China, 8:30 am: four hour car ride from rural mountainous city to Kunming, province capital 

China, 3:20 pm: three hour plane to Hong Kong. six hour layover in Hong Kong, took the train half an hour into the city and shopped for three hours.

China, 11:55 pm: twelve hour plane, slept for ten and tailed off the flight with Twighlight (horrible movie). 

UK, 7:10 am: two hour bus from Heathrow Airport to Oxford, saw a huge “TO LET” sign, which I mistook for “TOILET”

UK, 9:00 am: arrive at Stanford house after 30 hours of travelling, finally get to take a shower and SLEEP in a bed

In Hong Kong and China, the customs officials are so friendly and inviting; you can even rate your experience with the official after you leave the station – I think the Chinese have the wisdom to know that customs is often the first encounter of a foreign visitor into your country, so hospitality at the border is extremely important in coloring a visitor’s impression. I arrive in England to the warm welcome of the customs agent lecturing me: 

- Why are you coming to the UK?

- I’m studying here

- When did you start to study here?

- I am just starting now

- Then you don’t say ‘I am studying here. That means that you already started and are continuing. You should say, ‘I will be studying here’

I didn’t realize this was immigration and grammar control. I suppose the British don’t like to let people with improper English past their border – too much dilution of their primly preserved language. But other than that first encounter, most of the other British I’ve met have been rather charming and at least decently nice folk. The biggest problem is that everything is obscenely expensive and I can’t seem to afford anything; combine that with not very delectable food, and I’ve come to two (positive) conclusions: 1) I’m going back to being vegetarian because meat is too expensive, and 2) I will probably eat less and have an easier time losing weight. Another stick in the side is the internet restrictions at Oxford: no peer-to-peer, no large media downloads, basically no use of the internet for anything non-academic. I suppose the Oxford IT services and the UK Border Control hire from the same pool?

Today is my first full day in England, and it’s off to a pretty good start. I woke up at 6 and jogged around the city for 45 minutes, exploring the meadow and streets surrounding the house. Came back to have a breakfast of peppermint tea and cheese while reading the news. I want to share these words of wisdom from an article in the New York Times: 

I would offer everyone the even less-palatable lesson that sometimes people make dumb decisions. Sometimes you decide to do something and then you wish you hadn’t done it, and that doesn’t necessarily make you bad or good, though it may make you sadder and wiser.

I submitted an FML last night, but it wasn’t selected. Nevertheless, I’ll publish it here:

Today I saw my mom for the first time since Christmas break. She asked me whether I was pregnant; after I denied it, she asked if I had gotten an abortion and hid it from her. Then she said, girls your age aren’t supposed to gain weight that quickly. FML

So after three months of being vegetarian, I actually gained weight. When I started the school year, everyone was worried about me because I looked so skinny. Now, everyone is commenting on how much fatter I got (they do that in China; it’s supposed to be a compliment).Today I went shopping and couldn’t even fit into the largest size pants in all the stores. A week before I came to China, I started eating meat again, justifying it on the fact that: I knew I was going to eat meat in China anyway, so why not start a week early?

I know why I failed at being a good vegetarian: 1) I never stopped eating lots and lots of sugary snacks (my achilles heel), 2) I didn’t exercise as much as I used to before I became vegetarian, and 3) I was hungry a lot and so went out for fast food late at night.

Despite my weight gain and my inability to continue, I still don’t consider my vegetarianism a failure. Since I’ve come to China, I have indeed been eating meat, but much less than I had eaten in my previous diet; I mostly eat some rice and lots and lots of vegetables. This isn’t because I’m trying to follow some strict regimen, but because I actually like the taste of vegetables and prefer to not eat much meat. In the end, that’s all that I wanted to get out of my vegetarianism: a healthier eating habit.

So, I’ve decided to scrap vegetarianism and continue on this new diet:

• continue eating lots of vegetables and little meat
• do not eat cookies or any other dry snacks (so hard! especially in China with so much good stuff to eat!)
• when I do want to eat a snack, have fresh fruit, or at the worst, allow myself to eat dried fruit. (very easy in China, have basket-fulls of fresh cherries, pears, apples, strawberries, and all sorts of fruits I’ve never seen)
• drink more water (I constantly have headaches from dehydration but never remember to drink)
• eat lots and lots of Indian food when in England (yay! looking forward to that)

I will continue updating about how this diet goes. And yes, it’s a good thing you didn’t make a bet on how long I would stay vegetarian.

So I finally caved in to this viral chain mail. Here goes…

1. I was born in Crystal City, Virginia, where the Pentagon is. I must admit I’m pretty flattered that they named the city after me.
2. My first word was “fei”, which means “to fly” in Chinese. I would excitededly point at the sky, clap my hands, and yell “Fei! Fei!” each time an airplane went by.
3. I went to one year of preschool in China, but the only thing I remember about it is having three teachers named Ms. Sheep, Ms. Cow, and Ms. Pig.
4. When I came back from China to enter school as a first grader, I couldn’t speak English and was enrolled in ESL (English as a Second Language). My parents also decided to enroll me in the optional French Immersion class, where we learned all our classes in French.After six years of French schooling, I can’t remember a single word.
5. Whenever I watch a show/public event/am in a situation where silence is expected, I have an urge to break out into song and sing really loudly. I once stood up from my desk during silent reading period in first grade and started belting out “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”. That was the first time I learned it was inappropriate to do so, but I still secretly do it in my head.
6. I have an amazing aptitude for surviving cold weather. I can mentally numb myself to coldness immediately just by telling myself to stop feeling cold. This comes from years and years of training waiting at the elementary school bus stop in winter. I would imagine that I was in a place colder than where I was at the time (homeless, antarctica), and feel better than I wasn’t there. Now I don’t need to go through the imagination step anymore. I also have a lot of empathy for the homeless.
7. My dream job as a kid was to be a panda vet. My pre-med academic adviser once asked me whether I had ever considered a profession other than medicine. When I told her, she said, “Well, that’s just a childhood dream, anything else?”.
8. I used to imagine that I was the girlfriend of cartoon characters. My favorite boyfriend was Little Foot, from The Land Before Time. Other ex-boyfriends include Simba and Aladin. What happened to Nala and Jasmine you ask? Of course they were no match for me. That seguays nicely into..
9. I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I slept with my expansive dinosaur figurine collection on the head of my bed. I watched the Fantasia dinosaur scene over and over (and cried every time the T-rex killed the stegosaurus).  My favorite book was about two Dinosaur skeletons breaking free from the museum and heading to the beach.
10. My earliest email handle was mushroomgirl, because I liked (and still LOVE) to eat mushrooms. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn until senior year of high school what it could imply when during a scholarship interview, my interviewers asked me to explain my email address.
11. In sixth grade, I had the biggest crush on the guy in our school known for being good at math. I even wrote a poem called “Dan Dan the Math Man”. I stopped liking him after I won first place in the school math competition and he came in second.
12. I enjoy giving people nicknames by sticking together two consecutive syllables in their name that normally don’t go together. e.g. Zabeth (Elizabeth), Ickel (Michael), Topher (Christopher)
13. I love to play mahjong. My ideal white noise machine would play the random clacking and shuffling, followed by the more ordered stacking, of mahjong tiles.
14. I never wear matching socks, but I can’ stand having socks of different thicknesses or lengths.
15. One of my favorite hobbies is to make miniatures out of sculpy and fill doll houses with them.
16. My current desktop wallpaper changes everyday to a different picture of my grandmother. My favorite is this one when she bought all the balloons from the balloon man for me.
    
17. I have an irrational fear of surfaces collapsing from weight. While I can usually control it enough to stand on higher floors of buildings, I absolutely freak out (i.e. mini panic attack) when things “land”. I don’t do well with jumping or bouncing balls. No wonder I hate basketball.
18. I collect shot glasses. My inaugural shotglass was purchased in a hotel giftshop in Paris. Since then, I’ve bought one wherever I go and my friends also know to buy me one when they travel as well. At my wedding, I plan to have all my shot glasses laid out and let each guest toast me with one.
19. I can do this with my hands:
    
20. I really enjoy playing road trip games, even when I’m not on the road. My favorites include: 20 questions, Guess my famous person, Contact, Trivia, telling riddles, and 7 degrees from Kevin Bacon.
21. It takes me forever to tell the time from a clock face. When I ask people what time it is and they offer me a glance at their analog watch, I tell them that I can’t tell time.
22. I love the the letter “J”. I want to name my kids Jeremy and Julia, and I often write these names over and over just to sweep my pen across first the tip and then the loop of the J. The rest of the words just become scribbles.
23. If I could be any other race, I would be an Indian, because they have the most beautiful women, the best food, and the coolest movies!
24. One thing I want to do before I die is open a really unique restaurant. I’ve spent my life collecting restaurant ideas. Right now the best one I’ve got is an Indian one called, “Naan Sequiter”.
25. No matter how much I resist following trends, I always inevitably follow them; but only when it’s not trendy to do so anymore (e.g. tights, bob haircuts, and this chain letter).

I dated this guy for four years from junior year of high school through sophomore year of college (“A_” from this blog). We broke up just this past June. It took me forever to get over him, and now we are even friends. Recently I was searching through old emails for something he sent me and decided to reminisce by reading old emails. Thinking that I would have fond memories of halcyon days, actually my main reaction was a churning in my stomach from the thick sugary sappiness.

Here are just a few of the many overly lovey-dovey epistles I wrote him:

Oh my love for the first time in my life,
I miss someone like i’ve never felt before.
Oh my lover for the first time in my life,
My heart aches ten times more
(Can’t remember if I was trying to quote a song or if I actually wrote this)

In your busy life, please remember to take a few minutes and think of me.  Trust me, i’ll know when you are.

My soul is shaking.  I want to break out of this cage and run across the ocean to you.  If you could know how much I long for you, how much you dominate my thoughts.  If I could just hear your voice, read one email, or a simple hello message left for me online, I would be happy.

I’m in geoscience right now but all i can think about is u and how much i am still stuck in the oral freudian phase

I just wanted to write to you and tell you how much I miss you and how much I love you

I think about you every second, almost; like when i was at a red light today for a really long time and i wanted to reach out my right hand and hold your hand.

Of course, my sappiness wasn’t un-reciprocated. In fact, it was probably learned from him. Here are his responses:

To a Wonderful Girl,

Hey beautiful stranger,

Before I went to sleep, I was laying on the matress, looking at the stars. I was listening to Jazz on my CD player and I was thinking, “It would be so nice if Crystal was here and I had one of those headphone split things so she could hear was I hear, see what I see, and feel what I feel.” The feeling was surreal. . I felt a bit insignificant, but mainly I felt a longing for your company.

I miss you so much. I sometimes can’t concentrate on what I am reading because I keep thinking about you. I love it when your hair is glowing. Like that one time in the car, the sun was at your back, I think it was setting. Then the edges of your hair has glowing red. It was really beautiful and I wanted to kiss you then, but I was driving.

I love you
I hope you smile when you see this
because i’m smiling as I write it
thinking of you
I love you
hey, thats kinda like a poem.
not really

Yours adoringly, affectionately, and admiringly,

Your true love,

I was absolutely in love with this guy for the longest time. Even after we broke up and I had been dating someone else for a couple years, I still thought that he was the perfect guy for me and that we would end up together. Read this essay he wrote about me after we met in a high school debate camp and you’ll see why:

Random Thoughts

By Me

I have a funny way of associating names with personalities and appearances. Joes are tall and bland; Michelles are cheery and energetic, making up for lack of insight with pure volume. Crystals…are strange.

During eighth grade, one of my friends, a typically pretty, sweetly innocent Monica, thought it would be hilarious if she gave me a blow-up girlfriend doll for my birthday. “Name it,” she urged me, leaning on a cracked white pillar of the English building. I just kind of stared at her. “C’mon,” she laughed. I rapidly thought of random names. “Crystal,” I muttered. Whatever. Just make her happy.

Discourse shapes reality, fuels social change and sparks grass-roots movements. Bleiker 2000. That’s the underlying paradigm of this workshop here in beautiful Potland, Oregon, where marijuana plants outnumber people. Words do have a strange power; writers can develop parallel universes, speak volumes, create lives. I’m terrible at that type of stuff. I’m really not that profound. I just try to add my own voice to things, just try to re-tell reality.

When I entered high school, there was a junior named Crystal. She wore about enough makeup to suffocate a dog and had a work ethic that was challenged by eating lunch. But she was nice enough, albeit slightly strange. Crystals must be slightly fucked up, I thought.

High school is funny. So are teenagers. The slightest crisis will put us over the edge; we create our own problems that in turn threaten to swallow us whole. Bloody love. That four letter word that destroys nations and consumes lives, especially those of us high schoolers.

Cynicism- it’s a concept that’s highly overused. I was probably the epitome of teenage cynicism. I guess it comes with being Asian, with hellaciously Asian parents. Happiness, love, blah blah blah. Birthdays? Dude. One of my earliest childhood memories is my mom screaming, “DON’T SAY THAT I CALLED YOU STUPID. YOU’RE SO STUPID. I’D NEVER SAY THAT!!”

One day, one of my friends told me, “One day, you’re going to fall in love and be insanely happy. You’re not truly cynical, you’ve just been taught to be that way.” I nodded at her. I hoped, but I wasn’t so sure.

I hate writing all poetically, with hidden and profound messages. Some masterful writers are able to pull it off beautifully- Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” for example, is simply written but represents so much more. Me, I’m not that complicated or intelligent. I just tell it how it is.

I’m not some brilliant philosopher, some insightful analyzer of teenage thought. After all, I’m just 16 myself. And as hell would have it, I’ve fallen into my own self-marked trap of high school romance and drama. I’ve seen Crystals blossom from weird make-up machines to beauty. I’ve seen cynicism wither away until I can hardly remember that it ever existed.

I’m sure your friends will give me shit if they see this, but whoop-de-fucking-do. I’ve met some ridiculously gorgeous people, some disgustingly intelligent students, some obscenely sweet souls. But I’ve never seen anyone as purely, simply, honestly beautiful as you. I’ve never missed so one so much, never had anyone dominate my thoughts and actions the way my longing for you has. Fuckin’ a. I just need to see you again. At random parts of the day, I’ll play one of your messages that I’ve heard a thousand times just so I can hear your voice.

Crystal Yuan Zheng. I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone.

When I was the captain of my high school policy debate team, we taught the novices how to make small events turn into catastrophes. We called it, “the Nuclear War game”. Basically, we give you a random event (say, buying a dozen roses) and you have to link that to nuclear war (roses are mainly manufactured in Latin America; in supporting the import of roses, you are creating empirical economic incentives for politicians to bolster free trade laws; free trade hurts American workers, which tanks the economy; we slip into depression and start nuclear war.)

Here is one for you: How do you link your dog taking a piss to the homicide of three Pittsburgh cops?

Answer: Urinating dog triggered argument resulting in 3 officers’ deaths

I found this email that I sent to my friend over summer of 2008.  Sigh, kids..

from: Crystal
date: Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 9:27 AM
subject:  complaints about my love life…

this email is to complain about my sucky and non-existant love life.

So A__ dumped my ass two weeks ago and I haven’t talked to him since. And then I started becoming obsessed with J__ again..so I hung out a lot with him and we were sort of intimate with eachother – not like kissing and making out but more like hugging/cuddling/holding in eachothers arms. anyway – well i thought it was really cute and romantic and he even said that he wanted to kiss me! but then he was like

i actually don’t like you…so i’m like wtf? im so confused! Why did you do all those things – and he was just like Oh I like to do that with girls.

anyway – well it shouldnt matter right because i left for China the next day, but I keep getting distracted by him and unable to concentrate on my research! Like, i will wake up in the middle of the night, hoping to catch him on AIM, or I will call my house between 3 and 5, when I know he is tutoring my brother there…

But whenever I talk to him he just doesnt act very nice to me… so I’m trying to forget about him… and who knows if i even really like him anyway – perhaps its just rebounds…

so then I met up with this guy i barely knew, met once when he was visiting stanford, but he goes to Beijing University. I met him two days ago to just eat and hang out, but then he kept inviting me to do things, like play cards, go karaoke, go to a bar with friends, and actually – I like him and hes really cute…plus he is going to stanford next year as a masters student, so there is actual potential here, as opposed to with J__! But he’s leaving for Shanghai tomorrow…which means my need for immediate affection would have to be staved off for 3 months…

Last of all – When i was complaining about how no one wants to date me, M___ asked me out! haha – well hes kinda doing it as a pity joke, but still, we are nominally boyfriend and girlfriend. But my conditions were that I could date as many other people as i like in the  meantime, and also that i could dump him with no consequences – and he said ok. Dang – haha it makes me want to laugh!
So that is my pathetic love life….im such a loser…

This quarter I began a weekly tradition called ~Tea at Three~

A small group of friends (more of the – they are in my dorm so we are nice to eachother – type) and I began to make a point to leave our Sunday 3 o’clock to 4 slot open in our schedule so that we could drink tea, eat light snacks, and engage in random discussions. It’s something very unique to be able to have so many people consistently participate in any activity at Stanford. I don’t even attend my club meetings that religiously, but I would always make time for Tea, even during finals week. The topic ranged from our favorite quotes and books, to our life experiences, to philosophies about afterlife and love. Aside from the tasty snacks and well-timed study break, after ten tea sessions at the end of the quarter, the Tea gang had become some of my best friends at Stanford. We will be Tea-mates for life.

I will sorely miss ~Tea at Three~ while I am at Oxford. I finally fully experienced the feeling of friendship and genuine intellectual excitement that college is about. Isn’t it ironic how I had applied to Oxford because I felt so stranded at Stanford, only to be taken away at the moment when I felt like I most belonged?

Recipe to starting a successful ~Tea at Three~

Materials: hot water boiler, cups, various types of tea, assorted light snacks, something to serve as a table (preferably low – a box with a shawl thrown over it works quite well)

Location: Any room, although generally make the ambience quite peaceful, play relaxing and unobtrusive music, can move outside to enjoy nice weather. Rotating rooms is a good way to get to know others because they can show off their room and play their music.

1. Determine a group: very important! These people should be people who you do not know extremely well, but want to get to know better. It’s ok to have a close friend or two (we had roommates participate). Most of them lived in my dorm, because it is more convenient to get together casually. Keep the group small so you can get to know everyone and the conversations are deeper.
2. Determine a time: it should be a time when everyone is available, when generally there will not be meetings scheduled, and when people will not be working on last minute homework. Picking a good time is extremely important to minimize flakiness. It’s a bonus if it falls in a good study break time. We found that Sunday at 3pm worked extremely well. If you pick another time, well, you can come up with another smart name for your tea party.
3. Allocate responsibilities: Figure out who is responsible for what. Who has a hot water boiler? Who can bring what materials?
4. Reminder email: Send an email invitation the night before to give everyone a heads up. Use this chance to get creative! Use fancy stationary and include pictures of tea parties (iPhoto and Mac Mail are great). Write eloquently and pompously. Or, include a joke or something to think about for discussion. Sometimes I ran out of material and started to include pictures to have people guess the relevance; they usually were pictures of things that had happened on that date in history. Be creative!
5. Establish a quorum: Just kidding. But do wait for people to trickle in and expect people to be a few minutes late. Take this opportunity to boil water, pick out music, and chat with the early birds.
6. Check-in: Go around and let everyone briefly share how their week went (high points, low points, etc.). Also answer a check-in question that can range from the trivial (what is your favorite word) to the serious (explain the meaning of your name).
7. Spotlight: Focus on one individual. Have him or her tell her life story and share objects of importance (another incentive to host in your own room). Let people ask questions afterwards.
8. Themed discussion:Discuss a topic that you would never talk about otherwise. Like what you think maturity means, or what your favorite school experience was. These can be chosen in advance or offered on the spot. You can also pick special ones based on the day, for example our Valentines Day tea was focused on love.
9. Awkward glances all around: As people lose steam for discussion and run out of things to say, they will awkwardly start to look at each other in silence until someone pops up and says, “well, it’s four o’clock, gotta back to homework”. And that person will pop the bubble of enchantment that you have built around you that let you forget that you are in a world of books and school and deadlines, and you will fall into the pavement and realize that you have somehow come back to reality. And you will smile and hope that next Sunday will come soon.

Happy April Fools! I’m not getting breast enhancements, although, I could use some larger breasts…

Just kidding! I want you to know that I am perfectly happy with the size and shape of my breasts. I’m not only perfectly happy, but rather fond of them too. But that can be saved for another discussion…

There is one other lie though, and that is the time stamp on all of these posts. I’m actually sitting here, freezing, at 5am April 1st in the dorm hallway because (can you believe it?) I can’t fall asleep even though I am super tired and have work at 8:30 in the morning. I’m leaving for China and my internet connection will be iffy; I don’t want to keep my eager readers hanging, so I scheduled a post for each day I will be gone. Please leave comments and I promise to respond to them when I get back and also write about my China adventures. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy the lineup that I have so stuporly crafted for you in my insomniac clarity.