Category Archives: random

That time when my mother couldn’t speak

There is a hole in me from missing my mother and it goes that every stream of my consciousness diverts in that direction.

Everything reminds me of her. 

My mom passed away from an auto-immune disease that was, in the end, not fully diagnosed. She died from suffocation as we watched and waited helplessly.

When I went home and stayed in the hospital with her last January, she was still able to remove the oxygen mask a few seconds at a time to speak. By March however the decision was between eating and speaking as she refused the feeding tube. 

I still wonder every single day what went through her mind as she laid there those few months, fully conscious as her body attacked her lungs. What was she trying to say as my brother and I rushed to her bedside after they allowed us in the ICU? What was in her silent scream and stare as she struggled to get up with her wrists and legs bound and an intubation tube strapped to her head? 

When she was still able to talk, she’d made us promise that she would not be intubated. I’d never seen my mother so angry before. I’d never seen her angry. 

A few days before the doctors moved her into ICU, I laid my head down on the bed by her side. She smoothed my hair and felt the tremble from my soundless cry. She gestured to the oxygen mask for me to remove it. 

“It’s ok. I’ve led a happy life.”

I would give up anything to remember that as the last thing she said to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Tell one’s stories

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This has been the question on my mind since I watched The Founder last night.

Starring Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman (aka Ron on Parks and Recreation, one of the best characters in TV history) and John Carroll Lynch, the movie is based on the true story of how the McDonald’s business empire came to be. Ray Kroc an embattled salesman with a series of failed ventures under his belt maneuvered himself into the McDonald brothers’ burger business and took their speedy food concept to build a massive global enterprise. In developing the origin story for McDonald’s, for Kroc understood the essential connection between myth building and empire building, he erased the (his)stories of the McDonald brothers.

It’s as if he’d built a time machines and changed the past. Kroc alone was the founder.

This erasure and how easy it seemed was disconcerting if not downright terrifying. What does this mean to the ordinary people like us who’ve led ordinary lives? This is why we tell each other’s stories. Storytelling is remembering is history making is bearing witness to lives lived. 

 

 

New Year’s Resolution part deux

I admire those who are quietly assertive and wish to learn their Jedi mind tricks. Luckily I have the following quote from Madeleine Albright and all I have to do is to apply it.

So I made up this term, active listening — you listen differently if you think you’re going to interrupt.

The trouble is I worry whether I’ve been overcompensating and become a rude interrupter. I grade myself on whether I’d been aggressive enough or too aggressive at the end of the day and I regret either way.

2017 is going to be the year of no regret.* It’s the year to be bold, to be undeservedly confident, to interrupt without fear, to rid oneself of the plight of feeling self-conscious, to grab life by the, ugh, whatever handy.

 

* I immediately regretted calling 2017 the year of no regret. tbh we all know it’s going to be the Year of Regrets on so many levels.

Make it up on volume with the island of misfit toys

New Year’s Resolution: Make it up on volume

Make it up on volume with the island of misfit toys

Happy New Year! We couldn’t wait for 2016 to end even though 2017, let’s be honest, is not going to fare better.

To say that 2016 sucked is a gross understatement. My father passed away on April 10 while I was 7,447 miles away. I still haven’t processed this. I am working up to it while being slowly eaten empty by guilt and regret.

I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions. I mean, I am very good at making them, I am just horrible at keeping them. My best record I believe was one week for keeping a journal. Journals are in general a bad idea: the thing about secrets is that as soon as they leave your mind, they stop being secrets. I did make one resolution for 2017 however: Read more real books instead of trying to read every single article saved to Pocket.

I’ve reached a, what should I call it other than a cliche, crossroad in my professional (and personal, though I am in deep denial on this one) life. So for the first time, I picked up one of the 10,372,763 recommended “this year’s best business books to teach you how not to jump in front of a moving train on your commute home every evening”, called Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, chosen out of, yes, self-aggrandizement. Adam Grant made an interesting point on quantity vs. quality:

It’s widely assumed that there’s a tradeoff between quantity and quality—if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it—but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality… On average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality.

I’m taking this as a permission to crank out as many streams of consciousness as my mind can dictate.

“…the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.”

Make it up on volume. Sorry Internet. Blame it on Ira.

Reading on Kindle is like dating on Tinder

Finding a book on Kindle is like finding a guy on Tinder. You have to make quick, uninformed decisions based on woefully inadequate amount of information.

To extend this bad analogy further: reading the book “reviews” on Amazon to determine whether a book is a good fit is akin to asking a guy’s flock of birds whether they’d hang out with him. Case in point: Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy got 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon.

Unlike Tinder however, once I’ve downloaded a book to my Kindle (whom I’ve named Marvin), I feel I’ve made a $9.99 and up worth of commitment – I have to see this through to the end. Reading has become an obligation and the stake is now unnervingly high in which book I choose to date.

I’ve had a bad dating streak lately.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette. I found the most popular guy annoying as hell and felt extremely guilty.

Mr. Mercedes. It’s my own fault to assume that since I loved Lisey’s Story I am a Stephen King kind of gal. ikr?

The Buried Giant. My bad for thinking that I was smart enough because I was able to appreciate The Unconsoled. So why the f* couldn’t I decipher the deeper meaning this time around? It’s not me. It’s you. You changed!

They’re not necessarily unworthy books, they’re just not for me. Ok, some of them I did find fingernail-on-chalkboard annoying and made my way to the end just so I did not have to listen to the whining — Looking at you Hausfrau and The Daylight Marriage. There were dates whose names and faces I can’t remember. Even ones I tried to forget. For some of them I’ve even gone so far as to expunge the record of us ever spending time together – deleting the copies from my Amazon account.

What made the bad streak even worse? None of these were one-night stands. Nooooo. These were dragged-out lengthy affairs because I have the opposite of a commitment issue.

After three months of slugfest I finally finished Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. It occurred to me why someone once told me that I can’t say I am a Queen’s fan if I only like A Night at the Opera; The fact that is my favorite album is irrelevant. I adored The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. Atwood’s writing remains brilliant and her vision of what the future could bring, thought-provoking. It is just not my cup of tea.

When I finally finished Oryx and Crake and saw the other two books in the MaddAddam trilogy waiting at the corner on Marvin (my Kindle), I thought, “Ok, let me power through these two books then I can start reading all these other books [I’ve also foolishly swiped right for].” It felt like a burden. A bitter vegetable. I slunk down in my seat, hating this whole thing.

Then I remembered: I am an adult now. I can eat desserts first. Heck, I can eat only desserts if I want to. Heck, I should eat only desserts. I should only go out with guys I like and I can change my mind even if I’ve swiped right. [apology for mixing the analogies…]

I picked up Marvin and deleted all the “I may get to that when every other book dies” books.

Then I went to the library.

Nothing beats actually seeing and flipping through the real things.

 

books you can touch and return

 

#ProTip: best way to display your Instagram feed on WordPress

If you, like me, are obsessed with documenting your otherwise mundane life with your phone+Instagram, secretly wishing the filters would make your life seem less ordinary, then you probably have also been looking for a way to share your Instagram feed on your blog. I discovered and installed Instagram Feed plug-in by smashballoon today and could not have been happier.

Live the IG life. Unapologetically.

[instagram-feed id=”17077002″ num=20 cols=4 showfollow=true]

Expectations are the mother of discontent

So were men consulted when mother’s day was invented? Did they agree to the deal or was it simply a unilateral contract? Maybe it seems unfair to some that they have to be on their best behavior the whole day?

What’s up with “I” have to do everything around the house? The whole 24 hours?

I imagine a tiny voice grumbling.

I expect the same thing on father’s day then.

Maybe it will work better if the mother is removed from the environment of the house then there’s no hard feeling going around about who’s doing what on the day when all the commercials make you believe that we’re all supposed to be waited on hand and foot without lifting a finger, that all our whims are catered to, etc. It seems such a drag for all involved. The crushing weight of expectations. A stifling cloud of unspoken, unjustified disappointment hanging.

Maybe it should just be mother’s morning? Mother’s luncheon? Till after lunch? And then everything goes back to normal? To be honest, I can’t wait for this day to be over myself so I can go back to doing things per life dealt me instead of having to wait until Monday.

Most likely this is just another whining episode of first world problems when so many mothers out there genuinely deserve and need a break. I wonder whether you would consider joining me in making donations to non-profit organizations that land a helping hand to women, especially mothers? From Heifer International, Women to Women, to Help A Mother Out (Did you know that the simple act of donating diapers can help change somebody’s life for the better?)

Have a truly happy, contented, mother’s day!

Charles Minard's flow map of Napoleon's March thru Russia in 1812

The Brutal Eloquence of an Infographic

Charles Minard's flow map of Napoleon's March thru Russia in 1812

(Click on the flow map to see the larger version on Wikipedia)

This flow map was recently touted by Dr. James Grime on Numberphile as “The Greatest Ever Infographic”. It’s created by Charles Minard, a French civil engineer and a pioneer for “information graphics”.

So, yes, Internet, I was just as startled as you’re now to realize that Information Graphics are not new, and that they used to actually demonstrate useful information and sometimes even tell a gripping story, such as this masterpiece published by Minard in 1869, depicting, in its chilling reality, in graphs nonetheless, Napoleon’s 1812 disastrous March through Russia to Moscow.

All you really need to know to appreciate the totality of Napoleon’s defeat and the enormity of suffering and loss is that the width of the beige colored band represents the size of Napoleon’s army on their way to Russia (442,000); the width of the black colored band, that of his army retreating after Moscow (10,000).

Dr. Grime spoke with great compassion of the point on the flow map where a second black-colored band joins the main one. It tells the story of the Battle of Bérézina, spanning four days in November 1812. The retreating French Army suffered unspeakable loss – the number goes from 50,000 before the Bérézina River to 28,000 afterwards.

I’d never shed a tear looking at a graph. Until I saw this one.

 

…defy the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence.   — Étienne-Jules Marey

Flying home. Musing.

On ASIANA plane less than 5 minutes I’ve Already noticed vast differences. First of all: Flight attendants’ smiles & willingness to help. 3 flight attendants offered to help me with lifting my carry-on to the overhead bin despite the fact that I’m bigger than all 3 of them combined!

They’re also all very young, thin and pretty. If I were some dumb Westerner with yellow fever, they happen to totally fit into the stereotypical images of Asian females. So I’m conflicted in how much I’m enjoying this. Should I give it some feminist and cultural critique as I enjoy being catered to by people who are pleasant to look at and who see customer service as their job and not some inconvenience?