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Full of confidence, out-going, extraverted, loud, attention whore…

It doesn’t matter what label you choose nor what connotation you assign it. I enjoy putting myself in the public eye, exposing uncensored my strengths and vulnerabilities for others to learn from, laugh at, or judge, without any concern how others perceive me. This unshakeable trait of mine results in two possible portraits:

Assertive, not afraid to put herself out there. She knows what she wants and gets it done. Other girls should learn from her. She…

• Straight-up tells guys that she likes them, asks guys on dates if she wants to go out, no tolerance for wishy washy guessing games or sad pathetic nights alone whining about how no one likes her.
• Volunteers on the spot for talent shows to perform lame hip-hop routines
• Sings the loudest in karaoke and dances when everyone else is still
• Sings in the bathroom stall and continues singing even when other people walk in
• Lets others make fun of her and likes it
• Tells embarrassing childhood stories voluntarily
• Loves to take social risks, because to her, there are no costs. Her aura is a selective membrane, letting through rewards but impermeable to negative social impacts.

On the other hand, she …

• Can be the most embarrassing girl to take on a dinner date. She will talk loudly, snort when she laughs, has the worst table manners, and most likely drop a plate or two. Everyone in the restaurant will stare at you two, then make snide comments to their companions about the degrading etiquette of young society, and probably also internally make a judgment about Asians.
• Farts, burps, and all manners of unpleasant bodily functions without hesitation
• Can come off as rather rude, because she doesn’t waste effort pretending to be cordial to people she could care less about. At the same time, she doesn’t give a rat’s ass if they do think she is rude. This results in her coming off as snobbish and cold.
• Will tell you the truth, even if you don’t want to hear it. If you ask for her opinion, be prepared to absorb a blow (just in case – she can give favorable opinions too, and frequently does!) This can result in her being seen as “mean”.
• On most days looks like a slob, and doesn’t care if you think she needs a shower.

Is Crystal really this self-absorbed force field against all social judgments?

What do onions and Crystal have in common?LAYERS! [Best joke in Shrek]

Of course she isn’t. Everyone cares about how they are perceived by others. In fact, that is probably the most important criteria for happiness. How do we balance this need for social acceptance with self-reliant happiness?

I think it is all has to do with the struggle to be independent. Although at a superficial level, it seems like I do not care about anybody’s opinion, I actually care much more than most people. I allow my happiness to depend so much on one person (usually my boyfriend). It killed me after I broke up with my last boyfriend that he was the one to stop liking me. The acceptance of others was so important to me that I could not accept myself. Perhaps how much you care about others’ opinions is a zero-sum game: you can only allocate a certain quantity of caring among certain people, and I just happened to distribute it completely to my boyfriend and zero to everyone else.

This is a trait that I am still trying to improve, and I think that this recent long stretch of being single has been healthy for me in that regard.  I am learning to like myself more without anyone’s validation. Like I said, social relationships are an act of balance – I just happen to put way more weight on one end than average.

Mood: 4 Stress + tests + concert rehearsals + going to fail because I suck at physics

Physical Tiredness: 3 Not enough sleep last night + stress induced insomnia

Spiritual Tiredness: 4 no time to think about it, must survive the week and make it to the weekend…

Today, objects are designed for convenience and time-saving, which means that they allow you to multi-task. Take macs for example, they are so nifty because all their windows can be open at the same time, which allows you to do multiple functions at once. Or the cup holder of your car, which allows you to drive and imbibe your favorite beverage at once. I was once also, an expert multi-tasker. I could listen to physics lecture with my ear while reading SAT prep-books with my eyes. I could write an essay while chatting on AIM and watching my favorite TV series (Boy Meets World on the Disney Channel).

The problem is that I have become a habitual multi-tasker. Most people would think that is great, but I want to break that illusion and convince you to give up your multi-tasking! The reason I could get away with multi-tasking is because I was always content with just “enough to get by”. I did whatever it took to get an A in the class, or a 1600 on the SAT, but I never really cared about the quality of my time investment. In college too, I still can manage to write my essays at the lat minute because all I really care about is the 4.0 on my GPA.

When you multi-task, you do all those tasks half-heartedly. I remember getting angry with my boyfriend for typing on AIM while talking to me on the phone. I wanted his whole attention, and I gave him mine. It’s funny how much more importance I attributed to my boyfriend than my own life. Just like driving while multi-tasking is unsafe, steering your life while multi-tasking is dangerous! There should be a traffic sign on the multi-tasking street that says: Warning! Vapid, yet mediocre enough to get by, life ahead! Avoid at all costs!

I find that when I devote all my attention to one task, I gain so much more productivity and happiness. I know that I am deliberately choosing to do that task, rather than having it be one on my list of many chores. Now, I can’t even write a blog while listening to music. No matter how small the task, devote yourself fully to it. I used to eat meals while doing homework. Now I can’t do that. No matter how busy I am, I have to make room for the 30 minutes it takes me to eat, sit down at the dining table with my classmates, and socialize about nothing related to my homework. Even wasting time, I have to do it deliberately, fully, and execute it well. People multi-task to save time, but I think you will find the opposite to be true.

Try giving up multi-tasking for one day, and let me know how it goes!

Mood: 5 exercised – too much work – chorus rehearsals – i’m a loser for skipping all my classes today – My Crush doesn’t like me

Physical tiredness: 7 even though its 3 am in the morning… hello insomnia. good thing is I have lots of work

Spiritual tiredness: 5 too stressed out to think about long term stuff

Two words you never want to hear someone say after you tell them, “I like you”.

For our “Screw Your Roommate” (you set your roommate up on a blind date) ice-skating event, my ever-thoughtful roommate set me up with My Crush.

During the first quarter of the school year, I spent all my time with my boyfriend and completely dismissed the need to make other friends in my dorm. After I broke up with my him, I was determined to not let the break-up get me down. I deliberately forced myself out of my room to meet and socialize with other dorm-mates [I must boast that, on this one goal I passed with flying colors]. On one of those days, I happened to stumble into the room inhabited by a pair of Asian engineer guys who I vaguely remember earlier in the year confusing for one and the same person (no wonder I thought he ate a lot in the dining hall–). Immediately upon entering, My Crush offered me tea and I happily accepted, impressed by his hospitality. Expecting tea bags stolen from the dining hall, I was taken aback when he opened his drawer to showcase a collection of various teas.

“You should come to our weekly tea parties,” I laughed. I didn’t realize at the time that this chance encounter would develop into a warm friendship and later, romantic feelings.

“It’s so great to be single!” I declared to my roommate upon returning. “You can meet so many more friends!”

Sometimes I think he is too cool for me. My Crush is a stereotypical engineer: smart, hard working, logical (he’s the one who made the comment about the Chocolate Soulmates). But he is also not the stereotypical engineer: he likes biking, photography, and classical music. I often see him in the hallways fixing bikes. I decided to cool down my feelings for him because I decided that he was too busy to date. Meanwhile, we continued to meet weekly and get to know each other better over tea.

“Your roommate just walked in and asked me to go with you. I’m sure if my roommate was there instead of me, she would have asked him instead,” My Crush explained to me as we circled the rink; I was skating backwards holding his hands to support him and while he was barely keeping his balance.

“Actually, I should tell you that the reason she asked you is because I like you,” I confessed.

“Uh Oh”.

Mood: 8 on an emotional high, laughing with friends, telling stories, girly crush feelings

Physical tiredness: 9 completely alert… this is bad, considering I’m trying to fall asleep

Spiritual tiredness: 5 who can think about these kind of things when you’ve got a crush?

This is the 3rd chapter of the Migrant Worker thread. Read the 2nd Chapter.

I scored a front row ticket to the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this summer. Going by myself, yet eager to take lots of pictures inside the Bird’s Nest, I borrowed a camera tripod to set up auto-picture-taking.  A security line surrounded the Nest a few miles out, so no one without a ticket could enter, and those with tickets had to talk a good 45 minutes (I made it in 30 because I was power-walking) until they reached the stadium. I arrived at the security check-in point next to the stadium forty minutes before start time, only to find out that camera tripods were not allowed in. I tried every trick in the book: sweet-talking the male student volunteer, pretending to be a dumb foreigner, being an angry bitch. Despite my protests, the volunteers told me my only options were to either chuck it or walk back outside the security line to find a hotel that could check it for me.

Seeing as how the tripod was borrowed, I could not throw it away, so I turned around and started on my trek outwards. Twenty minutes out I approached a fancy-hotel-ish-looking building and asked the policemen on guard if I could check things there. They told me no, the closest place would be outside the security line. When I asked how much checking it at a hotel would be, they relied, “100 [RMB]”. Running out of time and breath, I called my friend to ask how much the tripod was; her response: “65RMB”. Some quick math told me that paying 100RMB to store a 65RMB object was not right, and exasperated, I told her my situation and asked if I could buy her a new one instead. At that moment, a policeman, I suppose out of pity for a single frantic girl, offered to hold on to it for me until the end of the ceremony. I just had to meet him back at the exact same spot immediately after it ended. I grabbed his number and headed back.

Great, I run back towards the stadium and arrive with time to spare. I snap some photos sporting my Olympic and Chinese patriotic gear, and ask some foreigners to sign my Olympic guestbook (using my fake Chinese accent to speak English so I sound like a cute Chinese obsessed with foreigners).  I head on over to my great seat and watch the show progress, seeing up close Yao Ming’s towering ogre of a figure. The show ends and I start to head back to where I met the policeman, only (I should’ve seen this one coming) my horrible sense of direction and memory lead me 15 minutes down the wrong street. By the time I arrive at the spot, the policemen have all moved to their next shift location, and I have no choice but to take a taxi to their new shift.

Arriving at the Museum of Science and Technology past midnight, I look around but don’t see anyone. The entire area is deserted and the only sounds were the humming of cars on the highway. I call him to tell him my exact location: in front of the main gate on a rock, wearing a white skirt. At first, in the silence, I hear footsteps approaching, and then I can make out a tall plain-clothes man walking towards me. Our eyes meet but we do not know for sure if we are right people that we are looking for; in the darkness and rush of our first meeting, we didn’t really get a deep impression of each other’s appearance.

“Hi, are you the girl here for the tripod?”
“Yes, that’s me”
“Here you go”
“Thanks so much, I really appreciate it”
“How are you getting home?”
“Metro”
“So late at night? That’s not safe for a girl like you traveling alone. We can send you home in our police car”

And so he sent me home, all the while chatting about our lives. I usually never tell Chinese that I am actually American, but I felt like I could trust him (he is, after all, a policeman). He was also quite cute, and when I chat with cute guys, I naturally can’t stop smiling during the entire conversation. After I arrived home though, I never thought that I would see him again.

The next day, I receive a phone call from his number.

“Hi, do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you!”
“I just realized that I never even asked for your name”
“Oh, I am Crystal”
“My name is LYK”
“How long are you going to be in China? I hope to have more opportunities to chat with you”
“I am actually leaving for Wuhan today, but I will be back in two weeks”

Two weeks later, I call him to let him know I was back. Every few days I would receive a call from him just to chat for hours.  We talked about our childhood, jobs, the U.S., China, our past, our present, our future, just everything about our lives. I was really giddy – I mean, a policeman was interested in ME! Flirting is a universal language afterall. I had an extra ticket to paralympics wheelchair basketball, and I had been looking for an excuse to see him again, so I invited him to come with me. The conversation gradually shifted to the Olympics, and I asked him if aside from security work, had he ever been inside the Bird’s Nest.

“Yes, I went last week, but we didn’t get to spend much time there because we had to hurry home”
“Oh, how come?
“My mother-in-law wanted us back”

I felt like an anvil had dropped and crushed my pride. I had spent the past few weeks flirting with a married man?

“Oh.” [silence]

He must’ve sensed my shock and understood why, because the next thing he asked me was, “How old did you think I was?”

Asian men look younger than they are, a lesson I learned the hard way. He was a married, 35 year old man, who for some reason or other, wanted to make friends with a 20 year old college student.

What does this have to do with the migrant worker, you may ask? Recall that for the entire week I had been avoiding the migrant worker because I was more interested in the policeman. After this phone call, I was so upset that I called up the migrant worker and invited him to dinner.

Mood: 7 just ate dinner and helped one of my students with his lab report, had my weekly tea party with friends

Physical tiredness: 5 slept at 4 am last night, but woke up at 1:30, so haven’t been awake very long

Spiritual tiredness: 4 finally made some long term progress today, turned in my major grant proposal

I played a lot of video games as a kid. Whenever I lost all my lives, a screen would display, “YOU FAILED” accompanied by a strong voice announcing the same phrase. If my life were a video game, I would imagine that screen displaying right now.

You’ll notice that for the past week I have been a little negligent about writing. That’s because I have completely and utterly failed  every single goal I had set. Let me just list them in order:

Academics: I had said that I would be more diligent about learning over memorizing, yet due to my procrastination, cramming is all I can ever manage in order to get by. Friday morning I had a midterm for human physiology, which I chose to not start studying for until 2 days before. The result: spending every spare moment, and including some not spare ones (try biking while looking at notes), forcing tidbits of information into short term memory, and counting on a system restart once the test was over. I am interested in medicine; human physiology should be the most interesting and relevant subject to me. If I can’t even motivate myself to learn this, how can I ever learn anything? This week, I have to do the same for a physics midterm. Which brings me to my next goal…

Sleep: This week I have been running on consecutive days of minimal sleep. I’m one of those above average people who need more than 8 hours of sleep a night, yet I’ve only averaged 5 this week. Now, my sleep is so messed up that I am sitting in my bathrobe in the dorm lounge at 4:27 AM writing this blog, because despite my extreme tiredness, I still can’t fall asleep. Looks like my insomnia is kicking back in, most likely stress-related…

Exercise: Last weekend I pulled a leg muscle while playing squash, and for two days it hurt to walk. I used that as an excuse at first to doge my exercise routine, promising myself that as soon as I felt better I would work out again. Later, when I had too much work to do, I skipped again. The sleep deprivation gave me more excuses. However, I can already feel the consequences: my mood is worse than usual, I feel more tired, and am less productive and unable to focus. This weekend I should make up for it by re-starting my routine.

Vegetarianism: No, I have not broken it. I have friends placing bets on how long I will last (shoutouts to those who placed 100$ on me staying this way forever!). I must say, some friends have already lost. However, I don’t feel like I am getting what I am supposed to from this diet. As mentioned earlier, I feel extra-hungry, and rely on unhealthy, albeit meat-less, meals. I keep meaning to visit the nutritionist but never find the time.

From now on in my posts, I will keep a tracker of three things: Overall Mood, physical tiredness (short-term fluctuations), and spiritual tiredness (more long-term). For sake of clarity, I will spend a moment to detail what each reading means. 10 means best (better mood, less tired, etc.), 0 means worst.

Mood:

0 – suicidal

1 – severely depressed

2 – slightly depressed

5 – neither happy nor sad

7 – quite happy

10 – best day of my life

Physical tiredness:

0 – I’m going to collapse

3- lethargic

5 – not too tired, but not too energetic

7 – quite bubbly

10 – I just overdosed on caffeine

Spiritual Tiredness:

0 -I want to shut myself up in a Buddhist temple and take a break from life

3 – I need a vacation

5 – no feelings

7 – I have energy to move forward with life

10 – I have no idea what this state would look like, must be heaven.

I am so tired of being tired.

Mood: 6 These few weeks are the weeks from hell: exams or large papers due every week, and they just keep on coming. The only reason this score is positive right now is because I just came back from Viennese Ball and got to wear my new 300$ dress. Also, I’m going ice skating tomorrow!

Physical Tiredness: 1 Too little sleep + 5 hours of waltzing + insomnia

Spiritual Tiredness: 3 School + Med School apps + being unsure about life

On Valentine’s Day, I gave my friend two dove chocolates and told him to save them for later to see if we were chocolate soulmates. Dove chocolates have sweet messages written in the inside, and every so often two of them are the same. The next day, I was doing homework in his room when he reminded me about the chocolates. We both opened ours, and I read mine first:

“Be a little mysterious”

“Really? Cuz that’s mine too,” he responded. I thought he was pulling my leg, but it really was! Ecstatic at this sweet coincidence, I wanted to memorialize the moment for posterity. I asked him to flatten his aluminum wrapper while I did the same, but I accidentally made a hole in mine. On his wall now hangs two identical chocolate wrappers (albeit one a little tattered), with captions declaring us as “Chocolate Soulmates”. While I was still experiencing the lingering feelings of the joyful high, he said, “How many distinct messages are there, because we could calculate the probablity of that happening.”

I like to think that there is some Valentine’s Day spirit that guards over us on February 14th. The VDay spirit infects us with happiness and protects us from sadness. It can even control the weather; the weeklong interminable rain that had been cursing all of campus with Seasonal Affective Disorder was interupted on Saturday by bright rays of sunshine and clear blue skys; the next day, the rain resumed again.

Call it ignorance if you choose – yet despite my logical side, there is still a little part of me that holds on to the belief that maybe things do happen for a reason.

We are and have always been sexual beings. We don’t just suddenly become one when we hit puberty, or when we transition from cootie-phobes to having crushes on others, or when we start sex-education in schools. From the very beginning, we are aware of our bodies and explore them. Who among us can honestly say that they never curiously played with their body parts as a kid? I remember in music class in 4th grade, I discovered that placing the hardcover book in a particular way on my lap tickled me in a strange way I had never felt before. From then on, I was always reading; maybe this explains my above-average intellect. Another summer a few years later, my mom signed me up for gymnastics camp. There was this one stretching exercise where you spread your legs to do the horizontal splits, then bring your body forward so that your chest touches the ground. I suddenly felt something and it reminded me of the feeling in music class. I still stretch a lot even now, taking pleasure from my juvenile memories. The point is, long before I ever took a sex-ed class or knew what a clitoris was, I was already experimenting and discovering how my body functioned.

As kids, we are also fascinated with the body of the opposite sex. I don’t know why Adam and Eve ever felt ashamed of their nakedness. As kids, we love to be naked. We run around and make people laugh, and no one judges us. We also didn’t feel embarrassed when we saw other boys and girls naked. I have three younger brothers and as kids we took baths together. Sometimes I would poke their penises and laugh when it swung. But the majority of the time I was just having a fun time playing boats in the bathtub.

Somehow, through our life, exposure to various cultural influences has ingrained it in us that we should be ashamed of our bodies. This is the craziest thing, but I used to be ashamed of my feet. They were large, flat, and ugly. I could definitely understand why traditional Chinese women would want to bind their feet. Coming from such a background that associates daintiness with femininity, I hid my feet from public exposure at all times. During tumbling class in gym, when we had to take off our socks, I sat on my feet (if you are unfamiliar with the asian man squat, please click here: ).

Then puberty hit. At first I didn’t understand what was happening to my body, or that it was inappropriate to talk about it. Around sixth grade, I noticed that two lumps were forming in my chest, and when I pressed on them it hurt. I liked to imagine that they were two large beans full of powdered milk that would spill out if I split them open. In the cafeteria one day, I shared my discovery with my friends, and they ridiculed me. After that, I never discussed my body again.

Age and shame about our bodies are inversely correlated. Remember back to a time when you were younger and enjoyed seeing your body naked. Then find that feeling again and feel sexy.

I have not yet broken my vegetarianism, which means that I have not consumed any meat for two weeks (ok, so there was this one time when someone offered me a Thai biscuit and only told me afterwards that there was meat in it). So far, it hasn’t been too hard to stay veg. I don’t have cravings for meat, although sometimes I find it hard to resist if I start thinking about how yummy meat fat tastes. Eating more vegetables has also increased my appreciation for their taste, so that now well-cooked vegetable meals taste delicious to me; whereas before I would have found them unbearably bland; although it sucks when the dining hall has no good vegetarian food and I have to content myself with eating huge portions of salad and fruit.

These days I eat:

• lots of fruit (oranges, apples, cantaloupe, grapefruit, pineapple – I avoid bananas because I heard those can aggravate acne)
• lots of salad, especially spinach
• cooked vegetables
• soup
• eggs
• bagels for breakfast
• pasta
• tofu
• rice
• soymilk

I originally started a vegetarian diet to see if it would improve my skin. The first few days I noticed significant improvement. However, I think the diet is starting to backfire; I don’t eat enough during actual meals, which means that I have to eat another meal late at night. However, the only dining options available at that time are fries and other fast food. I guess I should start trying to eat more tofu and carbs.

This is the 2nd chapter of the Migrant Worker thread.

“I will think about you,” he shouted to me with a huge smile on his face as I turned away and walked up the stairs to my apartment, leaving him with his yellow cap in the darkness. The Annie’s delivery boy had just taken half an hour out of his work shift to accompany me to the bank, all because of my absent-mindedness. That night I received a text message from him with a message of friendship:

*** Friends ***
*** New Friends Are ***
***Gifts sent from Heaven ***

The next day, riding my hour-long bus commute home from work at 11PM, I receive a call from him inviting me to go out drinking with his work buddies. Against my better judgment, I accepted; but quickly realizing my mistake after hanging up (I barely know this guy, it’s late at night, we’re going with his friends, and I have no family in Beijing to follow up on me), I send him some excuse by text about being too tired. The next day he invites me again, but I decline, citing late work hours; and the next, and the next. Eventually I start ignoring him altogether and I think he got the picture.

I didn’t trust him because he was a poor migrant worker. I don’t know what I was scared of, whether it was rape, or kidnap and demanding ransom from my parents; I just knew I was scared. I felt ashamed of myself; I had been desiring more interaction with migrant workers, yet I could not trust the very people I was trying to help.

Love. That little word with the most power per letter in the English language.

What I like most about Valentine’s Day is that it gives you the opportunity to show the people you love the most how much they mean to you. Even more so than Christmas, Valentine’s Day is all about giving. I gave my best friends roses and serenaded my roommate with a strip tease while singing “No One” by Alicia Keys (I think she was more embarrassed than I was). Saturday morning, I opened the door to find gifts lying at me feet: brownies and a love song CD from the freshmen in our dorm, and three unsigned roses. All day I could not suppress a mysterious smile as I wondered to myself who the sender of those roses was.

My parents let me buy myself a dress as a Valentine’s Day gift, and I hesitantly told them it cost 300$, expecting them to order me to return it immediately. Surprisingly, they were so happy that I had finally bought myself something valuable and could not wait to see pictures. My parents are so cute, I don’t know anyone else whose parents buy them Valentines Day presents.

Something about Valentine’s Day blocks out sadness and fills everyone with happiness. I spent the day with one of my best childhood friends who lived down my street back home. Seeing old friends triggers something comfortable, and I couldn’t stop smiling, singing, and dancing all day. While waiting for the bus, I taught him to waltz and swing, and we choreographed a dance to the Beach Boys’ “Do you wanna dance”. For one weekend, I felt like I finally had someone at school that I could call a true friend. As he walked away in the rain, and his dark blue jacket disappeared into the night, I couldn’t help feeling like I had lost something. It was like my only genuine friend was leaving me behind in the college cesspool of self-absorbed, superficial relationships.

My friend and I were wondering whether Valentine’s Day was purely a marketing gimmick invention of the chocolate industry. If it was, they are pure geniuses and deserve everybody’s gratitude for devising such a great holiday. I’m going to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for surviving my first single Valentine’s in five years. I never did find a Valentine, but I did learn that in my life there are people who care about me; and that is good enough for me.

What does Valentine’s Day mean to you? How did you spend it?