Unreasonable fears

I’m not talking about phobias that totally break people down. I have some random fears, not without roots, but they are still unreasonable at my place in life.

One of my greatest fears is calling strangers on the phone, whether it is customer service or a store to ask questions or what. I’ve largely gotten over it and can make myself call, but my throat gets dry and my head feels woozy whenever I do.

I know why. When I was younger, my older bro, my sister, and I often had to call up people and places on behalf of my parents, due to the language barrier. But it’s not easy being a kid and calling adults, expecting them to take you seriously, especially when you are talking about things you don’t know.

Imagine you are at your job. And some kid calls you, says they are calling on behalf of their parent or parents. The kid sounds young, maybe 10 years old. You think you are being jerked around, but try to be nice. The kid asks some questions, making you wait while talking to someone off the phone (is it an adult? or is it another kid prompting them on this prank?), then gets off the phone. The phone rings again, and it’s the same kid. She’s asking you the same questions. Or different ones. Whatever. It’s getting annoying, and you are busy. You speak curtly, but you are willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. By the time she calls again, you are pissed off. You curse out the 10 year old, annoyed to keep getting these crank calls, which, by this time, you are sure it is. You scream at her and tell that bitch to never call back and some creative things she can do with her “parents”.

Well, I was that kid. And I wasn’t making crank calls. And I didn’t want to bother them and call them over and over again, but there it is. Most immigrants’ kids will tell you that they had to do this everyday for something or another.

The person on the phone yells at you for wasting their time. Randomly, and more frequently than you might imagine, they’ll get personal and say something about my background, like, “Go back to China, you stupid ching-chong,” especially if they’ve heard you talking to your parents. The parents at home yell at you for not getting the information correctly the first time, maybe even for making the person on the line mad. But you don’t even know what words to use for what they want to talk about. The concepts are hard for a kid.

The other, lesser component of this is having to give them my name. It’s almost always an ordeal. Some people have asked me, “Don’t you have an ‘American’ name?” or, more politely, “Do you have a nickname you go by?” Ignoring the inherent xenophobia of the first question (if I am American, and that’s my name, what is un-American about my name? Ah, you mean a name of Western origins. That’s not the same as being American.) it’s not like I wouldn’t rather I had a name that people could easily understand and say. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to fit them on for size and see how they feel. I know a lot of people who have changed their names for precisely this reason. But nothing else fits me. I’ve been this name for so long. I’ve tried and tried again. I just live with it because it’s me, and I’m used to people not getting the name right. It’s ok, as long as they put in an effort. It’s rude if they don’t put in an effort, but not getting it right the first few times is not a crime. I even tell people it’s ok to ask me again later, so they aren’t embarrassed to ask.

Anyway… I can call people now. I rehearse what I will say and get to the point quickly but politely, so I don’t waste their time. I know to always say, “Let me spell it for you,” when having people looking up my account. I know what I’m calling about. I know how to assert myself if someone is insulting to me. I know how to respond nicely when I am speaking with a person who is trying to help. I know I’m in control. (Well, unless I’m trying to cancel AOL, I suppose.)

But always, in the pit of my stomach, there is a painful pit lodged right between my ribs, fear that someone will scream at me and curse me out and tell me to go back to where I came from, and being unable to avoid the situation in the future, being out of control of my circumstances.

It hasn’t happened in years. But there it is.

What’s your unreasonable fear?

The Winner Is Me!

Seppo and I play funny games. I’m sure every couple or even friends who have known each other for a very long time do the same. Some of our games involve the following:

• Singing songs with made up lyrics having to do with how awesome we are.
• Closing our eyes and trying to land our index fingers on our respective noses/chins/tongues.
• Going through the alphabet and trying to name animals (or songs or people’s names or movies) for each letter. This game is really good when you are standing in a long line.
• Playing the thumb game. It’s complicated to explain but easy to play and involves smacking the losers mercilessly on the wrist. This is also good for standing in lines.

We’ve got a huge set of these that we rotate through, adding new games whenever we can think of one.

Last night, I introduced a new game that I read about. I had read about this a few days ago and was biding my time for the perfect opportunity to spring it on Seppo. I wanted to do it by the book and not deviate from the pattern set out in what I had read.

Ostensibly, I lost. But Seppo and I know both know who really won and who really lost.

Basically, you challenge your opponent to try to touch your face with their tongue as lightly as they can, and whoever does it more lightly wins. I let Seppo go first. He did his best, and I swear it was as light as a snowflake.

I granted to him that it was a really good effort and that I wasn’t sure if I could beat him.

Then I leaned in and covered his face in slobber and proclaimed my utter loss.

Bwahahaha.

Checking in

I just finished writing the last blog entry, which I had started almost a week ago.

Between a major milestone hitting today, eating better, cooking more, and walking the dog on longer walks, I’ve been too tired to blog this month. Yet, as Seppo’s blog entries will attest, we’ve been up to a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t mind recording for myself to look back on. Well, at least one of us did.

Singing. Seppo says my singing is better than it used to be. I told him that to me, I sound the same as I did before, i.e. a fun mix of flat and sharp and loud and quavery, but he says he can hear the difference. At least Mobi doesn’t grumble and lumber out of the room anymore. People say that all the time, but he really used to.

Work. I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but I have a fancy assed title at work now. I kinda love that the next one up sounds like a made up one. In other news, I am pretty tired from the milestone, but I still have a little wee bit left to do.

Dog. He’s learning a new game, “Where’s the treat?” It involves the following commands:

• Sit.
• What’s this? (This indicates to him that he should pay attention and sniff the treat I am holding in my hand.)
• Stay. (I walk away from him and hide the treat while he is in “stay”.)
• Ok, where’s the treat?

You’d think that being a dog, he’d naturally use his sense of smell to find stuff like treats and his favorite toys. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. When we play hide-and-seek (not too different from this game but with one crucial difference that I think you can figure out on your own), he doesn’t try to figure out where you might be by sniffing you out. No, he simply goes from room to room to try to find you.

With this new game, he actually makes loud sniffing noises while trying to find the treat. In fact, he is getting much better at using his nose for something other than poking his squeaky toys, which is his primary way of making them squeak. You’d think he’d use his mouth like every other dog on the planet, but that’s another topic. Anyway, he seems to be able to zone in on the general area very quickly now. It’s neat! At the beginning, we’d literally walk five feet away from him and throw the treat down on the carpet in plain sight. He’d sniff around and walk in circles trying to find it, requiring up to a minute and plenty of human aid to find it. Now I can put it in a different room under a pillow and he can still find it.

House. Seppo has been really proactive about getting the roofers out here. They were here this morning to evaluate the current state of the rood and will start work soon. Yay! We are also going to get estimates on other repairs to the house. Seppo cleaned up most of our room the other weekend, prompting me to clean out my closet in its entirety and reorganize. I made up one and a half more bags of clothes to donate.

Gardening. I have some ideas of what I want to plant in the coming year, but it requires that I make a raised bed of some sort. Hmm.

Cooking. We have been trying all sorts of new things in the kitchen this month. I bought stuff to bake bread in our bread machine (inherited from a friend who moved away to NYC) and have baked the first loaf on Sunday. Fun! I wish it had a little window on it like my mom’s. It would make staring at the breadmaker more fun. Right now, I end up just staring at the white plastic, wondering what’s going on in there.

Two words

Dilettante. I was called a dilettante for the first time (which happens to be the first time I ever heard the word) when I was a freshman in college.

I hadn’t known what this word meant, so I had looked it up and found something very similar to this Merriam-Webster definition:

1 : an admirer or lover of the arts
2 : a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge : DABBLER

“An admirer or lover of the arts” — how wonderful! But he had said it in a sort of mocking way, so I had asked what was so wrong with being someone who loved the arts. Apparently, he had meant it in the latter way, which happens to be the more common use of the word (as indicated by other dictionaries and people who are well-versed in Big Words^tm).

This riled me up back then and still riles me up now. There is definitely something to be said for someone who gains a deep and penetrating knowledge of a field. They move areas of research forward; they are the ones who break new ground and move us ever forward in the tide of progress. They are the pioneers and we’d be nowhere without them.

But that’s not to say there is something wrong with people who can see the wonder and joy of a variety of things and like to poke and taste at them. I look around the world and see so many items of interest, topics to pull apart, food to eat, media to consume, things to absorb. I love Toni Morrison but I also love Julia Quinn. I love La vita è bella but I also love Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. I drool at high–tech gadgets but I also love that I can make something like a scarf out of something as low-tech as some yarn and two skinny sticks. I loved intro chem and organic chemistry so much that I used to beg people to let me tutor them but I still can’t help falling asleep at every corporate informational session they have. Oh wait… one of these is not like the other. It doesn’t fit the list paradigm! Arg! One more try… I loved chem but I also love to assemble IKEA furniture, except anything involving hammering. I suck at that.

I love things that have to do with etymology or current word usage or standard grammar but I also gleefully use “OMGWTF!” and have actually said the non-word “lawls” (phonetic pronunciation of LOLs) in real life. [edit: This was not a good example of what I meant to illustrate. Somehow, this morphed into a highbrow/lowbrow thing, instead of a deep knowledge versus shallow enjoyment. Damn.] Instead of, you know, actually laughing out loud. I know. I’m ashamed too. And this post will undoubtedly be full of mistakes which will force me to make incremental changes over the next few weeks, thereby embarrassing me in my assertion that I love grammar.

But whatever it is that I’m interested in, even if it is for just a short period of time, it really, really interests me and gets me fired up. I try to grok the material, at least on the level of what makes it an enjoyable thing. I throw myself into it. I love it and revel in it.

To sum up, being a dabbler is no crime. Take joy in whatever you want, whether it’s something that is generally considered frivolous or something that is generally revered, whether you only get into it for a week or a lifetime. There is so much awesomeness out in the world and only so much time.

In other words, do the dew. *ducks and runs*

Spendthrift. This is a word that has been haunting me for years. It is reasonable to say that it has in fact been bugging me for decades. Since the first time I ran across it, it’s driven me crazy. Trying to understand it as a compound word seems to make it clear that it’s a word that has to do with being frugal. Reading it in context makes it clear that it’s one of those odd words that means the opposite of what it looks like… Until you read something else and it sounds like what you originally thought it meant.

I’ve always been 85% convinced that it means someone who spends money like it was made of water, contrary to the seeming breakdown of the words. I vaguely remember even looking it up sometime during my high school years. The problem is that I remember the “A-ha!” feeling I had when I looked it up, but forgot which way the resolution went. Well, recently, a podcast from A Way with Words cleared it up for me. Dictionary.com defines the word to mean the following:

1. a person who spends possessions or money extravagantly or wastefully; prodigal.
–adjective
2. wastefully extravagant; prodigal.
[Origin: 1595–1605; spend + thrift]

The key is in the origin and the word “thrift“. The origin of the word is related to the word “thrive“:

[Origin: 1200–50; ME < ON: well being, prosperity; cf. thrive]

And the origin of that says the following:

[Origin: 1150–1200; ME thriven < ON thrīfast to thrive, reflexive of thrīfa to grasp]

A-ha!

So the contemporary meaning of thrift most likely comes from the part of the definition having to do with “grasping” or holding onto something, but the older meaning had more to do with the contemporary meaning of thrive. So a “spendthrift” is someone who spends with vigor!

I love it!

The Year So Far

This year has been pretty dang good. We had our most active New Year’s Day ever. We’ve gone to a new-to-us Korean restaurant, revisited a neighborhood sushi boat place and found that it’s improved quite a bit (although they still make their sushi with fish that’s waaaaaaaaaay too cold), cooked at home about four days out of each week, and packed lunch for work much more than we used to.

I’ve lost somewhere between two to four pounds already between my very slow diet and walking the dog between thirty minutes to an hour about four times a week (shorter walks on other days).

I’ve hemmed three pairs of pants! Well, one pair was hemmed on December 30, 2006, so that one doesn’t count, but I hemmed a pair of Seppo’s jeans and my black corduroy pants. It’s so awesome having pants that are the perfect length. All three pairs of pants have slightly different hems, so I am learning a bit too. I bought a bunch of patterns, but have not bought any fabric yet. I dropped by Poppy Fabric on 51st and Broadway, but I didn’t buy anything except some hemming trim (or something like that) for the inside of Seppo’s pants.

I know that sounds like I’ve put rickracks on Seppo’s pants. Heh. But I swear I haven’t.

I’ve been pretty good about calling my family in the past few months. I try to do it when I’m walking the dog in the evenings on the days I work from home (or on the weeknds), so that the timing is pretty good for talking to both my mom and sis, as well as the nieces.

I’ve been reading a bunch of new blogs and am likely to post a round-up sometime soon.

I feel a tad restless. Not sure why.

I am officially an employee of a large company now, which means I have a strangely interesting title. I looked at the descriptions for what a holder of that title is responsible for, and it sounded like something someone ten years older than me should do, so it’s a little intimidating. Or I’m intimidated by me. Not really. It’s just funny to me, I suppose.

I haven’t really felt like I have something that’s really bubbling up out of me that I want to say. I really do think squeezed it all out for NaNoWriMo and am still recovering. My mind feels blank. I hope I have something interesting to say soon, because I’m going to put myself to sleep. Snore.

Ok, so everyone else is doing it…

… So I’m going to jump off the bridge too! Via dre-2k2-f4i, niralth, and helava.

Your senior year in High School is supposed to be “the best year of your life.” Let’s see how much you remember. I know for some it might be hard for you to go back that far!

Year :: 1994

1. Who was your best friend?
Hajeong

2. What sports did you play?
Nothing. Why not a question about anything else I competed in?!

3. What kind of car did you drive?
Nothing. Didn’t drive.

4. It’s Friday night, where were you?
At bible study.

5. Were you a party animal?
Not at all.

6. Were you in the “In Crowd”?
There was no in-crowd. If there were, I wouldn’t have been in it. But I was also not a pariah.

7. Ever skip school?
Yes.

8. Ever smoke?
Not in senior year, but when I was younger, just to see why people would do such a thing.

9. Were you a nerd?
Uber.

10. Did you get suspened/expelled?
No.

11. Can you sing the Alma Mater?
Let others sing of college days
Their alma mater true.
But when we raise our voices
‘Tis only, high, for you!

We’ll ne’er forget those days gone by
Those glorious days of old!
When oft we sang the praises
Of the crimson and the gold!

Dear high, dear Central high,
Thy memories never die.
Thy honor we’ll cherish <-- I had this line wrong the first time
And laud it to the sky!

I don’t remember the second verse/part.

ETA: I do remember!

On ballfield or in life,
In peace or deadly strife,
For thee thy sons will labor,
For thee, oh, dear old high! <-- I got this one wrong too. 12. Who was your favorite teacher?
Mr. Brooks, my crazy Pharmacology teacher (who also taught me Chem A.P. and Organic Chemistry). Half the kids were terrified of him, half the kids couldn’t stop laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing at the funny things he said. He was awesome and taught me so much about chemistry and made it make so much sense that I wanted to become a chemical engineer.

13. Favorite class?
World Lit, taught by Dr. Slepian, my other favorite teacher of senior year. She introduced me so much world literature, far beyond the normal stuff you usually read in high school. Her classes taught me to think critically about what I read.

14. What was your school’s full name?
Central High School of Philadelphia.

15. School mascot?
Lancer.

16. Did you go to Prom?
Yes.

17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
No, because everything that was great was so great that I don’t have any desire to change anything, and because everything that was terrible was so awful I don’t want to relive it.

18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Our Salutatorian gave the most inspiring speech about spreading our wings and flying, which sounds cheesy, especially when you take into account it included actual wing motions, which everyone started doing. You’d think it was all just a large joke, except she was such a great speaker that we were all really into it. I could see her becoming a senator one day.

19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
My little brother was born. I remember seeing him for the first time in the delivery room. I made sure to memorize his crinkled up features because I was paranoid he’d be switched with another baby by accident.

20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
What the heck is this? I’ve never heard of it.

21. Did you have a job your senior year?
Yes. I tutored three younger students. I think I had four at some point.

22. Who did you date?
JCH. We were long distance. He was in Germany for most of the year.

23. Where did you go most often for lunch?
School cafeteria or to the little Chinese place across the street for the best spicy vegetable lo mein I’ve ever had, barring my friend’s dad’s. You know who you are! 😀

24. Have you gained weight since then?
Yes. I think I’m about 15 over what I was when I graduated.

25. What did you do after graduation?
Continued to tutor. Awaited eagerly for college to start.

To-Dos

• Learn to sew. Learn to make nice hems for altering pants. Learn to alter shirts and dresses to fit better. Try to construct shirts and skirts.
• Lose weight gained during the year through exercise and better eating habits. Get back to using FitDay to track intake, exercise, and weight.
• Organize and rebalance our retirement funds. Continute to make use of Yodlee. Continue to read up on personal finance blogs. Find index funds to invest in.

I like having attainable and focused goals. 🙂

Week in review

Disclaimer: Boring, journal-like entry follows.

Well, it’s been a busy week.

Last Friday, Uyen and I babysat for Gene & Heather, after stopping by Lindsi’s house for a dinner of crispy duck and rice. The baby was already asleep, so we just had to make sure he stayed asleep and didn’t panic when he woke up. He did stir a bit about 10 minutes before they got back, but he settled back down with a little back-patting (by Uyen) and hand-holding (by me). He reached out for his cat and held it while he fell back asleep. It was so adorable.

Last Saturday, we went to dinner with Becky & Alan at a place called Café Rouge, a nice little Mediterranean place that served me a most fantastic steak, which was perfectly pink & juicy in the inside and seared on the outside. Seppo got a cassoulet of duck confit & sausage, which was extremely tasty but waaaaaaaay too greasy for me. I can’t remember what we had for appetizers, but they were really good too. I have a vague memory of lentils that looked like tapenade, but my memory overall isn’t what it used to be. Definitely a place to go back to.

Sunday morning, Uyen graciously drove us to SFO where we stopped to eat at Perry’s. I wouldn’t ordinarily mention a meal eaten at an airport, but they had homemade thick-cut potato chips and an awesome lox & bagel plate. If you have to eat at SFO, it’s a decent choice.

My second cousin (is that what it is when the guy’s mother is my mom’s first cousin??) and his girlfriend picked us up from the airport. We got home at 9pm-ish and had the first of our many, many, many meals.

My mom cooked like a maniac. During our 4.5 day stay, we had dweji bulgogi (spicy pork), galbi jjim (braised short rib), yook gae jang (spicy brisket and vegetable stew), make-your-own maki, miyeok gook (seaweed soup w/ mussels), odeng bokum (sauteed fishcake), jap chae (glass noodles sauteeded with julienned vegetables), LA-style galbi (short rib), some sort of spicy snail & vegetable thingy that I don’t know the name of, moo gook (beef & turnip soup — “moo” is turnip, not cow :D), and a bajillion little accompanying side dishes, including various kimchees and seaweed-y things. That’s not even all of it; it’s all I can remember. This is in addition to sandwiches from a sandwich shop that my mom’s friend runs, a meal of food court stuff at a giant Korean market (giant dumplings, blood sausage, seafood and vegetables pancakes, mung bean pancake), and yangyum chicken (similar to general gao’s chicken).

I gained 4.5 pounds in 4.5 days. :O

Seppo and I spent most of the time playing with the two nieces (it’s so cute how they both alternate between calling him “Uncle Seppo” and “Seppo Samchoon” which is Korean for Uncle Seppo) and my little brother. That is, when we were not running around buying things (to fix a door that was sagging and not closing right) or returning things (Christmas presents that didn’t fit). We also gave their dog Reno quite a workout.

I wish we had had more time there (we returned on Thursday) so that I could have taken the bro somewhere he wanted to go, apart from the nieces, and vice versa. It was good seeing the family. The best part of it is that my mom and I didn’t argue even once! I love her and she loves me, but we always bicker, so this was a nice change.

My sis was supposed to return from Korea on Thursday, but it got pushed back to Saturday. She had made an emergency trip to Korea because her father-in-law had a completely unexpected accident (fell off a ladder while trying to get something) and sadly passed away. I didn’t get to see her, but I was glad she was able to be in Korea to help her mother-in-law and her husband deal with their grief, even while grieving herself.

Uyen picked us up and took us to a totally kick-ass Shanghai-style restaurant in Millbrae, where we had tasty little things called “soup dumplings” that are in fact little tiny dumplings filled with the standard blob of meat and the non-standard glug of soup! Mmmmmm, good. That’s also going to be a place to return to.

Friday, we went over to Becky & Alan’s place to hang with them, Joe, and Chris while enjoying a little Zachary’s pizza and a berry pie. It’s no wonder I put on a few.

Today was all about going to Joann’s and buying a bunch of sewing things like a ruler, a tracing wheel, tracing paper, scissors, pins, and some other things that I can’t remember, while Seppo hit up Trader Joe’s. I came home and hemmed a pair of my pants! I am wearing them right now. It’s awesome to have pants that don’t drag on the floor. I am so happy.

The Areas of My Expertise: The Audiobook

No, I haven’t written a self-aggrandizing book, of which I am releasing an audio version. But John Hodgman has! Thanks to Angry Chad for the link.

Get your free John Hodgman book here! The audiobook is super-duper awesome in that there are all sorts of extras (in the way of songs, inside jokes, guest voices, etc.) especially designed for the audiobook format, so it’s not just him reading his text.

You can’t get better than free. I paid for mine a few weeks? months? ago, but it was well worth it. Enjoy.

Rosie O’Donnell is dead to me.

I used to watch a lot of stand-up on tv when I was young. I have seen a lot of people come and go. Strangely, all the women stand-up comics I loved have come out at some point (Ellen, Paula, Rosie). Wait, that wasn’t my point.

Uh…

Anyway, Rosie, whom I’ve loved for years and years through various tv shows and life events, really crossed the line for me.

She is dead to me. Dead. Her apology sucked.

It doesn’t have the history of the n-word, but if you want to instantaneously make me want to spit bile and make me sick to my stomach, you say ching-chong in front of me. No, don’t. If you are a friend and you care for our friendship, never, ever say that in front of me.

Rage rage.

What with Michael Richards, I’m gonna run out of comedians to like. But I can turn around. I loathed Margaret Cho and her comedy for years because I felt it came from a place of self-loathing and anti-Asian propaganda, but in the recent years, with personal growth, her comedy has also changed. And now I enjoy her comedy because she is funny and can make jokes about race without being racist. Which is definitely possible.

Seriously, I love comedy. I didn’t find her “joke” to be unfunny because I have no sense of humor. I didn’t find her “joke” to be unfunny because it mentioned Asians. I found it to be unfunny because it wasn’t. Furthermore, I found it to be grossly offensive because it was. Sure, that may be subjective but I have plenty of reason to find it offensive, not because I’m a left wing PC nut (which I don’t deny being).

If Rosie wakes up and grows in the future, I guess I can see taking her back of my “dead to me” list. We’ll see. But for now, dead.