Whoosh!

Quick recap because I know the Internet is dying to know what’s happening in my neck of the woods.

Ok. Fine. Quick recap because I am sitting at the airport lounge waiting for my delayed flight to SFO, and I can’t think straight on less than 3-hour sleep.

1. I went to BlogHer. I went. I saw. I conquered.

Ok. Not really.

There’s so much I’d like to include in my trip report: the awesome people I met & even hung out for extended length of time, including Naptime (who kept me level and from going to the deep end) & Neil Kramer (now you all are jealous, ikr?!)

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(The Animated Woman & our new friend whose parents also came from Taiwan so who’s almost like my adopted daughter instantly)

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How three awesome ladies & myself managed to steal walk away with pieces of giant display boards. (Long story. Post later)

How I still hated moments of events such as this. (Hint: not anybody else’s fault but my own)

And more, including, identity crisis! Am I or am I not an introvert? Neil Kramer called me out because he witnessed my social-butterfly insanity at the exhibit hall. Neil, it’s because I felt bad for those people having to stand there and wait for people to come up and say hello! I was projecting and empathizing. I did forget that PR/Agency/marketing people tend to be extroverts so I didn’t have to feel bad for them. They were most likely not scared or embarrassed or wishing the world would suddenly come to an end.

I am of course assuming that no introvert would be masochistic enough to find a job that requires them to approach complete strangers out in the open and constantly.

 

2. I went to Lollapalooza.

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I went. I saw. I conquered.

Well, I went and I SAW.

Fortunately not THIS. [NSFW]

The Cure sang Friday I’m In Love LIVE.

I also would like the Internet to know that I was not the oldest person at Lolla despite what some people warned me. Nor was I the least hip. I did not feel any judging (a la bouncers outside trendy clubs) and was just happy to be amongst thousands of others who were also just happy being there. Clearly the naysayers have never been themselves. Hearsay.

Bucket list checked.

 

3. I learned that WEEDS & DRUGS still happen at musical festivals even though we’re not in the 1960s any more.

I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, There sure are a lot of dead skunks in the park.”

Duh? I know I know. I know now.

I did not know at first that’s what cheap weeds smell like. Dead skunks. Or those were not cigarettes that people kept on lighting up and held in a peculiar way.

I was amused (and perhaps I should have been alarmed?) when I noticed some guy sitting on the ground who casually took out a Ziploc bag and gingerly poured the content into a strip of paper, and then started rolling it…

Like it was the most natural thing to do in the world, just right there, out in the open, surrounded by thousands of people.

 

4. Camping trip this past weekend.

Yellowstone Lake State Park in Wisconsin is quite awesome especially for boating activities such as kayaking and canoeing. My choice for a boat was a paddle boat and I did not capsize! Granted the old man said, “I have never seen those suckers capsize in my life.” But I was skeptical.

 

GTG. Plane leaving. Catch you on the other side!

 

 

 

Welcome to Chicago!

My previous post was a fine example for #FirstWorldProblem.

The kids and I survived. Of course. More than survived, we had a grand old time taking it easy playing really layback tourists in Chicago. The kids apparently inherited my love for hotels: we spent one morning inside the hotel watching the History Channel.

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image

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As I lay on the lounge chair watching the kids frolicking in the pool on the top of the hotel under the moon and surrounded by city lights, I had to admit, with embarrassment, that I could no longer complain.

 

I am going to be staying at yet another hotel tonight. BlogHer 2013 is here in Chicago. I hope to see some of you in 3D. Be warned: I am hashtag awkward.

 

Hotels

My co-worker once told me that my family should have a reality TV show because ridiculous things happen to us all the time. Actually, I admit: what he really meant was that we are a family of ridiculous inclination and we make ridiculous decisions and do ridiculous things.

“Hilarity ensued.”

I should have a plaque of these words hanging in our family room.

We are putting new floors in for the house this week. We did not realize that we had to completely vacate the first floor before the workers could start.

No problem. We all got a rude awakening early Tuesday morning. We moved everything (except the large pieces of furniture) off the floor, the china cabinet, the buffet table, the wine cabinet, bookcases and shelves in a record time of 3 hours. I was tearfully grateful to have a teenage son that morning.

Then I was told that starting today, we had to vacate the house because of the sanding and the staining.

THIS IS AWESOME.

I HAPPEN TO LOVE HOTELS!

I really do.

I love them so much that when I am on a business trip I often miss the chance to explore the city fully because I spend most of the time enjoying the hotel, that I used to bid on Priceline for $50 or less a night to stay in hotels, sometimes within 5 minutes drive from my house, just because.

 

I have fond childhood memories of my mom hiding me in the laundry cart or under the service cart to sneak me into the hotels that she worked at when she could not find somebody to watch me. Hotels to me at that time were fantastical places where super wealthy people stayed when they were not at home. I did not know the concept of vacation back then – I don’t remember my parents ever taking any “vacation”, and my family certainly had never taken trips together to faraway places for fun. The guests at the hotels always looked so grand and happy. Some frequent guests even brought me candy, and sometimes even chocolate truffles [worth their weight in gold to a child]! The ladies dressed beautifully and spoke in soft voices, and plus, they smelled nice, like flowers.

Hotels were where you were taken care of, where your towels and sheets smelled like sunshine, your bed was big and soft and bounced when you jumped on it. My mother was an expert bed maker (she kind of had to): she made beds with perfect “hotel corners”, and they looked like rectangular boxes with sheets pulled so tight that you could see the sharp angles at the foot of the bed.

Compared to the regular cramped apartments in Taipei, hotels seemed like palaces with modern amenities. The bathroom itself was a wonder – a toilet that worked perfectly, tiles with no dirt or moldy spots in between, and a bathtub so big and CLEAN that you could soak your entire body in.

NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ANTS OR COCKROACHES.

and the most wondrous thing of them all:

AIR CONDITIONING.

To this day my favorite thing about staying in a hotel is to sleep in a cool room with a soft comforter pulled over my face.

 

Thus began our adventure in three different hotels on three consecutive nights.

Renaissance/Marriott tonight.

Tomorrow onto Starwood.

On Friday, we are checking into an IHG hotel.

Collect all three!

I guess my co-worker was onto something.

“Hilarity ensued…”

I’ll cry if I want to…

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.

A is for Advil I have been taking for my pounding headaches and sore throat.

B is for Benadryl for watery eyes, sneezing and runny nose.

C is for COLD as in WHY DO I HAVE TO COME DOWN WITH A BAD COLD ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL DAYS?!

D is for Depression that I feel on every single one of my birthday since the third grade.

You get my drift.

On my birthday I have learned to keep my expectations extremely low. In fact, I’ve learned to go through life with no expectations from anybody. Probably due to the cold virus, I’ve lost my self-defense mechanism and failed to put up my mental wall and accidentally caused some accidental birthday expectations breach.

I have also been trying to be more grateful for what I am blessed with. So I will count my blessings on my birthday:

I am grateful that it rained today.

I am grateful for the perfect excuse to sleep through most of the day. Perhaps sleeping through the day is the way to go for the rest of my birthdays.

I am grateful that my youngest needed to wake me up from my slumber because he and his brother were hungry and I, it seemed, was the only person who knew how to cook for them. This was important because otherwise I would have missed dinner.

I am grateful for the excellent fish and shrimp tacos and the two big giant glasses of epic blueberry Mojitos for dinner in a nice cantina.

 

Google wished me a happy birthday by name. I must be a big shot on the Internet.

 

Do they grant do-overs for birthdays? I will take one when I turn 80.

 

 

The ABCs of OBX

A is for the ABC stores in NC. After having come here every year for 10+ years, I finally realized on this trip that 1) in NC, you could only purchase hard liquors from the ABC stores, 2) ABCs are not open on Sundays, 3) ABC is not a random acronym that many businesses have adopted because they want to be on the front section of the Yellow Pages. ABC = Alcoholic Beverage Control. Mind blown.

B is the Beach that can’t be beat.

C is for Chinese restaurants as in “They’ve lost the only Chinese restaurant around here and the closest one is 20+ miles away!”

D is for Dairy Queen.

E is for Electronics which I will never swear off.

F is for fish tacos.

G is for go fly a kite.

H is for horses as in the famous wild horses of the Outer Banks.

I is for I am on vacation.

J is for jealous, you, I know. Sorry for bragging!

K is for Kindle.

 

A perfect beach morning.

L is for Lighthouse Bagels and Deli. No kidding.

M is for Me Time, too.

N is for North Carolina style pulled pork. The best one we’ve tried is from Corolla Village BBQ.

O is for OBX, of course.

P is for pelicans!

Pelican

 

Q is for quality time with family. Just the right amount.

R is for restroom breaks I am no longer afraid of. See “T” below.

S is for sand that gets into everything, everywhere. I miss a bar of soap without exfoliating power.

T is for Tankinis. I finally got myself into a Tankini. You gals have been holding out on me. Wearing Tankinis makes being a beach bum so much more convenient. Those and coverups have been my daily uniform since day one. Thank you, Tankini!

U is for under the water shenanigans captured by the underwater camera. I highly recommend getting one if you could swing it.

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V is for Verizon reception, poor.

W is for Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi in the beach house is so much better than what we have back home. Thankfully, sadly and ironically.

X is for Xyresic. “We may not be able to boast of our xyresic wit but our swords are sharp and dissected men have more to worry about than snarky remarks.” [aka I am suffering an intelligence breakdown and therefore if you have any suggestion for X please do leave a comment]

Y is for YOU. Wish you were here.

Z is for ZZZ. I’ve been sleeping IN, and also been taking a nap after lunch every day. Really, vacations do not get better than this.

New York. New York.

The Husband and the boys are on a 4-day hiking trip along the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin. I had been thinking about taking advantage of the empty house for a long time but did not make any decision until Bugginword gave me the “open arms all system go” welcome gesture and also I found a roundtrip ticket from Chicago to New York for $220. That’s almost like an obligation when you found a fare like that. The universe was telling me something.

So I leapt into action with only one hour to pack and without a working cell phone.

Oh, I forgot to tell you here though I’ve blabbered about it all over Twitter and FBook. Yup. I have been without a working cellphone since last Tuesday. I dropped my Samsung Galaxy Nexus face down on the ground. Bye bye screen. Bye bye phone. Bye bye the limb that I did not know I had until I lost it.

Fear not for me though as I’ve successfully made one trip to Boston with no phone. Hey, I survived! How about let’s do it again? Why not right? I am all about spontaneous. These past few days anyway.

It was lovely spending time with Elly (of Bugginword fame) and her absolutely charming almost 2-year-old boy and checking out her lovely town in New Jersey. I did not realize that suburbs could be so awesome – progressive, diverse and full of cultural activities. I should not have been surprised though awesome cities attract awesome people, and Elly is simply magical. It was fascinating and comforting at the same time that everywhere I turned in her house I noticed small, creative touches that made me go, “Yup. That is Elly.”

My 2-night stay there felt like a bed-and-breakfast stay complete with popcorn popped with bacon grease.

I actually cried on the train into New York. (Yeah, those popcorns are like crack. I miss them something terrible…)

 

It rained the whole day today. I didn’t mind. I love walking in the rain and have done so many times in my life in pouring rain. Rain puts a natural framing around the world. It gives a different perspective on everything you do. When you are just wandering around the best city in the world with no plans whatsoever. Rain is like Elly, simply magical.

I whiled the afternoon away in MOMA. I don’t think I need to say anything more about my day. Wish you were here.

 

Fifty Minutes

The tornado touched down in Moore, OK on May 20. It stayed on the ground for approximately 50 minutes.

I get my daily doses of news from the radio & mobile news summary during my 1.5-hour commute, each way. When you were simply listening to a narrative of what happened, it was hard to grasp the severity of devastation in Moore at first. As my car inched along in highway traffic, I heard this apparently common practice described matter-of-factly,

They have to actually post street signs so people can recognize where the streets are.

The realization hit me so hard that I sucked in my breath.

FIFTY. MINUTES.

 

 

Moore Tordano

 (Photo credit: Time.com)

 

This is what happened after a tornado cut through a 1.3-mile wide and 17-mile long destructive track.

I have not been able to look at the images and video footage until now. I still can’t look at the photos of children being carried out from the decimated schools with piles of unrecognizable debris in the background without suffering an attack of guilt + anxiety. It’s not that we live in Tornado Alley, of course. I hear these stories of how some parents had made the judgment (and which turned out to be right) call to pick their kids up from the schools that collapsed. I was happy for them, glad to hear the good news in the midst of everything, yet a voice says, “You would not have made it in time if it happened here.”

 

The first funeral for one of the 24 victims was held yesterday. Her name was Antonia Candelaria. She was 9. Antonia, or Tonie as she was called, was found in the rubble with her best friend,  Emily Conatzer.

If you are thinking of making a (or more) donation, in addition to Red Cross, OK Governor has established the OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund, in coordination with the United Way of Central Oklahoma, to assist with the long-term needs of victims.

 

Best. Mom. Ever.

I am using this title because I don’t know what to call this post. The original title choices were:

Called a Psycho Mom on Mother’s Day and am proud of it

but that would leave nothing of substance for me to write because the title is basically the story.

or

Possibly One of the Best Mother’s Day Cards

and that would most likely make my youngest child sad because he’s been planning his awesome mother’s day gifts for me for days

Mothers Day 2013

I love my youngest for remembering how to fold the crane after I showed him only once, and what my favorite candy is after I mentioned it in passing…

 

while his oldest brother admitted, with pride mind you, “Hey, mom. I made this card more than two hours before. Aren’t you proud of me?”

 

Mothers Day Card 2013

 

 

We all got a good chuckle again because we watched Psycho together last night and found it ironic and hilarious and maybe even fitting that Psycho was our family movie night choice on the eve of Mother’s Day. A discussion over “What is the best Mother’s Day movie?” continued over Mother’s Day brunch (yes, yes, how typically suburban…) and the Alien movie franchise was agreed upon as the best cinematic tribute to mothers. You want proof?

The fundamental myth in mothers (even surrogate ones) genetically coded to do anything to protect their young is obvious in this image chosen to promote Aliens.

Aliens poster

 

Just look at Ellen Ripley, so deliciously played by Sigourney Weaver. (Most of us cheered when she uttered that famous line, “Get away from her you bitch!”) From the other side, didn’t the Queen Mother (the matriarch alien) fiercely protect the survival of her offspring? Not to mention all those scenes of forced cesarean births…

Instead of leaving you to ponder the above, I thought I’d leave you with something more lighthearted: Mother’s Day Cards That Should Exist” (Thanks to Mary Lee for a great chuckle!)

 

[Disclaimer] I am fortunate enough to have a great mother-in-law. In fact, sometimes I think I like her more than her son… Those cards though funny do make me a bit anxious from imaging my future daughter-in-law wanting to send me one of those…

[Sidebar Convo]: Being an overtly protective 21-century mother who feels guilty if not doing some helicopter-parenting and also if not providing my kids with sufficient independence that I am, I have not allowed my kids to watch any scary movie such as Fridays the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. They can decide to watch crazy horror films from Asia such as Ringu when they are adults, but never ever when they are still under my watch in my house. I’ve seen similar horror films when I was little and I regretted ever since. Till this day, the memories of horrifying images and scenarios stay with me, and they always resurface to the top of my consciousness when I am alone in a hotel room while on business trips. It’s very tough to be on intensive business trips if you can only fall asleep after 3 or 4 am from watching all the  reruns of Law & Order you could find on cable. It’s ridiculous.

[One more thing] After the kids presented their mother’s day presents, we all looked at my husband. “Hey, I made you a mother!” I guess we should thank all the dads on Mother’s Day.

Losing

I have lost 30 lbs. since last summer.

There. I said it.

I don’t know why I have been feeling too embarrassed to tell you this. I feel guilty. What’s with all the “you are beautiful the way you are” “girl power” blah blah rah rah Dove marketing speeches I tend to meander into. I did not come clean earlier because I am worried that you will somehow be mad. Somehow it feels like I have committed betrayal.

It all started last May when they were getting a Weight Watcher group together at work. Have I told you that my office has 500+ people and most of them are young and female, above-average-looking and most importantly, thin? It took a llllooooonnnnngggggg time to get 15 people (the minimum for a WW group leader to come onsite) to sign up. I thought, “Why not? I have nothing to lose [ha ha].” I was lucky that the WW method of counting points turned out to work for me. It was difficult in the beginning of course considering how an ounce of vodka is 5 points and I had only 29 points per day to spend. What saved me was the “rule” that all vegetables and fruits count as zero point and therefore I filled myself up with apples and bananas in the morning and ate a lot of grapes throughout the day. At night I ate a lot of egg whites and fish which I loved.

I eventually got a hang of it: counting points forced me to become aware of everything that went into my mouth. [Stop giggling, you pervs!] I learned to make mental trade-offs: “Do I want to have this piece of cheap cookie now or do I want a shot of vodka later?”  I started eating healthier with less carb and smaller portions without going hungry and found myself with lots more energy. When we left for Taiwan last August to visit my family I’d lost about 15 lbs.

I was excited to be home even more because I thought that my family would notice my weight loss and would, you know, say something nice.

What was I thinking?

I tried to brush off the usual comments about my “American” size –  These comments were laid upon me by everybody, I mean, EVERYBODY, sometimes even strangers (grandmothers with good intentions lest I lose my husband due to my not keeping myself in good shape…) every time I went home. you’d thought by then I’d gotten used to them.

Pardon the cliche, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when a female relative greeted me with this line, “Come let me see how much fatter you are since the last time I saw you.” It sounds a lot worse in English. In Chinese, it could be interpreted as a good-humored tease, showing affection and familiarity. But what the fuck? I’d lost 15 lbs before I came home. How much thinner do I have to be to make you people happy?!

The thing about teasing by your Chinese family is that you cannot get upset. If you do, people will be offended that you cannot take a joke, and that somehow is a sign of poor upbringing.

“You bring dishonor to your family.” <– Ok. That was a joke.

I gritted my teeth and smiled while she spun me around.  As soon as she’s done “inspecting” me, I immediately accused myself so I could rush to the bathroom and quietly sob behind the door.

Usually I give up easily. I don’t ever remember myself being the type of people that turn rejection into a motivating force.

“You don’t like me? Fine. I will just crawl into a dark corner and die. Take THAT!”

Something clicked however last summer as I sat wide awake in our hotel room at dawn while the kids were still sound asleep. [Btw, THANK GOD for kids that do not suffer jet lags!] I started taking full advantage of the decked out gym and spa at W Taipei. I was on the machine for an hour in the morning. I went back to the machine for another hour in the evening, sometimes after midnight because I resented those beautiful people that were frolicking in the bar area surrounding the beautiful swimming pool. [I know this does not make any sense at all. Just work with me…]

Maybe that’s what did it. The 10 days of serious workout regiment kicked off some weird biological thing inside my body. Long story short, instead of gaining weight from stuffing myself with all the awesome food that I had missed (I was not going to let those people stop me from eating. Hell no! Carb or no carb!) I ended up shedding more lbs during the trip.

I will be honest even though I fear I sound like a hypocrite: I do like looking at my pictures more now. They look more like what I’ve imagined myself to look like all along. [Yes, I will also confess that I am a Narcissist.  So there!] Instead of deleting every single picture with me in it, I will do that to only 80% of them. Yes, possibly I have also become more vain: without telling people back home that I have lost weight, I started posting pictures of myself on Facebook. An actual announcement and especially the explanation of how would equal defeat in my mind, an admission that they have somehow won. Also, deep down I fear that some of them would probably have said, “Oh, you’ve lost weight? I did not notice. How much did you lose?…”

I was hoping that people would get the idea.

Oh no you didn't

I hope you regret it now because I was cute before and now I am just fucking gorgeous.

 

 

What was I thinking, really?

My mom called tonight.

“So and so was showing me your pictures from Face Book. She said that you seem to have lost a lot of weight. I said, ‘Nooo. Did she? Nah.’ Did you? You didn’t right? You look the same to me.”

I shut my eyes tightly and took a deep breath.

I said nothing.

Nothing.

 

The Optimistic Perspective from a Cynic

Something horrific happened in Boston, to Boston, to people who congregated in that resilient city for the annual Boston Marathon. Two explosive devices went off near the finish line when many were getting close to accomplish what was one of the most impressive feats, running in and finishing a marathon. There were a lot of footages and photos, and in some sense, the event was live streamed via various social media. There was one photo that emerged and was shared and reshared right away. Even though folks helpfully added #NSFW as a warning, I still got a glimpse of it because Twitter automatically shows the full image in the live stream. At first I did not even realize what the large ares of redness on the ground meant. There was so much red. Bright red. I thought it was paint because it was so errily bright. Later it hit me, and I started crying.

My first reaction as I sat here staring at my computer screen obsessively hitting refresh, refresh, refresh, feeling utter disbelief and helplessness, was “What’s wrong with people? With humanity? With this world?” Thanks to Twitter (with whom I am secretly in love) I came across the calming perspective provided by Mr. Rogers (or rather, Grandma Rogers), “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

It is true. Hundreds of Bostonians soon started using this Google spreadsheet “I have a place to offer” to open up their homes to runners and their families who are stranded because of the tragedy and the ensuing chaos.

Still, one could easily dismiss Mr. Rogers for being too nice, too trusting, too optimistic. I needed more. And I found it in an unlikely place… Patton Oswalt. You know, the stand-up comedian who’s not known for having a sunny, “look on the bright side”, personna?

I really appreciated his reminding us that in many of the video footages you could see clearly that when the explosion happened, many instead of running away ran towards the explosion to help.

If you are feeling lost, sad, helpless, and especially if you are feeling angry, read what he said. I like the math he did.

 

Patton Oswalt Facebook Post on Boston Marathon Explosion

 

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