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[cliche-ish]

To be with myself

Three weeks ago, I had a long video call with my friends from high school, and one of them said something that really got me thinking in the past weeks. She recently became a Christian and shared that one of the Saints (forgot his name...) said that you can serve and help a lot more people when you are single/do not have a family than when you are in a relationship/have a family. Now I’m not religious, but that idea really got into my head and forced me to reevaluate what I was doing. 

Right after I had that conservation with my friends, I went through some really intense weeks. Exams after exams, and right after that a science symposium that I was co-chairing/co-hosting last Thursday. I had a few thoughts about that, but I did not really have time to sit down and crystallize them until yesterday after the symposium. I sat down and wrote, because writing helps me think clearly. I made sort of a pros and cons list, but slightly different. I initially split the page into 2 equal columns. On one column, I tried to answer the question “Why do I want to be in a relationship?”, and on the other column “Why don’t I want to be in a relationship?”. The the don’t list got very long very quickly compared to the do list. They were no longer equal columns. Obviously, one took over. 

I just “recently” got out of a 4-year relationship. I broke up with my partner partly because I chose my dream and career over my partner. Right after the breakup, I got a lot of support from my amazing friends. One of my best friend encouraged me to try a dating app, to which I thought “Sure! Why not?” It was my temp rebound. So I created a profile. After playing with it for a while, I got matched with a guy. I did not invest in it at first, but after meeting him, I realized he seemed like an awesome person. I sort of liked him, which means there came the emotional dependence. I was waiting for texts and wondering what he thought about me and all that, you know. And for some reason that did not make me feel great. I just got out of a relationship and finally felt free and happy and open to explore new hobbies and got start all the personal projects. That emotional dependence brought me right back to before and made me feel like I was distracted and my free time was taken away again. And I was terrified to imagine where this would lead to. 

I want to be brutally honest with myself, because if I can’t even do that then whom can I be honest to. I’ve learnt to be with myself a little more since the breakup. I’ve been taking up a few new hobbies, which made me feel great. I’ve been spending more time catching up with friends, which feels awesome! I love my friends. I’m working to help advocating for the causes that I care deeply about, and that makes me feel meaningful and fulfilled. Being in a relationship takes time and commitment. I want to see what I can achieve when I’m single and have all this time to myself to do what I want. I’m terrified of the idea of jumping right into another relationship and losing all this. But I have to admit I feel terrified at times being single/by myself after 4 years. And I hate it when it was so easy for me to fall emotionally dependent on another person I just met a few times. It doesn’t feel right to me. All these thoughts and feelings to me are signs that I should learn to be with myself first before I decide that I am ready to step into a relationship again. Getting into a relationship is the easy part. Staying in is hard. Getting out is hard.

Don’t get me wrong. I like being in a relationship. It’s great to have someone whom I connect to to share life with. I want to eventually be with someone great. But stepping into another serious, potentially long-term relationship and settling down can wait. I know people say life is short. Yes, to some extent, but it is also pretty darn long. I have my whole life ahead (assuming covid does not take me out). The first half of my 20s have been a huge growing/learning curve. I’m sure the next half will be the same if not more, because of the milestones that are set to happen during this time. I’m excited to dedicate my 20s for self growth and self awareness. Age and aging no longer scares me anymore. Many of my friends have been telling me the same thing “Oh I am 2x years old and still I am not married/still single/not working a job I want/already late for my plans to have kids.” or “I need to find someone before 27, get married by 28, and have kids by 30.” Hmm, that’s not how we should live. We as a society use age as a convenient, yet lazy and unreliable measure to contextualize accomplishments and calibrate expectations. Everyone’s life is different. My life is different. Whatever I do whenever, I want to just make sure I am doing it for me to better myself/my life and pursue my own timeline while enjoying life at its best. Age should be just a number and just a piece of many pieces of my identity.

I’m spending only the next 2-2.5 years in the city that I’m living in right now (for grad school), and then I will likely move to another place for a new job. The world is huge, life is full of great opportunities, and I want to go and explore all the possibilities instead of thinking life should be a certain way. I want to be open to go where life takes me and embrace the uncertainty. If I am in another relationship by then, know I will choose me and choose to leave this place and the relationship instead of giving up my life and ambitions for any person. 2-2.5 years is an awkward amount of time, not too short but not too long. So I want to decide that it is too short for starting any serious relationship, and so I do not have to focus on and spending time finding one. Instead I want to spend time enjoy life, pursue some of my passion projects, and truly just build life-long relationships with the amazing, inspirational, and supportive friends/colleagues that I am so fortunate to have here in my graduate program. 

It’s been quite liberating to make this decision, and I’ve been smiling to myself since yesterday. It’s more of like a “I know it’s scary but at the same time I know I can do this and I’m excited” sort of smile. And like any other things that feel so right to do but at the same time scare me a little, I just gotta gather all my courage and roll with it and tell myself that I can, because I know me and I know that I can. :)

[cliche-ish]

We made it halfway

Context: What is written here happened in the beginning of July 2020. Yes we are halfway through 2020. Guess what else happened in 2020? COVID-19 and Trump... What a time to be alive! 🙃 A week ago Trump signed an order to suspend all H1B (working) visa processing until at least the end of the year. I have two friends from high school (let’s give them fake names, April and Ann, because Parks and Rec) who are working in Pittsburgh and Boston and applying for their H1B (working) visa this year. We went to high school in Vietnam together, and all went to the US at different schools for college. I was wondering if the order was going to affect them, so I sent them a few messages on Facebook to check how they were handling this. The previous time I sent them a message to them were probably at least 1-2 years ago. They both replied and said the visa suspension did not really affect them. We all caught up with one another through messaging and decided to set up a video call on the night of July 4th (because what else was there to do this year 😅).

Saturday, July 4th, 2020 

You know how sometimes it takes a global pandemic to finally have time to catch up with your high school best friends who also live in the US but you never really had the chance to meet in person. 😅 The last time our group of friends did a video call was in 2013 or 2014. There we were again 6 years later, and we just hit if off instantly and talked non-stop for 4 hours. It was like those 6 years never existed and we were just together the day before. We talked so much our throats hurt haha. 

We talked about everything. Of course we talked about people we went to school with and how/where they are now. Most of the friends went study abroad like us. Some of them came back to Vietnam. Some of them already got married. Then we talked about how rare it was that all of us were single at the same time and looked into planning a girls’ trip haha. We talked about relationship stuff, like what we want in a partner or a relationship or whether we want to get married or have kids. We talked about the people we dated and what we have learned from our previous relationships. We talked about how our American dreams as well as our perceptions about life in the US had shifted and changed and what we wanted as the purpose of our life. Like real serious adults talk haha.  

Ann then brought up about someone from our school who went to Georgia Tech for college and committed suicide last year and how that how we all had some periods of time when we felt so lost and depressed. At that point Ann was very depressed and felt like her life was so meaningless. She said that suicide news was the wake-up call for her. So she asked her boss to give her a month off, and headed back to Vietnam and saw her family earlier this year in February (when COVID-19 was mustering and looming). When she came back to the US, she felt better and started looking for a new job. She landed one with Microsoft. (Yes girl!!) She told us the same stories of a few of our friends from middle school and high school who also had some periods where they felt so lost and depressed during their time living far away from family and friends in a new country and culture. April told us about her “sad period” and how becoming religious helped her find a way out. I talked about the time I lost my Grandma and how I sought out to therapy. (I promise to myself that I’ll normalize talking about mental health issues and therapy from now on, because not talking about them inevitably keeps them a taboo, when they are not.) We all coped differently. Luckily, we all actively found our ways to recover and felt better and was living our lives in the US when we had this conversation. But this path of being an international student that we chose is not always easy and not for everyone. Perhaps it could have helped if we’d known about each other’s difficult experience and shared with our friends who were also going through similar hardship. If there are any people that can understand, it’s them. So my friends and I, we made a pact that whenever one of us feels down and goes through any emotional or mental challenges ever again, we will let the others know.

The clock hit 1:45 am, and I suggested we call if a day. Ann, being Ann, asked if we could take a photo together and posted on Facebook, so we would be reminded years from now about this reunion. So I offered to take the photo, took it, sent it to them right away, and asked if the picture was okay. Ann said it looked good. She made a silly, cute pose with both her hands in a peace sign held high next to her face. April was like, “Yeah, it’s okay! Actually, hehe, can we take it again? I don’t look so good.” And I said, “Of course!”. April replied, “Yayyy hihi, thanks!” or something like that. I took it again, and this time everyone was happy. Then Ann made a comment, “Wow this is just like high school. April is still the awkward, shy baby, and [Me] is still the caring mom of the group.” And Ann is still the silly, hilarious one (you can tell based on her pose). It was just funny and interesting to see how we had changed and matured so much in the past years, and yet we were still the same people in high school. 

Plot twist - Monday, July 7th, 2020

Like any day this year now, something shocking just happened today. While I can imagine Ann and April got quite some messages asking if the new order affected their working visa, 3 days later, it was my turn. This evening, a federal order was issued, saying that all students who attend schools decide to conduct 100% online classes in the Fall due to COVID-19 are mandated to leave the US or risk getting deported. I am currently on a student visa, which is affected by this order. My phone was flooded with messages from friends checking on me. Oh how the table has turned LOL.

This order came out right after Harvard announced they were doing entirely virtual classes for the Fall. The government wanted schools to stay open despite the pandemic ravaging the whole country and was afraid schools would follow Harvard’s move. Harvard, you freaked out the government, and played us all. But you sued the gov for this order, so we forgive you. 😂 When this order was released tonight, all hell broke loose for the international student community on social media. I can imagine the administration of all universities in the country are feeling the same shock, confusion, and dread.

My first reaction when I saw this was ironically to laugh. I just laughed. I have been laughing a lot lately at some of all the ridiculous things the President said or some of the bad news coming my way. Remember that time when he said he had been taking hydroxycloroquine for preventing COVID-19. Or when he suggested injecting disinfectants to kill the virus. And we also saw how that statement turned the whole country upside down. The White House, CDC, and all disinfectant companies was racing to issue statement against his advice and deal with the consequences that night and the next morning. I mean I must admit there was a little part of that that was funny, right? All of that can be great materials for a new episode on VEEP lol. So yeah, I laughed. Ironic laughs, but laughs nonetheless. I don’t know why I laughed. Maybe those things I heard were to absurd and ridiculous. Maybe I’ve gone crazy during this strange time. Maybe this is the new resort that my newly updated brain automatically seeks out to when I hear news like this. Aaah what a time to be alive! 😂 (If my life has an emoji, it is definitely this laugh cry emoji. 😂)

I told my friends I don’t know how this was going to play out for my case, but at this point, I honestly just feel fine. It’s not that I don’t care. I just feel fine. I’ve worked hard and tried my best to do all that I can to maximize my chance of getting a job here in the US and fulfill my goals and dreams. Anything else is out of my control. So whatever comes my way, I will cope with it and figure it up. I feel like at this point I have been through enough to know I can deal with anything and everything will be alright. Knowing who and how I am as a person now, I just know I will survive and thrive anywhere life takes me. 😁 So yeah, I laughed and I feel fine. I’d not be surprised if tomorrow I wake up to another one like this. I mean it’s 2020. Why not? 😂

And it truly feels fine. Probably because I know no matter what happens there is always hope and wonderful people in my life and in this world standing with me on my side. 😊

Update on Thursday, July 9th, 2020, 3 days after the issuance of the above order.

My university has been sending out emails every day to assure us international students that the university disagrees with the order and is doing everything they can to protect its international students and create a safe and viable environment for us to continue pursuing our education here in the US. My friends from all over the country reached out and checked on me to see if I would be affected by this order. Many of my American friends and colleagues have been speaking out and taking actions against this order. It’s not their fight, yet they chose to participate anyway and stand by the side of us international students. The amount of support that I have seen and received has been tremendous, and I am beyond grateful. My heart is so full.  

All of this is truly a reminder for me to just care about others and choose to fight those battles not for me but for others. This is a fight against us international students, yet we are joined by people who are not affected by this incident at all. I want to remember how empowered and supported this has made me feel during the past few days by recording it here. There are a lot going on right now in the world and this country. A lot of different people are under attack, like Black people and the LGBTQ+ community. I am not one of them. I am not under those attacks. But when I am under one, people who are not affected choose to fight for and with me, because it is the right thing to do. And so I want to choose to fight those battles that are not mine and stand with others when it is the right thing to do.

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You go, girl!

I really wanted to be a boy when I was younger, perhaps through out elementary school up to high school. I wanted to be a boy, because I enjoy the games that boys got to play. I liked running around and playing physical games and sports. So I hung out with a bunch of boys when I was in elementary school. I wanted to be a boy, because I hated what comes with being a girl. My Mom taught me that because I am a girl, I had to pay attention to my manners (i.e. close my legs when I sit, not shake my legs, walk slowly and femininely, talk quietly, dress modestly, help out with cleaning and cooking when visiting someone’s house while the boys run free and play outside, etc.) or to learn to do house chores. All those restrictions and responsibilities made me want to be a boy even. What made it worse is that I have a younger brother to compare. I am five years older than my little brother. When I asked my Mom if I could sign up for soccer (aka the real football) classes, she was hesitant. I knew she would. It is a boyish sport. She convinced me that playing soccer would make my thighs look bigger. (Thanks Mom, for pointing out my insecurity lol.) Ironically, my brother was forced to take soccer classes by my Dad, (because “real men play men’s sports” 🙄) and my brother said he hated it so much he never wanted to even watch soccer games on TV. When I was 8, my Mom asked me to wash the dishes every night after dinner. I asked her why my brother didn’t have to do it (because equality, duh!). My Mom said she would make him do it when he turned 8. So I accepted that “fair” promise, waited patiently, and washed all the dishes for 5 years to the day my brother turned 8. On his birthday, I asked my Mom to stick to her words and delegate the task more equally. She told me I should keep on doing it, because, you guess it, I am a girl. (Arghhhh!) So I grew up dreaming of being a boy, because I just wanted all the freedom that boys have. But at the same time I was still very much girly. I acted all boyish around my friends, but all girly and cute around the boys that I had a crush on. I was one of a handful of girls that stayed and played basketball with bunch of boys after school. I asked my Dad to get me boys’ sneaker and wore them to school while also wearing cute bow hair ties. Now that I look back, I was just a very silly and bizarre kid lol.

Asking for my parents’ permission to go out with friends late or to spend my night elsewhere but home was a nightmare. Because I am a girl, my parents say they have to protect me. My Mom did not let me go out and hang out with my friends in many occasions, because I was a girl. Meanwhile at the same time that was not a problem for my brother, even when he is 5 years younger than me. I was forbidden to have a boyfriend for the entire time I lived with my parents. Sleepover at my friend’s place was also not a thing. They could come over and sleep over at my place though, but guess what, their parents would not allow that either. The only type of overnight trips I got to go was school trips and scout camping trips (I was a girl scout), the kinds of trips that were lead by responsible adults that my parents know in person. Even when I left home to another country for college, stayed out as late as I wanted, and went on a bunch of trips without having to ask for permissions, the summer after my freshmen year, I came home and asked if I could go travel domestically with my friends (I was under their roof, so I had to follow their rules), they said no. They disapproved, because they did not know who my friends were and because I was a girl who should know better. That was it. I realized the sooner I become independent (mainly financially) from them, the sooner I get to make these decisions on my own. 

I was a very good student. I passed all the exams to get into the best schools and earned good grades all the time. And that was what mattered most to my parents or almost any other parents in our culture. Academic achievement was the best gift we could give to our parents. I remember vividly when I was in 5th grade and got the high score in my entire school in the elementary graduation exam, my Mom told me, “Girls tend to do well in school and be much better than boys during this age. But once they grow up into the teenage years (she means hitting puberty lol), they tend to get distracted with different things, like falling for boys and caring too much about their appearance, and thus fall behind boys in terms of academic achievement.” Okay, I know there are a lot to unpack here, but for the sake of time and my mental peace, let’s not lol. So I went on and became a “distracted teenage girl”, had crush on boys, got good grades but no longer the best grades, because wasn’t that what was supposed or expected to happen? When I decided to go to graduate school, my Dad told me, “Cool cool! But don’t spend too much time focusing on your career. Start thinking about getting married soon.” Around the same time, a family friend visited our home and told my Mom and me that “I should aim too high in my education. It’d be harder to get married and have a family.” I couldn’t believe she got to my Mom, who later that day said if it seemed to much to go to grad school, maybe I could find something else to do. Assuming I, as a girl, have achieved a lot more than expected (I think I did) even when people, including the ones that were supposed to cheer me on, kept on shutting me down and telling me I couldn’t and shouldn’t because I was a girl, then imagine what mind-blowing, impressive things I or any girl could achieve when we were just told or set to believe that we could be and do anything.

Growing up, I repeatedly heard from my Mom the story of how my Dad reacted when he learned that his first child was going to be a girl. He is very much subjected to the typical Vietnamese patriarchal culture and thinks that the first son should take care of and decide everything for the entire family. (My Mom suffered a lot from his patriarchal way of thinking throughout her marriage life.) My Mom said he was disappointed to know that I was a girl. In Mom’s words, he said “The first child should be a son, so he can give good guidance to his younger siblings.” My Mom told me how she felt protective of me and argued back that “Why does it have to be a son or brother? Why can’t an older sister guide her younger sibling?” She told this story many times. And for a long time, I was led to believe that I was not enough. I was sad and angry. So I tried my best to be the best that I could just to prove my Dad wrong. All my life it felt like I was fighting a uphill battle just so I could feel accepted as if I was a boy/son. But I’m done fighting this fight.

Despite all the above lamenting, I no longer resent my parents. Again, they were subjected to the belief system of a society and culture where the majority of people still believe 1) a woman’s place is at home, in the kitchen, and in her husband’s shadow, quietly sacrificing her life taking care of the family, so her man go out and achieve, and 2) a woman is vulnerable in this man-dominant world and needs a man to protect her fulfill her life. That is the bubble we were all living in. No parents are perfect. And I understand that my parents love me, and so they just wanted to protect me and make sure I could grow up fitting into the gender role that the majority of society expects or accepts. But because they did it out of love does not mean it was the right way. Not in my opinion. But in their opinions, that was what they think was the best for me.

Over the past years, I have learned to embrace being a girl, a woman, and a daughter, because I realized no matter how hard I wished I was a boy, I am still a girl, and so I need to learn to embrace and work with what I have. As a woman, I have a lot of odds stacked against me, from both my family and culture to the world. (It’s 2020, and we are still fighting so dang hard for women’s rights.) For a while I was just looking at the boys and men in my life, jealously and dreaming of the things I could have done, had I been one of them. Now I realize what I should do is to look at the many bad-ass women in my life and in the world as my role models, because I can actually become one of them. 

According to my gender role as a woman, I am expected to not achieve high in my education or or career, to get married, be good at cooking, bear children, and take care of my family. Well, how about no? 🙂 I am getting a PhD degree right after college, because I am a woman who can. I change the oil of my car and fix my own appliances, because I am a woman who can. I speak my mind, because I am a woman who can. I am taking good care of myself without relying on any man, because I am a woman who can. I am single, happy, and occupied with my career, dreams, hobbies, and friends, because I am a woman who can. I like cooking, because it brings me joy, not because I am a woman who has to. I will get married and have kids (or not) if and when I feel like that is the right decision for me and my partner to make. Yes, being a woman comes with a lot of obstacles and a lot of people telling me what I can or cannot do, but all that have only made me stronger, more compassionate, empathetic, independent, and resilient. I am proud that I am a woman. I can and will achieve whatever I dream because of who I am, not despite it.

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Momo

Growing up in Vietnam, I was told and taught all kinds of biases and prejudices about people, some of whom I never even met. To give you a few examples, Muslims are bad people who kill other people. Indians are dirty because they eat with their hands. Black people in the U.S. are criminals. White people are better, polite, or civil, and they would always respect and put women first. Couples who move in with each other or get pregnant before marriage are immoral. Gay people are immoral. I never felt too strongly either for or against those claims when I was younger, since a lot of them were about people living in other places I thought I would never really encounter in my life. But I did think some of them were true. I remember when I was in 7th or 8th grade, when I was hanging out with my friends in front of my school, I saw a gay person dressing in women’s tank, shorts, and high heels for the first time. I found myself staring at the person. The person caught my stare and stared back at me as if that person were saying “What are you looking at?” I looked away. I felt terrible afterwards for looking. “Why did I stare? Why do I feel bad like I did something wrong? I never meant to demean the person, but why did I give that person the look?” I asked myself. I did not know how to feel about the incident.

When I stepped outside my little bubble and moved to the U.S. at 18 for school, it was a whole new world for me. I was so fortunate to get to meet kind, talented, sophisticated, compassionate, complex, and inspiring human beings who are from all sorts of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality. I thought about all the things I was told and realized there were a sea of conflicts within me. All these questions started popping up and haunting me. These are wonderful and good people, yet why are we calling them all sort of bad things? We don’t know these people at all, so how can we judge them? Aren’t there are all kinds of people everywhere? Not all Vietnamese are good or bad. We also have people who kill or are criminals in Vietnam. We also eat with our hands for certain dishes in Vietnam. Not all white people are polite or civil or respect women. Gay people are not immoral people. And whether people move in or get pregnant is their decision and is not an indicator of their morality. It is their life and their choice, not ours, and I am sure they have their reasons, so who are we to judge? Anyone I meet is just as complex as you, me, and another people out there. How and why are we taking an entire community, identity, gender, race, country, or ethnicity, and putting them in a few boxes and labeling them with generic statements that we can’t even prove? It did not feel right to me, because it was and is not right. For 18 years I was ignorant. I knew it was time I shattered my whole belief system and started over.

I do not blame my people in Vietnam for being entirely ignorant. We live under a system that train people to comply and agree to whatever is given to them and never question. It was in our educational system. For instance, our Vietnamese Literature curriculum (equivalent to English classes in the US) asks students to include specific, pre-determined points in their analysis essay for every books or poems in the curriculum, or we will lose points. We are rewarded for compliance, and penalized when we fail or try to break the mold. Critical thinking is not ever taught, if not discouraged. A lot of information about the world we get in Vietnam comes from Hollywood movies, which were not famously known for being inclusive or objective in representing races. Information accessible to the public is also carefully filtered, censored, and curated, and so much of it is often twisted, blocked, or presented from only the sides that were chosen to shape our views in certain ways. That lack of free access to holistic information, plus the no questioning, no critically thinking, has inevitably morphed people’s views about the world in certain, finite ways. Most of the people I grew up knowing are not inherently mean or ill-intentioned (though culturally many of them can be judgmental and nosy). They just did not have what they need to challenge their beliefs or have them challenged. I was one of them, thinking like them, not really questioning. But I have known better, and I am trying my best to refrain myself from that way of thinking (or not thinking), to be open to change my mind, and to stay non-judgmental and unbiased.

Let me tell you a relevant and embarrassing story about me. (I have a lot of embarrassing stories. Stay tuned lol!) After graduating from college, I moved to a different state for my job. My new workplace was a very culturally diverse environment, which I found very cool and at home. One day, I was eating lunch in the break room with a co-worker and very good friend of mine and saw her taking out her lunch. Background info: she is from Nepal. I asked her “Are those dumplings?” and she said, “Yes! I just made them yesterday.” And with all of my ignorance and subconscious stereotype about what an Asian person should be or do, I said, “Wow you did? I just buy them from the store. You are more Asian than I am.” My friend calmly replied, “I am Asian, too, you know.” That was when my world came crashing down inside my head, and I felt like my face just got slapped. I realized what a stupid and ignorant statement I just made. Guess when this happened? Just 2 years ago, after over 4 years of my living in the US and thinking “Hey, I’ve changed. No more stereotyping people!”. I don’t think I had this notion of what being Asian meant before I came to the U.S., but guess what my time here did to me. I was subconsciously associating being “Asian” with things that only represents East Asian people, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, etc., probably because of what was being presented to me in the TV shows and movies and the social media pages I chose to watch or follow with people looking like me doing the things I can relate to, and from interactions with my college friends, many of whom were East Asians. Guess what, me? Asia is freaking large and diverse. The Middle East is part of Asia. Countries like Kazakhstan Uzbekistan are part of Asia. Turkey is part of Asia. South Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, are part of Asia. This is a very wordy way to make my point that we are all Asians, yet we share very different cultures, appearances, religions, and languages. That break room dumpling incident helped me realize my biases are always going to be there, whether I am conscious about them or not. Yet it is good to be called out, be challenged, and have such slap-in-the-face moments through which I can wake up and realize how troublesome or biased my thoughts can be and change them for the better.

Back to my people in Vietnam, I don’t think my family and many other people are inherently racist, Islamophobic, or homophobic. They just took the things they were told as truths, as their social system desires and designs them to. Not all of them get the opportunity or the right push to leave their bubbles, go out and truly see the world, and meet and get to know people who are different from them. My brother and I, we are more fortunate in so many ways. We are lucky that our parents are both educated people who are very receptive and willing to learn from their children and change their mind, especially my Mom. We are lucky to receive our parents’ support and other upperclassman students’ guidance to acquire our tickets to go live, explore, and get an education in the world outside our country. We are lucky to get to meet people who are different from us and who have changed us in positive ways we could never imagine. We was given the privilege that enables us to learn and embrace the difference in ourselves and in others. And with great privilege comes great responsibility. Now we have the responsibility and honor to share what we have learned with our people, starting from home.

My brother, who has been studying abroad in India and Hong Kong, and I are doing our best to help change our parents’ biased views and eliminate their prejudices. She visited me in the US for the first time during the year that I lived with a roommate who is a Muslim. My roommate bought my Mom flowers to thank my Mom for cleaning our apartment (you know how Moms are haha), and my Mom appreciated her gesture so much. Now my Mom have met a kind Muslim, something that challenged her previous belief about Muslims. My brother also brought back friends who come from India and other countries (I cannot remember which lol. My brother has many friends), to our house in Vietnam, and they stayed at our place. My Mom enjoyed hosting them so much and kept saying how great kids they were. She’s met a few more nice people who are different from her and the people she sees every day. My brother and I get to see the beautifully complex and diverse world outside our little bubble in Vietnam, because our parents have worked so hard to make it happen. Little by little, we are trying to show our parents that world. Hopefully, we can all learn from each other in the process and change for the better.

A follow-up from the break room dumpling story haha. After my ignorant statement, my Nepali friend offered me one of her momos, which is what “dumplings” are called in Nepal. (Now my title makes sense, right?) It was the best “dumpling” I’ve ever had haha. I visited her recently and we made momos again (see picture below). I can now make momos on my own. 😊 Since that day, I have also been very conscious when I am about to make any general statement about Asian people and just use “Vietnamese” or “East Asian” instead. I still think about this story once in a while to remind myself that it is not fun to realize I am ignorant, but this is how I grow, through learning uncomfortably.  

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Be comfortable in my own skin color

I was born with darker skin than most people in my country and than my culture’s beauty standard. My family and neighbors called me by the nickname “Đen”’, which means “dark skin” in a negative way and also the black color in my language. They even made up a chant that included all the worst quality possible of multiple body parts. It was something like “Bald head, protruding forehead, short nose, dark skin, slanted eyes.” Is that a haiku lol? In my culture, it is believed that you should not call a baby “cute” or “adorable” no matter if the baby is cute or not, because that can jinx it. Yup, calling a baby “cute” is believed to be all it takes to turn the baby into an ugly looking monster later... Instead, it is preferred to always call babies “ugly”. So even though I had none of those characteristics but the dark skin, that chant was my life theme song for a while. At least that was the reasoning of the people I grew up with. That chant was sung to me up until I was about as young as I can remember, maybe 4 or 5 years old. After that, the chant stopped, except for the dark skin part. The dark skin matter haunted me up to high school. 

In Vietnam and most East Asian countries, people are obsessed with having fair, pale, light skin. That is THE beauty standard for Vietnamese women. Beauty salons and cosmetic spas offer a wide variety of skin whitening procedures and products. Dark skin also means ugliness. It is the last thing you want to have if you are a girl or women there. What is worse, it was deemed to be associated with lower social status. People saw my dark skin and made rash assumptions (did I see a pun?) that I was poor and not well educated, because I had to work outdoor, laborious, manual jobs as a kid to help the family. That’s the stereotype. One time I went to the dentist for a quick simple procedure. During the procedure, the dentist said my skin was so dark, I must come from Miền Tây, which is a region where many people were poor farmers back then. (Reminder, I was born and raised in a middle class family in the biggest city in Vietnam, went to the top schools, and the only work I really had to do was homework and some housework.) I felt so offended, yet couldn’t correct her because my mouth was help open by a cheek retractor.

I saw many TV ads about skin lightening lotions and cosmetic procedures. I was still a teenager, so I could only ask my Mom if she could buy me the lotions. It was a big deal, because at that time in our culture, teenage girls were usually not allowed to use any cosmetic products, like makeup, hair dye, or nail polish. So I gathered all my courage to ask her to buy me those lotions. To my surprise, my Mom agreed to buy and let me use the skin lightening products. She probably wanted the best for me. I did use them, but didn’t really see any improvement. I thought it was probably because I was an active, sporty, outdoorsy girl who was out in the tropical sun the whole time lol. So my skin was still dark, and I was teased all the time. When I was little, I was so sad. When I was a little older, I just laughed along on the outside, but came home and cried alone in the bathroom. There were days I felt so shitty and so insecure about the way I looked, wondering why I was born like this. Once I became insecure and conscious about my appearance, it spiraled and more stuff was added to the list of things I was ashamed about: my fat ass (I have a pear-shaped body), my weird jaw (I have an asymmetrical face, you know, like a normal person), my body hair (who doesn’t have that), etc. That list got expanded quickly, as my self-esteem was shrinking substantially.

I started to gain a tiny bit more confidence in high school. I saw a few women on the street rocking their tanned skin with great sense of fashion and bold choice of color, looking like they were joyfully living their lives. Even though they loook different from the many other women out there, their confidence was beaming radiantly, and so I thought I wanted to be like that one day.

But it was when I moved to the U.S. that I truly became confident about the way I look. No one in the U.S. really teased me about my dark skin any more. People even approached me and complimented on how pretty I was. That never happened! I never thought of myself as “pretty”. That was when it hit me. Back in Vietnam my tint was somewhere further towards the end of that normal distribution of skin shade spectrum. That does make me more uncommon but in no way abnormal or ugly. But when I left home and moved to the U.S., a beautifully diverse country, I got shifted to somewhere in the middle, more common area of the spectrum. My point is, the spectrum, the standard, the perception of beauty, they’re all relative and changing all the time. It’s never going to be enough if I keep on chasing these ever-changing standards. I cannot be super skinny while also have an ass. I cannot have light skin while also getting that summer hot tan look. And every body is different, so what works for you might not work for me. I can’t let a few people decide what I and all billions of women in the world should look like to get the world’s approval. What best determines my worth is how I perceive myself. I am pretty and happy when I feel pretty and happy about myself. I’m in shape. Pear’s a shape. Body hair is not abnormal. It’s there for important functions, and we’re more closely related to chimpanzee, not dolphins. 🙂 Each and every part of my body is important, functional, unique, and a part of me. I appreciate them.

My appearance has changed a lot in the past few years, not because it finally adheres to new, updated beauty standards, but because I have learned to love myself, be comfortable in my own skin, and make myself prettier and healthier for me. I look up on what type of clothing fits my body shape. I cut my hair short, because short hair fits my personality and makes me feel like me. I eat right and work out to stay healthy, not because I want to get rid of my fat thighs. I appreciate and love my dark brown skin more than ever before. I look healthy, glowing, and sun-kissed without even trying, and never get sunburn. I mean, what is there to be upset about? I care less about what people think or comment on my appearance, if it is not objective or constructive. (i.e. “Why don’t you wear more makeup?” versus “I have this lipstick color that I think will fit you great.”) I spend more time enjoying life now rather than worrying over things about me that I think people think. I also realized people don’t really pay that much attention. It was just me paying too much attention and scrutinizing my own flaws. I learn to appreciate the diversity of body shape, and strike down those stereotypes or biases that being slim means healthy or being plus-size means you cannot be sexy or healthy or strong. (There is a scientific study about how body type is not a good indicator of health.) I look perfectly fine, and I will never let anyone tell me I am ugly, or not worth it, or not going to make it, because of how I look. And because of how shitty those mean comments made me feel, I promise to never let anyone treat others the same way, to say “I love your [...]. It’s pretty.” when I find something about someone pretty, and to be mindful and every time I am about comment on someone’s appearance.

There have been hopeful, progressive, and empowering changes that took place to challenge the culture based on toxic beauty standards. Several days ago I came across a news article about a decision made by Johnson & Johnson to stop selling skin-whitening creams, as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. But it is also a great win for women in these countries, as such products had been feeding the toxic culture and the media that shames women for their look.

Recently, my Mom told me about a Vietnamese woman named H’Hen Niê. She is a Vietnamese beauty pageant who was crowned Miss Universe Vietnam 2018, and she was slaying it! She was widely recognized and loved by the Vietnamese people as she smashed every single Vietnamese beauty standards for being a minority with short hair and dark skin. Models who are plus-size, wear hijabs, have skin defects or disabilities are showing up more on American brands where I shop for my clothes. Finally, there are women on covers and who represents and advocates all girls and women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and cultures. Representation matters, because you can visualize yourself there, it’s easier to get there. This is so that more young girls and women would see “There’s someone who looks like me and she’s killing it.” Hopefully, they would feel less worthless, ashamed, and insecure about their features that society should not get to judge or label, and more inspired and empowered to love themselves and be proud of who they are. We have come a long way, and we still have a long way to go and a lot to do, but I’m optimistic that we are on our right track to building a better world for many young girls and women. 

Photos of kick-ass women: Left to right, H’hen Niê, Zozibini Tunzi (South African woman to be crowned Miss Universe 2019 who has been openly advocating and celebrating “black girl magic”), Halima Aden (first Muslim model to wear hijab in Sport Illustrated Swimsuit), Thando Hopa (firsl albino model to be on Vogue cover), Winnie Harlow (internationally recognized supermodel with vitiligo), Ashley Graham (plus-size model, covergirl, and TV presenter who hosts a section on the Ellen DeGeneres’s site, theellentube.com) 

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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

Maya Angelou, badass woman

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Where are you from?

“Where are you from?” This is a question we all get asked almost whenever we meet someone for the first time. (We are not talking about the question “Where are you really from?”, that’s an entirely different post. Let’s save it for another day haha.) For some of us, the answer is very straightforward. That used to be the case for me when I first came to the US. Yet with time and life experience, my experience has became longer and more complicated. 

I was born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam up to 18 years old. Back then I did not really have to answer this question much unless I traveled elsewhere. When I first moved to Texas for college, my answer was simple and easy: “I’m from Vietnam.” (But whenever I traveled outside Texas, and someone ask me that question, I’d say “I’m from Texas.”) After I graduated, I moved to Florida, and then to Ohio, for my different jobs, and this is when it got harder to answer that question.

One of my current co-workers, who is originally from Korea and who also moved to the States, specifically Iowa, for grad school, told me that foreign people in the US like us would consider the first place or state where we lived as our US hometown. So it’d be Iowa for her, and Texas for me. I did not feel 100% like that spoke for me at the time I heard it. I never felt like Texas was home when I was there. I surely have made a lot of life-long friendship with people I met in Texas, but was it my “hometown”? I was not sure. I did notice later on that once I moved away from Texas to Florida and later to Ohio, my answer became longer and more complicated: “I’m from Vietnam. But I moved to Texas [insert number] years for college.” Sometimes I’d also throw in the part of “I also worked in Florida for a few months before moving to Ohio (where I currently live).” I’m not sure why I felt obligated to add the all the different places there. I asked myself why. I can imagine that it’d feel weird if I say “I’m from Texas.” But it’d also feel weird if I just say “I’m from Vietnam.” Neither of the part is enough to speak about me. Perhaps that’s why. For the past 7 years since I moved out of Vietnam, I have grown so much and changed into a new 2.0 version of me. Yet I also treasure and keep parts of the former version of me and my origin from Vietnam. 

What is the definition of “home”?

If home is where my family is, then it is Saigon, Vietnam where my parents live. But the last time I flew back to Saigon, I could barely recognize my city, my street, and my townhouse where I grew up. I remember stepping out of my taxi from the airport and instantly asking my Mom, “Where are we?” I was right in front of my childhood house, but everything had changed. There were new stores, new houses, and new neighbors I had never seen. My parents turned our street-facing living room into a rental space for a fashion store. Everything looked different. Over my few weeks home, I was somewhat struggling to adjust to my temporary life in my own “home”. Almost all of my friends from middle school and high school were also in some other foreign countries pursuing their dreams, so I had almost no one to hang out or catch up. Every day, I woke up and realized my usual routine of going to school or to work was temporarily not an option. I often found myself running out of things to talk about with my few friends and family, because we hadn’t been sharing much common experience in the past years. Things felt unfamiliar. Yes, Vietnam is home, yet somehow I did not feel completely “at home”. I felt more like a visitor visiting or stopping by her favorite, familiar town on a short vacation before she returns to her usual life.

So is home in the US, where I now spend most of my time and where I live my usual and familiar life? Is home the country where I am listed as an “alien resident” on my federal paperwork to remind me that I am only an alien that is allowed to reside here in the US only under certain conditions? Is my hometown Texas, like how my co-worker defines? I love many of the people I got to meet in Texas, but can it be “home” if I find it very hard to say “I love Texas” and was so eager to leave it after graduation? Is home Columbus, Ohio, where I currently live and feel more like home than I was in Texas? But home can also be where I have a place to go back after a loooong day to my cat, cook a meal, and sleep on a bed I call my own. Home can also be the few very close friends from college who live in another state and whom I visit once in a while. I’d crash with them for free, feel at home enough to go over their fridge and eat any of their food lol, and spend time with them doing anything. All of those also make me feel like home. 

I’ve had many moments in my life that remind me of how I am now this hybrid product of my experience of moving from place to place. It did not allow me to belong in either of the countries I had lived or identified myself with. When I was walking through a touristy neighborhood in Vietnam, a few vendors said hi and advertised their products to me in English, because they thought I was not a Vietnamese. I’ve never stepped into a McDonald’s either in Vietnam or the US and got a lot of fun, mixed reactions from both my American and Vietnamese friends. (Because if there is one thing that different cultures or countries can agree on, it’s that McDonald’s is the most American thing ever.) I sometimes subconsciously behave and say things that in my mind is normal for me because they are normal in my Vietnamese culture, but are considered weird, abnormal, or embarrassing in the US, and vice versa. I was called Americanized (which is implicitly equivalent to “not Vietnamese”) by my friend in Vietnam for saying things that oppose what I consider obsolete rituals or values or the bad norms (i.e. greeting people by calling out how they have gained weight or lose weight, telling girls to focus on starting a family before it’s too late, whatever the eff that means, telling boys to only marry girls that are good at housekeeping). I was also called Americanized by my Vietnamese friend living in the US for watching many American TV shows or caring about American politics (Yes I started caring a lot since something bizarre happened in 2016...) And yet, I also find myself not Americanized enough to understand all of the jokes or references on American famous people during every day conversations, to be a hardcore football fan, to feel free and not scared to express myself and say whatever I want, or to find an apple pie super delicious (because nothing is as American as apple pie... and McDonald’s). For a while I couldn’t find my sense of belonging. I kept asking myself between these two worlds, where did I belong?

My most favorite thing in the US is that it is the land of immigrants! People from different corners of the world decide to leave their country to move here and start their life over because of different reasons (i.e. escape poverty, war, discrimination, oppression, financial hardship, political issues, to have a better education or a better life, to pursue their dreams, to make sure their kids have a brighter future, you name it). They bring with them their cultures, their identities, and their life stories, and raise and walk their children through this beautiful clashing and merging of cultures. Over my time here, I have been so fortunate to get to meet different people, hear about their stories and their enriched life experience, and learn from them. Also, can’t forget to mention immigrant food! Over my time here in the US, I’ve got to try cuisines from so many countries right here in the US without having to travel. I could not experience this cultural richness and diversity anywhere else in the world that I have been to. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it such a unique thing about the US? If yes, doesn’t that make immigrants the most American thing?

I sometimes feel related and connected to these immigrants from countries I haven’t been to even more than to many people “from” Vietnam and “from” the US. My heart lit up when I heard my Indian colleague calls his wife and children every day very early in the morning because it’s before bedtime in India. Or when my Mexican professor talked about the burden of renewing a US visa lol. Or when my Nepali friend talked about how we both got a Camry as our first car, because it is “the immigrant car” (-Hasan Minhaj). Or when my Vietnamese friends brought me food when I was really sick, because we understood we all did not have our family around to take care of us. Or when I posted on IG about having dosa for the first time, and my American-born Indian friend sent me a message saying how she had it all the time growing up with her parents. Or when I took a stroll in downtown Columbus in the evening of July 4th and saw only a few people, all of who were likely immigrants based on the languages they used or their clothing, because we all had nothing better to do on this day off lol (I came across one group of White people that I thought were Americans, but then they spoke some language that sounded like Russian). I went out that day thinking “It’s July 4th. It does not feel very special to me. Just gonna take a walk and kill time.” and went back to my apartment feeling like I met people I’ve known for long. I can go on and on about these little moments. These are the time I feel very much “at home”, understood, and welcomed, and find a sense of belonging, no matter where I was geographically. Home does not have to be a physical place. Home can also be a feeling.

Photo: A few “immigrant food” I had the opportunity to try.

For a while I felt like I lost my sense of belonging. I now think I am extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to live in two very different countries: Vietnam up to the age of 18, and the United States for the past 7 years of my adulthood. This experience has put me at a perfect vantage point where I get to uncover, understand, embrace, and work on both the good and the bad of both worlds. Most importantly, I get to choose what I want to keep or refute from each world as my identity. Neither world is perfect. Neither world is horrible. I love both countries. Both are changing and progressing even, partly because people who found themselves shifting between worlds like me. Both worlds hold some pieces of home for me. 

Knowing who I am and how much I want to experience and see the world and what choices (and restrictions) I have as a US immigrant, a Vietnamese passport holder, and a global citizen, I know I will keep on moving to new places and starting new journeys elsewhere in my life. Taiye Selasi captured this perfectly in her words, “Where I'm from comes wherever I go.” (Also listen to her TED Talk if you have time 😊.) I’ll continue adding wherever I’m going next to my list and make my answer to “Where are you from?” even longer and more complicated. So what? Let it grow longer and more complicated, because that means I am growing, too. 

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Untold stories

I have been through quite some difficult, sad, and painful moments in my life. I never told anyone, including my close friends and family, about most of them, because I did not want to be victimized and pitied. I wanted to be a strong and independent person in the eyes of my friends and family. I went through those moments and all the accompanied emotions by myself, then hid them in a secret compartment, and suppressed them any instant at which they were about to surface when there were people around, even the ones that care about me and that I trust. For so long up until a few months ago I thought that was what being strong was about. Of course, I was wrong.

Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” By trying to hide my sad stories to avoid being victimized and pitied, I was victimizing and pitying myself, because I looked at my sad stories as things so hurtful, shameful, and tragic that they should not be shared and become a burden of anyone else. I thought I was doing everyone a favor by not telling them my stories and making them feel uncomfortable. The truth is I was the one uncomfortable with my own feelings about my stories. I was scared to be seen as vulnerable. And so for a long time I tried to escape, suppress, and hide them. Now I realize how everyone may feel about my stories depends greatly on how I tell them. If I think I am worth feeling pity and sorry for in this story, my narrative will reflect that and call for such response. If I have processed my feelings about my story, learned to take control of them (i.e. take it more lightly, let bad feelings go, focus on the positive, even funny, sides of it) and truly moved on, my storytelling will also reflect that and induce similar response of positiveness, laughter, and hope in the listeners. I have the power to retell and shape the “vibe” of my past stories and influence how my listeners, or better yet, I, feel about them.

For a long time, I’ve truly believed every experience, good or bad, pushes me to grow into the person I am today and embrace them. There is always a silver lining somewhere, and this mentality has helped me get through all the toughest moments in my life and turned me into a calm, level-headed, optimistic, and positive person. No matter what happens, I know everything will be fine, because if I was strong enough to overcome so many past obstacles, I can definitely overcome any other one coming my way. This has been my mentality in living life for a while, yet how come it was so hard for me to tell my sad stories? How come it took me so long to really open myself up and let others and myself tap into these unpleasant parts of my past? I suppose I was strong, but was not strong enough. I takes a lot of strength to face life, but even more strength to face myself. After all it’s easier to lie to others than to yourself. So now I am learning to tell my untold stories better and more bravely. I choose to once again go through and face those difficult times and my feelings and to decide what type of narratives I want to tell to other people. This is partly why I want to write this blog, to figure out how to narrate my untold stories. I am optimistic that I will be able to tell them in a way that will leave me at a better place than before. I am doing this mainly for me, but hopefully also for someone out there who might connect to some parts of my stories and move on the a better place themselves.  

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I don’t know 😬

I was very good at doing well at school as a kid. Growing up in Vietnam up until the end of high school, I was that smart kid that a lot parents compare their kids to. (Although to be fair, I was being compared to other people’s kids by my own Vietnamese Mom sometimes. It was never enough lol.) I got all the good scores and passed all the toughest entrance exams to get into the most-prestigious public schools/program from elementary school to middle school to high school. I did so well that the things I cried about were a lot of times a not so good (not even bad) grade on a test. I did so well that I felt like I was so smart and I knew a lot. I was never an arrogant kid and I never thought I know it all though. But I did think I did so well, until I left my home and my own country and stepped out into the world. I realized I knew very little, and all the good grade and best school accolades almost mean nothing outside my little bubble, my safety zone, my home country. I realized the world is much bigger, more complex, controversial, and diverse than I had ever know, and it takes a lot more than being a booksmart to truly understand and navigate this world.

Because I has always been “the smart one” or “the intellectual one”, I had a reputation to keep. For a long time, it was pretty hard for me to admit “I don’t know” when I didn’t know about something, because I did not want to be deemed dumb or ignorant. Thus, it took me a while to truly accept outwardly and within myself that I will always be ignorant about something, no matter how much I know, because the world is a complicated, controversial, and ever-changing place, and we will always have to constantly adapt to and evolve with it. “Ignorant” is a heavy word. Ignorance does not feel like a bliss to me. It feels very uneasy and uncomfortable to be subtly or directly called out for being ignorant. But I have learned it is that uneasiness and discomfort that shift me even just a centimeter (Guess what? I’m a metric girl!) further from being ignorant and closer to being educated.

Despite the seeming association between appearing that you know a lot and being externally confident (You know the saying: Fake it till you can... Google it later), ironically, I have realized it takes a lot of more internal confidence to say “I don’t know” rather than faking like you know it. It was tempting to say “I know” just so I can appear as someone who knows a whole lot, but I realized it was when I chose to say “I don’t know” that actually helped me shut up, truly listen, learn, and actually become someone who knows a lot more. Even when I have already heard about a subject or know only a thing or two about it, if I say “I know about it”, the other person would most likely believe it and move on most of the time. But when I say “I don’t know”, the other person feels invited (or maybe obligated) to share more. I would also actually pay attention to what the other person has to say (instead of getting lost in my thoughts, wondering what the hell they are talking about) and gain a few more pieces of info about that subject than before. 

Like anyone else, I am inclined and eager to impress the people that I interact with, either it is a date, a job interviewer, our even friends and family members, or even strangers sometimes. So it is not always easy to instantly speak those three words “I don’t know” when... I don’t really know. Yet I have learned to realized it is rewarding to take that seemingly self-deprecating, uneasy choice and say “I don’t know. Tell me more.” It enhances learning, tears down misconceptions sometimes lol, and prolongs and deepens conversations. I tell myself the longer and deeper the conversation gets, the more chance my moment will come for me to prove my intellect and expertise in things I am truly knowledgeable about. That’s my chance to shine lol.

Yet again, it is not always easy for me to admit I don’t know something. So here are a few of my cliche and pretentious solutions the help ease me into admitting  “I don’t know” more confidently and hopefully learn better:

1. I must do my own work to educate myself and learn more about the world and the things I find interesting or important to know. The more I know, the less I say idk. (Learning is also proven to help prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. I mean that sounds like a win-win to me.)

2. I must acknowledge that I will know more about one thing but less about another thing than any people I meet. (You can get a win-win sometimes (see #1) but you cannot win all the time.)

3. Be open to talk and listen to different people, especially those who disagree with me and challenge my view. Everyone can teach me something.

4. When someone asks “Do you know... blah blah blah?”, if I feel like it is a borderline yes or no, just fudging say “No, I don’t know”, and keep on learning!

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Hello there 😊

Just a few words before we start.

Who am I? I’m a very very smiley, tanned, petite woman with short hair in her mid-20s. I was born and raised in a large city in Asia and moved to the U.S. at 18 for college. I’m a mixed bag of everything: confident and awkward, cautious and clumsy, girly and boyish, real cute and sweet but also real dark, organized and messy, and an introvert who loves meeting people. I’m always trying to learn about myself and the world.

Why I am here? I value personal growth and strive to be a better version of myself every day. I have changed and grown a lot in the past years since I moved away from home to the US. I needed somewhere to jot down things that has happened in my life, so I have a record of my growth for the better. Writing also helps me organize my thoughts and synthesize my views. I don’t live in the past or hold on to regrets, but I do relive the past once in a while, because I believe I can learn from it. Every good decision or mistake and every wonderful or unfortunate incident that happened help me become who I am today. (Yes, very cliche! It’s obvious from the blog name. You signed up for it so here we are. :P)

Any disclaimers? Please understand I’m not here to speak for everyone. I’m only speaking for me from my experience. Also, I am currently pretty busy with other things my life, so I cannot spend too much time writing here. All that you’ll see is just very crude, raw writing, but I will do my best to give enough contexts and organize everything and make it easy to read.

Why Tumblr? No one carries paper and pen around nowadays, and I want to be able to write whenever I can. So I figured I’d should put it on the Internet. My purpose in life is to be a better person. 😬 And I was told that means I should learn to be honest to myself, and be open to get feedback, disagreement, and criticism. So I���m going to publish my stuff here to hopefully get any feedback and learn from y’all. But I’m a private person, so I don’t plan to share this with anyone I know yet. Plus, I’m afraid I’d become to conscious and lose my authenticity in what I write if someone I know reads this. And I haven’t figured it out how to advertise this to people I don’t know yet. I guess it’s not a very well-thought plan for now lol. But in the meantime while I am figuring this out, if you happen to follow what I write, feel free to share with me what you think, agree or disagree with me, and challenge my views, as long as it’s constructive. I’m all ears. :)

What are things I want to work on here? To create a chance for myself to reflect on and retell my life stories. Hopefully I can learn something from them. 😌 To live the funnier sides of life and laugh a little more, because 2020 has been a joke. Gotta keep up with it, you know. Also, I love puns and want to get better at puns. Just an amateur here, and English is not my first language, so there’s a lot of room for improvement. 😂 I'll try to throw in some silly puns here and there (for practice and self embarrassment lol) if I remember to lol.

Tumblr blog is not easy to navigate, so I’ve created a List of Contents below. Hope that helps. 😊

(I’m working on it haha)