or how well you are taking it. No one knows just how hard that fist hit you, no one knows just how much you loved that dog, no one knows how much of your own pain and sadness you internalize for the sake of the people around you.

I recognize, however, that I am a strong person. After everything happened, one after another, I was still standing. More than standing, I was doing pretty damn great. Hardly anyone remembered what happened unless I told them flat out that it was on my mind. Many people would've been down and out after the breakup. Most certainly would've hit the ground out cold after the passing of a friend on top of it.

And yet there I was, going strong, recovering quickly, with a positive attitude. I took all the positive things about my relationship and learned something from them while recognizing why he broke up with me. I didn't blame myself for it, I didn't blame him for it, I simply understood the reason bounced right back.

As for what transpired after the breakup, well, there isn't much you can do with news that arrives in your Inbox telling you something you just can't believe you're reading. You certainly could not have prevented it, and even if you were not as close to that person as you wanted to be, you still recognize the true impact of what has happened. So what do you do instead? You offer to help the ones who were close to him recover. You are there for them when they need you, and that is all you can do given the circumstances. It is perhaps a small gesture and maybe it doesn't make a difference, but it makes things easier to deal with when you know that you are doing what you can to help others lighten the load.

Honestly, that was the only good thing. I love helping people, I love being there for them, knowing that I am helping them through something they can't get through by themselves.

Please understand when I say what I'm about to say next that I love that people come to me and I would never blame them. It's just that I've been dealing with so much emotion coming from all sides that it's been overwhelming. The irony is, I called it! I knew February was going to be a crazy month and I was fully geared, waiting for it, bracing myself so that I can be everyone's shoulder. But I guess that with all my own shit going on, it takes a lot more to stay sane and stable. Do not apologize for this; if I didn't want to help, I would never have offered. In fact, helping people is what literally kept my head above the water for so long. It's draining in the process, sure, but it is also refreshing and recharging when it's over. I love doing it, please don't deny me that pleasure.

Then there's work. I don't need to tell you guys anything more about just how much bullshit work generates on a daily basis. If it weren't for my coworkers, I don't know how I'd make it through the day.

And, ironically, even though these are the people who help me through each individual day just by being there, even though these are the people I see the most, they are somehow the ones on whom I shit on the most. I resolved to correct this, and tried to approach work with an increasingly positive attitude.

For the past weeks, through the Frogger-like dodging of boss-generated obstacles, my coworkers made it bearable simply by being around. There wasn't anything special they needed to say, they were just there, probably thinking the same things I was, and that made it so much easier to survive yet another day in the office.

Still, one can only take so much bullshit. There's only so much a (unwitting) shield can handle before it buckles, splits, and breaks. I think my shield lost its effects yesterday, and I was pushed into and past my limit into the realm of what I like to call "Armageddon." I tore up a draft of a Powerpoint printout right there at my desk, tearing it to shreds, while I was sure my boss had a clear view of my desk. I snapped at a coworker when, really, all he probably wanted was to get that breath of fresh air I myself was craving. I yelled and screamed when I got home, breaking down in front of my sister and her boyfriend.

It feels easy, even to me, for me to get over things like those mentioned in my previous post. To an outsider and that third eye inside my brain that tries to process everything I do, it is generally surprising how little effort it seems to take for me to recover and come back with a vengeance.

It's not actually easy.

So when you've been doing it a while with no sign of respite to let everything bleed out of you, you just get too tired. Too tired to fight another round, too tired to defend against yet another onslaught of bullshit, too tired maintain the thickness of your shell. It's easier to give in and explode.

To be fair, my limit is very high. Very. I am able to plow through and contain an incredible amount of bullshit. It's just that it's been so much crap happening in such a short span of time and I have had absolutely no time to recharge my batteries. I have kept angry outbursts to a minimum at work for the sake of maintaining good morale, trying to stay positive, and at home I distract myself because I don't have the energy to think about anything more serious beyond "will my little red tanks do enough damage to the big blue tanks to kill it when I have 7 little red tanks and they have 2 big blue tanks?" (The answer is yes, but only if my little red tanks were attacking from the woods.)

On another level, I guess in my efforts to stay positive, it further drained my energy, nor did I afford myself the time to deal with what was requiring me to stay positive in the first place. It's ironic that I know how to take good emotional care of myself, but because I didn't want to step on anymore toes, I internalized everything, which is basically the polar opposite of what I need to be doing, as it does nothing to help me recover from the draining process of getting over everything. I was trying so hard to stay strong that I ended up so unbelievably weak that I am disgusted with my failure.

The breakup does not bother me. Nothing really bothers me, per se, as everything that has happened has been dealt with, recovered from. I just haven't had to time to restore my arsenal back to maximum, and my boss's idiocy has basically quintupled over the last week, leaving me so uncertain about my career, about what I do in my day-to-day life. You can only take so many hits in a row before you finally crumple; even if your injuries are healed, if you haven't eaten or rested, you're going down in the 7,412th round whether you like it or not. I took as many as I could, and I guess my only comfort is that it's a hell of a lot more hits than most could've taken.

I am just so, so, so tired.

TL;DR - oh here you are again hey go fuck yourself

Why I'm Awesome (Part 15 of 7,412): PHVIV'N

2008-02-18T17:30:00.003+08:00

So hey let's recount the last week, shall we? I got dumped, my boss returns with full force stupidity, a bunch of friends (and myself) went (or are going) through severe emotional trauma over a recent incident, and heartbreaks abound!

I did get a real sweet haircut that I can't stop talking about though. I AM STAYING POSITIVE. GO ME.

(That is semi-sarcasm.)

[ This post is brought to you by the fagatronics of life. ]

Before I go on, I just wanted to clarify that there are no hard feelings between Iping and I and we are still friends. Some people aren't suited for a long distance relationship and that's nothing against them, it's just how they are.

I have said time and time again that people need to be positive, secure, stable, and trustworthy to make an LDR work. If you are not those things, then it's just not for you. This doesn't make you a BAD person, as physical closeness is of course a significant factor in any relationship, it just means you're built a little differently from the way I am. (If it helps, people who can't make LDRs work tend to be more sensitive and show their feelings through gestures rather than words. As far as I know, I am neither of these things.)

But moving on; as it is, my personal problems tend to be the ones I focus on the least. This is solely because I am so good at managing my own emotions and taking care of myself. Ask anyone who's seen me since the breakup: bounced back and better than ever within 48 hours, positive attitude bubbling over. I mean, honestly, outside of bitching about work (which is a fixable problem that I am working on), there's little to complain about.

What prompts me to write this particular entry is the fact that one of the less appealing features of my personality is my severe "anger problem." I put those in quotes because quite frankly, I don't see it as a problem. Yes, I have little outbursts of rage that snap out of my mouth and lash right at the back of some poor little guy's head, but hey that is what he gets FOR GETTING IN MY WAY AS I GET OFF THE ELEVATOR JESUS CHRIST.

The thing is, I express my anger just as often as I express my happiness, my surprise, my fear, or my tears. It is perhaps the idea that anger is such a negative thing that makes people focus on that the most. (The fact that I have to contain it for 8 hours out of the day while at work might be a driving factor as well.) I doubt I feel anger more than any other emotion, it's just that its presentation is usually the most explosive and the most visible.

I do not like to hide what I am feeling, though of course I recognize when it is necessary. I believe that, for me, a frequent expression of emotion is not only healthy, but pretty much necessary. Why is that?

The reason is simple: I am incredibly empathic. It is just one of those things about myself that I recognize to be both a strength and a weakness, and I endeavor endlessly to ensure that it is a good thing while minimizing its ill effects.

This means that I am very capable of identifying with how someone else is feeling, internalize their emotions, and process them in my brain while looking through their eyes. I am not the BEST at this, but I am a damn sight better than most people I know.

At the same time, as I feel what I myself have a right to feel in day-to-day life, the sheer amount of emotion I contain inside myself is full to bursting. To avoid breakdowns, explosions, gratuitous acts of mindless violence, or moments of severe hyperactivity, my solution is to wear my emotions on my sleeve, letting them out in small to moderate bursts in order to prevent a meltdown of epic proportions.

Some people have pointed out that maybe I don't have to be so empathic when it comes to other people. Others have mentioned that by firing my anger off at someone, am I not caring what they think or feel of it, thereby making me a hypocrite?

The first question is easy to answer. I do it because I want to. I do it because it is what helps me understand the people around me and in so many ways it is also why I am so damned good at my job. I do it because I care, because in knowing how and why someone feels the way they do, I am able to help them should they need it—whether it is to help them see a solution to their problem, or to help them understand (or be understood by) someone else.

This particular need of mine (the need to be the person that people go to for help and advice, when asked, of course) has earned me an online nickname that explains the title of this post: "Dr. Phviv," a tongue-in-cheek mashup of the infamous, moustached, balding Dr. Phil and, of course, my beautifully hair-styled self.

It goes somewhat beyond the simple shoulder leaning; I offer not comfort, but understanding and solutions. You all know as well as I do that I am heavily opinionated (see Part 13), and that generally means I will always have something to say about one's situation. Still, I listen and try to speak only when asked to do so. I do not judge, I empathize, and put my advice in a form that they will understand. When it does come time for me to talk, my honest and upfront nature (as evidenced in pretty much every single one of these posts) is what has people believing that I am not saying what I'm saying to make them feel better. I'm saying what I'm saying to help them understand and solve a problem.

This is a part of myself that I refuse to give up; a part of myself that I recognize is fueled by my empathy, and I have accepted it and all its implications in the form of a necessary evil.

What about the second question, then? "...By firing my anger off at someone, am I not caring what they think or feel of it, thereby making me a hypocrite?"

This is one of those things that makes me wish I were a significantly better person, but then again I do realize that I am only human. I can't help everyone, and were I to sensitize myself to making sure I don't tread on any toes at all, I think I would lose a lot of my passion and character. There is no "magic personality" that makes someone the very best of the best. This, I recognize with a heavy heart, is a flaw that I do make an effort to minimize, but never to eliminate, as it is the cost of being someone I love being.

A lot of that thinking comes from the fact that while I am always willing to help (and give my all when doing so), I do pick and choose to whom I afford that privilege. Past experiences have taught me rather harshly that you cannot please everyone and, perhaps most importantly, that going all out for just anyone will only have you end up a heavily trodden doormat.

Rather than seal myself off to people who might hurt me, I simply scare the weak ones away, keeping the stronger ones, the ones who know who I really am, by my side. It is for these people that I will do absolutely anything for; they need only ask.

Natural selection, if you will. To be fair, though, I am almost always nice at the outset and I am so good at making a good first impression if I wanted to do so. I just quickly turn into a bit of a bitch and then switch back to sugarcoated goodness when I think the receiving party has had enough.

I will help as many people as I can, but I can't help everyone. It helps that people know they can come to me without even asking, because with the people I like or am close to, I am so very open with them about my thoughts and feelings that they know they can be just as open with me. I am honest and upfront with them, so they know they can be the same way with me without fearing any negative repercussions. If you see me in this light, then it means I like you, because I have shown you that side of me.

Call me a hypocrite or something synonymous if you like, but I will have you know that I have helped so many little girls and boys find their parents while lost in a supermarket or mall or store simply because I wanted to. And because if I didn't, no one else was going to do it.

Knowing that I am a nice person at heart, that I am a nice person a hell of a lot more often than I am a mean one, is what makes me glad that I have come to terms with both the very best and the very worst of myself. The people who think I am mean more than I am nice are, quite frankly, perhaps the kind of people whose opinion I don't particularly value, so hey, why the hell should they have any kind of impact on my self-image?

If you are reading this, rest assured that you are one of those people I would be there for, no questions asked, if you needed me. It doesn't even matter how well you think you know me; more often than not, if you find me approachable and want to talk to me, then that means that I am more than willing to talk to you, no matter the topic. There's very little we can talk about nowadays that will freak me out, and I will never, ever judge you. Trust me. I am here for you.

You know where to find me if you need me.

TL;DR: Dammit you SE++ fags (Javen and Sil I am looking at you dudes so hard right now) it's not THAT long you lazy bastards! (Oh ok I actually I just scrolled up and it IS pretty long but it is me being soft and squishy and everyone loves THAT right, RIGHT?)

Why I'm Awesome (Part 14 of 7,412): BACKS

2008-01-24T15:08:00.000+08:00

Yes, friends and acquaintances and people I met once fleetingly and have never seen again, the age-old mystery is about to be solved. No, there will be no "summing up" of 2007, I've been doing that all year, if you wanna hear about it, go back and read about it.

[ This post is brought to you by everyone who ever asked me why I like backs and shoulders, as well as Mr. Meissner, whose conversation with me today brought certain things to light. ]

First, I should clarify that it is both backs and shoulders that I find appealing. Just a back or just a shoulder simply will not do.

Second, Iping possesses a stunning specimen of the perfect combination. I just wanted to say that before people started whining about how terrible a girlfriend I am. HE HAS A GORGEOUS BODY AND HE KNOWS IT BECAUSE I ALWAYS TELL HIM ALL RIGHT. Have you felt him flex? HAVE YOU? It is awesome right? Damn straight. (Hands off, Chuck.)

Third, it certainly does not mean that other parts of the body are not appealing, it just means that these parts are the BEST.

This all said, it has been revealed over the past year or so that my favorite part of the male body is their upper body, specifically, their backs and shoulders. I do not find pecs particularly attractive, as they start to resemble boobs after a while and I will be damned if a dude I like has boobs better or bigger than mine.

Most people find this odd. Well, okay, let's be fair: most guys find this odd. Girls generally know what I'm talking about.

Let me explain, as briefly as I can force myself to (the blinking IM thingy in the taskbar helps, Meiss), why this is the sexiest part of the male anatomy. I couldn't really put my own finger on why I have this particular preference until today, so I now impart that knowledge to you.

Those of you who have read previous entries in this series know that I am basically the warmest, softest person you can possibly imagine once you penetrate a veritable fortress of Prince-of-Persia-style traps and walls and such.

On the exterior and in day-to-day life, I generally like to take care of myself. My armor is thick enough to withstand most forms of punishment in this sense, barring a particularly well-aimed attack.

However, in my most private of moments, when I am alone with someone special, I like to be taken care of. I, like anyone with the double-X-chromosome combo, like to be coddled, cuddled, snuggled, held, hugged, spoiled, and protected. You could say that after spending so much time looking out for myself, so much time spend wearing that body armor, I just want to take it all off when I get home and be held nice and tight and be treated like a little princess.

This admission does not come easily but I am hardly ashamed of it. Jaya knows what I'm about. In fact, I would imagine most girls out there do.

Think of it this way: a girl like me, who is accustomed to giving orders and making decisions and bludgeoning her way through barriers and asserting her presence and generating this visage of invulnerability for most of her waking day probably just wants some time to let all that go and go in the polar opposite direction. To let go and just be a GIRL.

How does this tie into backs and shoulders?

I view upper body strength as a mark of male dominance, as a symbolic representation of protection, or the ability to protect.

To be picked up, carried, hugged, held, etc.... these are all things that I absolutely enjoy when I'm with someone I am close to, and these are all things that solid upper body strength only help deliver.

To be hugged tightly, surrounded by well-sculpted arms with my hands feeling up a firm, solid back? A strong back that does not give way, that would protect me from anything?

I am basically ramming this metaphor down your throats, I know, but that is exactly why I find backs and shoulders so sexy. To me, I see a man who is capable of protecting me and taking care of me.

Now, don't get me wrong; I am not insinuating that I EXPECT these things from a man built this way. I simply mean that these are things I find appealing because my brain jumps a couple light years ahead of time sometimes.

This is perhaps the girliest I can possibly get without Iping physically being near me, but hey, that dude gives the best hugs EVER. THE BESTEST!

(No offense to past or future huggers but seriously the dude has you beat no contest.)

Hopefully, that clears up some confusion with regards to this "strange fetish" of mine. I HAVE A SOUL. I AM ACTUALLY HUMAN. I AM NOT AN ANDROID BUILT OF RAGE AND FUELED ON BABY TEARS.

I leave you now with a caricature drawn by Berk because Berk is pretty cool.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 13 of 7,412): OPINE

2007-11-22T13:23:00.000+08:00

The past weeks have been an interesting mix of frustration and joy, with one stemming mostly from my job and the other stemming from my overwhelming ability to find things to do that make me happy. I have, however, found very little to write about, because as long since mentioned, the boyfriend and roommate now receive the brunt of my bitching, which quite frankly leaves me with very little to write about. Those who find my anger to be entertaining will just have to wait for a two-day period wherein neither Iping or Romain are accessible to me and, rest assured, you will have something else jumping up my butt and vomiting rage out my mouth.

My choice of imagery is stellar, I know.

[ This post is brought to you by Victoria's Secret and my Xbox 360 and Social Entropy Plus Plus. ]

I am also well aware that my previous entry was so awesome that I have left myself a tough act to follow. That said, I do not care, I'm just going to write whatever I want goddammit and you are going to like it.

As those of you on SE++ may know (as I posted this twice in the same thread), I am currently riding the crest of the wave known as my self-image. At present, I could not be happier with my physical appearance, my personality, my relationship, and my career. Confidence is at an all-time high and while I am perfectly aware of the fact that I stand on the precipice of one hell of a nosedive, I am just focusing on enjoying this for as long as I can.

With a significant boost in confidence comes an increase in the opine aspect of my personality. While already upfront with my take on basically everything that enters my line of sight and beyond, the tendency to verbalize exactly what I think about anything has basically reached critical levels. It's actually gotten to the point where I do it without thinking.

Constantly expressing my opinion is a habit of mine, though I haven't yet decided on whether or not this is a good thing. Sure, it can be termed a "bad" habit in the sense that I clearly do it much too often, but as something that is "bad" or "good" for me, I remain ambivalent. In an effort to sort this out once and for all, I opted to put myself in the shoes of someone on the receiving end.

I remain as clueless as ever on this matter, as it does seem to come down to individual personality. There is no universal way to look at someone who is opine to the degree of helplessness, and by now you yourself have realized that I really like the word "opine." (It rhymes with porcupine and as such is awesome.) Depending on your own personality and experience, you will either find it refreshing, annoying, or you may not notice it at all.

I have been told by multiple people (both online and off) that I am an intimidating, aggressive individual, and that this characteristic is fueled by how opinionated I am on everything. I do not hesitate, they say, to fill others in on what I think of anything, from celebrities to the color green to the Republicans to relationships to South Park. In some ways, my very "animated" way of expressing these views is termed as being "scary."

While I secretly delight in being seen as such an intimidating figure, I do admit that I find myself confused as to why people would think of me that way. Yes, I have presence, which I personally define as being able to walk into a room and be impossible to ignore. I recognize this as a strength, but it is wholly separate from being intimidating. I am essentially a giant bundle of hugs and cuteness and pyrophobia, from whom there is little to fear. It was then explained to me that my intimidation manifests itself in the form of my upfront, confident, and often aggressive personality.

Let me clarify that I do not deny that yes, I do hide that giant bundle of giggles and teehees under a thick coat of booby-trapped titanium (see WIA Part 7: MARSHMALLOW), but this particular brand of fear is, according to experts (i.e., people I like), not what fuels the intimidation. It's just good ol'-fashioned fear.

So, back to the point. Apparently, the majority of people I know find the fact that I am very upfront with my opinions as being intimidating. This group of people are people I generally like but are not very close with, even though I interact with them on a semi-regular basis. These people also tend to find it refreshing that I am so upfront, particularly when people left and right love to hide what they really think behind masks of political correctness and apathy. I am also honest about my opinions, no matter how controversial. People closer to me generally don't find me intimidating at all (most likely because they know better) and they have grown used to hearing me spit out an opinion every five minutes (seconds). All agree, however, that I am aggressive and have a very domineering personality.

Then you have a pocket of people who say what I have suspected all along: their annoyance with how I have to have an opinion on absolutely everything. Generally speaking they tend to wonder why I can't just keep my trap shut and roll with it instead of having something to say about even the most mediocre, mindless topics.

Since these people are not my friends so much as fringe acquaintances, I find that people who think this way are not people I tend to like.

I also find that while I do in fact have an opinion on most things, there are key topics that I just don't care about and I certainly don't express these opinions at inappropriate times. For example, I'm not going to attend someone's very Christian wedding and then ramble on and on and on about how I feel about religion in general. Not unless asked, anyway, and even then I am very careful with my tact.

That said, I think being upfront and honest with your opinions falls under the same rule that most other things in my life tend to follow: I like doing it, I know when not to do it, so I will keep on doing it when I can be doing it.

For me, something that definitely pisses me off is being wishy-washy. Wishy-washiness is for pussies and wimps. Sure you can have those issues that you just don't care about, that's normal. But not having an opinion at all is something that rubs me the wrong way. You don't have to take a stand, you don't have to defend your point of view, you don't have to debate every damned thing that comes up in conversation. But have a stand, have a point of view, and be able to have a damned conversation that goes beyond the versatile yet overly-used utterance of "meh."

So someone might disagree with you. So what. You really want to go out there and please 6 billion people?

Naturally, the other edge of the sword (at least in my case) is the frustration that arises when I feel like the other person simply isn't listening or is refusing to grasp the point. So stubbornly locked into what they think that they refuse to let me finish making my point before interrupting and jamming in something that ultimately derails the conversation away from the original point. They "think" they know what I'm going to say and jump in anyway because to them it's all "recycled garbage" and they have a prepackaged response to it. This frustration, if built up to the point wherein I feel like the other person is absolutely convinced that s/he is right and I am wrong without even trying to see where I am coming from (and wherein I have afforded them that courtesy), I generally explode in a violent blast of impatience. This is also known as a tantrum. I am seldom proud of myself when this happens, but suppressed, seething anger is, in my case, infinitely more damaging.

I am well aware that I am not perfect and that I have very likely interrupted other people in such discussions, but I have gotten significantly better since I decided to put the focus on listening to what people say rather than what I am waiting for my turn to say. (You can't tell I know but the change is there and I like it a lot.)

My conclusion from this round of introspection is that, like everything else, there is a time and place for everything in moderation. Being that this is the policy I already adhere to, I've since decided that this particular aspect of my personality is a positive one. Some people will like it, others won't, but those that won't are probably not the sort of people I'd like to hang out with, in any case.

TL; DR - fuck you, Sil.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 12 of 7,412): OMG

2007-10-09T16:02:00.000+08:00

Every so often while at work I find a quiet moment in which to jot down a veritable onslaught of thoughts and opinions and, of course, bitching. Generally speaking, this salvo of aggressive typing is inspired simply by boredom, recent events, seething frustration with a lack of an alternate outlet, or writer's block. This particular instance is a combination of all three, as I simply cannot seem to write the latest part of my story in any fashion that I deem suitable to the rest of the book.

[ This post is brought to you by Andor, my fictional god of Might, named after a combination of Thor and the word "and." ]

When I started this tongue-in-cheek, fake-it-'til-you-make-it series of "Why I'm Awesome" proclamations, I promised myself that I would limit topics to those that tend to be less sensitive and emotional so as not to reveal my vulnerability and great insecurity. I have, naturally, failed in that attempt rather spectacularly, so there really is no point in further "censoring" such topics.

You may wonder, then, that with someone so emotionally volatile as myself, with an anger problem akin to a vicious, "all together now!" eruption of the Pacific Ring of Fire, why I have not written a particularly angry post for quite some time (see Parts 4 and 5).

The answer manifests itself in the simple fact that most of my bitching is now expressed in earnest to Iping the boyfriend and Romain the roommate, both of whom tend to be the most efficient receptors of the aforementioned bitching, as simply talking to them via messages or conversation does not warrant the composition of a literary firecracker.

Anyway, without the anger, I am left with controversy and thinking entirely too much.

Recent conversations with many friends, both offline and on, have basically led me to ask this question: do you believe in an afterlife?

I, for one, do not. I have not shared my religious beliefs in full up until now, but let's lead into this discussion with a sister question: do you believe in God?

For me, I am very indifferent. If he exists, great, if he doesn't, also great. This isn't even agnostic thinking, this is simply indifference to the idea of a greater power. (As background info, my mother was raised Catholic and my father believes that yes there is a supreme being but he'll be damned if he's told what to think by a book written by "guys like me who think they know it all but don't.")

Scenario A: God exists
So what? If God were to exist in the absolute definition presented by all religions who believe in one (or many), then "God" or "gods" possess omniscience beyond what we as humans can comprehend. This is, at least, what I am told over and over and over again. A supreme being isn't just a dude who happens to live forever and be able to make stuff, a supreme being, as defined by myself (and endorsed by many religious people I've spoken to) is all-seeing and all-knowing.

If God is all-seeing and all-knowing, he can also see what I like to call the Web of Causality. He can see this web of cause and effects, with all kinds of causes leading to all kinds of effects leading to all kinds of causes. It is not unreasonable to assume, just for fun, that he is able to see the entire web at once and, therefore, predict the future.

BUT FREE WILL! you cry adamantly. HE CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR FREE WILL!

How many of the choices you make are influenced by something you have seen or experienced? By genetics? Your own personality is sculpted by your genetic blueprint, your parents' upbringing, and your environment. Your ability to process what you see around you is directly influenced by everything that was used to make "you" into who you are.

Millions of causes can create one effect, and this effect can be anything in any moment in time of any scale. An effect can be a choice you make. It can be the location of a beetle on the street. It can be the weather.

So, theoretically, God could have predicted things a certain way and arranged events on his end to orchestrate an incredible complex web of causality that will eventually result in his end design. Why would he want to sit around watching when he knows what's going to happen?

Miracles? Miracles are just millions of threads in that web falling into place JUST RIGHT to produce a single effect that happens to be recognized as a "perfect" effect. They are extraordinarily rare, of course, which is why they are also "miracles," because if those kinds of things happen all the time then why do we call them miracles and not "everyday life?"

Chance? Say, why did you end up a girl instead of a boy? Chance, I think is also governed by cause. Say you roll the dice. The effect is a 5. The causes, then, are the weight of the die, the way it was made, the way it was rolled in your hand, and the way it was dropped onto the table. Say you shuffle the cards. The effect is that you draw an Ace. The causes are the state of the deck when you picked it up, how you shuffled it, how the deck was cut, and which cards are dealt. Even the act of shuffling is influenced by a series of tiny incidents, such as how many cards you pick up because your skin squeezes at a certain strength or angle.

My point here is that even when it comes down to chance, God can see the micro-micro-micro-causes that influence the outcome of an infinite number of causes. You really have to think outside the box here, folks. Way outside. Think beyond billions and trillions. Think beyond any number conceived by man, and now think smaller than anything you have previously heard of.

My personal conclusion is that if there is a God that is all-powerful, he doesn't really care about us anymore because he did what he needed to do thousands or millions of years ago and has since moved on to other pursuits like knitting.

If he isn't all-powerful, then what do I care, I can't tell him what to do, HE'S BIGGER THAN ME and knows more than me, so I might as well try to live with it, and honestly, why would I take him seriously to begin with if he were somehow fallible?

Scenario B: God doesn't exist
Well then the world is still governed by that web of causality, it's just that no one was around to set it in motion in the first place, it just kind of happened and I'll be damned if I make my brain explode by trying to theorize what "happened" when ultimately it doesn't particularly matter. I am here, now, and that is what matters to me.

That line of thinking governs my entire view on life itself: you are here, now, and that is what matters. You can prepare for the future, sure, but only insofar as you exist. You have no way of knowing what kind of impact your life may have on the future after you are gone. Really, the most direct influence you have is procreation, and even then, it's only in your hands for so long. That web of causality is so huge and what you do is such a miniscule, subatomic particle in it that why not focus on the things that you can directly influence, with your own two hands?

Similarly, I only have this life to live. I know I exist now, in this life. I don't know if I lived before and I don't care. I don't know if I will live after this and I don't care. What I know is in front of me and that is what matters. This life, not any other, is what matters.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

If there is a God, there's no guarantee that we're going to join him in his home after we die. If there isn't a God, there's nowhere to go ANYWAY.

I don't WANT an afterlife. If I get one, you can have it, I don't want it. I don't want to live forever. Why? Because the idea of living forever completely dilutes the value of the life I have now. It makes THIS life less precious because, hell, I'll live forever after I die anyway, so what's the point in valuing this life?

And seriously what the hell would I do for eternity?

Eternal happiness, to me, is unappealing because you only appreciate happiness when you have sadness worked in there somewhere. Always being happy is worthless if you don't have some bad times to experience to put things in perspective. So heaven and all heaven-like places can suck it. Eternal suffering? Sure, you can go the way of Tantalus and always be tempted by the good stuff but always have it out of reach, but am I really going to live THIS precious life that I have out of FEAR of punishment? Am I going to live a life governed by fear? (Fear, even, of something that might not even exist?)

No, I'm not.

I will live this life as a good person because this is the only life I have in which to BE a good person. I get no other chance. I will live this life as a good person because, ultimately, I live more happily as a good person. I am relatively guilt-free, I do not fear for my life, and everything I have, I owe to good people.

That's not to say I am purely good. No one is pure. Even unknowingly, unintentionally, you have screwed someone over, even though it might be a hundred hops away from your moment of causality. Think about the most and least significant thing you have done in the last 24 hours, and imagine how that might have affected someone close to you. Now imagine how that might have affected someone more removed, influenced by moments of causality in addition to yours.

It's not your FAULT, no, but had you not done X, then Y may never have happened, where Y is something bad to someone else.

No one is purely good, but you can be good in intention, which is what lets you sleep at night.

Yes, this belief does perpetuate discussions like "freedom fighters are killing for good intentions but they still suck at life." But hey, welcome to the state of the world. One man's trash is another man's treasure, right? Who are you to deem who is better than someone else?

This belief is also why I am an advocate of the idea that as long as you are not hurting anyone (in any way, not just physically), then go ahead and do what you like. I can't read your mind, I don't know what your intentions are, I don't know what the circumstances are, but if you can sleep at night and if no one has suffered as a direct result of your actions to the best of your awareness, then I'm not going to judge you. That'd just a waste of time.

So, in conclusion: afterlife cheapens the life I have now, I do not believe in it. I also do not believe in living in fear of punishment (hell) or want of a reward (heaven), I believe in being a good person as far as you can push yourself to be one. I'm not telling you to believe what I believe. I'm just telling you WHAT I believe and why because this is my blog dammit and I am writing about myself.

TL;DR: fuck you go back to SE++ and maek poast cuz seriously you guys are the only ones who would skip to the end to see if this little tagline was even here

Why I'm Awesome (Part 11 of 7,412): BTW

2007-09-12T10:46:00.000+08:00

I would imagine many people have been wondering why I write this "series of why I'm awesome" or whatever you want to call it. "Self-centered," "self-important," "egotistical," "full of myself," and "too much time on the hands" are remarks that I'm sure have surfaced in some minds at some point.

But why DO I write about why I'm awesome?

The answer is simple.

Because if I don't continuously remind myself by writing it all down, I'll forget.

That, and I like to write. A lot. And the easiest thing to write about when you get that itch is something you know, and something that I know fairly well is myself.

P.S. Anyone who actually thinks I really am self-centered and self-important and egotistical or even the slightest bit full of myself after reading any of the past 10 entries (or hanging out with me for longer than half an hour) probably isn't actually reading.

P.P.S. Okay that's it.

P.P.P.S. No really, that's it. Short and sweet.

P.P.P.P.S. It's really me you guys I swear I just wanted to write something short for once.

P.P.P.P.P.S. No, the act of resisting the urge to slam out another 2,000 words of high-minded bullshit did NOT cause me physical pain. Smartass.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 9 of 7,412): CITYSCAPE

2007-09-10T10:56:00.000+08:00

One of the niftier and lesser-known things about me is that I do not "hate" anyone. I am an angry bastard of a woman with a lot of pent up rage and aggression stemming from all kinds of environmental and internal stimuli, but even in spite of my more-than-frequent pissiness (haha Word tried to autocorrect that to "prissiness" DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO MICROSOFT YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME) and the endless string of snide quips and jabs and verbal diarrhea that hurls from my wrath-infested self, I do not hate people.

Before I continue, I'm going to go ahead and introduce a new concept I will be working into my blog entries, which is a one-line explanation as to what inspired me to write this post. Ready GO.

[[This post is brought to you by Greg, better known to most of you as Quetzi, even though there is nothing remotely Quet or zi about him, and a brief exchange of comments on my previous blog entry.]]

Hate, to me, is a very strong word that I would only ever use in jest. I don't think I can remember the last time I actually used the word and meant it, whether to address an object or a person. Objects don't deserve that level of emotional intensity. When it comes to people, well, that's another story entirely.

You see, I am a cynic. I'm sure you've plucked that fact out if you've been reading my blogs. I have a hard time seeing the good in people at large; generally speaking, I find the human race quite abominable and abhorrent and do not expect us to last very much longer (in the grand scheme of things). I mean, humans are really the only ones who can think that their 10,000-year existence on a planet that's 5 billion years old is really anything particularly significant.

But while my macro-view of people is less than favorable, on a mano-a-mano basis I am much more amenable to thinking better of people. That aside, however, on a more personal level, I generally try to find things about the other person that I find likable (yes, even when I'm being mean, I'm looking for the good things about them), rather than going balls-to-the-wall out and trying to find something I don't like.

The bad stuff almost always surfaces eventually…no need for me to go poking around for it.

It is scientifically and emotionally impossible for me to hate something or someone. Something that I dislike to such an extreme degree isn't worthy of notice or attention, let alone any amount of intense emotion. Why waste my energy hating something when I can channel that same energy into something or someone I like?

My emotional state is like a giant lump of Play-Doh that may or may not be brown in color owing to the mixture of all the other, prettier Play-Doh colors over the course of my childhood. Put in a more scientific way, my emotional state is basically the Third Law of Physics, which talks about conservation of mass (I don't know if that's the third law for real but it's one of them goddammit).

The amount and total mass of Play-Doh cannot be increased or decreased, and in my case let's say it's a very soft, very LARGE lump of Play-Doh. On the ground in front of you, there's an asterisk drawn on the ground (a big one), and at each point of the asterisk there is an emotion (angry, sad, happy, etc.). The lump of Play-Doh is placed in the center of the asterisk and then pulled and flattened and punched until it accurately reflects my current emotional state, so if I'm angry, the Play-Doh pulls more toward the asterisk point labeled "angry" and if I'm also a little sad, it pulls a little bit along the "sad" part of the asterisk but not so much.

(If you're a Naruto fan you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about here in terms of this diagram.)

IT'S CALLED A RADAR CHART YOU BUNCHA JAPANOPHILE WEEABOO CHILDREN GOD GO THE HELL BACK TO SCHOOL.

But basically, I am capable of feeling intense happiness just as much as I am capable of feeing intense anger, and if I'm mixing two or more emotions, that dilutes the intensity of them overall because there's less mass left over to distribute to the rest.

My ability to like or dislike something isn't so much a lump of Play-Doh as it is a series of graduated cylinders and a giant bucket of love. When I first meet you, you get 100 ml worth of love in a 1000 ml cylinder just because I am a nice person and I give everyone my respect at first. (Even if I appear to be being mean to you, the love is there, buried beneath the snide quips and harsh words.) Depending on how our interaction goes over the course of time, the amount of love in your graduated cylinder is reduced or increased. Any love going out of the cylinder is returned to the bucket of love, while additional love comes directly from the bucket.

As a general rule, anything below 100 ml means I dislike you more than I like you.

In some cases, the overall size of your graduated cylinder can be upgraded if I feel like the original one cannot possibly contain all the love I have for you.

After a period of time the amount of love in your graduated cylinder stops changing, and this means I've got a good handle on you and my relationship with you. (The love inside it solidifies into a Jell-O-like substance; less likely to change and of very high viscosity but still removable if necessary.) Some people have such a staggering amount of love that their graduated cylinders are the roughly the size of an office tower (it's a really big bucket of love) and the contents within have basically been cemented. Naturally, the bigger your graduated cylinder (and the corresponding amount of love inside it), the closer you are to me. The more solid the contents of your cylinder, the less wavering our relationship is (and the better I know you, which is sometimes a time thing).

Family members or people who have attained family-like status basically form the central business district of the giant city (that looks not unlike Hong Kong) that is my heart, with the CBD itself populated with towering skyscrapers of fully solidified concrete. These are the people who can do whatever the hell they want and it will take an act of god for me to reduce the affection I have for them. My unwavering loyalty to my closest friends is evidence of this.

Business associates and casual acquaintances generally do not get upgraded past the original cylinder. They're like the little tiny glass "people" that fill the streets of the mega-city, looking up at the towering people that I hold dearest to my heart, some of them hoping to reach that place of magic and wonder and elite status, others not particularly caring so long as they have at least 100 ml of love in within them.

Now, if I dislike you to the point where the amount of love in your graduated cylinder hits 0 (which is a very difficult feat to achieve), your graduated cylinder is unceremoniously plucked out of the city of my affections, brought into the wilderness beyond, and smashed as a last act of anger against you, the remains ground into fine powder that is then scattered into the wind. You no longer exist in my city, you are forgotten, it's like you never even entered my life.

As such, my dislike for someone isn't really recorded or even remembered, especially when it gets that low. My love is returned to the giant bucket (which is my heart, you idiots who need to read more), ready to better serve the filling of the cylinder of someone slightly more awesome than those whose powdered cylinders are the stuff of legend.

It should be noted that as a general observation, the contents of an individual's graduated cylinder is likely to be more solid if there's less in it; that means that the less I like you, the harder it is for you to get back into my good graces and I don't think about you enough for my dislike to go any further unless you force it in that direction.

On the flipside, the higher the amount of love in a cylinder, the longer it takes to solidify. That means that you are very likable to me, but you haven't yet earned my loyalty.

Metaphors are so much fun.

I am more likely to love the people I like than I am to hate the people I dislike. As I've said before, when you are one of my closest friends, you are in for life and there is very little that I will not do for you or forgive you for.

Doesn't mean that if you fuck me over I won't knock your glittering tower over, not unlike God reaching down out of the heavens and jamming that almighty thumb of his into the top of a building and smushing it right into the ground (picture that if you will for a moment). It just means that it'd have to be a pretty serious betrayal and I would need to see lots of evidence against you before I could ever be capable of writing you out of my life for good, let alone actually to it.

Plus it leaves this giant pile of wreckage and rubble right in the middle of my city that, unlike the glass powder of insignificant graduated cylinders, doesn't blow away because you meant that much to me…and the cityscape is forever marred by your departure from it.

D'awwwww.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 10 of 7,412): SPOON

2007-09-10T10:45:00.000+08:00

I was talking to my uncle on Saturday night over the many courses of a superb French dinner at one of Shanghai's finest restaurants (called La Platane, near Xintiandi, if you know it). This uncle is my mother's younger sister's husband and he also happens to be the uncle with whom I get along best. For reference, he is father to the third-oldest grandchild on my mother's side of the family, with Lilienne and I holding the top two spots. There are many reasons why he is basically my favorite uncle, but the one that really stands out is the fact that he and I have probably spoken the most over the course of my more formative years.

[ This post is brought to you by foie gras, whose pronunciation is so heinously butchered by non-French speakers around the world, yet we still insist on trying to pronounce it the French way because "goose liver" just doesn't sound quite as appetizing. ]

My mother's family consists of her being the oldest sister, then her younger sister, and then her two youngest brothers (henceforth called Aunt #2, Uncle #3, and Uncle #4, which is approximately what we call them in Chinese). My mother has contributed two granddaughters (my sister and I) to my grandmother's quest for world domination, while her siblings have contributed a total of four granddaughters and two grandsons.

That's probably more information than you will ever need about my pedigree.

I pointed out to this uncle (who was in town on a business trip) that at one point, I felt there was a lot of pressure on me as the oldest grandchild. If you recall tales of my woes prior to this year, this was not uncommon for me; I felt pressure from all kinds of sources, with family sounding the loudest. Whether it was pleasing my parents, worrying about impressing my friends, or other such "voices" that I felt I had to answer to, I put an ungodly amount of pressure on myself.

I had to set an example for the younger grandchildren, I felt. However distant we were in upbringing or parenting styles, we were still linked by blood and I felt that I would be used as an example by my uncles and aunts to say, "Look at your dai biu ze ('oldest cousin who is a girl'), she has done well with herself. Successful career, etc."

Because of this, I felt an overwhelming need to succeed, not just at a career that would impress me, but that would impress them. I wanted to inspire my little cousins to strive to be the best, not because I wanted to be that inspiration, but because I felt that is what was expected of me: my duty as the first grandchild.

Then came 2007 and a very serious, honest, heart-wrenching look at who I am.

Ever since a particularly loud, aggressive, angry, argument-screaming, solid-objecting-throwing, tear-filled summer in 2005, I learned that my parents never wanted anything for me but happiness. I used to think that they wanted me to fill a certain mold: doctor, lawyer, engineer, consultant…something that sounded high-powered and impressive. When I was lost in my college years as to what I wanted to do, they would throw these suggestions at me and I mistakenly thought it was them trying to push me in those directions. In the end, I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Finance because I felt it was a fair compromise: it was a technical skill I could use in any career and it was something that my parents seemed to be all right with.

Turns out it was because they just felt I would genuinely be good at any of those careers and were just wondering if I was confident enough in my ability to consider pursuing them. Wracked with doubt and second-guesses, I couldn't quite see it that way.

Even with the shouting that took place that entire summer, it took a little under two years for the message to sink in: they really just wanted me to be happy. They weren't saying it because they felt they had to because they wanted to be good parents (which was my original thought, sickening as it is for me to think that badly of my parents), they were saying it because they meant it.

With that realization came an incredible overhaul in my personality.

I went from an individual who cared entirely too much about what everyone thought to becoming someone who really didn't give a shit anymore. I looked back on everything that my parents had ever said to me about my future, and instead of second-guessing them, this time I took it to heart with no strings attached.

They wanted me to be happy. I owed them nothing except the joy of seeing me be happy. I need only answer to myself.

I used to want to stay with my old company because I could picture my parents telling their friends who I worked for and being impressed…and my parents swelling with pride. That is, put very simply, a "Hong Kong" way of looking at one's career and parental pride. It's always based on how other people perceive and judge your status, never what you think of yourself.

So my internal renovation shrugged that cloak of shallow materialism off my shoulders and proceeded to hack away at anything that even came close to answering to anyone but myself. And it worked.

I now have a level of self-confidence that, two years ago, was probably the same level but in the other direction. Sure, I still feel insecure about my physical appearance, but I no longer worry myself to death over what goes on in my head, over where I am in life, over how I interact with people, over what people think of me, over my future. Yeah, maybe after meeting someone new I wonder if it could've gone any better, but I no longer obsess over it or punish myself for it. I simply make a note of it and improve the next time.

It wasn't easy, though. It hasn't been easy. There have been many nights where, doubt-ridden, I cried myself to sleep, wondering if what I was doing to myself was really worth it. If it was right for me to do it. I fought old mental habits viciously, damaging and healing myself with the same strike, sometimes to disproportionate degrees. I will not ever deny that it was hard. I don't say it because I want to impress you with how hard I tried and how I came out the other side in one piece. I say it because it's true. It's what it took for me to break twenty-three years' worth of mental barriers akin in size and scale to the Hoover Dam, armed with nothing but a spoon (an admittedly resilient one with a level of tenacity not unlike the stuff that lines my very thick skull, but just a spoon nonetheless).

And even after all that, I'm not done. I still feel intimidated by people who are of a higher "rank" than I am, be it career-wise or by socioeconomic status or by IQ score. But I can feel it changing. It's not as bad as it used to be. Instead of shaking hands and being scared to death about how I'm going to screw up, I'm shaking hands and approaching the situation with increasing confidence.

I remember that one day in May when I was just hanging out, walking down the street, and almost stopping in my tracks to say to myself, "Viv, you're done all right. I'm proud of who you are right now, of what you've become in such a short period of time. I'm happy with you." That was easily one of the very best moments of my life, to know that at that point in time was the first instant wherein I was truly happy with myself in all aspects. It was my own personal reward, I guess, for having come so far.

I didn't do it alone. I couldn't have done it alone. Sure, most of it was a conscious realignment of my point of view, but I did have the help of my friends, in whose eyes I saw a hint of they could see, and they made it possible for me to claw forward. I had the will and I made the start, and they helped me get ever closer to the finish line, even if they had no idea they were helping me out all along. Sometimes, when I stumble in my stride, they're the ones who put me back on track, usually with little more than just being around me.

My uncle told me he was so very proud of me for everything that I'd accomplished, and even while he said this, my mind was thinking "Pffft that's not so great, I can list so many people way better than me in that respect." Realizing that this was an old habit starting to surface, I gave myself a proverbial kick in the forehead, told myself to shut up and just listen to what my uncle was saying. He was proud of me, and he was telling me how proud my parents are of me.

And I promptly found tears in my eyes, because I guess everyone's always looking for a little validation from the people they respect the most; even if it's not needed, it's always nice to have.

I do still care about setting an example for the younger cousins because I know that my cultural heritage expects it of me. It is not for me to judge how my uncles and aunts raise their kids, but it is for me to do my duty by them as the oldest grandchild and be happy. If I am really out to set an example, why not set one where I live a happy life, doing what I enjoy most to the absolute fullest extent I am capable of reaching?

You could probably argue and tell me that I'm still under pressure to live a happy life, that I'm doing it because my parents want it for me or because it's expected of me. Sure, there's a small part of me that knows it's somewhat true, but that's no longer the only reason I am doing what I'm doing. I am the biggest reason why I do what I do.

My ideology, from start to finish, has been that while I still can and while I'm still young, I'm out to live my life for me. If I ever get married, if I ever have kids, they will then come first, so goddammit, I am going to put myself first for as long as I can, until I am good and satisfied and ready…then I can focus on my family, free of resentment or regret, prepared to make the sacrifices I know I will need to make for the good of their happiness, and put them first, where they belong. It's what my parents did for me, and it'd be pretty shitty of me not to do the same for their grandkids.

Really, all of this would explain why I'm very intolerant of people who bitch and moan and ultimately do nothing to solve their problems. I'm not talking about whining about the person on the subway who blocked your way as you got out of it. I'm talking about your own deep-seated issues that you can't seem to get over because you feel like they own you. You identify it as an issue but you don't do anything to change it; you surrender that this is how you are and that's just how it is and it's a necessary hardship, blah blah blah.

I will never, ever agree with that. If you don't like something about yourself, then get the fuck out there and change it. (And before you argue the point, it is entirely possible to keep what you DO like about yourself while changing what you DON'T like.) It's not easy, but nothing worth having ever is. It's hard and you may think you can't do it alone, but then, no one ever said you had to.

Sure you can frown at me and say "Look at Viv, tooting her own horn because she could do what she thinks no one else can, she should just get off her high horse. This is all part of growing up, god, it's not that big a deal." My response to that will be, "Hmm? What? And I should care…because I'm over here conversing with the people I give a shit about, and you are clearly not one of them, so just run along please, you're blocking out the sunlight because your horse is ever so much higher than mine?"

If it were really that easy to change, then why did I spend endless hours writing to or talking with so many people aged eight to forty-seven for so many years, helping them as best I could, listening and learning to what really goes on in people's heads?

Never once will I ever tell you to change something about yourself, because I will always think you are just fine the way you are (even if I appear not to think that, I really do think that), but if you don't like something about yourself, if YOU are the one who wishes that part of you was different, then I will always be here to help you make whatever change you want, even if it's just a shoulder to cry on if the tears come, even if it's just a few rows of comforting text popping up on your IM screen, even if it's just a hug or a winning smile.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 8 of 7,412): AWESOME

2007-09-06T16:54:00.000+08:00

I've been on a blog-writing spree lately, for which I feel I should apologize on account of me nagging half of you guys to read it and subjecting you to wasting a good hour or so of your own time just to plow through my long, long, long, long, long rambling. I feel like I should apologize, but I won't. Generally speaking, I apologize too much. No time to change like the present, eh? I actually started writing this blog entry about two weeks ago, but thanks to the hectic moving and other recent developments at work and in my personal life, it's been a bit delayed, but here we go.

This latest rampage of optical abuse is brought to you by Romain Hefti, whose comment on Part 6 of Why I'm Awesome prompted me to explain a little something-something to the masses. And by masses I mean people who have the free time or low resistance against nagging to read it.

I feel like I need to define the word "awesome" here. You see, "awesome" in my mind is defined as something positive, attractive, memorable, unique, and that has an impact of some kind (i.e., "impressive"). Whether it's a person or an object, it has to include all of these qualities to be awesome, otherwise it falls into the not-so-awesome category of "cool" or "nifty" or "neat" or "meh" or "not very awesome at all."

"Awesome" is not quantifiable by anything beyond those traits. That is, it doesn't matter what it is that makes a person memorable, so long as they ARE memorable (and also meet all that other stuff listed up there).

This means that anyone with any kind of interest has the potential to be awesome. No matter what "subculture" you're from, no matter what you're interested in, you are probably still awesome because you are definitely all of those things to someone out there.

Therefore, if I play way too many computer games for it to be healthy and conducive to a productive lifestyle, that alone doesn't make me unawesome. Nor does, say, a frequent flexing of my mathematical muscles which, since those bygone years of high school, have fallen into disrepair and now suffer from saggy old-woman syndrome. If you're into cars, sports, finance, medicine, obscene amounts of porn, pocket protectors, or your Nintendo DS Lite (which I still lack because this country really blows balls sometimes), none of that particularly matters. It's not WHAT you're into that makes you awesome (or totally not awesome)…it's who you ARE that makes you awesome (or totally not awesome).

Let me break down what each of those traits means as far as my definition of awesome goes.

The one trait that most people tend to lack is their ability to be unique. With all things awesome, generally the most awesome of the awesome is that the most awesome thing is the one that is head-and-shoulders apart from the rest. Copycats are never quite as awesome; the more copycats there are, the less awesome each copycat is and, generally, this only highlights how unique the original act of awesome really was. Pioneers into the field of the never-done-before, well out of the range of simply "weird" or "quirky," will almost always satisfy the need to be unique. When it comes to people, then, the person who's going to satisfy this trait best is someone who is very much an individual, rather than a cookie-cutter type that identifies him or herself as being part of a subculture…rather than simply as being who they are. I don't mean that you cannot RELATE to these people, that's different. It's not that you have nothing in common or don't share any interests or that they are loners…none of this is true. Someone unique is someone who is very individual and someone whose personality you are not likely to meet ever again.

Next up you have to be attractive. Now, this qualifies as general attraction. Are you magnetic? Are the things you do magnetic? How well do you grab and hold someone's attention? Are you able to get other people interested in you (not for sexual or relationship purposes; what I mean is, are you able to intrigue people)? Your looks do not matter. Your ability to have mass amounts of sex does not matter. The only thing that matters is your general appeal to the people around you.

Memorable is also key, as plenty of cool things happen around us all the time but we generally forget them moments later because they just weren't THAT cool to begin with. As a person, you have to be remembered. If you've met someone before, they have to be able to remember you the next time you see them. The reason doesn't matter…they just remember who you are and at least something specific about you.

"Impressive" has been in quotes all this time because I don't mean it in the way that "wow, that was pretty cool." I mean it in the sense that something or someone left an impact. What separates "regular" awesome from "super" awesome is just how well someone leaves an impact on you. Did they change your life? Change the way you looked at something? Made you think about something deeper and more abstract? Got you interested in something new? The method in which they left the impression doesn't matter…that they had any impact at all means they meet this requirement of being awesome.

Positive is likely the most important of the bunch, as this means that you are not out to hurt anyone and are generally a contributor to the betterment of society as a whole. You don't go out of your way to screw someone over, and the things that you do don't involve coercing someone into doing something that they wouldn't otherwise do, and they don't directly or intentionally hurt someone. This means that if you're the kind of person that does some pretty memorable and "impressive" stuff but it comes at the direct cost of someone's well-being, you are probably not very awesome at all. This alone probably eliminates 70% of all potentially awesome people, because so many people just aren't awesome enough to know how to be all the things above without taking advantage of someone else.

Of course, all these traits vary depending on the individual trying to gauge the awesomosity. One person might find you very memorable while someone else goes "who what." You could've left an impact on one person but had zero effect on someone else. This is normal, as awesome is a purely subjective sort of concept.

What if, you wonder as you remember something I mentioned about how much people suck a few blogs ago, people just aren't paying attention to you and therefore you are not memorable…when you otherwise might have been, and thus awesome? Well my answer to that is that if that person doesn't remember much about anyone, there's a good chance they don't think anyone is particularly awesome…or maybe you just didn't leave enough of an impact to make them stand up and pay attention to you.

All these traits of awesome feed into one another and influence each other, but in different ways depending on the individual. Some traits directly boost one another as one is boosted, while others counteract and must be balanced. Which traits behave in which way relative to one another depend on the kind of person you are.

Generally speaking, because of this definition, very many people are awesome to me. It helps that I pay attention to what everyone says as closely as I can, and it helps that I naturally try to find something especially unique about them, so most people get two of the traits right off the bat. I don't always look for the good in people, being the awful cynic that I am, but generally speaking I don't assume the worst of people, either (just don't go around calling my best friend a pussy when he's lying on the ground, bleeding from his torso). Essentially, everyone I meet has my respect right from the get-go, regardless of rank or file, and it only goes up or down from there.

Man I just reread this thing and I wanna say that a drawn-out, logic-supported definition of awesome is slightly asinine. I wanna say it. But I won't. You can think it, though.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 7 of 7,412): MARSHMALLOW

2007-08-22T16:13:00.000+08:00

Before I get going here I'd like to say something to my compadres at Social Entropy ++:

I miss each and every single one of you little shitsmokers, my new job is keeping me super busy

I'm really sorry I won't be at PAX, it's killing me to know that it's this weekend and I won't be there

I can't get on AIM or MSN at my new job, I can only use Skype, so stop crying at me you blubbering vaginas

I occasionally check the forums but those chances I get are view and far between… I can't post much at work and after work and on the weekend I'm busy having a life that involves my general aura of awesomosity being shared with people who can enjoy its presence in exchange for many hugs

ABLOOABLOOABLOO

Okay now I'm going to go back to acting like I'm better than all of you because I have a spiffy job a bitchin' bod the best hair in the world and basically everything that you don't have ready GO

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I started out this tirade of 7,412 obnoxiously long blog entries with a not-so-brief explanation of one of my two main strengths. These two strengths, as I mentioned before, are traits of my personality that I have found great confidence in, which, if you know me at all, you'll realize is a pretty big deal for someone as self-conscious and doubt-ridden as myself.

That first strength, you may or may not recall, is that I am very able to express myself. No matter how abstract, I can put just about anything into a verbally communicable form. I love that I have this skill, as it makes me a good communicator, and I do it well.

The second strength is that I can take good emotional care of myself. Generally speaking, I know exactly what I need to do to get over a rough patch in the heart zone.

Whether it's a bout of overwhelming depression, cuss-laden rage, or even just bouncy happiness, I'm generally able to make the most of it all without much outside counseling.

I know when I need to talk it out, when I need to shout, when I need to sweat it out, when I need to numb it, enjoy it, thrive on it, ignore it, suppress it, write about it, bitch about it, confront it, etc. It took me a long time to get to this stage, too. A lot of it comes down to a familiarity with oneself and, perhaps above all, honesty.

I've had to admit many things about myself, almost all of them negative in nature. I am stubborn, hot-tempered, loud, stubborn, validation-seeking, foul-mouthed, stubborn, pissy, whiny, bitchy, stubborn, obstinate, hard-headed, adamant, pigheaded, tenacious, and stubborn. (You might notice an ongoing theme there, I'm not sure.)

More than anything else, I am a stubborn person. When it comes to controversial debate, I may be convinced to accept a different viewpoint or even change my existing one, but this is only after I have ensured (with a tenacity that the Chan Clan is infamous for) that my point has been heard…without any chance of misinterpretation. When it comes to my emotional well-being, it's an arena wherein you just won't survive.

When I'm happy, there is very little that can stop me from being happy until I am good and ready to let the outside world come in and beat the crap out of me like it does to all of us. Likewise, when I'm depressed, I need to just sit there and BE SAD for a while before I will even entertain attempts to cheer me up. Most of you know what I'm like when I'm pissed off, but it's the same basic principle: I will go ahead and be pissed until I am damn well ready to not be pissed anymore.

How I handle things while being in an extremely emotional state is my true skill, because it ensures the longest recovery time for the so-called "bad stuff."

For example, if you go back several/many blog posts, you'll see one entitled "What Happened" or something to that effect, which is me talking about what is nowadays referred to as the "subway incident." I was pissed beyond reason and upset and I knew what I had to do to get over it as humanely as possible while sparing my landlord the need to clean up bloodstains from punching my fist into a wall a few too many times.

First thing I did when I got home was, well, slam the door a couple of times and perhaps smash the palm of my hand ridiculously hard into the wall of my bookshelf, just to get some pain going there. Then I picked up the phone with trembling fingers and pressed and held the number 2.

Michelle answers the phone, I tell her what happened, and with her ever-glorious understanding of what it means to be pissed off, basically egged me on in my violent, loud, and utterly unreasonable tirade of death threats, disembodiment designs, and a slew of swear words that make what I say on a daily basis the stuff of babies and rainbows and puppies and marshmallows and lollipops. She knew as well as I did that I just needed to be angry to have someone there to hear me be angry.

It's not about logic, it's not about comfort, and it's certainly not about making sense. So amidst cries for castration and various methods of asphyxiation, Michelle threw down her agreement and, without saying it outright, her understanding that I just needed to be pissed. I love her for it and it's why I called her first.

Next, after hanging up with Michelle, I pressed and held the number 3.

Romain picks up and I fill him in on what happened, this time with a much more tearful accompaniment. Death threats ensue yet again, some of which probably made him a tad bit uncomfortable since I was basically mentioning male genitalia every other second, but this time with more of an emphasis on making ME feel better about what happened. My conversation with Michelle was more of a "how do I make this guy suffer as much as possible" deal.

This conversation was slightly longer since, as is expected of Romain, he laced a bit of "ok let's make sense and start calming down here a bit" into the phone, which ultimately had its effect. I took a shower and then picked up the phone one more time, pressing and hold the number 7.

As I talked to Chuck, I was much, much calmer, with minimal swearing (by my standards) and a much more rational recount of events. I asked if I could sleepover at his place, and in his very maternal way he said yes and offered to take good care of me. I went over, hung out with him and Romain and Michelle (who brought a bottle of Bailey's because she is just awesome) for the evening, eating an inordinate amount of American junk food and overdosing on cheese-in-a-can, having milkshakes at City Diner, and spent the night in Chuck's spare room.

Black Hawk Down, a violent movie dotted throughout with really hot men in uniform, was just, well, a perfect complement. The next afternoon saw a healthy three hours of volleyball, where the remainder of my rage was channeled out of me in the form of physical abuse on a bouncy ball that really never did anything to hurt me.

By Monday at Zapata's, I was pretty much fine and in a manageable enough mood to talk about what happened in a calm and conversational manner with my closest friends. Still a bit jumpy and nervous while on the subway, but nevertheless able to function as a wholly sane human being.

Breaking down this example, I took hold of my anger in stages that I knew would be most effective for me to get over what happened. Of course, this would never, ever have worked without the company of my friends. Of course, this also meant that I had to know them well enough to know how they'd respond to the incident and know if it's the kind of response I wanted. I bottled up my need for a physical outlet until Saturday, where I knew a good round of balls-to-the-wall volleyball would be just what I needed to get the last of the bad blood out.

This isn't to say that the friends not mentioned in this post were not also amazing in their support and love, because it really meant a lot to know that so many people cared. Basically, what I mean is that I know what I need in a support system to get over a trough in the utterly irregular (and often unfair) oscillations of life's pendulum. I would imagine that me behaving the way I did with other friends might've resulted in a ruined friendship, not because those "other" people are bad friends, but because of my own personality (and their reaction to it).

I have a very volatile temper, which is just a nice way of saying I'm a bitch with an anger problem. Not everyone gets to see me at my worst because I simply don't WANT people to see me at my worst. Sure I know most of my friends would never judge me, but for my part, the worst part about being caught in a round of utter depression or extreme anger is to know that people have seen me that way (and might react badly to it). You could say I fear that people would think of me as being weak because of it, but really, it's that self-conscious stuff I've said before.

Let's put it this way. At my absolute worst, I worry that my friends might actually end up afraid of me. I don't mean that in a "teehee you're so scary teehee" joking kind of way. I mean that in a "holy shit this bitch is fucking nuts quick hide the knives" kind of way. I worry that people might shy away from me in fear of ever seeing me in such a state ever again.

It's because of that that I refused to see anyone until I was already calm. Shouting on the phone is bad enough…it's another for someone to be there and see me when I'm in such a rage.

I wish I were exaggerating but I'm really not. At my very worst I am almost always alone in person. My bitchy behavior that is visible on a day-to-day basis…you all know that that's just how I am. I am very seldom truly vindictive when I behave that way. No one, absolutely no one, has seen me when I have been truly, righteously angry. I doubt anyone ever will.

That's anger, I guess. Sadness is different. Depression depends on the circumstances that brought it about. Sometimes, I want to have people around me to hug me or comfort me. Other times, I want to be alone to cry it out for a while, then maybe talk it out later.

I know exactly what kinds of outlets I need whenever I hit a rough spot, and it's not the same for all cases. I call it a skill because, based on my own personal experience, a lot of people don't know what to do to get themselves out of their own emotional traps. I honestly don't know how I know what to do…I just do. Instinct, maybe.

Thing is, it's different for everyone. Some people need to talk it out. Some people need to have it out. Some people need to cry or scream or punch it out. Many times, people do not need what you think they need, no matter how well you think you know them as a person. It comes down to the individual and, as I said, I guess a lot of it means you have to be really honest with yourself: what kind of person are you?

I could go a bit farther and say that the way you handle your own emotional states (or, better put, what you need to recover from emotional duress) tells a lot about the kind of person you are.

I'm an incredibly sensitive, insecure individual (to an almost alarming degree, if you really got into my head) who wears her anger on her sleeve as a shield to cover up all cracks and soft spots. There isn't a thing I wouldn't do for most people, but I don't want them to know that. Oh, it's true: I'm a steel-coated melted marshmallow.

Rub that fact in my face and I'll take it out on yours.

Keeses.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 6 of 7,412): NUMBERS

2007-08-16T12:37:00.000+08:00

So you might wonder why there are only 7,412 parts that go into explaining the full scale of my awesomosity. That's right, I said only. It is, as opposed to popular belief, not an arbitrary number.

I was going to do something mathematically nifty, like how 13 is most people's unlucky number, right, and since I am so fantastic that I cancel out all negative effects of negative objects, you split up the 1 and the 3 in the number itself and also the value of the number 13. Breaking it apart, you get 1, 8, 5, 3. Why? 1 and 3 from the 13 get split apart so they're on polar ends of the number. 8 + 5 = 13, and I chose those numbers because they are two lucky numbers in Chinese culture, 8 because when spoken aloud it sounds like the word for prosperity. 5 because it means self or "me" and it can also mean "nothing," which I then interpret as me being equal to nothing.

So that gives 1,853. Multiply that by the number of people in my immediate family, including myself, because we are the core parts of what makes me awesome, and that's four. 4 x 1,853 = 7,412.

I was going to do something like that but then didn't.

7,412 actually comes from three very important numbers: 7, 4, and 12. All three were my numbers when I played volleyball.

12 comes last because it's technically the least important to me. I was this number because at the time, the International School of Beijing didn't have custom uniforms and I was a fatass to end all fatasses. The uniforms the school DID have were scaled by size, so 1 was the smallest and 12 was the largest. Iping, if he's reading this as he damn well should be, is well aware of how this works. Andie, too, of course, and the rest of the 1999-2000 ISB Volleyball Team.

4 is next because it's my first ever volleyball number and, therefore, slightly more important than 12. When I first joined the 14-and-Under Volleyball Team at Brent International School, Manila, 4 was the number assigned to me. I don't remember why or how it became mine, it just kinda showed up on the back of my first ever volleyball jersey. Like 12, I was 4 for just one year.

7 has always been my favorite and most important number, not because it tends to be the favorite of many other people. For a long time before I even started playing volleyball, I liked that "seven" contained a V right smack dab in the middle of the number, it was the month I'd been born in, and mostly I just liked how it showed up a lot in my life. (We lived in the 7th floor in our apartment in Hong Kong, we lived at house #167 in Beijing and 1 + 6 = 7, 7 days in a week, etc.) As far back as I can remember, it's been my favorite number. There was even a period of time wherein it was my nickname. People would call me "Sev" or "Seven" instead of "Viv" or "V" as per usual.

(It was a bit weird, I'll admit.)

Volleyball is more than a way for me to keep in shape while escaping the excessive boredom that accompanies a trip to the gym. It gave me confidence and saved me from what would otherwise have been a dismal, empty stage of my life.

It is as large a part of my personal therapy as writing is. It was once the crutch for my self-esteem, being the only thing I was good at in high school, the only thing I was even marginally respected for. Now it keeps me in shape, helps me let out my frustration with work or with life, it's an avenue through which I meet all kinds of people, and it brings a smile to my face just to be playing a sport I love.

I hate the gym and I hate exercising alone. I would prefer to play a sport with a team.

I hate being bad at a sport and I hate losing. I would prefer to play a sport that I'm good at and have a chance of winning.

SOLUTION: volleyball.

So at this point you are probably still marveling at how I pulled a mathematical explanation behind a number that I chose completely at random out of the crack of my ass so you're very likely not paying buttloads of attention to what I have to say about volleyball.

Now you're thinking about butts.

Mission accomplished.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 5 of 7,412): SARA

2007-08-14T12:04:00.001+08:00

A couple of years ago, on a much older blog written by a much younger me, I recounted an incident that happened when I was in Hong Kong one Christmas. I'll recount it here, now, for the purposes of introducing a topic inspired by something I saw on the bus on the way to work today.

For those of you are familiar with Hong Kong, I was in Causeway Bay with my mom and sister, picking up snack foods to populate the over-priced minibar at the Excelsior Hotel (oooh fancy). Our destination? Wellcome {sic}, a very popular supermarket that, like most supermarkets and convenience stores in Hong Kong, accept the Octopus Card as a form of payment. For those not familiar with Hong Kong, the Octopus Card is a store-value card that can be used to pay for any form of public transportation in Hong Kong and can also be used at places like McDonald's, Wellcome, 7-Eleven, and the like. My former boss in Hong Kong could use it to get into his building and had it automatically charge up with money from his credit card whenever the balance dipped below HK$50. Spiffy.

But I digress.

While at the supermarket and possibly wondering if I could finagle an extra-large package of my favorite fish snack (don't ask if you don't already know what it is) out of my mother—in spite of the fact that I was 20/21 years old at the time—I happened to overhear a little girl's voice crying, rather shrilly as most such children do, "Mommy! Mommy! Moooooommmmmmmeeeeeeeeee!"

At first I passed off this assault on my aural senses as a typical child whining about how Mommy wouldn't get her an extra set of batteries (because I was standing right next to a giant rack of Energizer and Duracell products at the time) or whatever it is kids nowadays whine about not getting enough of. At length, however, my instincts told me to at least spare the little girl a sympathetic glance.

It was then that my astute observation skills noted that she was alone, with no one resembling her "Mommy" in the vicinity. She was a little brunette girl who could've been Canadian or American judging by her accent (which wasn't exactly discernable through the onslaught of hiccoughing sobs), probably four years old and not very much higher than my knee. She was clutching a stuffed toy of what looked like a mix of a rabbit and a pig and her face was in tears…not of the crocodile variety, but the red-faced kind that basically spelled out the fact that she was scared out of her mind.

Acting immediately, I knelt down in front of the girl and asked where her mommy was. I looked her in the eye and gave her a little smile and, after she'd calmed down enough to look at me, put a reassuring hand on her shoulder (I only touched it, I didn't grip it). She told me her Mommy was lost and she didn't know where to find her. I tucked a lock of hair behind the girl's ear and told her that I'd help her find her Mommy if she could tell me what she looked like. Brown hair. Pink shirt. Long and wavy hair. Kinda tall. Not particularly helpful but getting her talking was naturally the best thing to do as it calmed her down some.

My mother and sister appear by my side with a timing that only the Chan women can pull off, and I fill them in very quickly and they both go off to find a woman matching the little girl's description.

My own task? To bring the girl to the checkout counters and find someone who could announce into the loudspeakers that the girl was lost and waiting near the entrance. I put a gentle hand on her back and started guiding her through the crowd, and as we walk I let my hand dangle down beside her. She took it and squeezed it really tightly, not wanting to let go. (You NEVER take a child's hand if you do not know her; you let your hand hang there and let her take it. It's a comfort thing. Some kids get really scared at that kind of thing and the last thing you need is someone flying off the handle when they're already terrified.)

I keep her talking, asking her very general questions as we walked, all the while my eyes keeping a look out for a pink shirt topped with wavy brown hair.

We're pretty close to the checkout counters when a woman comes by, looking frantic. She looks down at the girl, then up at me with wide eyes. The look she gave me in the split-second I saw it wasn't very kind…it was the "who are you and what are you doing with my daughter let her go this instant" kind of look, as though I was some kidnapper looking to make it out of the store while tricking the girl in to a false sense of security.

The girl instantly runs over to her in relief, and I explain simply that I found her daughter alone and crying and was worried about her. The girl adds, "The nice lady was helping me look for you, Mommy."

The mother looks up at me and, this time, gives me a grateful smile and a rushed thank you. They bustled out of the store and I haven't seen either of them since.

Today on the bus, I saw a young woman get out of her seat to let an older woman sit down.

What surprised me wasn't the fact that it'd happened, but that I was surprised that I was surprised. (INFINITE LOOP)

When did we forget to be good Samaritans? Coming from the biggest bitch on the block and possibly one of the most sarcastic, cynical families on the face of the earth (minus my mother, who through it all has always maintained a very level-headed and fair view of life in general), I know this is a pretty large pill to force down your gullet but stay with me here.

When we were younger, in kindergarten and grade school, we had all these little lessons. From Aesop's Fables to your sweet little teacher, you were told to share, to be nice, to smile, to have fun, etc etc etc. When did we forget all that? When did it become okay to stop doing those things just because "no one else does them or will appreciate them?" or because "if I do people will walk all over me?" When did those reasons start shutting up your conscience?

I say this not to be preachy, but because I know I am guilty of the same. I very seldom go out of my way to do something nice for a stranger just for the sake of doing something nice. In a city like Shanghai, your deed will very likely go unnoticed, unappreciated, and forever mark you as a doormat. It's not what you would call "worth it." And I'll be perfectly honest, the fact that it has to be "worth my while" for me to do something nice absolutely disgusts me. When did I get this way? Is it because I've been exposed to a harsh, uncaring bitch of a city like Shanghai that has forever disillusioned my view on the human race?

If I were to consider giving up my seat on the subway or bus for an elderly person, anyone who has spent any time in Shanghai will know that there's going to be some other jackass trying to weed their way into the seat, even though you intended it for a senior citizen. What would then ensue is a shouting match that ultimately does nothing but get you riled up. Not the best way to start your day, eh?

Let's take it an additional step back, to Hong Kong, circa December 2004. It wasn't the holiday season or anything like that, it was the fact that there was a crying little girl in a giant, high-traffic store all by herself in a city where people basically suck a giant shit-ton of ass. (The imagery here is stunning, I know.) A little girl alone in a store? Even if she hadn't been Caucasian I would've thought the same thing: kidnappers or some other form of asshat scumbag.

You can call me paranoid all you want, but that would simply mean that you just don't know Hong Kong like my family does.

Beyond the worry that the girl was in personal danger as well as scared that she would never see her Mommy again, the Mommy's reaction was something that got my gears turning a little more rapidly.

Of course she would assume I was a bad person, out to snatch her daughter and not look back. In Hong Kong, it's not because I'm Chinese. It's because I'm a stranger. And all "strangers" in Hong Kong basically suckass. It's a ridiculous air of mistrust that permeates the entire city from the Island to Kowloon, regardless of political, socioeconomic, or professional standing. I'm guilty of thinking this way, too.

My problem is that the logical reaction for the mother to have was to be wary of me. Why couldn't she assume the best of me? Give me the benefit of the doubt before giving me the stink eye? Thing is, I know the answer because, putting myself in her shoes (a feat I am so capable of doing), I would've very likely reacted the very same way.

Did I mention I was also disgusted with the fact that no one else had stepped up to help her right away? That everyone else just ignored her the way I did at first? Did I also mention that the fact that I just admitted to thinking the worst of people, even though that same attitude was thrown at me?

Nowadays it's so hard to just do something nice or think the best of people because you get so weighed down by the people who disappoint you or, worse, hurt you. You look at around, you see the very visible bad stuff, and it just gets to you. It's hard to do a nice thing when no one else seems to want to bother. (Notice I didn't say "right" thing, I said "nice" thing. It's not about right and wrong. It's about being a good Samaritan.) In a given day, I can riff off a list of all the shitty things I see in this city. I'm sure many other people in similar circumstances could do the same.

But how often do you sit back and take note of the good stuff that happens? The only reason the bad stuff sticks out is because it's so obvious and visible and, well, it pisses you off. I want to believe that, not unlike the probability of dying in a plane crash, you are a bazillion times more likely to spot the good in people than if you just step back and look at the big picture. You focus on the bad? On the disaster itself? Sure, you'll end up a cynical asshole like me. But for every bad deed you see, maybe try being fair to your own sense of well-being and try to notice when the good things happen, too?

I'm not going to lie here, folks. That's a very, very hard thing for me to believe even as I type it.

People will run down the street, so self-absorbed that they'll push each other over, knock each other out of the way, get in each other's way, cut in line, the whole nine. They just don't care. They do their own thing because hey, they come first.

It's a vicious cycle because that kind of treatment only breeds more of it.

I will probably never stop being a cynic. It's a sad thought, really, but I just can't help but think the worst of people, even when it bothers me that people probably think the worst of me. Even as I try to see the best in others, all I get is grief.

Is it really "today's world" that breeds this in people? The sense of self-entitlement? The self-centered arrogance that comes through in the simple fact that people can't be bothered to just say "thank you" or "please" or "excuse me," no matter how much such a small gesture might make someone else's day? The lack of necessity to pay attention when other people are talking? The motive behind any good deed being a giant slice of selfish self-gratitude?

I don't think so. I think this bullshit has been around forever, but because people are so self-centered they think it's "today's world." What do I mean? When you're young, you're taught all these valuable morals and lessons that you're supposed to carry with you for the rest of your life. But so very quickly, you find yourself looking into a festering cesspool of egotism, disrespect, self-importance, and false pretenses. So you think of the lessons you were taught as a kid, think they're supposed to apply "today" but they don't, and so you assume that something's wrong with the state of the world today. Newsflash: everyone was a kid once, everyone has been disillusioned.

I look around and shake my head at the world around me. My parents look around and shake their heads at the world around them. My grandparents looked around and shook their heads at the world around them. I'm absolutely sure my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, all the way back to the butchers of Shandong Province from whom I am descended, looked around and shook their heads at the world around them. (And for the love of god before you whine at me remember that history's just what you read on paper, plus, let's not forget that when thinking about the past, you're usually looking at it through rose-colored glasses.)

The thought of that doesn't comfort me. That doesn't make it okay for us to be this way. All it does it absolutely disgust me. People, past present and future, disgust me. I disgust me. Every so often you find a gem of a person who is truly, truly altruistic, who doesn't give a damn what anyone around them thinks and does something just to make someone else smile. But that's so rare because even the most virtuously good people get taken down so easily by the people around them.

Someone once quoted some saying at me that went "a good deed is its own reward" or some such high-minded bullshit. When I heard that for the very first time, I remember asking, in wide-eyed innocence, why there had to be a reward at all.

Even something so small as remembering some detail about someone is something "nice." It's such a tiny gesture but it makes that other person feel remembered and they feel good about themselves. What's it cost you to remember that someone grew up in Toronto and had a cat named Benny but they had to leave it behind because they were moving to Hong Kong?

What's it cost you to remember anything at all about the people around you, even if you're just meeting them for the very first time? A little bit of attention. Put yourself aside for once and just pay a little goddamned attention to the people around you instead.

Six billion people on this fucking planet, and a significant proportion of them can only seem to give a fuck about one. That's my cynicism right there. Never mind that the guy who just knocked me backwards rushing off the subway was probably trying to get to work so that he wouldn't lose his job so that he could feed his family, right? God I really hate myself sometimes.

What about just smiling at a stranger? I haven't done that in a long time. Not since college. Just smiling at someone not because you want to get in their pants or need something from them; I'm not going to list out the good things that can happen for you if you just smiled at a stranger. I'm not going to say "smile at someone because it will make you feel good, too." I'm going to say, smile at someone because it makes them feel good.

And guess what.

I'm sickened by the fact that right now a string of "consequences" for giving a stranger a smile are running through my head.

Fuck you, human race. And fuck you, me.

PS - See Jaya I totally didn't mention you in this blog thing at all.

PPS - Oops. :D

PPPS - I'm still awesome.

PPPPS - The little girl's name was Sara, she was born in Toronto and had a cat named Benny that she had to leave behind because her family was moving to Hong Kong. She was due to turn six years old on August 15th of the next year, and if my memory serves me correctly and this took place in December 2004, that means she is going to turn nine years old tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Sara.

PPPPPS - 2,878 words.

Busy

2007-07-27T11:09:00.000+08:00

It's been a pretty insane week for me. Let me list what's been going on (and what's coming up) for those who are less than well-informed as to my antics.

Saturday July 21: release of Harry Potter 7
Sunday July 22: my sister arrives for a week-long visit
Monday July 23: the usual trip to Zapata's for free booze with my sister in tow
Tuesday July 24: my birthday!
Wednesday July 25: finalizing my costume for Friday
Thursday July 26: arrival of my old friend Cheryl and preparations for Friday
Friday July 27: my last day at work, Michelle's birthday, our joint birthday party
Saturday July 28: one hell of a hangover followed by volleyball with the sister
Sunday July 29: Michelle's birthday brunch
Monday July 30: sister's departure, preparations for my new job, and Zapata's again
Tuesday July 31: transportation test run for my new job
Wednesday August 1: first day at the new job

It's a pretty well-booked calendar, if I do say so myself. For today's long-winded post, however, I will focus on just one thing: today is my last day at my current job.

This is the first full-time job that I've ever had, and I've been floating around in a surreal bubble of indifference ever since I turned in my resignation letter one month ago. Some that has to do with the fact that I can no longer stand this job, but most of it is to do with the fact that, for the last month up until today, this moment always seemed so far away.

Now it's hear, I've got a duffel bag in the corner of my cubicle, ready to pack up and leave for good.

This all hit me as I was walking up to my building and glanced up at it, realizing that, wow, this the last time I will ever make this trip to this office.

It's a bit of a sad thought, I know, particularly when you never know what will bring me back to these hallowed halls for whatever reason; if there's one thing my parents always reminded me, it was to never underestimate the power of your network of business contacts.

Still, I don't know if I will be coming back any time soon, if at all, so I must say that it is a bit overwhelming, and I'm not even sure if everything I have in the office with me will fit in the duffel bag!

Two years ago, I came to this office to help organize their Global Management Committee Meeting here in Shanghai, a meeting that is held every quarter and that brings the group's CEOs from around the globe to one city for a two-day meeting. It was following this two-week stint that I was offered a permanent position here at the company.

The company was new at the time, so they couldn't hire me right away because I'm not a Chinese national (being British by passport and Hong Kong ID by birth, I needed a work permit, which they couldn't apply for because they had not yet received their full operational license). As a result, I worked at the office's Asia Pacific counterpart Hong Kong for three months, working long-distance on a project for the China office.

November 19, 2005, I arrive in Shanghai, looking for an apartment with my mother and father helping me along. November 23, 2005, I come to the office to report for my first day at work.

What followed was 20 months of what can only be described as an experience I will never forget. From running translations to project management to sitting around being bored out of my mind, this job was quite the learning experience. When it comes to the inner workings of Chinese management and the Chinese market, I gained a lot of very unique insight that I am sure will be invaluable as I continue my foray into China's expatriate workforce.

Even if I'm eager to get out of here and not look back, my heart still finds itself heavy with the sense that I will miss this place and the people in it. The job was never all bad. Indeed, there were days where I came in and left with a smile on my face, enjoying the work I was doing. I do like that the internet's routed through Hong Kong, granting me access to Livejournal and other websites deemed "inappropriate" by the Chinese government. The ease of getting to work, which was a straight shot for me on the subway. The accessibility of cheap places to eat. The fact that, at a glance, no one has any clue that what I'm doing isn't actually work.

I know that, to most people, I'm blowing this way out of proportion, but I feel like a chapter of my life has ended. It was my first job, my first step into working for myself by myself, and I survived and came out on the other end a better person, ready for what comes next.

I'm both excited for and terrified about my new job, one that will eat up a considerably larger chunk of my time, but I think I'm ready for it. Nothing good ever came from wasting away in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. Plus, I'm a fast worker in general…I don't see free time as being too big a problem for me.

So, here's to my old company, with great thanks for everything that they have taught me and all the opportunities that they have afforded me. It has been an unforgettable experience.

I will recount my birthday week after the party tonight, which promises to be incredibly interesting. Cameras at the ready, because it will be a night that I will not likely remember.

Okay, no, that's a lie, I actually don't plan to get THAT trashed, if only to keep from making a total ass out of myself (again). All the same…it will be fun.

(Here's to the Irish!)

Why I'm Awesome (Part 4 of 7,412): L2SPELL

2007-07-17T16:38:00.000+08:00

I believe in kids.

This may come as a surprise, but I strive for excellence. I am not a perfectionist, but I believe that if you do not give something your all, you might as well not bother getting involved in it at all. Why do things half way? Why try for a B instead of an A? Why settle for a 3.5 instead of shooting for a 4.0?

When did it become all right to be average? To be mediocre? When did a C become acceptable? Why do the people who get straight A's get ridiculed? Why do those who devote themselves to doing the best they can end up with nothing more than a nod?

Now, before the jocks of the world yell at me, I do not mean this in just a grades-based sort of way. I mean excellence in anything that you set out to do. If you want to play a sport, give it your all. If you want straight A's, give it your all. If you want to write, give it your all.

I would, however, like to focus this particular discussion (at least at first) on a single facet: spelling and grammar.

My fellow SE++ers snicker, as they know exactly what drove me to write about this particular topic. (No, it's not you, Chuck, you know I have a deep affection for you and your spelling habits.)

What I am, my friends, is sick and tired of hearing about people getting off easy for bad spelling and bad grammar. I don't even mean teachers letting these kids get away with it. I mean the language itself being changed to accommodate kids who are just too plain lazy to learn how to spell properly.

"It's too hard to remember," they whine. "Everyone spells it THAT way so I'm going to keep spelling it THAT way (even if it's wrong)." "I've only ever seen it spelled that way." "More people spell it this way than that way." "This spelling makes more sense to me."

Fuck you all.

I and countless other non-native English speakers have worked our asses off to get good at your fucking language…and meanwhile you're going to sit there and whine about how "hard" it is for you to learn when you are surrounded by it every moment of your waking life.

Fuck you and your mediocrity.

When did it become okay to be "mediocre?" When did these standards lower to accommodate people who are simply too fucking lazy to do the work? I blame the baby boomers. My parents were part of that generation, as are most individuals who are now in their 50s and 60s. You had shit handed to you on a silver platter and now you can't stand to see your kids suffer.

When your kid gets a D, you don't yell at your kid. You yell at the teacher for being a rotten teacher. You're happy with just a C because it's considered "average" and you're happy that your kid is just "average." You don't let your kids do the International Baccalaureate program because it's "too hard" and "too stressful."

Never mind the benefits of pushing your child to strive for excellence. Never mind the benefits of putting them to the test when they still live under your own roof, where you are able to hold them up when they fall or guide them when they need it. No, never mind any of it. Let's just say "it's too hard for my C-student, I don't want them to stress themselves out." Lower those expectations, mom and dad, because heaven forbid your child face a single goddamn challenge in his or her life while you are around to help them through it.

Yes, some kids are not A students and they are excellent in their own ways, be it as an artist or an athlete or something else. I respect that. I have mountains of respect for kids who are well-rounded, able to excel in more than one pigeon-holed area of expertise. I myself am very capable of singling out an individual's strengths. It's why I am such a fantastic person to come to when you need an ego boost.

Honest to god, I hate the idea of lowering expectations just to accommodate an unwillingness to challenge oneself. The English language has been mastered by people long before this generation. Why now do you change it and simplify it? What's wrong with this generation, now, that makes it impossible for THEM to learn how to spell properly when all generations before it seem to lack that problem?

Blame the internet. Blame computers. Blame television. Blame ADHD. Blame whatever the fuck you want, but placing blame doesn't change the fact that all you are doing is making it okay for kids to just stop trying. You are making it okay for them not to do the work. You are making them think that the second they face an obstacle, it's okay to ignore it instead of overcome it, because they're going to go ahead and believe that, eventually, someone will remove it for them.

If they suck at spelling, fix the fact that they suck at spelling. Don't fix the language they're trying to spell in. Challenge them. Bring them up to the standard, bring them up past it, don't bring the standard down.

The kids can do it. The only reason they think they can't is because everyone is too busy making excuses for them. Push them, and kids will always fucking surprise you. Parents, do you really have that little faith in your own ability to raise a child that you don't think they can handle something like the IB? Sure they'll bitch and complain that it's hard, but that's why you're there. You're supposed to tell them they can do it, that they have the ability to do it. You're there to show them that yes, it's hard, but when they finish it, they will finish it as a stronger person, better prepared to face what comes next (in the case of the IB, that would be college).

One day, life will throw something nasty in their face, and you won't be there to help them through it. Do you really want that kind of situation to be the first time they feel like they can't take something on? Help them now, support them now through their challenges so that when you're gone, when they're out of the nest, they are better prepared, better armed to tackle life's bullshit.

Huh. Talk about a passionate and preachy digression. My apologies. I know I sound elitist in those previous paragraphs, but this is what I will tell anyone who thinks their kid "can't hack it." I believe in your kids. Why don't you? But back to the topic.

Sure, spelling is a small facet of a much larger issue, but it alone is a stellar example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. No one asks for A's. It's okay to be second instead of first.

As long as you gave your best, sure, you can be proud of that. But you better swear that you did in fact do your best, that you did in fact give it your all, before you look at that silver medal with pride.

Saying that you did your best, that you did everything you could, is a pretty far cry from actually doing it.

Nothing, nothing worth having ever comes easy. I don't want to think about what the next generation will be like if they believe otherwise.

Aqua

2007-07-16T16:41:00.000+08:00

I am in a very strange mood today. One might call it an almost ethereal apathy, where I have a hard time caring about anything but in a much deeper way than the statement itself suggests. I'm not just separated from everything, but I am, essentially, completely insubstantial to the things that are around me. I'm not sure I've ever felt this way before, but basically it involves me spacing out frequently, not really listening to what the people around me are saying, having no opinion on the subjects at hand, saying very little, and speaking very softly.

It's pretty much the anti-Vivienne, right there.

Needless to say, this serene state of indifference does not last very long. It was over pretty much the moment I stepped on the subway this morning.

What does it take to spawn the anti-Vivienne? The Nikki to my Jessica? The Sara Kerrigan to my Queen of Blades? The Jekyll to my Hyde? While you may sit there in your throne of literary superiority and point out that Jekyll and Hyde were not "good and evil" (respectively) so much as they were simply two extreme representations of the same man, I'll simply say that, um, yeah. Get out.

On a very pleasant Sunday morning, I awoke at the alarming hour of 9:17 am. Being that I had not gone to bed until 4 am after another typical Saturday (even though there's nothing typical about seeing the Transformers movie a second time), this was disconcerting to me…until I noticed the brilliant sunshine beaming through my curtains.

Instantly, I picked up the phone and sent a text message to Michelle and, for the first time in known history, woke her up instead of the other way around. This message asked if she'd be up for going to a place called Mandarine City (no, there is no spelling error there, that is what the place is really called). She told me she wouldn't be able to join me until later, but sent me the address and all that fun stuff like the excellent friend that she is.

What followed was an ill-conceived mass text-messaging of most of my regular crew members, many of whom were either still asleep or already at work and thus unable to call in sick on such a rare, beautifully sunny Sunday in Shanghai.

I snuggled in bed a little while longer, enjoying the sunshine, then got up and proceeded to deplore how my outfit for the day looked on me. It was, suffice to say, a less than glorious sight…but it would be well-hidden.

At 11:55 am, I was in a cab with Mylynn, the very first person to text me back with a reply. Being that we live five minutes away, we shared a cab and went west in Gubei for approximately 38 yuan. At about 12:25, we arrived at the Mandarine City outdoor pool.

As some individuals from SE++ and elsewhere know, likely via the AIM attack I received shortly after waking up that morning, that day was my first day in a bikini. It was, simply put, a mind-bender of a self-esteem issue for me, what with my self-consciousness consuming me from all angles at once, forming a veritable, collapsing vacuum around me. It took a lot of effort and distraction for me not to change into my usual one-piece bathing suit instead of the bikini.

The reason why I've never worn a bikini until now, if you are curious, is more a practicality issue more than a self-esteem one. I was a competitive swimmer for about 15 years of my life, so whenever I hear "pool" or "beach" I think "swimming!" A bikini is not exactly the most practical item for the job.

Mylynn and I arrived at the pool, bumping into a friend of hers on the way in, and already there is my ever-faithful favorite, Mr. Romain Hefti himself, already enjoying the water. For several moments I stood by our table, hesitating, not really wanting to take off my T-shirt or undo my sarong, but at length decided to just rip it off like a too-sticky Band-Aid. Within 30 seconds of the removal of said outer armor, I hopped into the pool.

It was glorious. Prior to that moment, it had been upwards of about two years since I was last in a real pool, and I had forgotten just how happy being in the water makes me.

Many people, I have heard, tend to identify themselves with a single element more than others…possibly Captain Planet style sans the superpowers and screwed-over-South-American. Mine is undoubtedly the water. As I said to Romain yesterday after admissions that it was gonna sound "really cheesy," in the water is where I belong, and realizing that at a time where I am finally happy with the kind of person I've become…it's a lethal combination that throws a rather large boulder of regret right into the pit of my stomach that whispers, "you should've gone with your first instinct and been a marine biologist or an oceanographer."

I cannot tell you how amazing it was to be in the water again. I felt at home, I felt safe, I felt powerful. Within an hour I completely forgot I had previously been in a state of self-conscious anxiety and just enjoyed the water. Being underwater, feeling it hold me tightly yet gently, the way nothing else ever could, brought me an inexplicable feeling of tranquility and happiness.

As I repeated several times that day: "do not underestimate how much I love the water."

(To some extent, it is also the reason I love rain, be it a drizzle or a thunderstorm. I love the ocean for a myriad of reasons, one of them being that it is essentially a massive body of water.)

In the water, I am far from master or commander, but I can hold my own. I am an excellent swimmer, though years of neglect have caused my lung capacity to shrivel somewhat from its former asthmatic glory (little known fact: I was asthmatic when I was younger and I basically beat the crap out of that infliction by swimming it to death), so I can't swim with nearly the speed or power that I could before. My form, however, is pretty much just the way it used to be, though with some additional drag since the girls were not restrained under the cover of a one-piece bathing suit.

We spent about 5 hours at the pool (Remy and Melanie joined us a little bit after we arrived), with me being in the water for at least 4 hours and 45 minutes of it, only getting out to check my cell phone. I used the excuse that I wanted to hide my hideous abdomen from the world, but really I just wanted to stay in the water as long as humanly possible. I will admit that even when the others were ready to leave, I was not…I wanted to stay much, much longer.

It was with a heavy heart that I departed, and once I stepped out of the shower and sat on my bed, I felt a wave of depression wash over me. I know it's weird beyond even my own standards, but I can't explain it. I wanted to go back and jump into the water for just a while more.

Following the depression came this sense of great detachment described in the opening paragraphs of this too-long rambling. All through dinner, at which I met up with my friends once more, I was removed from the conversation…aloof, wistful, as it were.

I just really miss being in the water, being in a place in which I feel safest and most alive. I can't wait to go back.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 3 of 7,412): BITCHES

2007-07-06T15:11:00.001+08:00

My family is why I'm awesome, but apparently not everyone seems to think so. It has recently come to my attention that some people think that my mother is a bad mother. These people are, allegedly, expatriate mothers who live in Beijing and whose kids attend international schools in the city (not unlike the one from which I graduated).

While I was advised by my very wise and mature sister to just "let it go" because our mother doesn't give a rat's ass what these people think, it's been burning a rather large hole in my confrontational, too-large brain.

Let me fill you in on exactly why they think my mother is a bad mother. Ready?

BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T FOLLOW MY SISTER OR ME TO COLLEGE.

When my sister told me this I did a very loud "wait, WHAT" into the phone that I think scared my neighbors.

Excuse me, holier-than-thou judgmental floosies who spend all their time shopping while their husbands work and their ayis do all the cleaning…when was going to college with your kids the mark of good motherhood? Because I'll tell you what…it sounds like the mark of good apron-strings-getting-a-bit-tight-around-that-neck-there-hood.

Yeah. You wanna judge MY family? Here's a little of your own fucking medicine.

If my mother went with me to college (which basically means she moves into the city I'm studying in and lives there…or that she visits me every damned month or something), you know what? Then I WOULD call her a bad mother because she won't GIVE ME MY GODDAMN SPACE.

Seriously. Is this mentality prevalent? Because it would drive me up the fucking wall if my mother lived in the same area as me while I was studying abroad for college. That's where you learn to take care of yourself, to be independent…not to mention participate in certain activities that mommy and daddy just don't ever need to know about.

I went overseas to do something for myself, and I did it all on my own, and the feeling that I know I did it on my own is priceless. Are you really going to rob your own children of that feeling of self-accomplishment?

So Beijing expat mothers, while you ladies have your kids living in your basements at age 30 because they never learned to feed themselves or pay their own rent, or leeching off of husbands to survive…I will be living on my own somewhere in the world, emotionally stable and independent, and I will fly my mother out to visit me wherever I am, or I will visit her wherever she is, and it will be a kickass time because she will know that every accomplishment I ever managed to pull off was thanks to her.

My mother knew when to let go. Just because you don't know when to do the same does not make her a bad mother and hand to god if I ever hear of anyone ever telling her so again you are going to hear from me.

In the meantime, I pity your kids, because they probably hate you for always being in their space and not letting them go and live their own goddamn lives, free of your coddling and stifling and selfishness.

Let them the fuck go. God. It's no wonder there are so many pussy momma's boy men running around nowadays.

To wrap up, let me reiterate.

To any mother that thinks my mom is a bad mother: here's a giant FUCK YOU, keep your judgmental bullshit to yourself. My sister and I turned out fantastic. Why? Because instead of worrying about how OTHER parents raised THEIR kids, our mother worried only about raising HER OWN kids to the best of her ability.

Which I imagine is far superior to anything a whiny little expat wife can manage when all she's gonna do is sit around and act like a self-righteous bitch.

Fuck you.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 2 of 7,412): ABCs

2007-07-04T14:57:00.000+08:00

A - merican accent
B - ritish passport
C - hinese face
D - cup
...
E - xplosive
F - rugal
G - amer
H - ong Kong-born
I - nternet junkie
J - etsetter
K - ittens!
L - ush
M - ultilingual
N - arcissist
O - bstinate
P - ersuasive
Q - ueenmother of dorks
R - ayne Heartsong
S - exual deviant
T - hird Culture Kid
U - nreticent
V - olleyball!
W - ordsmith
X - men fanatic
Y - our bestest friend ever
Z - esty

No this wasn't some lame-ass meme. I seriously sat down and just came up with it. The one that took me the longest was Y.

Why I'm Awesome (Part 1 of 7,412): TALK

2007-07-02T12:18:00.000+08:00

If you've spoken to or interacted with me for longer than 10 minutes in just about any setting outside of business, then you've undoubtedly heard me boast, ruthlessly, about the perfection of my hair. It really is the most gorgeous thing ever. I can't even mess it up without my hair returning, of its own accord, to its silken state.

Now, that is the only thing I am particularly vain about, as it is the only part of my body about which I have never been insecure. I love the shit out of my hair. Most of my physical vanity comes from my hair. Sometimes I'll hate my face or some other aspect of my body…but my hair has never been on that list.

As for my personality, there are only two things that I know are my biggest strengths. The rest…well, let's say that even on my best days I can feel shitty about some of the things I say and do.

One of the strengths that serves me best is my ability to verbalize just about any thought, emotion, or idea. That is, I am very capable of putting things into words, whether spoken or written. I think I have my outspoken nature to thank for that. I have always been very good at expressing myself, though I never really noticed until recently, when I was told by business contacts and relatives alike that I am very good at getting my point across.

A lot of it, apparently, has to do with the fact that I love to talk and write. On top of that, I have also had the privilege of communicating with people from a wide variety of backgrounds (socioeconomic and cultural alike). It becomes easy, then to shift and adapt my intonations, slang, vocabulary, and humor to best accommodate the people with whom I'm communicating.

The strange thing is that because I am capable of making this shift, people accuse me of being fake…because I act differently in front of different people. Here's the funny thing, dear naysayers of mine: you will often find that it is not only necessary, but prudent to approach different people different ways. I am still me, across the board, I am just finding different ways of expressing my one personality.

I used to hate the fact that you have to change the way you express yourself depending on the setting, because I used to believe that you should be able to be yourself in the purest form. I no longer believe this. I now believe that your personality encompasses how you present yourself to different kinds of people…in fact, in front of different people, a specific method of communication can actually get your personality (i.e., your beliefs, ideals, behavior, sense of humor, likes, dislikes, nature, etc) across even BETTER than another method.

I'm not saying that I enjoy saying things I don't think or support. Like most people out there, I hate saying things I don't mean, whether it's sucking up to a boss or agreeing with a business partner on something just for the sake of getting the deal through…or saying certain things just to impress someone. This is NOT what I am talking about here.

What I am talking about is your presentation, intonation, approach, word choice, and diction. The way you communicate, in other words. You can have a single personality while communicating in a variety of ways with a variety of people.

It is because I am capable of this adaptation, of identifying when and how to get my point across in the most efficient possible in any setting, that I would say that, yes, I am very, very good at expressing myself. My personality is very much the same across the board…it's just HOW I choose to show it off that's different.

Of course, it helps that I am articulate and have a well-stocked vocabulary, but even in Chinese, a language in which I find myself limited in terms of spoken communication, I am still able to express my meaning through a combination of intonation and body language.

No matter the form of communication and no matter the person with whom you are trying to communicate, there is always a combination that works best.

I firmly believe that in any exchange, the burden falls to the person speaking to properly send out the message. Sure, some of the responsibility falls to the listener to pay attention, but most of it comes down to how the person speaking chooses to get the message across (including managing to maintain the audience's attention).

My other strength, I'll talk about some other time…sometimes it's nice to ponder just what it is you're good at, because more often than not I find myself focusing a bit too much on the things that could be improved or the things that I outright dislike about myself.

Ah, self-therapy.

Ramblings of a Madwoman

2007-06-27T14:55:00.000+08:00

I've actually had trouble writing any sort of blog or journal entry, believe it or not. Hell, last night I even sat down, pen in hand and journal in my lap, trying to scribble something meaningful down. Naturally, that goes against a lot of what a journal is there for.

I don't believe forcing yourself to write a journal entry will have the effect you want. You can't make yourself write anything meaningful or interesting, you should just start writing and see where it takes you. I don't know if you've noticed but that's basically what I'm doing right now. I spent the last week or so rummaging my brain for good "topics" to write on and sadly I never made it very far with any of them. It's one thing to have a topic materialize out of what begins as the first few thoughts you pluck out of your head.

It's another to sit down and try to write, at best, what will only end up being a marginally entertaining essay about yourself.

Yesterday I came down with a bad case of food poisoning that can be attributed to "bad ice." As Robert/FF correctly assumed, it is indeed an infamous water-borne stomach bug that is prevalent in unfiltered water. I am doing better now…still a bit frail (haha, me, ME, frail, HAHA) and recommended against eating solids or cold foods or spicy foods, but better. Well enough, in any case, to have to come to work.

Then again I did spend most of the day at home and playing Planescape: Torment (woohoo it doesn't crash anymore but I still cannot get Sybil to reward me for sneaking out of the Tenement…oh well I'm in the Modron Maze now holy fuck I forgot what an XP farm that place is). The longest stretch of sleep I got was two hours long…everything else was, well, rudely interrupted. Plus I jumped on webcam with people I haven't been on cam with for a long time, so that was pretty nifty.

For those who are curious (and awesome enough to be in the know), I am playing through PS: Torment for the first time as a Mage, and my party consists of Dak'kon, Morte, Annah, FFG, and Ignus. I've never used Ignus before so I'm gonna keep him around until I can get Vhailor…though I've never used Nordom, either.

I wanna go ahead and say that this week so far has been wretched for my health. Friday night was Remy's 7 Deadly Sins costume party, with a picture of my costume over there on the left (as at the time of this blog's posting). If you and I talk a lot, you know what happened. If we don't talk a lot, then um, well, basically Friday night was the drunkest I have ever been, to the extent where, after a certain point in time, I do not remember a goddamn thing.

Saturday morning saw an early wake-up and one-hour bus ride out of the city for beach volleyball. For this particular leg of the trip I was still drunk, and upon getting off the bus my hangover started settling in. After downing some water and playing for a while, though, I was fine…but not for long. A combination of excessive heat, leftover alcohol in my system, sweat, and sun all culminated in a whopper of a migraine at about 5 pm (which, thankfully, was about the time we were due to leave the place). I went home, showered, and pretty much made an effort to rest my head. I can't really complain about Saturday though…out of the 29 people who went to volleyball, only 5 of us were girls. I was very much enjoying the view.

Sunday was pretty tame, though I ate a shit-ton. Brunch with my favorites, then over to Romain's to wade our way through a little more Prison Break. (Seriously guys, what the hell do you see in this show, I don't get it. Sure the dude is hot but that doesn't mean the show can't suck ass.) Then, later that evening, came Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which I saw with the crew (or most of it).

We found out early on that the Chinese version had sliced about 30 minutes off of the front of the movie. If you've seen the whole thing, what we saw as an opening sequence was a black screen, a 5-minute spoken summary, and then it opens up with them in the ice floes. It was, simply put, extremely disappointing.

The thing is that I'm not gonna go ahead and say the Chinese government was censoring anything. I'm gonna go ahead and offer up my two hypotheses: if they remove those 30 minutes, they get more showings because most movies in this country are 2.5 hours in length, tops. Alternatively, by removing those first 30 minutes, it makes the movie harder to pirate, and I shouldn't have to remind you that pirated DVDs are a big deal here in China.

Minus that hiccup, however, I found the movie to be quite excellent, which makes me want to watch all three movies again, back-to-back, pretty soon. I noticed the pendants almost right away in the second movie, though I'm sure I'm not the only one. (I make a big deal out of it because I had to point it out to my sister…even though Lilz had seen the movie tons of times more than I had before I even saw it once.) Awesome ending, overall an entertaining movie. Definitely blew those other miserable excuses for trilogy-enders (Matrix Revolutions, here's lookin' at you) out of the goddamn water.

I never thought much of Orlando Bloom's looks after LotR, but I gotta say that that boy makes one excellently sexy pirate captain.

Moving right along Monday was pretty normal too, though because of Friday I didn't drink nearly as much as I normally did. Just a couple of margies, and only because it was pretty freakin' hot that night. And man was there some amazing eye candy at Zapata's that night. It's gonna be a long three weeks, compadres, that's all I gotta say, hahaha.

Enter Tuesday morning at about 6 am. I wake up in an excruciating amount of abdominal pain. And so begins my saga against bad ice, which I fought off with an inane amount of water and Planescape: Torment.

I still haven't heard back from the new job, which I feel is my cue to start officially looking again. It's a pity because if they said yes I'd be all over that in a minute, but I guess things just got a bit too hectic for them. Ah well. My resume still looks sexy and there are still people out there who haven't seen it yet.

That was a pretty dry update, if I do say so myself. Then again, it does follow a series of very upbeat, egotistical ones wherein I basically told you that I was the best anything ever and that I was amazing at everything I did.

Here's the irony, though. On Monday night, I fell victim to my ultimate vice: a guy that I'm attracted to but consider way out of my league. This happens all the time. As some kindred souls were sweet enough to point out, yes, I know I have all the "necessary equipment," but that doesn't get rid of this mega-mental block I have in my head. If I perceive a guy to be ridiculously gorgeous, I have a hard time being my magnetic, charming self around him. I get all shy and hesitant and self-conscious and then I generally start to ramble on about random things. Yes, I guess you could call it intimidation.

I think in my head it goes something like "why do you even bother he's probably got a hot chick in his sights already" or "he can do so much better than you" or something silly like that. Now I'm not saying hot guys are all shallow…I definitely do not mean that. What I'm trying to say is that I'm a crazy person.

The most psychotic part of it all is that I know all of this is madness but I can't stop myself from thinking it and it is extremely hard to overcome. I can't even say I've been getting better! I mean I can hit on guys just fine, but that only applies to guys that I perceive to be in my league. When it's someone I perceive to be way OUT of it (even though realistically my league probably doesn't have many exclusions at all), I turn into a verbal-diarrhea-spilling toolbox. I become a total tool. Socially inept, even. I say silly and stupid things because I'm too busy second-guessing myself.

So. Frustrating. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH someone smack me in the back of the head and loosen up that block because dammit it is gonna kill my game.

I am so adorable it makes kittens jealous.

2007-06-19T14:49:00.000+08:00

Okay, let me break it down for you, okay? Okay.

I am a feminist. No, that does not mean I burn my bras or cut my hair short or get boob reduction surgery or anything stupid like that. What that means is that I believe women and men are equal. Yes, men are better at some things, but they are also worse at some things. The same can be said for women. You will generally find that they are well-balanced in this respect.

I do not think little of women, nor do I think little of men. I have respect for both sides in varying things and I will be the first to recognize when women may not be the best gender selection for a specific task, just like I will be the first to recognize that a man might not be the best choice for a job.

I take a similar stance on attraction.

Someone approached me via the internets about my last blog post, which I do encourage you to read if you haven't already. They told me that all that was easy for me to say because I am "good-looking." (I'm sure they meant drop-dead gorgeous but they didn't want to creep me out. It's okay. Your secret is safe with me.)

Yes, my friends, being presentable is a large part of being appealing.

I am a very firm believer of the whole "do unto others" deal. What you expect to receive, you better expect to give. Simple as all that.

That said, let's say you're in a bar. You are a typical male geek, just hanging out by the bar and checking out all the hot chicks. Let me ask you something: what are you wearing? What do you look like? Because, believe it or not, it matters.

If you want a well-dressed, fashionable, cool, suave, hot chick to respond to you positively, you better be fucking ready to give her the same image of yourself. Why should she, after all, put in all the effort to look good and bother with a 500-pound piece of lard ass that looks like it just fell out of bed and hasn't showered in a week? A girl who puts that much care into her appearance isn't going to want a guy who puts none into his. It's as simple as that. She knows she can do better, and she's right.

(Switch the genders and the same is true here, too, ladies.)

You can argue all you want about "golden personalities" and "eye of the beholder" until the fat ugly cows come home but that doesn't change that what I say is more than partly true.

Want to present yourself as unkempt, dirty, and socially retarded? Then expect the only girls to respond to you positively to be unkempt, dirty, and socially retarded. If you're okay with that, then go nuts.

If you want a physically fit girl, get physically fit. If you want someone intelligent, come off as intelligent. These are not the "opposites attract" aspects of male-female interaction, folks. These are very basic things that make you attractive to others.

Be interesting. Be charming. Be nice. Be attractive. Be intelligent. Pull all these off and I promise someone of the caliber you're looking for will take notice, and you can move on from there.

But Viiiiiiiiiiiv, you cry in that annoyingly whiny voice that only your mother would love, you just told us in the last entry that someone who didn't like us for who we are can just move along!

To that, I respond with a very eloquent L2READ. Seriously. Presenting yourself a certain way is not the same as the content of your interaction. So you got their attention. So what? How are you going to keep it? THAT's where what I said in the previous post comes in. You've engaged them in conversation, so what do you talk about?

Most of the time, sounding passionate about something that you are generally interested in is a turn on, regardless of the actual content of your conversation… and you really can't fake genuine passion in something you're not interested in. Why does this turn people on? Because if you can talk like that about something you are into, that makes the person you are into that much more willing to let you be interested in them so that you'll talk about THEM like that.

If they're simply not interested in what you're saying, that's when you let them move on.

Of course, all of this doesn't account for hot people who don't know they're hot. Like myself up until recently. Sometimes, you'll get lucky.

Now. What I'm talking about is initial spark and attraction… about getting approached. This NOT RELEVANT to developing a real relationship. That's a different can of worms that I will not go into right this second, but suffice to say that it is immensely more complex than getting positive attention and being memorable.

That's where my appeal is. I am pretty, I am intelligent, I am able to carry a conversation, and I am able to make people laugh and feel good about themselves. I am interesting. I am magnetic.

I talk about myself a lot, I know… but that's because I'm just so damned interesting.

OH HO HO HO

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

2007-06-10T22:21:00.000+08:00

That title is actually more amusing to me than you will ever understand, for reasons that I will not mention here.

I just back from a gorgeous day, and by gorgeous I mean a combination of weather and my mood. You could tell I was in a good mood because, well, I WORE SKIRTS TODAY. A denim miniskirt to brunch and then a girly salsa-dancing-type skirt to watch Shrek 3 with my friends.

I never wear skirts. Seeing me wear one in any setting is a testament to just how good a mood I'm in. It generally means that I feel great about everything, from content with my life to proud of how I look. Very little can get me down on days like this.

It doesn't mean life in general is perfect or that it couldn't use improvement, but it does mean that for a singular moment of my life, I can be happy with who I am thus far. It's a great feeling that is so rare that you really have to enjoy it to the fullest when it comes.

I know what I'm about to say sounds kinda gay, but seriously... with life throwing so much bullshit at you on a day-to-day basis, when a day comes that you feel wonderful about yourself, take it as far as you can and enjoy that feeling. This is the kind of day that you live for. It is the reason you work your ass off and keep pushing through all kinds of crap. It really does make everything worthwhile, because for even a little bit, you forget everything terrible and are guiltless in your happiness.

And you'll be amazed how many people you can lift up with you when you are just enjoying life.

What brought this feeling on? I could probably try to pinpoint a cause if I wanted to, but why ruin it? Can't I just be happy and, for once, not worry about what brought me there or what might end it? Enjoy those moments when they come. They are rare in this single life you have to live. Worry about them later.

I'm a cynic by nature, so I imagine that me saying these things kinda sounds like me speaking with a completely different voice. Well, come on... it's me in a skirt. I NEVER WEAR SKIRTS.

Yeah, I have those days where I just want to punch a baby or shit on a kitten, but those things matter so little compared to rare, diamond days like today. I'll remember a day like today for much longer than I would ever remember a bad day. You could even argue that the knowledge that days like today are so infrequent is what drives me to work hard, to earn my next wonderful day.

Plus, Shrek 3 is a hilarious movie.

Do I have my new job yet? No, not yet. If I do get it, obviously I will be psyched beyond reason. If I don't, time to start sending out that sexy resume of mine some more. Keep your fingers crossed for me all the same.

On a sidenote, Shanghai needs more hot geeks. Seriously. They seem to be crawling all over the US, but you can't find them in Shanghai for some reason. I wonder if they're hiding their geekiness because they think people in Shanghai are judgmental and pretentious like that (they kinda are), but seriously... just let it out. You are so much more sexy when you are talking about something that genuinely interests you than when you are feigning interest in something you think everyone thinks is cool.

So, let's review: MORE HOT GEEKS IN SHANGHAI PLEASE. The only one I know is my best friend and a) he's my best friend and b) he hides it as well as the rest of them.

BUT VIVIENNE YOU DON'T GET LAID EITHER NYAH NYAH NYAH. Oh shut up. Like I'm really going to pretend not to be a huge dork just so I can get laid or get someone to cuddle with. Folks, I am WAY too hot for that. If a dude gets turned off because I'm a geek, it's his epic loss and you can quote me on that. I wear my geekiness on my sleeve and guess what, anyone who doesn't like it can just move along.

People remember me where they wouldn't necessarily remember anyone else. It is virtually impossible to ignore my presence in any social setting. I am fucking magnetic. Why? Not just because I know how to navigate any social scenario (which I do, and so very well). Not just because I am so very good at expressing myself.

Because I am interesting. Because I'm not ashamed of the things I like. Because when I talk about something I find interesting, I talk about it with such passion that it makes me infinitely more appealing to the people around me, friends or "men" alike. I turn people on because I am interesting when I am actually interested in what I am saying. I turn people on because I get so animated and energetic and ALIVE when I talk about the things I like.

IT'S SO ELEMENTARY but so few people out there seem to get it. So you like Backstreet Boys music. So you own every single issue of the Ultimates. So you play DnD. So you LARP. So you play Final Fantasy at home instead of going out on a Friday night. So you like to salsa dance. So you like to do any number of things deemed "uncool" by faceless fucks who only make the distinction because they are insecure with themselves. Who the fuck cares? It's who you are, and it's what makes you interesting, intriguing. Anyone who gets turned off by that shit ain't worth your time anyway, so if they shrug and walk away, let them go.

They missed out, not you.

GOOD NIGHT.

Memory

2007-06-08T08:52:00.000+08:00

I was browsing through some old journal writings last night at home and I found something that amused me rather deeply. It's been slightly edited for timing (i.e., how many years ago this took place), but otherwise it is largely what I'd originally written.

========

Was it first grade? Or second? No, wait. It was what we called "Primary 1." That's right. Primary 1 at the Chinese International School in Hong Kong. Mrs. … Bullon. Yup. That was her name. I don't think I'll ever forget it, if only because she resembled a bull. With long hair. Or was that the creepy teacher from Roald Dahl's Matilda? The world may never know. There's a good chance she only slightly resembled that teacher, only now whatever memory I have of her actual face is tainted by what I saw in the movie of said Roald Dahl book. I am positive, however, that she always had her hair up in a bun. And she was a brunette. I'll eat my left foot if she was actually blonde.

I can't say I remember what the project was for, but I do remember it involved everyone in the class making a hot air balloon. Well, the "primary 1" version, which was just a brightly colored piece of construction paper, a couple of strings of yarn, and a paper cup. Oh, right, I remember now. It was the beginning of the year, and we were making these hot air balloons to tack up on our classroom wall. The idea was that every time we did something good in class, we would get little "merits" to put in them. Punishments were given by the removal of those merits. Then, every so often, you could redeem your merits for a little prize. Or a sticker. Or maybe the prize was a sticker.

Mrs. Bullon handed us a pile of "hot air balloons," which weren't really much more than two-dimensional paper circles of varying colors. They already had our names on them… I got a red one, with the word "Vivienne" spelled on it with black marker. Two little holes, punched in by what I now know was a hole puncher (and not incredible skill with a pair of scissors) were found at the base of the paper circle. One strand of green yarn dangled from each hole. It was up to us, she said, to put it together at home. That was homework. Everyone who turned it in on time got a merit.

Off I go, excited about this new project. Well, I think I was. If I wasn't, I damn well should have been. Naturally, the nanny asks me what I did at school today. I tell her, with a sense of urgency: "Big Sister Ping, do we have any paper cups?"

(It didn't come out quite like that… I likely asked something that sounded like "Ping tse, ngo dei yau mou tsi bui ah?" I was still in my Cantonese-speaking phase, you see.)

I remember my nanny's response, not because it was anything profound, but because of the horror I felt when I heard it. "Hou tsi mo woh," she answered in Cantonese, telling me no, she was pretty sure we didn't. If I'd known how to cuss back then, that would've likely been the time to do it.

I can't say I know what happened next. I don't think I was angry, just a little worried. My nanny apologized and then said, "Nei haw mm haw yee tsi gei tsing yut goh ah?" That, I imagine, would make more sense if you read what my brain interpreted as, "Can you make one yourself?"

My mind goes a bit blank right here, and then I can see myself very enthusiastically yanking out a sheaf of perfectly-square origami paper. I picked one that had blue on one side and white on the other, I think. Maybe I say blue because it's now my favorite color. It's certainly what I would've picked today.

I remember not needing my origami books to help me. All I did was fold it, taking my time to get the creases perfect. I didn't need more than one piece of paper! As I tucked the last flap in, I held up my final product. I beamed.

It didn't look like a paper cup so much as it did a trapezoid. But if you held the "cup" up the right way, with the longer horizontal edge on top and the short one on the bottom, and then squeezed the edges in toward each other, a mouth opened at the very top! Now that I think about it, it wasn't so much a paper cup as it was a flattened pocket made of paper, but hey, the book from which I first learned it said it was a cup, and if it was good enough for Cheer Bear, it was good enough for Mrs. Balloon. I mean, Bullon.

During my escapade with the trapezoidal cup, the nanny had gone home. I only know this because when I emerged from my room, my mom and dad were back from work. I can't say I'm sure I know when the nanny left; I might've been too focused on my cup to care.

I ran to show my mom, showing her my cup and telling her as quickly as I could what the project was all about. I remember the look on her face when she saw it; it was probably my favorite part of the project. Her smile was so huge and her eyes looked at me full of pride…I didn't know it at the time, but she was impressed. Impressed! By me! I remember her asking if I did it myself, and I beamed up at her with all my 6-year-old glory.

Mom helped me punch two holes, one in each upper corner of the cup, with a pencil. Then she took the paper circle, made sure it was the right way up, and threaded the two pieces of yarn through the holes. She tied the strings into the holes and held it up for me.

"This," she said in a voice brimming with delight, "is going to be the only balloon of its kind on that wall." (Yes, this came out in Cantonese as well, but owing to the fact that Cantonese is a pain in the ass to type out in English, I'm not going to bother doing so yet again.)

My dad came into the living room then, curious as to what was going on. I didn't hear that conversation, though… I was too absorbed with my hot air balloon.

Fast forward to the next day. Mrs. Bullon was collecting everyone's homework, and I was grinning ear to ear. Everyone else (as far as I know) had plain, boring ordinary paper cups. Thinking back, they were a bit like the little Dixie cups that dentists like to give to their patients during an checkup or a cleaning. Some of the cups were white, some had flowers on them, some had funny cartoon characters on them, some were big, some were small.

But not a single one of them was a trapezoid. I was worried, because I thought I did something wrong.

I remember my friend Hamilton having Barbie's face on his cup. I can't tell you why that sticks out in my head right this second, but it might have something to do with the fact that he's now living in San Francisco (last I heard). Nope. Can't put my finger on it.

I remember showing Mrs. Bullon my hot air balloon, with her saying, "You made this yourself?"

I told her how we didn't have any paper cups at home, so I decided to just make my own. I think I might've asked her if that was all right… as I mentioned, I was worried I got it wrong.

Mrs. Bullon's smile was a tremendous relief. So were her words: "It's lovely. I think it'll go… here." And with that "here," she stapled my balloon on the classroom wall to join the others. It was, as my mom promised, the only balloon of its kind on that wall.

I don't think I knew then that that day was the day I resigned myself to the life of a geek. Well, no, not geek. But a specific kind of person, to be sure. You see, for many years after that day, my mom would love to remind me that I made a paper cup. When would she whip that out? Oh, right about when I was whining about how I couldn't do something.

From there, I learned something that I have carried with me all my life. I know of two kinds of people. One will give you ten solutions to a problem. The other will give you a hundred reasons why that problem can't be solved. Which is better? Which are you? That day seventeen-some years ago marked the day that determined on which side of that coin I fell.

I am a problem-solver. Sure, nowadays I bitch and moan when I feel like I can't do something, when I feel like I've tried every way to handle a situation. But I don't let it end there. Once I get all that nastiness out of my system, it's back to thinking of a solution, of a way to manipulate what I've learned to give me the result I need, of a way to approach the problem from an angle I hadn't tried before.

Something just occurred to me. It might not have been Mrs. Bullon at all. Maybe the fact that her name sounds like "balloon" linked her to this memory. Come to think of it, it might have been in my Primary 2 class, with Mrs. Woods and her teaching assistant, Miss Wood.

Nah. It's a better memory if Mrs. Bullon's in it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Oh Goddammit

2007-06-07T13:40:00.000+08:00

Apparently, certain governments can't make up their minds as to whether or not Blogspot should be blocked.

CHOOSE ALREADY.

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.

I mean, I can update it... but I can't view it?

What the fucking hell.

It is a Beautiful Day

2007-06-07T11:17:00.000+08:00

Well, it is for ME.

Every so often you just have a day where you wake up looking and feeling fantastic. That day, my friends, is here.

I imagine with three days of utter crap (which culminated in several emotional outbursts just yesterday and a 2,888-word therapeutic blog entry), it feels especially good to look at yourself in the mirror right before you leave work and realize that, well, holy shit.

I am fucking GORGEOUS. My hair is perfect and my favorite work shirt looks, well, enticing is the only word for it. Zero make-up and a little lip balm and I look THIS good? Shit, back off, when I actually try I must be scorching.

Screw cute, this is HOT.

I feel good because I look it, and I feel especially good because I've been plowing through three days of feeling utterly shitty about everything, including myself.

And sometimes it is JUST FINE to have a day or two where you feel like you are the most beautiful person on the planet and that your friends are lucky to be your friends. You should try it. It does wonders for your self-esteem and it makes you feel like you can take on anything.

Sounds shallow?

Fuck you. :3

Stupid LiveJournal and Xanga

2007-06-06T20:57:00.000+08:00

Yup, both LiveJournal and Xanga have been blocked here in China for reasons I will never understand. Irony? Blogspot USED to be blocked... but no longer, and I like the software a bunch even though I don't know anyone else who uses it.

Okay let me clarify that... I've always loved Blogspot's software (I mean anyone with a Gmail account basically gets a blog), always thought it was head-and-shoulders above the rest, but I got an LJ because so many of my friends were using it. There. I admitted it.

I don't mind not using LJ myself, but I am pretty pissed that while I can still see all public LJ posts and make comments on them, I can't see friends-only entries even if they have me friended. Apparently, proxies can only do so much, and one of the things they can't do is keep me logged in. :(

Anyway. I will be importing my latest and favorite LJ entries into Blogspot as well as throwing them up on Facebook when appropriate, don't be surprised if I direct you here and some of it's stuff you've seen before.

Anyone can comment, just leave a name so I know who you are.

Thanks kids! <3

PS - and no, this isn't a blog for UNIFIED. I don't know if I'll run one of those at all since I'm already swamped with other things for the game... all the same, I created a placeholder for the Hardy Clinics. It's nothing more than a C&P'd post from the Penny Arcade forums (where UNIFIED is being run), so eh.

FBC

2007-06-06T16:00:00.000+08:00

[I'm going to get in trouble with this post. I just know it.]

The first language I ever spoke was Cantonese. My first official word, according to my darling mother, was "mum mum," which did not actually mean "mother" as you would suspect. It actually meant "food" in pseudo-Cantonese-baby-speak. This does not surprise me; I was a very fat baby. I went to a local nursery in Hong Kong (called Woodland Pokfulam Pre-school, and if I could remember the words in Chinese I'd throw them here just to show off a bit) for two years prior to my family's move to Peoria, IL.

Sure, while I went to the Rainbow Kindergarten in the States, I must've picked up some English, right? Nah. I was all of 3 to 4 years old with a wailing, loudmouth, oh-god-the-walls-are-shaking of a baby sister at home. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is precisely how she has American citizenship. She was born there.) Beyond memories of folding an origami-type scarf for a snowman from old newspapers and maybe getting tackled by a neighbor's dog so hard that I flew back about seven feet (it was a German Shepherd, too, the bitch)…I don't remember much of Peoria.

I imagine that dog-tackle had something to do with it. (Though seriously, my parents say that the incident is the reason why I was scared of dogs for a while.)

On return to Hong Kong in 1988, I attended my first international school: Chinese International School. Now, here's the hilarious thing: for three years, I was in ESL. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's English as a Second Language, which basically means that I was retarded with my English and had to be stuck into this class in an effort to improve my English skills. I still remember Mrs. Castle, the ESL teacher. (I do, in fact, remember all my homeroom teachers from K-12, because I have a terrifyingly powerful memory.)

To give you an idea of just how bad my English was, I spoke Cantonese daily, in between classes and after school. My parents, both working at the time, would demand that I be watching Sesame Street every afternoon. What did I do instead? Well, I would watch my Cantonese cartoons (which was really the anime show Attack No. 1 dubbed in Cantonese… my first ever anime and probably what made me end up going for volleyball years later)… and then, when I heard the elevator outside the apartment ding onto our floor and heard the key turn in the lock of our front door, I would quickly switch to the English channel and pretend like I was watching Elmo the entire time.

I was a sneaky little brat. Still am.

Anyway, lucky for me, I graduated from ESL just in time for our family's move to Singapore.

Now the point I'm trying to get at here is that my English, in the early years—the years that psychologists and linguists alike say are most key to language development in children—was abysmal. I mean, think stereotypical Chinglish, and that was me.

Singapore didn't exactly help, either, with the whole country speaking "Singlish" and me attending a local, all-girls school. If you've never heard it, it is a brutal combination of English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Malay, and Tamil that, when coupled with a terrifying accent, is designed solely as a linguistic challenge—a secret language, if you will—that only an elite few (i.e., the population of Singapore) is capable of understanding.

It does make Singaporeans easy to spot in a crowd, though. Just listen for a "OH MA GOTT WHY YOO SO LIKE DAT AH?" and yeah, just ask them if they're from Singapore (or Malaysia) and come back and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.

(There's actually a really old E-mail type thing out there where Singlish has been put into the written word to recreate the "TREE LEETLE PIK BLADDAHS"…aka the story of the Three Little Pig [Brothers].)

Up to this point, I had a cute little British accent and my English, thanks to the influence of my parents (who refused to speak in Singlish at home), was decent, if not good.

Then came the Philippines in December, 1993, and my second international school: Brent International School, Manila. This international school used the American school system and taught American curricula, which basically meant that it also taught American English. This is where my English really took off, as our English teachers were primarily Americans, not necessarily Filipinos. It was also here that I picked up my American accent, as many of the students themselves were American.

Five years later, when I moved to Beijing, I took on the International Baccalaureate Diploma program in my last two years of high school (think AP but a million times worse), complete with Higher Level English (as opposed to Standard Level). I graduated and completed the Diploma program with a 6 in English (max score 7). Not perfect, but far from bad. I know I was happy since I'd survived a—for lack of a better word—bitch of a teacher.

My American slang made its appearance during my years in Beijing, since the International School of Beijing was not allowed to take local Chinese students, taught an American curriculum, and had a predominantly North American student population.

I should note here that, by this time, my Cantonese had long since taken a backseat to my English, with English being my primary, "native" language.

It was in college that I realized that while I may not be the best at plucking literary devices out of a piece of classical literature, I was by no means a slouch at writing...particularly in a grammatical sense. I was the go-to girl for all of my friends' paper-writing needs; they'd write their papers and I'd go at it with my trusty red pen (which, strangely enough, ran out of ink too quickly for my liking), editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation…not to mention your basic essay-writing do's and don'ts.

I, the international student whose early years were marred with aye no speekee gud inglees, was now asked by native English speakers to edit and correct their English.

How the hell did that happen?

Well, it's a combination of three things. First, there's the fact that I had to build my English foundation from the ground up, and that I was educated not just using English as a primary teaching medium, but I was actually educated in the basic usage of English. The humiliation of being in ESL (which is what it was considered to be back in those days… an embarrassment to be sent to ESL classes) also drove me to try much harder when learning English. Ergo, I had to pay very specific attention to what I was doing when writing and speaking, if only to ensure that I did not make any mistakes.

Second, there was my seventh grade English teacher, Ms. McKibbin, when I was in the Philippines (who I maintain had a thing going on with our Social Studies teacher, Mr. Jordan). I will always remember her because she was the one who basically drilled basic English structure into our brains. We didn't do literature in that class. We did grammar. Syntax. Breaking down sentences daily to identify each individual part, from punctuation to word form to sentence structure.

Third, there's me. If I have to name a single talent, well, I'd say it was my ability to remember names like no one's business. If I had to name two talents, however, I'd definitely have to mention my affinity for other languages. Now, I don't speak very many languages (unlike some people I know who make the rest of us look bad, right Romain/Remy?), but my pronunciation and memorization skills are, well, elite.

(I would like to take this moment to note that the Penny Arcade Forums are being a butt and it is annoying me somewhat and ooh that rhymed.)

But yes, in most cases, my pronunciation of any language is pretty spot-on, even if I can barely speak the language itself. This is what I like to call "accent immersion." No matter where I am or what language is being spoken, give me a day or two and I can adapt and immerse myself in the accent almost flawlessly. It's what happened when I went to Oxford in the summer of 1999, it's what happens every time I go back to Hong Kong or Singapore or the Philippines, and it's certainly what happened when I was in Texas for volleyball camp. However they speak English in that country, it's how I inevitably end up speaking it (sometimes without even noticing it) if I spend a while there.

I cannot, for some reason, whip this arsenal of accents out at will. My "fake" British accent is appalling. I have to be surrounded in the accent, hearing it regularly, and being spoken to in the accent before I can pick it up. Almost an assimilation, if you will, of the accents around me. Once I leave, I revert back to my "default" accent (which, while American, is not representative of any specific region of the United States), at least until it's time to pick up a new accent.

That was actually a pretty severe tangent from the topic that I've been trying to lead you to. The entire post up to this point is an explanation regarding how my English has become so good. (Usage, practice, etc.) The rest of it, well, is the topic itself.

Here in Shanghai, English teachers are in great demand, to the point where most of the my foreign friends are only here to teach English. Depending on the company, you may or may not need a college diploma or any experience at all in teaching, and even with minimal qualifications you can still make a good salary that is enough to live quite comfortably on. I, too, briefly considered this track for a while, as teaching English would pay me more than what I'm making now while working half the hours.

But then comes a horrible truth: there are no language centers who will hire me to teach English. Why? Because I do not look like a foreigner.

Welcome to Shanghai, folks. Maybe even China in general, I can't say for certain. But even though my English is better than that of all my peers here in Shanghai (including the ones who are English teachers), no one will hire me to be a teacher. I look Chinese. Even if the company is willing to overlook that fact and hire me anyway, their clients sure as hell won't.

Their mentality would likely be, "What the hell, why am I paying this much money to be taught by a Chinese person who is exactly like me and probably doesn't know shit about English?" Even if I were to walk into the classroom, looking spiffy, and speak in my perfect English, the judgment is still there and anything that comes out of my mouth at that point would probably go through a severe filter or two in their brains, to the point where they are more likely to complain at me (or to the company) than bother listening.

Isn't it depressing? My mother wanted to teach English up in Beijing, and mentioned it over lunch to her Chinese teacher and a fellow student (yes my mother took Chinese classes up in Beijing, at Qinghua University, no less). My mom laments to the teacher that no one would hire her as an English teacher simply because she is Chinese. The Chinese teacher says no, that can't be true… when the fellow student jumps in and says that "No, they've asked ME to teach English, too!"

This "fellow student" is a 40-something woman from Hungary, with blond hair and blue eyes… and whose CHINESE IS BETTER THAN HER ENGLISH. That entire lunch conversation was in Chinese.

They would rather hire a foreigner who can't speak proper English to teach…over a Chinese person whose English is close to perfect. The even more moronic fact is that people like my mother and I are probably going to be better teachers, period, just because we came from a Chinese background but LEARNED and eventually MASTERED the English language.

I mean, we went through everything they're going through in trying to learn English. We MIGHT know what we're talking about when we're teaching them, you know. Maybe. But okay let's be fair…we at least have a better idea than most foreign teachers with regards to just how hard it is to learn English coming from a Chinese-speaking environment.

At least.

English teachers make twice my salary working no more than 30 hours a week, and they don't even have to be qualified in most cases! (Granted, the better places require that you have some experience in teaching, but many language centers don't ask for much more than looking white.)

And twice my salary is more than enough for a foreigner to get by comfortably here in Shanghai.

This is just one of the things that an FBC (foreign-born Chinese) has to deal with while living in Shanghai. You wanna talk racism? Talk Shanghai and its very special brand of it.

Now. Looking at me, it's blatantly obvious that I'm not local Chinese. Whether it's the way I look, dress, act, or speak, anyone with half an eye and a second's worth of attention can tell that I am not Shanghainese. Another second will tell you that I'm not from the mainland, either. I know this because my coworkers have pointed it out, as have many other locals who actually pay attention to people instead of judging them right off the bat.

Yet, because most people can't be bothered (or, to be fair, just don't have the time) to spare me an extra second's consideration, I get treated like a local. Is this bad? In Shanghai…yeah, it is.

Shanghainese people treat foreigners infinitely better than locals. Foreigners are put on this glamorous pedestal, so that people who were nobodies back in their home country are treated like kings and queens out here. They are paid expatriate salaries, for the most part, and are therefore assumed to be affluent and rich. Which is technically true; expat salaries are head-and-shoulders above local salaries, allowing for very comfortable lifestyles for most foreigners.

When I'm hanging out with my friends, the vast majority of whom are foreigners, it is instantly assumed that I am a local Shanghainese girl who's obviously only hanging out with them for their money. This assumption is made by just about every type of person, from locals to foreigners alike, and it drives me up the fucking wall.

It's not that being a local Shanghainese girl is a bad thing. It's that being labeled as a gold-digging, unintelligent skank is a bad thing. The fact of the matter is that local Shanghainese girls are, for the most part, NOT gold-digging, unintelligent skanks. But, as with their counterparts in the western world, there are enough of them that it gives them all a bad name. These GDUS are everywhere, in every country and city and culture…and I get labeled one just for looking Chinese and chilling with my friends. Especially when foreigners (aka "rich people") are involved.

How do I know this assumption is made about me? Oh, the stories I could tell. On the not-so offensive side, they simply involve a local ignoring my friends and speaking to me in Shanghainese when I've already made it quite clear that I am not Shanghainese…or even looking bewildered when I take the check to pay for my own dinner. On the more aggravating side, they involve snooty little French punks apologizing to me for one of his lady friends hitting on one of my guy friends because he assumed that, since I was even talking to my guy friend (and even though it was blatantly obvious to 80% of the bar that we were JUST friends, being that I was getting looks regardless), I was flirting with this friend and looking to get him in bed… and that I was somehow disappointed that my guy friend went for the French chick instead.

Man WHAT.

Shanghai is essentially what Hong Kong was 20 years ago, and while Hong Kong has gotten to the point where it treats locals and foreigners on the same level, Hong Kong has also become ultra-judgmental and snooty and pretentious, to the point where I would rather live in Shanghai than Hong Kong and deal with reverse racism.

I say Shanghai the city because this kind of mentality is less prevalent in Beijing. In Beijing, yeah, foreigners get treated like shit…but so does everyone else. Beijingers will treat anyone, white/yellow/brown/black the exact same way, and I appreciate that about the city.

I guess my problem with Shanghai isn't that I get treated badly just for being Chinese. At the core, my ire is fueled by the simple fact that there is a difference in treatment to begin with.

Reading

2007-06-01T18:03:00.000+08:00

So apparently my rambling entries are a "superb" read if you can stand to actually start reading them instead of scrolling down and being intimidated by the appearance of length. Thanks Jay! That comment (on LJ) actually meant a ton, haha!

(I'll probably be throwing up entries like that for a while, if only because it's nice to get all introspective when you're in a good place in your life.)

The funny thing is that I know people do that…before they even start reading anything, they'll flip through it to gauge the length and then decide then and there whether or not it's worth the effort it's going to take to read it. This happens with books, articles in newspapers and magazines, blog entries, and basically any other place you're going to find a significant collection of text.

I remember back in college, whenever we were given a reading assignment, the very first thing everyone would do is a little math: he wants us to read how many pages? Depending on their own personal aversion to large numbers, they will then approach the assignment as either tedious or quick or not-worth-their-time and so on. So, even before they have read the actual content of the text, they already have a very strong opinion about it…simply based on its length.

Now, stepping away from the textbook analogy for a moment (as the content can occasionally be dry and most of the time you're only reading it because you have to), let's have a look at how this works for "voluntary" reading material.

Sometimes, you'll read a book because someone else recommended it to you. They assure you that it is a good read, that you will be a better person for it, that upon reading it you will gain lots and lots of sex, that it contains the key to happiness and that shiny new BMW Z-4 Roadster you've always wanted. (Man was I ever conned.) Therefore, you consider reading it, no matter the length…though you will naturally choose to read the blurb to see if you really are interested in the topic.

Picture yourself wandering through a store (and for the love of god don't nitpick this section I know I'm not you for fuck's sake just work with me here). You're just glancing at titles off the shelf, occasionally reaching out and grabbing a book written by an author you like, a title that sounds particularly catchy, or a cover that's flashy and cool-looking. You pick up the book for any of these reasons and, almost automatically, turn it over to read the blurb on the back. Maybe (if it's not wrapped up in plastic wrap), if the blurb is intriguing enough, you flip through the first few pages.

To accommodate the changing times, I should probably also add that you get to access things like reviews, summaries, blurbs, and user comments on this nifty little place called the internets.

When it comes to newspapers, you read the headlines and generally only read the articles with headlines that catch your attention. (I cheat and use Reuters.) For the rest, you skim through. In magazines, the process generally goes along the lines of flip-flip-flip-flip-flip-reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaad-flip-flip-flip-flip-ooohthatiscute-flip- flip-flip-reeeeeeaaaaaad (because really no one looks at the table contents in most magazines unless it's like The Economist or something). Short of a lengthy flight or a magazine centered around a very specific interest, very few people actually read every single article in every single magazine that they happen to pick up.

Enter the human psyche. Very few people actually want to read anything unless there's something in it for them. Usually, that' interest that stems from a preview or a catchy title/headline.

The only time you're going to sit and start reading something that you know nothing about prior to the act of sitting down and picking it up is if it looks short and quick.

Which, let's be honest, is pretty fair in all respects. No one really has the time to waste reading a long article about something that they may not even find interesting. So they stick to things that are short and take little time to read through. This way, even if the topic was stupid or sucked or whatever, at least they didn't waste a bunch of hours reading it.

So here's my question: when approached with a long article on a blog or even a forum post, do you scroll down to see how long it is before you even begin reading? If yes, do you often groan when all you see going down the screen is a blur of text and, as a result, often find yourself disinclined to read it?

How often do you really stop to read a random blog or forum post without scrolling down first to check the length?

I ask only to lead to a conclusion on the human psyche. We like to know, in advance, what we're spending our precious time on. For textbooks, we have grades. For books, we have blurbs. For news, we have the need to stay updated. For magazines, we have personal, topical interest. But in the world of blogs, where topics range far and wide across tentacle porn, video cards, the latest trends in scarves, how to ace an interview, introspective journal entries, bored kids whining about life and darkness and pain while posting from their US$1500+ computers, giggly accounts of sexual exploits, gaming expectations, movie reviews, music reviews, book reviews, blog reviews, review reviews…and the most random of rants…it is nearly impossible to know what you're looking at without actually starting to read something.

There are no blurbs, no summaries. Occasionally you have a catchy, informative title but let's face it, seldom do they venture beyond of realms of "lol this is cool" or "omg wtf." Even rarer are those bloggers who categorize every damned blog post they make. Rarer still is to find a blogger who consistently posts something meaningful, interesting, or engaging. So, the best defense you as a human have is to check out the length of the post.

If it's too long, you figure that no one on the internet could possibly post so much text so as to make it worth your time to muddle through. For all intents and purposes it could just be the most inane of rants with countless grammatical, logical, and factual errors. It is, after all, the goddamn internet. Birthplace of things like 4chan, orca stacks, and MySpace.

(Oh yes, yes she DID.)

Let's say you dive right into a blog post without knowing how long it is. Let's assume that it ends up being a whopping 2,500-word post.

Worst case scenario, you waste upwards of half an hour navigating your way though the chaotic muddle of keyboard bashing and reactionary thinking, to the point where you lose a few IQ points and probably get a bit ornery that people out there really think like that. (Even if it's just the internet.) Best case scenario, you surface refreshed from an entertaining, enlightening, informative, and probably humorous read that gives you perspective on something that you'd never before considered.

Run a quick cost-benefit analysis, adjusted for the lolinternetz factor, and generally speaking you're going to find that the chance of a best case scenario surfacing often enough to make saddling a whopping number of worst case scenarios worthwhile is horrifyingly slim.

Therefore, when you see an "lol wall-o-text crits you for 2500 dmg," you sigh, throw down your tl;dr card, and move on with your life, unmolested. Reading 50 words of utter retardation, after all, is far easier to stomach than 5,000 words of it.

Not to mention, some people are capable of being insightful and clever in under 200 words. So, statistically speaking, the speed required to read through sub-200-word posts is so much less than working through 2500+ word posts that you basically have a better chance of reading more fascinating articles if you stick to the short stuff than if you gambled with the long stuff.

It's just more time-efficient if you simply ignored anything particularly long to which you have zero attachment.

Welcome to the human psyche.

I, unfortunately, am incapable of keeping my insights short and simple.

WOE IS ME.

Writing

2007-05-29T14:24:00.000+08:00

I have been feeling rather...uninspired lately. Well. Kind of.

The last time I did any real work on my book was a good two weeks ago, and the thought of that kind of stagnation is really driving a rather massive spike into my conscience's most vulnerable orifice.

To be absolutely fair, however, my almost inhuman obsession with attention to detail has been far from idle.

Simply put, I've been devoting most of my free time toward writing a much less serious, significantly more "fun" project. I'm currently very backlogged, so it looks like MoB will have to sit on the proverbial shelf for a little longer still. Mostly...I'm just trying to justify that my writing muscle hasn't been just sitting around all lame and unused.

It would be such a pity to see that muscle go to waste, yeah?

Funny thing is that most of my meetings at work (now absolutely meaningless to me, for various reasons) are spent with me scribbling into my notebook rather vigorously. To the casual eye, I am simply taking a hefty amount of notes. What I am in fact doing, however, is jotting down plot points, character backgrounds, organization structures, even sketching weapons...basically all the auxiliary information that I need to drive the story.

These notes have now consumed just over half of my notebook at work, with actual work notes taking up less than a quarter of what remains. (For those mathematically challenged, allow the Chink to light the way: that means that less than an eighth of my notebook actually contains work-related information.) Flipping through them does make me want to get back to the book, but actually sitting down and writing it has become slightly arduous.

I do know exactly how to bring myself out of this kind of rut, and I plan to do this once my "other" project has come to a close. You know me, guys...project-bouncing as always. :)

I was asked the following question a few days ago by an acquaintance: why do I write this book, even when I myself don't expect to see it published?

This took me back to the spring of 1999, just after my family had moved to Beijing, smack in the middle of my junior year of high school...when I had sat down to write the very first incarnation of the book.

The question really should be: why do I write at all?

As with any activity, people do the things they do for their own reasons. For my part, I was never a big writer until I decided to sit down and become the youngest author of an epic fantasy ever. (This, of course, I thought without doing any real research into just how young some published authors really were when they first got "discovered." Gimme a break I was a kid.)

Writing was therapeutic for me. Some of you who know me well or long enough may remember me mentioning a disaster of an incident back in 8th grade, back in the Philippines, one of the roughest years of my life thus far. Simply put, my parents never knew all the details. Hell, my parents never knew shit because I wouldn't let them find out. My sister never knew all the details. Only a handful of my friends know that anything happened at all. No details will be given be here, but suffice that I came out of that incident more than a little overwhelmed.

To recover, I poured myself into volleyball for the physical exertion. I got very good at that game and won the respect of many former "enemies" because of it. But what really helped pull me out of that dark place was my journal.

I'd kept diaries and the like even years prior to 8th grade, but they were all giggly, girly things that I am simply embarrassed to acknowledge exist. After what happened, however, my diaries morphed into what they are today: journals.

They went from "Dear Diary teeheehee giggle giggle this boy was in class teeheehee" to a compilation of disjointed thoughts and ideas. Everything, from sketches to broken song lyrics to word games to travel logs to book reviews, went into these journals. There were nights wherein I'd stay up for hours past my bedtime just to keep writing. The callous on my right middle finger is pretty impressive in size thanks to this.

I took particular pleasure in buying a new journal every time an old one got full. There was never anything quite like flipping through a pristine, untouched stack of bound paper, ready to assault it with my too-hard handwriting and chaotic psyche. I loved (still love) receiving new journals and notebooks for primarily this reason. The desire to fill it is...invigorating. Pressing down on a fresh pad of plain, unmarred, flat paper for the first time was and still is one of the best feelings.

Sometimes I flip through old journals just to hear the pages crinkle and smile a little when I catch a phrase or two that I recognize and remember writing.

But yes, my connection to my writing was forged from a necessity to know myself. To see who I am, on paper, in the purest form I could manage. There were times when I would embellish the truth even in these journals...sometimes I'd picture someone reading it, and I'd want them to think better of me for it, so I'd write something that I felt would impress this nonexistent reader.

Yes. I'm insane. This shouldn't be news to a single one of you.

From this hailstorm of scattered ideas, my current writing project emerged. At first it was just an action-packed fantasy story with weapons and moves described as though they were from Xena's own diaries, but soon it went through a very severe metamorphasis.

Upon entering college, my faithful Cheer Bear in tow, I rewrote the story for the first time. At that point I had actually managed to finish the first book and was well into the second. I scrapped it all and started over, recreating characters and places. It became completely unrecognizable from its original form.

Why? Was it because I thought it was bad and needed an improvement? Nah. It's simply because I knew how to make this "book" mine.

If you read Signet of the Moon, you'll know that there are three principle characters. (Don't worry, that's the only spoiler you'll see here.) These three characters are what I have identified as being the three cornerstones of my personality. The story is admittedly woven out of my own imagination, but these three characters and their conflicts are basically a well-worded (if I do say so myself) representation of what goes on in my own head.

You've got the insufferable, preachy, often hypocritical know-it-all who is overly concerned with pleasing the higher-ups. You've got the likable, humorous, highly skilled smartass. You've got the passionate, feel-everything-to-the-extremes, naive bitch who craves only infamy, recognition, and her own satisfaction.

If that doesn't sum me up pretty well I don't know what does.

You could say that the books will chronicle their struggle through the plot as a trio...not unlike I, as an individual, must face what lies ahead with three very distinct facets of my personality warring against one another. It's funny because so much of the dialogue, while stylized to suit the story, are very accurate portrayals of what sometimes goes on in my head.

Naturally, this is practically invisible to anyone but myself, as I've taken plenty of creative license with it since my original idea. As far as most of my readers can tell, they are three individual characters, each with their OWN personality and style. This is a good thing, of course, as it means I have written them exactly how I should have to make the story interesting and engaging.

So, the story itself was born of a very close study of who I am. Everything else that I do for the book (i.e, the 800MB's worth of Appendix and Supplemental Material) is just me being my nitpicky, attention-to-detail-obsessed self. I swear I've done so much work on the world surrounding the story that someone interested enough could potentially pick it up and create a game based on it. (That's just my inner nerd being hopeful, of course.)

In between bouts of Writer's Block or even just me getting distracted by a side project (*cough*), I do take some respite in the fact that I am still writing. My favorite short story, now truer than it has ever been, is the lovechild of one such adulteration, and it, too, is a look into the kind of person I am.

I used to crave readers very badly, asking anyone to just check it out and let me know what they think, but that's not so true anymore. Now, I just want to finish my books, to get everything down and on paper, not to impress anyone, but because I owe it to myself. I owe it to my 8th grade self, who only ever wanted to show the world who she was and what she could do. I owe it to me, now. If you don't read the story, that's just fine. I enjoy reading it over and over as I go through it time and time again to fish out elusive typos or factual inconsistencies, and that is good enough for me.

Holy shit...

2007-05-29T01:12:00.000+08:00

...I talk. A LOT. How do you put up with me? I mean, ffs shut me up every now and again.

Welcome to Life, Guys

2007-05-28T12:02:00.000+08:00

Remember when things used to be simple?

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Nope. Me neither.

A Real Update For Once

2007-05-25T19:39:00.000+08:00

[NSFlazyasspiecesofshitwhohaveshortattentionspans]

I don't need to state that it's been a long fucking time since my last, genuine LJ entry that didn't involve plenty of self-gratuitous picture sharing or site-whoring, but I will anyway. It's been a long fucking time since my last, genuine LJ entry that didn't involve plenty of self-gratuitous picture sharing or site-whoring.

In such a massive span of time, plenty has happened. My circle of friends has since expanded to an incredible size, consisting of people that I would have been dearly sorry to miss out on meeting. I have fallen out of love. I have spent less time gaming and more time outside, hanging out in all manner of locales, from bars to clubs to volleyball courts to parks to my friends' apartments. I have finally made certain career moves that I have been planning to make for some now, only lacked the courage and conviction to carry out before. I have lost weight. I have fully embraced who I am, flaws and all, and accepted that at the end of the day, I am not a terrible person.

The friends I have now, I would never trade in. We grew so close so quickly that it's hard to believe I've only known them for 5 short months at most. I imagine it's all part of the "expat package," part of the life you experience when you go somewhere new, where you do not fit in with the majority culture, where you don't necessarily speak the local language. You naturally migrate toward and get close to the people who are like you, and, because they are so few in number, you latch on quickly to the people who don't immediately piss you off and have a hard time letting go.

Last week I had a bit of a crisis when I realized that, by this November, most of my closest friends will be gone. Yes, I know some will still be here (see Chuck? I totally just referenced you), but many won't be. Or, rather, there's a good chance they may no longer be here. While I am content to stay in Shanghai just so I can stop moving around for once, I know that not everyone is going to stay just because of the friendships they've made. Many of them have goals and aspirations of their own, and often times breaking (or at least weakening) certain bonds is necessary.

For my part, I've been dealing with all this "bond-breaking" all my life. Between my moving around and my friends also leaving because they lived similar lifestyles, I never really had a friend to call my closest or my best. No one really knew or understood me right down to the core, even my past boyfriends. In this particular group of friends, however, I have found a few individuals who know exactly what I have gone through, having experienced it themselves, and I am not willing to let them go so easily, even though I know that we will eventually part ways. Either I will move on, or they will. It is inevitable. It is part of the "expat package."

I have gone from the hardcore gamer I was in college to the casual gamer when I first came out here to start working to the occasional gamer. I no longer spend every day logged into Guild Wars, I no longer spend hours on end in Civ 4, I no longer slice and dice warlords, queens, and titans in my manta to gain my world UT2004 rank of #3 (damn you Midget and Nighteye!). Instead I find myself playing the old games, the games I really enjoyed when I was younger. Granted, I have suffered through this phase before and it will likely pass, but it's nice to play the games I grew up with, rather than trying to keep to the up-to-date, newer franchises that will rape both my wallet and my video card.

I go home after work and, while eating, I will either catch up on the latest episode of something that I have recently missed or log onto an instant messenger or fire up Planescape: Torment/Full Throttle/Grim Fandango (dammit Romain hurry up and let me borrow Fallout 2 already). I play/watch for about an hour, read if there's still time, then usually I'm out the door once more. This is if I don't workout or meet friends for dinner, mind you. My social calendar is full 6 days out of the week and, admittedly, I do occasionally miss the days where I just sit at home and dick around doing nothing particularly productive, but the sweet thing is that I can always just stay in if that's the case, and my friends will understand.

Volleyball is yet again a part of my life, though this time less about the importance of teamwork and more about just meeting new people and playing a game that I have always loved. After a month's worth of Saturday-afternoon-three-hour sessions, I have my old serve back. I'd forgotten how much I had really missed people saying, "Shit, it's Viv, back the fuck up she serves like a cannon." I mean, this comes from dudes who are well past the 6'4" mark. Feels good. Too bad I still can't jump for shit, hahaha.

I recently bought my very first two-piece swimsuit. I never owned one until now because when I think "beach" or "swimming pool," I don't think "sand" or "sun." My 13 years of competitive swimming has me thinking: "WATER." Water, Helen. WA-TERRRRR. Ergo, if I want to swim in that water, the best way to go about that is to wear a goddamn one-piece swimsuit. Plus, my insecurities about my body do not help. Anyway… I haven't worn this bikini out to a pool yet, but I have a feeling that if I do, I will spend a maximum of ten seconds out of the pool and the rest of the time in the water, either hiding my body or showing off my awesome speed underwater.

I belong in the goddamn water, dammit. Why do you fucks think I'm pyrophobic, eh? Because the water keeps me safe, yes it does. I like the rain, I like the ocean, I like everything about water. Damn all you pyromaniacs. Damn you all.

We'll see how that first trip to the pool goes. I will admit: I am quite nervous. My scars are better but they still haven't healed, and I'm more concerned about them than any other flaw I see on my body.

The good thing about that is that I've lost a lot of weight. I gained some back from January to March but now that I have a regular workout regiment and regular volleyball, I am not only losing weight, I'm getting quite fit. I like it and I look good. Too bad the scars won't go away…I think I will be insecure about those until something else crops up that I choose to fixate myself on.

As for my career, well, I have been to only one interview, but it went so well that there's a good chance I'll get the job…and if I don't, fuck it, my resume looks awesome and the interview gave me the confidence to keep right on looking. Basically though this will come down to how much they choose to pay me, heehee. Many, many thanks go out to Michelle for just handing over my contact info, as it basically forced me to put myself out there, and it paid off. I needed that push. Thank you.

That boost in confidence, coupled with a hot(ter) body and a full-on acceptance of the fact that even if I'm not gaming 24/7 I am still a huge nerd (*cough*UNIFIED*cough*) have basically had me sitting very comfortably with myself. A couple of bouts with boy drama, while saddening at the time, have pretty much left me unscathed and confident enough to move on and just be myself and do my thing. I like this feeling. It's new to me. I am no longer afraid of walking through a door that will close itself behind me, because I know that no matter what's in the room I just entered, I will be fine.

I no longer hear my parents' voices in my head, I no longer care about impressing anyone but my damned self, and that, my friends, is a wonderful feeling. For those of you who knew me more than 6 months ago, you know how big this is for me.

Thank you to every single person who's helped me get to this point. All of you know who you are.

On a sadder note, though, much love goes out to Matt. I love you kid, I really do. You are a big part of my life and I will never, ever forget you. I have so much respect for you, for the kind of person you are. There are so many people twice, thrice your age who couldn't hope to be half the man you already are. Stay strong, and I know you will, no matter what.

I kinda have to cut this short right here. There is still a lot to say, but I imagine there's plenty of time for me to get to it.

~ Viv