#maybe it’s because i spent most of my childhood as an immigrant speaking a foreign language

[psqqa]

the person behind me is having a whispered conversation with someone and their desk and my brain keeps trying to go down the path “oh no it’s because they’re talking about how much they hate me!” and i keep having to drag it back to the extremely obvious and fully rational “oh they’re trying not to disrupt anyone’s work, super appreciate them for that”.

like human brains are for real the dumbest, most terrified little animals in existence. calm the fuck down my dude our colleagues aren’t going to kick us out of the cave to fend for ourselves against the cold and sabre-tooth tigers.

[barsoleils]

✧ ; 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 / monstadt volume.

last updated on march 29th, 2021.

warning - spoilers for the prologue, the monstadtians’ story quests and their respective pasts.

desc. - below is a list of my personal headcanons for the city of monstadt and its people, made mainly for my own personal reference as my big brain has long since run out of space and i didn’t want to accidentally forget them like a clown. c:

please feel free to use these headcanons for any of your creative works, the only thing that i ask for in return is for you to let me check out what you’ve made if ever you were comfortable with doing so. no pressure!

temp. note - found this in my drafts! i figured i should probably publish this so it can serve as a starting point for this blog’s writing section. but please keep in mind that i’m still thinking about polishing these a bit more at a later date!

TRADITIONS

as a nation widely known to accept foreigners and immigrants with open arms, seeing orphaned children abandoned near their walls isn’t an uncommon sight in monstadt. the people of the church of favonius are the ones who stepped up to the task of caring for and assigning the the children with individual given names if they still didn’t have one.

when it comes to the matter of naming the children, the church’s sisters typically huddle together to think and decide. but as they are not their real family, the names that the church give these children would merely serve as placeholders until the children themselves have grown old enough to decide whether they would like to keep it or change it.

as time passes, the orphaned children the church had taken in would eventually get adopted and receive the name of their chosen family, but on the off chance that one doesn’t get adopted, they will have three choices. if they’ve decided to accept monstadt as their true home, they can choose to be blessed and receive the surname “monstadt”. if they don’t fancy the first idea, then they can choose to travel to other nations in search of their real family/other families that they could possibly get adopted into. but if neither of the former ideas are to their liking, they can simply choose to remain without a surname at all.

the orphans would live and help out around the church once they are taken in but would not at all be forced to join the nation’s religion.

WIND SPIRITS

elemental beings found in the northern lands of teyvat and whom serve directly under the anemo archon.

a new wind spirit is born alongside every infant, and their sole duty is to listen and relay the prayers of their assigned child to the god of anemo their entire lifetime. but even though such a task is regarded as their lifetime duty, they are generally not obligated to obey their fate.

a spirit’s lifespan is directly tied to their child’s, so when the child passes away, so do they.

wind spirits have only two forms: a gust of wind, or a small sprite similar in appearance to barbatos before he had taken on the form of his late friend.

these little guys appear invisible to most people, with the     exception of those who possess traces of anemo energy in their soul. these exceptions are usually the reincarnations of wind spirits or anemo vision wielders.

anemo-based magic have no effect on them whatsoever, which is why they were and still are fully-able to pass through the storm barrier surrounding old monstadt at any time. small items would also become immune to such so long as they fully drape themselves over it, not allowing even an inch of the object to come into contact with the magic.

they are generally rather vulnerable to negative thoughts and emotions, and if a single wind spirit were to be exposed to too much of  them whether from their own mind or others--they always end up taking on the form of a small whirlwind and would stay as such until they manage to calm down. a hoard of these spirits, however, would cause a much larger whirlwind. they are one of the three main causes of such natural phenomena in northern teyvat.

the two other causes of whirlwinds are: (1) the anemo archon’s uncontrolled anger, which forms a massive dust devil, and (2) natural disturbances.

VENTI

about his past...

venti used to be a wind spirit; but contrary to what you might have  thought, he didn’t play hooky as often as you’d expected him to in the past. in fact, he spent most of his time tending to his human; leaving them little gifts and notes every now and then. Indeed, he was that fond of them.

one fateful day, venti found one that was able to see his kind; a boy with a lyre who lived on the next street over. and so, from that day onwards, he started spending time with the boy during the times his human was out like a light.

when the boy one day asked for his cooperation in freeing monstadt, it didn’t take much to convince him. after all, his beloved human too sought to see the world beyond the storm barrier.

once he became the next ruling archon in monstadt, it was then his turn to be served by the wind spirits; but not wanting to impede on their freedom of choice, he immediately made sure to let it be known that they weren’t obligated to serve him. In the end, they all decided to stay---for their childrens’ sake, and for he who fought for their freedom.

more about him.

venti likes collecting little pieces of trivia and has learned to fluently speak all existing languages in teyvat---yes, even hilichurlian---all for the sake of richer song compositions.

like klee, also buries his treasures (read: stolen wine) outside of monstadt because he doesn’t really have a permanent home; but he only really does so near venessa’s tree in windrise.

now you may be wondering, where does he sleep? anywhere really. so long as the place doesn’t have any cats hanging around the vicinity, he’ll kick up his feet and relax, maybe even with his lyre or a bottle of wine in his grasp.

AMBER

more about her.

the original baron bunny toy was a gift she’d received from her      grandfather early into her childhood. she began making explosive variants of the toy only after seeing klee tinker with and cause the explosion of the baron bunny rip-off she had made during her free time in an attempt to improve her sewing skills.

in line with her job as an outrider, amber has a keen sense of danger.

OTHERS

in progress. please return at a later date!

[chasingcrusaders]

Racist talk does add up – why casual racism by Hong Kongers against Mainland Chinese makes me so angry

If you’ve not lived amongst Cantonese-speaking Hong Kongers or interacted with them a lot, then this is something that you’ve probably not noticed. I spent ten months in Hong Kong in 2014 and, by the end of it, I’d had enough. Not just because of the climate or the food (none of which really suited me) but also because of the pervading racism that ran through society, from the courthouse to the family.

Even though I’ve moved back to New Zealand (a place not without racism, but I can genuinely say that the majority of us are working on making it a more welcoming place for everyone), I still keep in touch with my family in Hong Kong over Facebook, and one thing that I’ve noticed is the amount of anti Mainland Chinese rhetoric.

I’m not culturally Chinese in any form. I don’t identify with it, I don’t agree with the values; I’m probably the whitest Banana I know (aside from my brother). But it makes me really angry when I see my extended family members posting articles with headlines like, ‘Seven out of ten hospital beds are occupied by new immigrants. “Are we sacrificing the lives of local Hong Kongers for foreigners?” ~ Nurse’, ‘Majority of hospital inpatients are new immigrants while local Hong Kong birth rate has dropped’, or saying things like “Yay, no more Mandarin on the street! Give me back my true Hong Kong!” or “This place is so peaceful. No noise, no loud people speaking Mandarin!” (In this instance, I asked, “Would it not be noise if the loud people had been speaking Cantonese?” To which I received the reply. “Cantonese is different. If it were Cantonese, it would be lively and bustling, like the Lunar New Year Market.”)

What really concerns me is that some of the people posting these things are raising young kids. Racist comments do damage, not just to the psyche of those targeted, but it may also build up the hate in other people.

We recently had a terrorist attack in Christchurch where fifty innocent people died just because they spoke, dressed, looked, ate, and behaved a little differently from the majority here. Dozens more are recovering from injuries, including a five year old girl who can’t remember her parents because of the injuries she suffered. These people, however, have long been the targets of racist rhetoric not dissimilar to what Hong Kongers and Hong Kong media are saying about Mainland Chinese immigrants to the island. The terrorist also was afraid that his race would get ‘replaced’ by newcomers (it’s called ‘Replacement Theory’, something popular with the Alt Right) because Caucasian birth rates were lower than the birth rates of other people and immigration was increasing. Replace ‘Caucasian’ with ‘Hong Konger’ and ‘other races’ with ‘Mainlanders’ and you get headlines that are being published on established media sites in Hong Kong.

To put it into perspective, Hong Kong’s net immigration rate was 0.17% in total in 2017. The majority, but not all, were Mainland Chinese. In the USA, it was 0.39% and in New Zealand, it was 0.22%. (CIA Factbook). About 1.9% of people in Hong Kong speak Mandarin as their main language, and 88% speak Cantonese. In fact, more people speak English in Hong Kong (4.3%) than Mandarin. Some people argue that places like New Zealand and the US have room for migration, to which I will reply that even if you take away the net migration rate of 0.17% from Hong Kong, the ‘local born’ population is already unsustainable and you will still end up with the same population crisis, possibly just delayed.

When the terrorist attack happened, I got messages from family and friends in Hong Kong saying, “Are you okay?” and “God bless your family.” And I really wanted to say, at the time, “Yes, we’re fine, but only because this time the terrorist chose to target a minority that weren’t my type of minority. Next time, who knows?” Because, for our part, it really was luck that the terrorist decided he hated Muslims, and not Asians, or some other visible minority in our society. It’s because no one has been spouting racist rhetoric about people who look like me on mainstream media for quite some time. It was only a century ago that Chinese, both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers, but mostly Cantonese because they were the ones who moved away in droves in the earlier part of the 20th century, were persecuted in other countries because of the rhetoric being thrown around, some of which was about how they would, yes, “replace” the dominant racial group. In the western world, this talk centres around Muslims. In Hong Kong, it’s Mainlanders.

Maybe the people who say these things won’t think of actually hurting anyone, but what about the listeners who hear these things and internalise them? I’m angry at this talk because there might be someone who will take these things to heart, let them fester, and it could bloom into violence against innocent people. And what’s more hypocritical is that, for most Hong Kongers, their parents or grandparents were immigrants from Mainland China too.

So what if they speak Mandarin? Everyone has the right to speak the language they choose. So what if they dress differently from you? They’re not forcing you to dress like them. So what if they were born somewhere else? They didn’t have a choice about that. And maybe they behave in a way that you think of as rude. Different people have different etiquette and etiquette has changed immensely in every culture. I have my biases on certain behaviours. I’m not claiming to be perfect, but I will defend anyone’s right to behave as they wish so long as they’re not hurting anybody. Speaking Mandarin or dressing unstylishly does not hurt other people and, frankly, it’s nobody else’s business.

And if they’re buying up all the baby formula and nappies? They’re parents who want the best for their kids and they can’t help that they live in Mainland China where a few unscrupulous individuals have ruined things for everyone. If you were in their situation, wouldn’t you do the same for your kids?

As an immigrant, I can put myself in those Mainlanders’ shoes. How would I feel if Kiwis called my mother tongue ‘noise’, treated me as ‘other’, and derided everything about me? What if they blamed me for the actions of my birth country’s government, which I don’t agree with and can do nothing about? I doubt I would have wanted to learn about them or be like them. But they haven’t. Almost everyone I have met has been open and curious about my birth culture, and far more accepting of its oddities than I am. But I have experienced some racism in my childhood. A woman called me a ‘gook’ at a McDonald’s playground and it was unpleasant. It made me feel angry, hostile, and very aware of my differences, and triggered my fight or flight instincts. (Just a note, that woman’s kid was a little sh** too. Parental attitudes are infectious to their children.)

So the next time you want to say something or post something divisive based on race, please think about who’s listening to you and how your words could snowball into something else much uglier.

[thediurnalowl]

In my recent post entitled 3 Days in Taiwan, I talked about my experience in preparing for my whole trip. It involved a lot of firsts and a few mistaken turns, but in the end, it resulted to an enjoyable (slightly tiring) and fulfilling trip! Here’s what happened:

Just a few days before our trip, my friend and I were both so excited. We were then going over the list of things we’d like to do when something unfortunate happened. It turned out, my friend couldn’t go to the trip after all because of a family matter. I had mixed emotions but mostly, I just felt sorry for my friend. Then, I realized, there’s only the two of us who were supposed to go to this trip. Does this mean I’m going to Taiwan alone? 

I tried asking my other friends but since my flight was in a few days and the third day of the trip was on a Monday, it became hard for them to file a leave, plus the plane tickets were a lot more expensive then. I told my brother what happened, and since he didn’t want me to go alone, he booked a ticket for himself! Some may feel bad for me because it seems like my family doesn’t give me much freedom, but really it worked well with me being on a budget because my brother paid for a lot of stuff in our travel. So there! Ha!

Day 1

At Ninoy Aquino International Airport just before we board our flight

When we arrived at Taoyuan International Airport

My brother and I arrived at Taoyuan International Airport at past midnight. Before our departure, I already coordinated with Yumi (our Airbnb host) and asked her how to get to her apartment. We took the bus since the MRT closes at 11:00 PM. After passing through immigration, we proceeded to the bus ticketing counters at the ground floor. We took the Bus 1819, alighted at the first stop and took a taxi.

We didn’t buy mobile sim cards at the airport but it wasn’t hard communicating with our Airbnb host because our bus has a wifi. All of the buses in Taiwan have a wifi! But if you’d like to purchase mobile sim cards, you ay refer to this link for your guide: Cell Phones and SIM Cards

Here’s the tricky part. When we were looking for a taxi, it was hard communicating with the taxi drivers since they barely speak English. I had Yumi’s address with me written in both English and Chinese, but I only saved it on my phone. Our driver had a difficulty reading it. But, it all worked out in the end and we arrived at Yumi’s apartment safe.

Although, if you’re travelling in Taiwan for the first time and you can’t speak in Chinese, I would suggest for you to have a printout of the important addresses that you need.

When we arrived at the apartment, Yumi showed us to our room and gave us the key. After getting settled, my kuya (older brother) and I went out to see the nearby stores. I have this thing when travelling to a foreign country, I always have to go to a 7-Eleven. Is that weird? I don’t know, I just really enjoy seeing a lot cool stuff in 7-Eleven stores, and they are always different from one country to another. Unfortunately, there were no 7-Eleven stores nearby. But, we discovered this famous convenience store in Taiwan called Hi-Life. They were basically everywhere, so I’m assuming that they are more famous than 7-Eleven. We went inside the Hi-Life store, bought some past midnight snacks, and saw a lot of cool stuff — including these cool soda cans:

Then, we went back to our apartment, ate a little something, and had a good rest.

  Day 2

The following morning, I was so excited because our first activity was to go to National Taiwan University. You might be wondering why I was so excited about a university. Well, this was one of the two universities used in the iconic Taiwanese drama series called Meteor Garden. It was aired in the Philippines in 2001 and was loved by a lot of Filipinos — one fan right here!

As a matter of fact, while we were walking towards the facade, I played the Meteor Garden soundtrack on my phone. I forgot to bring my earphones, so yeah, I played it on speaker! I wasn’t even ashamed of it! Though, I turned the volume down when we were about to cross paths with some of the students. Oops!

National Taiwan University (Ying De University)

With the facade of my dear Ying De

We went there on a Sunday; still, the university was open and visitors are welcome to come in.

More than just a venue for a Taiwanese Drama, National Taiwan University is, in fact, the most prestigious university in Taiwan and one of the top universities in the world.

When we were there, I just loved how so clean and beautiful everything was. I was actually considering this school to be one of my choices for post-graduate studies.

National Taiwan University up close

Here are some more pictures:

I was meaning to find the lockers that was also used in one of the scenes in Meteor Garden. However, some of the sections inside the university were exclusive to students. Or so we thought. Maybe we were just too shy to ask. But still, I was just so happy I was able to visit this place. I felt like somehow I relived my childhood fantasy of going to the same school as the F4 and Shan Cai. Oh, how my inner kid was really so happy!

After our photoshoot around NTU, we took the train and went to Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.

Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

Chiang Kai-Shek Exhibition Hall

Visitors are allowed to go inside the exhibition hall, although, my kuya and I weren’t able to go inside. We got caught up with so much going on around the park. When we finally decided to go inside, it was already past 5 o’clock; and apparently, the exhibition hall is only open till 5.

Martial Arts practice

Entrance Gate of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

  In front of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

After our sightseeing and picture taking sessions, we were starving so we went to the nearest restaurant/cafe.

The servers here at the Theater Cafe were very nice. We’ve spent around NTD 1,000 for our food. It’s a bit pricey, perhaps, because it’s located at the Chang Kai-Shek park. We could’ve looked for someplace else, but we were so hungry already. Not bad, though, the food here was actually good!

    At the subway

After we ate, we went back to our apartment. We took the MRT again, as it is very convenient to use when going around Taipei.

Travelling by train is my favorite mode of transportation. I’m always fascinated about the subway system of the countries I visit. I love Taiwan subway in particular because it’s not too complicated. In this picture (to the left), I was looking at the subway map; and by this time I felt like I know all the lines by heart.

If you are planning on travelling to Taiwan alone, hold on to your maps and take a minute to study the subway system. Believe me, it will take you to places (literally).

Shilin Night Market

We reenergized and washed up in our apartment, then we went to Shilin Night Market. Taiwan has a lot of night markets. Read more: Top 10 Taiwan Night Markets

We went to Shilin because it’s one of the most famous ones and it’s near to where we were staying.

When we arrived, I was surprised because it looked different from the night markets I’ve visited before. Usually, in night markets, I see different stores/stalls aligned in one street. Shilin has three main streets that stems out from one point.

This one’s a bad picture, but this is all I have: (I’m not sure if you can actually the point where the three streets stemmed out)

Here are some of the stalls. There are also a lot of apparel stores, souvenir shops, and bubble teas!

    One of the things that I really wanted to try was the night market’s Takoyaki! I know, it’s not actually a food that originated in Taiwan, as it is a Japanese food, but I heard that the Takoyaki here are very cheap. And they really were! I bought this for NTD 25.

            We also tried this bread that tasted like honey-glazed donut. We bought five pieces for NTD 10.

            The night market is a good place to buy souvenirs. We bought a lot of pasalubongs (souvenirs) here. Then, we went back to our apartment for a good night’s sleep.

That’s it guys for our first two days in Taiwan! We still had a lot of adventures on the third day so wait for it. I’ll be uploading it soon. Thank you for dropping by!

Check out my new blog post! In my recent post entitled 3 Days in Taiwan, I talked about my experience in preparing for my whole trip.