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.

I’ve made a rather eventful and shocking decision. I’ve decided to get breast enhancement surgery. I’ve sort of been hiding this from everyone because I didn’t want anyone to know until I was certain about it, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

My flat chest has always sunk my self-esteem. From the very moment in fourth grade when my first girl friend started to develop boobs, to sixth grade when all my friends were wearing bras, I still looked like an androgynous doll. I did start to notice something forming in my chest that hurt when I pressed against it, but I imagined that they were two mochi sized kidney beans (read all about this here).  In seventh grade, I abashedly asked my mom if I could start wearing a bra, because we had to change in the locker rooms for gym. She only bought me a training bra, and I had to wear the same one every day for three years. When I was in ninth grade, I finally sucked up the courage to buy a real adult bra. I asked my girl friend to take me shopping and teach me how to figure out the bra sizes; I made up some excuse about how I had bought all my bras in China and the sizing was different (it is different).

My first serious boyfriend always told me that he liked the size of my breasts exactly the way they were, everyone else’s was too gaudy and unmanageable. I took that as his way of saying, “it’s ok that you have small breasts, honey”. I think it must be due to the fact that I sleep on my stomach so much.

So I’ve decided to end my sex drought by taking my body into my own hands (or rather, into the surgeon’s hands). Over spring break, the reason I stayed on campus while everyone else was off in Mexico was because I had an appointment at Stanford Hospital Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery to discuss my surgery options. I even have a date scheduled! June 24, right when I come back from school and so I can really enjoy my birthday! For those of you who I won’t see until school starts, you’ll come back to Hot Mama Crystal.

Here is a before picture (I’ll post an after one too, obviously): I apologize that it is so exotic, but it is the only one I have of me from the side. For the curious minded, I’m wearing a Chinese Yunnan ethnic minority traditional dress.

Flat chest prior to surgery

BTW – things you should do today:

• check out youtube and watch your favorite video! It’s not what you remembered
• Try google’s new CADIE program

10/6/6 Feel like I’m about to turn my life around and start anew! Never felt better!

After oversleeping my meeting with my academic adviser, I spent my morning procrastinating by reading CNN and the wikipedia page about the Manson Family murders. I’m guessing that most of my generation has never even heard of the 1969 slayings, but from reading comments on other sites it seems like it was one of those unforgettable and horrifying events.

A quick summary for those who don’t know: A satanic cult led by Charles Mason and consisting of Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and others, committed mass murder on two consecutive nights in LA in 1969 (known as the Tate/LaBianca Slayings). The more heart-wrenching murder was at the home of actress Susan Tate – her husband director Roman Polowski (the guy I associate with the Pianist and hiding from a statutory rape charge in France) was in London at the time. Eight months pregnant, Tate begged for the life of her child, to which Atkins replied, “We don’t have any mercy for you, Bitch”. Now, Atkins has terminal brain cancer, cannot live longer than six months, is an amputtee and confined to a wheel chair, and has petitioned the court for compassionate release so she can die in the presence of family and friends. Even Bugliani, her original prosecutor, supports her petition. The court unanimously turned her down.

For anyone who has heard my opinions about the death penalty, you will probably know what my opinion is. I really want to know what other people think about this, so please leave your comments!

4/5/3 Depressed by all the news,  Jack Johnson’s The News solemnly playing in my mental sountrack – A billion people died on the news tonight. But not so many cried at the terrible sight

Crystal’s First Grade Textbook:

I love procrastinators. I love movies. I love people who procrastinte by watching movies.

I love entrepreneurs. I love money. I love entrepreneurs who make money.

I love entrepreneurs who make money by procrastinating and watching movies.

The thing I love about Stanford is how amazingly smart, and amazingly lazy, people are. I resent everyone (parents, teachers, advisers, snobby know-it-alls, geeks who never leave the library even though they really need a shower) who says that laziness is not the way to success. That is why I am so in love with Hello Movies. Yeah, the interface looks nice, the service is useful (especially the database of free online movies), and the developers are hot (just kidding about that one..), but the real reason I love it is because it proves all those granny-glasses wearing crankies — who always seem to have one hand smugly stroking their chin and the other cramming that stick up my ass — wrong.

Why shouldn’t we get rich doing what we love to do. When its what we love, how can we call it working hard. Work becomes play, especially when  play means getting rich off of all your expertise from watching movies. Working hard has become a thing of the past, and the new wave of lazy entrepreneurs has come: from the web-saavy facebook app developers and bloggers to the down-to-earth garage band musicians. This economic situation especially has woken us all up to the fact that you can study and work for years to acquire your skills, only to get laid off; but people will always procrastinate.

Fmylife.com is a must in any procrastination toolkit. Usually I just laugh at how stupid most people are and click on You Deserved It (because they usually do). Unless it really does fuck up their life for real, in which case… its kinda funny that the first thing they think to do is to post it on fmylife.

But today when I was browsing (and trying to make productive use of my insomnia), I stumbled across this post:

Today, while at the Golden Gate Bridge, I spotted a large group of asians trying to take a picture. Trying to be a diplomat, I slowly say “You… want me… take picture?” while using hand motions. The man looks at me and says “No thanks asshole. I got it.” in plain english. FML

Of course, everyone knows the obvious initial response. The fact that it is 69k to 3k YDI to Yeah that sucks! is evidence enough of the outrage this has caused, not to mention reading the biting comments.

I’m here today to write a defense of Daftly Racist. Yes, we all know that what Daftly did was pure prejudice, rudeness, and idiocy. It’s the kind of thing that we don’t tolerate among our self-respecting, morally superior, unprejudiced folk. Thank god we never have to be judged by millions of internet procrastinators. We can guilt-free click the “You Deserved It” button and smirk at our purer moral composition. Because amongst our class, prejudice doesn’t exist and we operate in a judgment free world.

Isn’t it funny how we are taught to not judge, but those same teachers repeat the maxim that “first impressions are everything”? We can never free ourselves from our judgments (see this post for a fuller explanation). Isn’t it better to acknowledge those prejudices and do our best to mitigate them, rather than brush them aside and claim to have conquered them? How can we combat the enemy within ourselves and others if we don’t force it to the border of our inner psyches?

Daftly’s courage in posting is aptly refreshing. In a society where to exhibit the slightest bit of prejudice is cause to raise noses (and ironically, form judgments), to have the balls to admit fallacy in prejudice should be applauded, not condemned.

4/2/3 Insomnia mostly, but still proud that I can voice a semi-cogent argument at 6 in the morning.

Special Olympics Ad

This Special Olympics ad highlights the emotional charge that the “r-word” carries (www.r-word.org). The campaign to eliminate the use of the word retarded rides on the coattails of Obama’s highly publicized derogatory comment about the Special Olympics.

I’m not trying to be morally superior. Today I was at Castro Street getting dinner with a friend, when I made a comment about how “retarded” I was. I quickly realized my mistake, apologized, and replaced it with how “stupid” I was. Everyone is prone to it, it’s been so much a taken for granted part of our casual lexicon, but the point is that once we become aware of our choice of words, we can eliminate and replace harmful words in our vocabulary.

I didn’t realize that language could be so powerful. Like many, I thought that words were just meaningless, and that there could not possibly exist the hyperbolic attitude so vilified by disability advocates. However, while reading the forum I stumbled upon a very insensitive comment on the r-word website that exemplifies the exact kind of attitude that they want to combat. I would like to excerpt a bit here:

..those who fight so hard to have people stop saying [retard] is, well, … retarded..Don’t you think we could use our time and resoucres to attack a larger issue in this country. I mean what about the economy? you talk about intolerance, we just voted in a black president for christ’s sake, what planet are you from to say we need more tolerance for people who are “mentally challenged, or metally reatarded”, use your time and resources to counquer something more productive instead of fighting something that doesn’t exist, you freakin retards… (read the whole thing here)

I’m sorry cptwinks, but your comment exactly brings sympathy for the cause you berate so much for its “vacuity” and “insignificance”. I wasn’t fully a supporter of the r-word campaign until I read your comment, because now I realize what kind of bigotry and insensitivity pervades our society. The first thing I did was to look up the denotation of “retard”:

retard verb |riˈtärd| [ trans. ]
delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment : his progress was retarded by his limp.
noun |ˈrēˌtärd| |ˈritɑrd| |rəˈtɑrd| |riˈtɑrd| |ˈriːtɑːd| offensive
a mentally handicapped person (often used as a general term of abuse).

Even my apple dictionary is more sensitive than cptwinks. For a moment, let’s grant the dictionary definition and examine what we usually mean when we say “retarded”.

He’s so retarded: We don’t actually mean that he is mentally handicapped; when’s the last time you heard someone comment about a student with learning disabilities, “This is my student Peter, he’s so retarded”.  What we mean is that he is as stupid as someone who is mentally handicapped, and we mean that in the most derogatory sense. The implication is that the only characteristic of mentally handicapped individuals is their stupidity, and we mean that in the most derogatory sense.

I had a neighbor who was born with Down syndrome. He was one of the sweetest guys I ever met. When the phrase, “He’s so retarded” will come to mean “He’s so sweet” is when I will agree with cptwinks in affirming that the word “retarded” is inconsequential.

We do not accept the use of the phrase, “that’s so gay”, so why do we tolerate “retarded”? We respect the feelings of gay people, but not the feelings of the mentally handicapped. What’s even worse is that, our use of the word “gay” is usually deliberate; we are aware of our offensiveness and deploy our labels strategically. When we say “retarded”, we don’t even realize the impact we have. That the mentally handicapped are not even a group of people whom we consider to be worth insulting speaks volumes towards showing how much we actually do care about their feelings. To not even be a recognized group that we include in our sphere of decency; that’s the biggest blow of all.

Finally, although this might be a bit of a tangent, I want to address another false assumption in cptwinks’ comment. To claim that because we elected a black president means that we’ve somehow managed to rid the entire country of prejudice (not even just racial prejudice) is just ridiculous. I’m sure that if Obama knew that him winning the election meant forfeiting the fight against prejudice and declaring it won, he would have given up the presidency. To rubber stamp all battles against intolerance and insensitivity as useless because of one victory is completely counter to the entire progressive ideal. Instead of facilitating progress, victories insert a huge road block. To me, this is just an excuse for laziness and a justification for tolerance of our intolerance.

If you care about this issue, there are a few ways you can help:

1. Start catching yourself whenever you say “retarded”, and do it out loud so your friends hear you too.
2. Start correcting your friends whenever you hear them say it. They might find you annoying at first, but they will soon start to catch themselves.
3. check out www.r-word.org and sign up for their community if you’re interested!

4/2/3 After writing my opinions, I’m a little less upset about the contents of my last post. I am however, still deadly tired.