Tag Archives: you can never go home again

Help! Cuteness is everywhere.

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I had the privilege of flying on one of Eva Airlines’ Hello Kitty planes today.

Here's a screenshot so you know what I'm talking about

 

Everywhere you turn on the plane, you see signs of Hello Kitty: from the pins on the flight attendants’ uniforms, their pink aprons, the pillow covers, to the air freshener in the lavatory.

Eva Airlines is seriously dedicated to Hello Kitty

 

I started chuckling as I stepped onto the plane. It’s cute and adorable. But soon I grew weary. [Yes, I tend to overthink. Are you even surprised?]

There are obvious social and cultural reasons that girls, and in fact, women under 50, are encouraged to be cute, to find cutesy things desirable, and also to screech in delight whenever such cutesy things are encountered: In a patriarchal, male-dominant society, men prefer women that are dependent and docile (or at least seemingly so) and find them to be more attractive.

A nation of young women marching to the drumbeat of cuteness. Some critics have even gone so far to call it the “infantilization of women”.

There is the voice that many women here speak in. High-pitched and nasal. 

The facial expressions: eyes blinking deliberately with eyelashes a-fluttering, better yet if they appear to be watery & starry. Verisimilitude of manga characters.

I imagine myself a reject from the Hello Kitty factory.

I’ve never been able to be cute – partly because I am 5’7″ and not starving myself. By Taiwan standard, I am enormous. I also cannot fake Jennifer Tilly’s voice. Just imagine Lucy Lawless feigning cuteness. That. Did you throw up in your mouth too?

That being said, I begin to lean towards + on the cuteness scale when I arrive. It’s as if when I speak in Chinese, I assume a different personality. Or maybe they’ve spiked all the food here.

I tilt my head. I blink my eyes. I smile vacuously.

I know tomorrow I will start making a bunny sign when having pictures taken.

This is like an emergency note written by a survivor before the inevitable Borg invasion.

 

 

 

 

I am not here

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No, really.

Perhaps I am having too much faith in the universality of Internet access, and also in the lasting prowess of my cellphone battery. I am hoping that I could continue to overshare while traveling to/in Asia. I said Asia because I am going to be in Shanghai and then Taipei, and you know, I cannot say China because then we are getting into the realm of political messiness… We certainly can’t have that, can we?

I am very excited because I connected with my second brother finally over the phone. It’s a long story. Anyway, my brother the Japanese chef (is this the right way of describing him? If I say “French chef”, am I saying the chef is French or the chef masters in French cuisine? But “a chef in a French restaurant” sounds so cumbersome and so much less cool…) is in Suzhou right now which is about an hour away from Shanghai, and he is going to pick us up at the airport and put us up in the fancy hotel he works at.

I chuckle at the thought that I will be the FIRST person from my family to visit this hotel, considering how Taipei is only a 2-hour flight away from Shanghai, and in contrast, I am flying from the other side of the globe…

I am getting more and more excited about seeing my brother whom I have not seen for many years. He’s going to be so surprised when he sees my oldest son who is now 6 feet tall. He is probably going to be surprised to see how much I have aged. I know he still sees me in his mind as this snotty-nosed girl who’s 11 years younger, baby of the family.

It’s kind of funny how we tend to remember our siblings the way they looked when we were all much younger. When you see them after many years being apart, you’re caught off guard by the reality of it all, that many years have gone by, what has happened that they now look so old, and the grand finale of your thought process, “Hell, no. That means I am old now too!” Fortunately, things start to look up as soon as you start reminiscing, making fun of the dorky things your parents said or did (including how they beat you with a belt. Ha ha. That’s funny now looking back decades later…)

I am just rambling now. I need to go finish packing and actually work on the projects that I’ve promised to wrap up before I leave for vacation. I am thinking: Well, I will have 12 hours on my flight from SFO to PVG to be devoted to work… (Yeah, right. We all know how that usually turns out…)

Technology. Don’t fail me now!

xxoo

Splendid

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Hundreds of Taiwanese release sky lanterns on Saturday, January 28, 2012, in New Taipei City, Taiwan. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)

Today is the Lantern Festival. I completely forgot about it. It was only when I noticed the headline on The Atlantic, “Chinese Lantern Festival 2012” that I remembered.

Today marks the end of the Chinese New Year.

Looking through the beautiful photos, I wish I could say, “Yup. These remind me of home.”  Of my childhood.

I wish I could say, yup, I am of that beautiful custom and of that exotic tradition.

The truth is?  I grew up in a concrete jungle much like every other cosmopolitan city around the world. Globalization is an overwhelming equalizing force indeed.  The pictures look much better than what I remembered of Lantern Festival back home. Mine for many years were cheap plastic lanterns, with light bulbs inside. Candles were simply too dangerous.

As I am writing this post, I now am remembering a special lantern that looked like a big pull toy dog made of white paper that looked like real furs. I remember now how proud I was of my special lantern. I could not wait for the day to arrive when I could go into the street, joining the children walking around with lit lanterns. (I guess it was fun way back when…) I am crying now because I also remember that my special lantern caught on fire and was burnt down not long after I joined the crowd in an impromptu parade.

I was inconsolable for days afterwards.

Wow. That flashback is rather traumatic…

[Regroup via visiting Twitter and talking to random strangers… ]

[Ok. I am back!]

The funny thing is, this picture showing sky lanterns was indeed taken in Taipei. However, releasing sky lanterns is a tradition fabricated (or perhaps “invented” would be a better, at least kinder, word?)  Taipei, like all cosmopolitan cities, are feeling the erosion of traditions. People are feeling the longing for a splendid past that frankly most of us had never seen. And so we decided to start making our own, and believing in the histories of it.

Self-invention. Us urbanites are experts.

Splendid.

Going Home. Again.

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Waiting to get on a plane that will take me to Tokyo Narita, and then onto Taipei. I am making my annual solo trip back home so I can pack 359 days of homesickness, guilt and filial piety into a 3-day visit. (I will spend 3 days traveling due to time zone change and the sheer expansiveness of the Pacific Ocean).

As my parents get older, the necessity of going home as often as I could becomes unbearable. The anxiety and sadness I feel every time I see them though becomes unbearable as well. I long to see the joy in my dad’s face as much as I dread seeing his tears. March on, little soldier. That’s what I have been telling myself since I gave the TSA agent my passport and boarding passes.

I will try not to talk about feeling like a Godzilla as soon as I land in Tokyo. But I will feel that way while stuffing my face with food that I have been missing all year.

And I will try and send in pictures to be posted here (and below if the Flickr plug-in works). Just in case you wonder what I have been up to. *Megalomaniac laugh* *Megalomaniac laugh*

Love and peace.

Please specify a Flickr ID for this gallery

Conversation with my mother, or, why I dread it

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The phone rang. At this hour I knew it has got to be from my mother.

What does she want this time? Is always my first thought. Then I feel guilty about it. More often than not, however, I get to stop feeling guilty because she is calling to add to my shopping list called “Shit to bring home to my families because that’s what you do when you are a Chinese living abroad and you welcome all ways to help assuage your guilt”.

Mom: What are you doing?

Me: Nothing. Putting the kids to bed.

Mom: I am calling to confirm the date and time when you arrive at the airport. Is it 10 pm on December 27?

Me: Yes.

Mom: Ok. … … … What are you doing?

Me: Yelling at the kids to take a bath.

Mom: Why are you always doing that when I call?

Me: Because you always call around this time?

Mom: Oh. Ha ha. Have you eaten yet?

Me: No.

Mom: What time is it now? How come you have not eaten yet? [Then why did you ask me in the first place?!] What are you going to eat?

Me: I don’t know. I am thinking of Ramen noodles.

Mom: What kind? Is it the Korean spicy kind?

This went on for a while. Then my mom repeated the same story she’d told me twice already.

Mom: So and so’s daughter is married to a foreigner too. Her grandson is so cute. Mixed kid, you know. And oh, he’s so adorable when he speaks Chinese. Oh yes, her daughter teaches the boy Chinese at home.

Me: … … …

Mom: Oh, yes, he speaks perfect Chinese.

Me: … … …

Mom: And they are back in Taiwan now.

Me: … … …

Mom: She also just went on a tour around the world [ok, probably not around the world…] with her daughter and her son-in-law. Oh. They took her everywhere.

Me: … … …

Mom: And her daughter is back in Taiwan now with her grandson.

Me: … … …

Mom: Hello? Are you still there? Why aren’t you saying anything?

Me [sighing silently]: So let me guess. Her daughter does not work. [Maybe the bitterness in my voice came through]

Mom [relenting]: Oh right. You have a job. My daughter is so smart and capable. [This was said without sarcasm. My mother does not do sarcasm. I don’t think she knows how.]

Me [wanting to die]: Ok. So why are you telling me about your friend who I do not know. You have told me this a few times.

Mom: Ha ha ha.

[I hate it so much when she says something that bothers me etc, then she tries to cover it up by saying, “I was just joking. You need to lighten up.” Well, no, mom, you were not joking. I have never heard you joke in my whole life.]

Mom: I was just telling you about my friend. You have to be very careful and not overdo it on the computers. She’s so near-sighted that she’s almost blind because she’s spent all her working years on the computer.

Me: Ok.

Mom: Not good to get too high a degree.

[You don’t need a subject when constructing a sentence in Chinese. IMO this greatly contributes to Chinese mothers’ passive aggressive ability because you never know whom they are referring to in their laments. It could be nobody. Yet it could be everybody.]

Mom: So smart. What’s the use? Get a degree and leave and not come back.

Me [bracing myself for the impact]: … … …

Mom: Just like my daughter, right?

Me [really wanting to die now]: … … …

Mom: Now just counting the days until my daughter comes home again.

Me [Must. Pretend. I. Did. Not. Hear. This. Because. There. Is. Nothing. I. Can. Do.] … … …

Mom: Alrighty then. You must be tired. Have you eaten yet?

Me: No.

Mom: Why not?

[I thought to myself, “We are waiting for Godot”, and became more depressed because this would be a joke that my folks would never ever get…]

Me: Because I have been talking to you on the phone?

Mom: Oh. Ha ha. Remember to add an egg when you cook your Ramen noodles.

Me [Still wanting to die]: Ok. Bye mom.

 

 

So far in my luggages, there are FOUR Coach bags, 1 pair of Coach shoes, expensive eye cream, face lotion, anti-wrinkle lotion, unicorn magical hair to eliminate wrinkle from someone who’s almost 80, etc etc etc.

Why do I still feel guilty?

Why do I feel guilty that I did not goof off at school, drop out, work at some seedy places, meet rich older men, become their mistresses, bear boy children for them, become a lady of leisure so I can hang out all the time, and buy houses and cars for my parents?

Fuck. this. shit.

 

 

Where I’m From

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I am from sunshine, sweat, and bricks of humid air.

I am from have you eaten yet.

I am from rice, salted fish, stir-fried greens, from soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, from ginger, star anise, and cayenne peppers.

I am from concrete jungle, clothes lines stretched-across the rooftops, the smell of sun in the fabrics, of gardenias, jasmines and sweet osmanthus.

I am from morning glories winding along random barbed wires, coconut trees lining the streets crowded with motorcyles, from white azaleas strewn on the ground after thunderstorms like discarded Kleenexes.

I am from greetings, and salutations, from strangers in the streets who are also uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and grandmas and grandpas.

I am from blood is thicker than water, from you don’t turn your back to your family, from families stick together.

I am from proper, ladylike, and demure. From handkerchiefs and silk scarves and pocketbooks. From you should always make sure your hand is not empty and idle. From knees together, ankles crossed.

I am from politeness, decorum, and unwritten rules that everybody abides by.

I am from hospitality, from it takes a village, from gossips and busybodies.

I am from if you swallow the watermelon seeds it will sprout from the top of your head, from don’t point your finger at the new moon otherwise she will come and cut off your ear when you are sleeping at night. From if you cry or misbehave, Auntie Tiger will come and eat you up.

I am from humility, gratitude and contentment.

I am from nobody owes you anything, from be grateful even if someone gives you a mere roll of toilet paper, from nothing you get is because you deserve it.

I am from temples, incenses, and gods and deities.

I am from reincarnation, from Karma, from eighteen layers of hell.

I am from lurid ghost stories of vengeance, from spirits within magnificent rocks and towering trees.

I am from convention, contradiction, and confusion. I am from Post-Colonialism, Late Capitalism, and Rampant Materialism.

I am from the proletariat.

I am from the hushed wrath of my father, the quiet disappointment of my mother.

I am from a bottle of Aspirins.

I am from the deafening silence of a mid-summer afternoon when the only thing you could hear was the cicadas.

 

Many thanks to Elly over at BugginWord for writing her beautiful piece “Where I’m From” and for alerting us to this wonderful writing exercise. Of course, I did not follow the rules in the template, not because I am some rebel chick but because I am not good at writing descriptive scenes. 

I just want to go home

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Photo Courtesy of Stew Dean on Flickr

 

Sometimes, for no reason at all, I would get a severe attack of homesickness.

Without any provocation, my heart would ache and I would get a sensation of emptiness and at the same time heaviness inside my stomach.

I recognize that feeling well.

It is an intense loneliness that comes from a herd animal being away from its kind.

I am exhausted: I just want to drop everything and go home.

Do Americans feel this way?

It seems to me that, (I know I am grossly generalizing here), Americans take it for granted that they will not be living where they grew up, and that they will, most likely, be away from their parents and siblings, simply on account of how vast this country is and how geographically widely distributed job opportunities can be.

So is the pang of homesickness less acute if you know you are not expected to be there in the first place? Not being adulterated by a sense of guilt? The mutual understanding that you are where you are supposed to be? Without the gnawing sensation that eats you away as you age, as your parents age, that somehow you have pulled a bait and switch on them?

“Oh I will be back in two years. Tops.”

That somehow you ran away. You did not stay put like 99% of the population on the small island, the size of Maryland.

Betrayal.

The feeling that you may have turned away and the chasm is now irreparable because…

many years ago…

you started dreaming in English?

Leaving

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Whenever I think of my trips home, I think of the last moment as my parents watched me walking away

 

 

I started getting it, bit by bit, that the thing between parents and children, the thing that ties you together is that all your life, you are forever watching them walking away.

[The inadequate, rough translation mine]

I read this in a book by Lung Ying-tai, a renowned cultural critic in Taiwan, on my plane ride back to Chicago in December 2009, and I have not completely stopped crying ever since…

 

It has proven difficult for me to write about my trips home because whenever I think of them, I think of the last moment as my parents watched me walking away.

The last moment, at the airport, right before I turned around and headed towards the exit, ironically named “the entrance of emigration” in Chinese on the airport sign.

The border always carries something more than simply arbitrary and abstract. The pang was so visceral that I found it hard to breathe right before I steeled myself and determined that this hug was going to be the last hug. I turned. I walked towards the police officer, handed him the passports and boarding passes. I told myself every time, “Don’t cry this time,” before turning back with a raised hand towards my parents merely a dozen steps away, my mother waving with a smile on her face saying goodbye to the kids, my father teetering on his cane, his figure stooped, his expression stoic. He looked so small even though you could still see traces of his healthier self when we made fun of him by comparing him to the Happy Buddha. I squeezed my heart into a smile on my face. I waved one last time and quickly stepped into the customs area. And then, they lost sight of me.

This is always the moment when my tears start beading along the edges of my eyes until they get so heavy that they roll down my cheeks. I cry because I know my father is crying at this moment as soon as we are out of sight.

My family has learned to have the tissue at ready because, like me, my father is especially susceptible to crying.  I didn’t become privy to this family fact till when in college, we watched Graves of the Fireflies together, I turned around at one point and saw my father’s face wet with tears. I moved the box of Kleenex that I was holding in front of him. He acknowledged it by pulling a handful of tissues from the box and blowing his nose throughout the movie.

I tried to wipe the tears away so I was not embarrassing myself in front of the airport security. Perhaps they have gotten used to seeing people in tears as they pretended not to notice the fact that I was heaving and hicupping from trying to act normal. My 12-year-old patted me on my back, “Mom, are you ok?”

I nodded and gave him an embarrassed smile.

“You cry every time we leave.” He said, perhaps not quite understanding the possibility of such heartache.

I am always grateful that the act of leaving lasts only until the x-ray machine. I will soon be sufficiently distracted by the procedures, the logistics, and the anticipation for the dreadful 20-hour trip back to Chicago.

 

CODA: If I were writing in Chinese for a Chinese readership, I would have mentioned this prose essay, “Retreating Figure” (Bei Ying, 背影) by the famed Chinese poet/essayist in the early 20th century, Zhu Ziqing, which has become part of the collective cultural memory. The title is literally “Rear View”: you can understand why it is not really the best choice in this case. You could defuse the unintentional comedy by calling Zhu’s moving essay about his father “Seeing Father from the Back” but it detracts from the one-two punch the short Chinese title delivers. Sometimes there is simply no easy translation. In “Retreating Figure”, Zhu described his leave-taking with his father as the older Zhu saw his son off at a train station. The father crossed several train tracks to purchase some tangerines for his son for the train ride. The writer vividly described his father’s endeavor as he climbed down and then up the platforms, crossed the train tracks, and then back, stopping in between his arduous journey to wipe the sweat off of his brows. No emotions were transcribed into words between father and son, or on paper, and yet this is one of the most moving pieces of literature I have read. I close my eyes and I can see the back of the older Mr. Zhu walking away as this image is overlaid with the image of my father, standing there watching me as I walk away.

My Chinese babysitter is going to FIRE me soon

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I sometimes feel very sorry for my children: because how I am caught between two worlds, they too are caught between two worlds.

Many of you have commented on my responses to the Tiger Mom Controversy with great insight, grace and kindness. One comment that made me pause and reflect upon the factual state of what I am doing to my children came from MacDougal Street Baby:

Nobody knows what happens behind closed doors. We can pontificate all we want about how others are raising their kids but, really, there’s no way to know what’s going on. Believe in your own way. Trust yourself. And then deal with the fallout.

It is this unwavering conviction that has been eluding me ever since I became a parent. I am torn between the “Chinese way of parenting” and the, for the lack of a better term, “Modern American” way.

So I wobble.

One day I am a Chinese mother. The next day I am an American mother. I feel so schizophrenic and now am worried what this kind of wishy-washy parenting is doing to my children: they have no way of knowing which mother will be greeting them every morning. It is like living with Eve White.

Either way, I am constantly feeling guilty because of the pressure coming from both sides.

I am either too strict and overprotective or too lenient and permissive.

The worst would be when I am “confronted” by other Chinese parents either in this country or back home.

I am not kidding when I mentioned my brother asking me whether he could discipline my children on my behalf. “Just a slap on the face will solve all your problems!” In fact, he did not even need my approval since he is my elder brother and as their uncle, he has all the “right” to discipline my children the way he sees fit. Even my nephew, who was a so-called “problem child” in his youth  (with petty misdemeanors, unfinished high school and truancy which constituted as “family scandals” that shall not be spoken of, and who, one would thought, should hate this kind of heavy-handed, literally, parenting style), asked quite a few times with exasperation, “What do you mean you cannot beat your child? Oh I am telling you, it pangs me to watch them misbehave so much that my hands are itching. Could I please just hit them upside the head?”

(If you are wondering WHAT crime did my children commit to deserve such wrath? My kids were simply, according to the American standard, “being independent, rambunctious boys”.)

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We have a babysitter that comes every morning to accompany Mr. Monk to his bus stop: I have to leave before that in order to catch my train downtown and my husband travels a lot. We are now on our second babysitter who started last month. Our babysitter does not need this job: she lives in a house bigger than ours and drives a Mercedes. As a fellow Chinese, she is doing this as a favor for me and for that, I am very grateful. But I am afraid that she is going to quit very soon.

Mr. Monk was reading at the kitchen table and ignoring both of us when we asked him what he would like for lunch. I could see his finger moving across the page. I could tell that he was frantically trying to get to a place where he could stop without losing his place on the page.

He is a child of many peculiarities since birth. I have learned to go along with these special requirements of his to keep a smooth and orderly existence. I have learned the hard way.

If it were his elder brother at the table this morning? I would have punished him for blatantly ignoring me.

“You are very permissive. I would have snatched that book away this instant.” My babysitter commented in Chinese.

I explained to her what Mr. Monk was trying to do and his needing such an order in his life.

“You should have fought to get him to change. You should have made him change through persistence. If it were my daughter, I would have taken that book away already.”

I made some feeble attempt to explain why I did not. Could not. “He’d be harping on this for the rest of the day if I did so. Maybe even tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. He’ll remember this for the rest of his life.”

“My daughter remembers everything too. Oh she fought but I persisted. You just have to be persistent and make them change their ways. It is not possible for him to not change if you just work harder.”

“You must have been very strict with your daughter?” I asked, as a compliment.

“Yes, I was.” She beamed with pride as she should since her daughter is now a VP at a prestigious investment bank on Wall Street.

“Oh she hated me back then. I am pretty sure she hated me but I persisted. She is very nice to me now, she calls me all the time. I think she finally understands why I needed to do what I did. She can see now.”

“You know, I cannot do that.” I admitted to her. “It must have taken a lot of strength on your part to remain strict.” I stopped short at telling her, “But I need my children to like me, and I cannot stand the thought that they may hate me.”

“Yes.” She paused. “But I did what I had to do.”

In traditional Chinese culture, (Warning: Gross generalization ahead. Buyer beware!) your success as a parent is not evaluated by how happy your children are but by how obedient they are when young and how successful they are when grown-up. Providing your children with a happy childhood is not a requisite for being a good mother. I am not suggesting that Chinese parents go out of their way to make their children miserable but rather that IT is not a priority.  Or rather, the definition of happiness is quite different, and also who gets to define happiness is debatable since we were often told, “You don’t know what you want. You don’t know what will make you happy. You will know when you are older.”

I am happy for her and for her daughter’s accomplishment. As I said, I am grateful for her coming here every morning so that I could keep my job. But it feels like an indictment of me as a parent every single morning. I will be getting out of the house as soon as she arrives from now on.

Meet Me Halfway. Cute vs. Puke

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I am sitting in the United Airlines lounge, home for the famous automatic beer pouring machine, (not quite) halfway back to Chicago, but already I stop talking to people in Chinese, and I am transitioning to my American self again. (My apology for falsely reinforcing the dichotomy of East vs. West. This is strictly personal: I no longer feel the need to look smaller by haunching or sucking in my guts, or to look cute and agreeable, or to bat my eyelashes innocently. Feel free to expand. Take all the space you want. Of course, I will still complain about any non-Asian person trying to impose such a rigid contrast between East vs. West or subscribe to the idea that Asian women are oppressed. Bite my contradictory, non-consistent ass if you wish.)

First of all, I just want to thank all of you to continue to visit my blog even when I am not able to reciprocate. Sometimes I feel that blogging is ultimately a selfish act. Or rather, the reason why I blog. Or rather, the reason why I started blogging which has undergone some significant change over the course. It is selfish because when I have limited time and energy and am forced to choose, I almost always choose to post blogs rather than to read and comment. It is both selfish and self-indulgent and at the same time, an act of self-preservation as I need to jot down what’s swirling inside my head so I can clear it through the process.

When I hit the publish button, it is in the ether, in some sense, no longer my concern.

Of course, most of these are random things I found amusing of which I kept mental notes so I could regale an audience at a dinner party one day. Who am I kidding? I don’t think there is any dinner/cocktail party in my stars. So I put them out there. Voile! Carte blanche. ’cause my mental Post-It pad is as thin as the free ones you find on the desks in hotel rooms.

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I was assaulted by a wall of pink cuteness at the airport, a place you kind of expected to be safe from a culture that encourages its womanfolks, young and old, to be cute and adorable.

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Kawai. Japanese for cute, adorable. 可愛 in Chinese. It is a cultural obsession.

When I packed for this trip, I consciously left out tops that are too revealing, knowing that any indication of self-professed sexuality would be frowned upon. Unfortunately, I misjudged and two of my shirts, when I lean forward, reveal my cleavage, and this caused some visible discomfort in strangers, both male and female. At first it was quite puzzling to me: judging by the amount of advertisements devoted to breast augmentation, next only to those devoted to weight loss naturally, you’d think that people are at least used to the idea that boobs exist. Isn’t this contradictory?

Paradoxically, this actually falls in line with the schizophrenic idea of the female ideal: If you know Manga and Anime, you know we want our women to be Innocent + Sexy. Somewhat different from the Madonna + Whore paradox, we want our women to be CUTE. Juvenile. Forever 16 or 18. (Can you imagine La Madonna dressed in pink and adorned with Hello Kitty?)

I am pretty sure there is an entire dissertation worth of theorizing here but I am just going to do Stream-of-Consciousness which is to say, I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about and I am just going to type them up as thought clouds appear.

Someone asked me how much I drank when I was home. The answer is none. I do not drink when I am with my family because first of all they assume/prefer to think that I do not drink. Furthermore, the ability to hold your liquor is not something that will add to one’s desirability (not that I am looking to be desirable, being married and all, but you know what I mean…)

I am getting a clearer idea of why I always feel so out of place when I am home: I feel awkward, physically. Even if I were rail thin, Bulimia thin (which would be just about right according to the standards here. Ha!), I would still have been too tall. Cuteness and I simply do not mix. It was  already like this when I was in college: I tried to dress the part, cutesy prints, flowery adornments, frilly edges and all, but there was always this gnawing in the back of my head telling me how ridiculous I looked trying to look adorable when I was towering over 80%* of the female population, and probably the male too.

Puke.

I am so relieved now to be sitting here, sipping my Bloody Mary, showing my cleavage, surveying the world, narrowing my eyes and sitting in a manner that suggests Yes, I know I am sexy and you want a piece of this.

Incidentally, I was informed that in many restaurants and all self-respecting KTVs (Karaoke with all private party rooms) in Taiwan, you can find a mini version of the urinal in the men’s bathroom for puking. Ingenious, isn’t it? We should get these into the bars in the U.S., and of course, in both MEN’s and WOMEN’s Rooms.

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* Number pulled out of my ass, in no way scientific.