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31August | no offense to any bedazzled-cell-phone owners
I realize that my updates have been sparse and slightly arbitrary lately. Daily life is going pretty smoothly (aside from that Sunday that I apparently regressed to age 3 months) - work is great, I'm happy there, not too stressed and not too bored. My lovely Alice is finally coming back stateside next Tuesday night, flying directly into NYC to spend a few days with me, and then next Friday Tatiana is coming down from Boston.. I am so super excited!! Alice called me today and we made mention of the last time we were all together and in NYC - it was quite a ruckus. I can only hope this time will be as much fun - if not better. I've been making some new friends lately who have been helping me explore different aspects of myself that have sort of been dormant since... well I don't even know since when. Not just my creative side, but my... organic side? My passionate side? I don't know. I saw a singer/songwriter named Gretchen Witt - she plays guitar and piano and is very folk/indie/organic, the kind of music that I would like to write - with my co-worker Sonja a couple nights ago, and was so moved and inspired. I've been trying to finish a song for quite a while now... but somehow the Guitar Center doesn't quite have the creative atmosphere I'm looking for. I need to find out when their offtimes are, and hope that the guys who work there don't bother me about buying a $3000 keyboard. But anyway, it's been an invigorating time for me, creatively stimulating. I've been wanting to write a new 'zine for a while. Perhaps this month would be a good time. September. I'm off to bed, but I will leave you with this conversation snippet between my older brother and me. Topic: how to represent a stereotypical Asian girl. me: i should show up wearing a hello kitty backpack o_____O (<-- Asian face. Well according to Jueli anyway)
29August | happy anniversary!
Today is the 13th anniversary of my first period. That's right. I have officially been a menstruating female for 13 years. That is more than half my life. When I was 10 years old, I was impossibly close to my childhood friend Diane. We lived in the same neighborhood, were in the same grade, walked home from school together, played Barbie and [respective NKOTB doll of choice - Ken definitely did not measure up] together... when I got my period, none of my other friends had ever gotten it and the only thing I really knew about it was that Elizabeth Wakefield got it before her twin sister Jessica (of Sweet Valley Twins fame, for those who were thusly unenlightened) and so Jessica lied and pretended that she got it too. Anyway, I didn't want anyone else to know, and I certainly didn't think it would be something that my mom would go out and blab about. Cut to several days later. I'm at Diane's house playing in her room and she suddenly goes, "Do you have something to tell me?" "No," I say. "Do you have something to tell me?" She gives me a scrap of paper. "Why don't you write down your secret on here and I'll write mine on here." "Okay." So I write, "I got my period." She scribbles something down on hers. We swap, and I open hers. It says: "Did you get your period?" WHAT A CHEATER!! Turns out she got hers, too, and our moms told each other, and her mom told her but my mom was not nice enough to tell me. Happy anniversary to me!
25August | belated
Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of my first Hanson show. I haven't thought about them in a while - not deeply anyway. They're always present; the Hanson Hotel is my Internet homepage, I have more than 60 of their songs on ITunes, and my Underneath Acoustic DVD has been laying atop my TV for a couple months now. It wasn't until this morning when I saw the date on someone else's blog post from yesterday that I realized that yesterday was August 24th. Anyway Hanson's in the studio now, which means that they will probably be locked away in a dungeon for another year or so. I'm actually suddenly really anxious to hear their new material, and to see them live again - I watched some tracks on my DVD the other night and was just so refreshed to see them - their faces just radiating passion, their harmonies impeccably tight. I haven't seen them live in two years, and I'm so anxious for them to get back out there and blow me away.
24August | hott
So I'm not normally one to drool over chunks of manflesh, but I happened upon this photo of Justin Timberlake and as my officemate Sonja put it, "HEL-lo!"  Whoo! Does anyone have a fan??
20August | is this what babies' lives are like?
So today I woke up at 1:00pm (without any alarm assistance, I woke up once at 9:30 and then went straight back to sleep... this is why I always need an alarm), putzed around for a while, ate some crackers, turned on the television... and fell asleep. Then I woke up to an IM from Tatiana, chatted with her for a bit, then returned to my television and fell asleep. I think this happened like... three times. So it's now 7:30pm and in the six and a half hours that I've been awake, I think I've spent at least two hours napping. !?!??!
17August | DAVE LANGLIEB
is possibly one of the most hilarious people I have spent time with lately... I know this is long overdue so I wanted to make up for it by putting his name in all caps in my subject line. Anyway, we had dinner a couple weeks ago - probably the first time I've spent an extended amount of time in his company. We went to Haverford together, he was a year below me and notorious for being outspoken and generally a bit crass and slightly controversial. (Am I correct?) Anyway, a little while ago, my friend Geddes, also from Haverford, pointed out that Dave's profile on Facebook listed my blog as one of only three items on his list of interests (the other two being charity work and depraved sex...). I found this to be particularly hilarious and even made a screen shot with the intention of posting it up here so he would see it and perhaps get a kick out of it. I don't remember why I didn't end up putting it up - I think I was going through one of my many mid-2006 crises and somehow it got pushed to the corner of my mind. Then about a month ago he commented on one of my posts, I wrote on his Facebook wall, we exchanged Facebook messages for a couple days and decided to meet up and have dinner. I have to say... it was so completely refreshing to talk to someone from Haverford who really understands where I'm coming from on a lot of issues. Dave seems so self-aware, and appropriately self-deprecating about things that a normal person might be completely defensive about. We may not actually see eye to eye on everything, but the beauty of coming from the Haverford environment is that we've learned how to communicate and co-exist with someone with differing beliefs by taking the time to understand where a person might be coming from. Serious things aside, here are some highlights from the evening: I wish I could remember more but it has been a little while... you know what this means - we need to hang out again. :) More this weekend, lots happening in this suddenly exciting life of mine haha
14August | my life = shakespeare
Today I learned that some of my behavior and things that I said on several occasions months ago led others to feel uncomfortable, perhaps threatened, and generally disgruntled with what they perceived as my intentions. This is troubling to me, for several reasons: 1. the things that I said were largely misconstrued 2. they were also passed along to third parties, inaccurately because of the misunderstandings and 3. I didn't find out about them until now. So my perception now is that people have been sitting on these misconceptions of me for 8 months in one case and 4 months in another. I'm having trouble processing all of this without getting majorly upset - and I'm trying to figure out why. Maybe it's the fact that so much assumption, misconception, and non-confrontation was what led to my termination from my previous job, and I really wish that everyone (including myself) would just communicate more, and less defensively at that. Like... is it me, and the way that I talk to people, or talk in general, that renders people reluctant to confront me? Because I'm starting to think that's the case, and that I need to really stop and think about how I need to change the way I approach things. At the same time though, I'm unwilling to compromise my convictions - sometimes I need to speak up, and I think that startles people and puts them on the defensive... but they don't actually want to express that, so they don't say anything about it to me and just let it simmer in their minds until it happens again. I can understand passive aggression - most people like to avoid conflicts. Yet when an interaction with someone leaves you annoyed, perturbed, or even just plain angry, unless you've actually hashed it out, maybe something is missing that would help remedy it. If I had been confronted at either of these situations, I would have been able to explain, apologize, and work out the misunderstanding right away. Instead, I'm left looking back and trying to remember exactly what happened, hesitant to dig it all up again with the respective parties but also really wanting to explain myself. I'm really at a loss as to what to do - I feel like this is just a symptom of life. You know what this is like? Shakespeare. Characters in Shakespeare rarely dig deep enough to really understand situations before acting on their perceptions - and on the other side they also rarely aggressively explain their situations to others. And what ends up happening? Most times people die.
14August | this is what i've been working on
So, I recently took the next step in my life's direction by talking to my manager about copywriting, designing, and advertising school. I bought a GRE book and am trying to figure out exactly what my future should look like from now on... granted it's still a bit fuzzy, but I've come to the conclusion that I can't let my design skills go to waste - no matter where that takes me and how quickly. So I've started freelance web-designing. It's of course a slow and basic start - I don't have much credentials (Haverford S-Chords and Outskirts of Haverford College, mainly... though I'd like to redo the Outskirts website if they let me haha) so I'm not charging right now. My first client is Marcia Leichter, mother of Hilary Leichter whom I sang with in the Outskirts. She runs an accessory business and by complete coincidence Hilary and I started talking about it, she mentioned that she was making the website and it was driving her insane... so I offered to make it. And here it is: marcialeichter.com! Some of the content isn't up yet because I don't have it, but the layout is complete. You like?! Would you hire me?! Hehe. Next up, I've offered to make wedding websites for my two high school friends who are getting married next year. This is so exciting!
08August | we've got a long way to go
As I was running today, I passed by a middle aged man who called out to me, "Watch out, China lady!! Watch out, China!!" All indignance and sarcasm aside, it's extremely sad for me to hear this on almost a daily basis. It doesn't matter to me that he's just one person whom I will probably never see again. It doesn't matter to me that he probably doesn't know any better, or that maybe he's a little bit crazy. It matters to me that just because I'm not Caucasian, I need to be called out based on the racial category that I appear to be. And it matters that I was tempted to not dwell on it because I wanted to convince myself that it wasn't a big deal. Because it is a big deal, precisely because we've tried to convince ourselves that it's not a big deal. I wish I had the patience to stop every time someone said something like that and just say, "Why would you say that to me?" Hm. Experiment for next time. Stay tuned.
07August | i really should take up kickboxing
So after a lovely weekend with Brian and Jueli, I went back to work and felt really abnormally productive. I've been bogged down a little by personal things here and there (oh wait... did you read the last entry? Yeah. But that's only a bit of it...) and making some pretty large and important decisions about what's going down in the next year or so of my life, so I came home and decided that today was the day I would rearrange my furniture. I'd turned the thought over in my head a couple weeks ago but decided it was too much of an undertaking at the time, but today I was like... I should just do it. And then maybe I will feel better about things. So I did! And it only took about an hour and a half. Results?
Before: (click to enlarge) 
After: (click to enlarge) 
(Look, you can see my IM box with Jueli! Haha) I like it this way, because 1. my desk is in the corner, which will help me concentrate on my writing and taking the practice GRE - yes that is right and 2. I can watch tv on my bed like it is a couch :) Now I feel much better. Except kinda dirty. And I want a Diet Coke. Next time I promise I will write about 1. Brian and Jueli's visit and 2. my evening with Dave Langlieb. Don't think I've forgotten.
05August | well-
Around this time last year, my wallet was stolen out of my purse, literally under my nose. That event itself was pretty anticlimactic - I handled it with as little melodrama as possible - but it set off a chain of events and thoughts that shook me and my school of thought pretty hard. I started to question what I had previously believed to be fate, the existence of God (Christian or otherwise), and what sort of direction my life was supposed to take. It led me through what seem like endless changes that have brought me to where I am right now. I've reached the midway point between 23 and 24. It's a trivial milestone for sure, but in some ways it's not trivial at all. Older people remind me how young I am, how much room I have for growth, individuality, and possibility. Younger people blink wide-eyed at the prospect of mid-twenties and remind me of a younger, greener self. I've seen, heard, felt quite a lot - all of which generally leaves me feeling like I've got a lot of growing pains out of my system. But still I find myself constantly wondering why the one true thing my heart, however young or old and at whatever stage of maturity, has always wanted has continually eluded me. Perhaps it's a result of my childhood - overweight, too-smart, lacking in physical affection - that I simply can't survive without support and affirmation from people to whom I feel akin. No matter how otherwise content the rest of my life may be, without that I'm empty. I am 18 months away from 25 - a quarter century, halfway to 50, 5 years to 30, however you'd like to put it - and sometimes I feel I have the socioemotional maturity of an ostracized teenager. I've long been frustrated by this. Last summer I began to recognize God's presence in my life, sometimes a mere glimmer and other times so blatant I could hardly digest it, and slowly gave my trust that his plan for me just didn't include a true, solid romantic relationship at the time. That I had other things to straighten out first - my employment, my family, my "life direction." Those became my priorities, and at the beginning of 2006 I was back in motion; in the meantime someone very new, very different, and seemingly very willing to be a part of my life literally fell into my lap. I didn't question and I didn't push. It was what it was. At some point it overcame me - it meaning not only him but every aspect of my "new" life - and in an instant completely gave out beneath me. I can't wrap my head around it. It's been three months since this all happened and I'm still almost left in a daze, wondering how that had all fit into God's plan for me, why this is all happening this way and why for the life of me I can't keep anyone close to me for longer than a few months. What am I doing wrong? Why do I have such an intense capacity to live and love if it's just continually going to be abused? Is this meant for me to learn hesitation in any new venture in life? And if that is true then why was I even at Haverford to learn forthrightness, confidence and compassion? I don't want to lose faith - in anything. But I truly feel like I'm stabbing in the dark with what I want to do and where I want to do it, and most of all I don't understand how a consecutive line of people have managed to find me, charm me, have me and then just leave me. I am constantly battling my own self-discouragement but it just gets more difficult to win each time. I really thought I had it figured out last time - I really thought it would take me somewhere. Somehow I'm back where I was a year ago.
04August | haverfun
I had dinner tonight with one of my most faithful readers, David Langlieb. It was hilariously fun - so fun that I am exhausted!! So I will have to write more later... and what a load there is to write.
02August | i think better in lists when i'm tired
1. it's H.O.T.!!!
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