I watched my Disney's favorite today.

Call it sexist if you will (Tina Li) ... but Mulan for is a story about a girl who goes on an journey to prove to herself, and her family, that she doesn't have to fit society's expectation and that she has the strength that would excel in the typical testosterone dominated society.  And by weird fate, she met a guy that loved her for it when she didn't expect it.

She is awkward in the male bonding rituals of nude pond bathing, weaker physically at first due to lack of training and has the worse hand-eye coordinations.  But she is determine and resourceful (blowing up the enemy with fireworks).  I think I loved it so much is that I saw myself in her.  Having to keep apart of myself secret for so long and tried to fit into the silly culture of masculinity. Like her, it wasn't any secret that I wasn't "a man."

I love Mulan because I am hoping that someday I will too "bring honor to us all" by defining my strengths and kick some villain's butt with my acrobatic skills. With the help of unusual friends and blowing off fireworks in the process.  

Moving.

With very little to do these days now that school is done and I am just sitting around waiting for my future-employer to process my papers, I spend most of my day sleeping, waking up around one or two hours pass noon.  I slide around in my sheets for a dozen-so minutes.  Then I muster the courage to pull my feet out of a pillowcase that I use for warmth and force both flat on the cold wood floors.  That is the biggest hurdle of my entire day. 

After I pull on my robe, everything seems to be just time fillers. Most days I just watch Korean dramas, American TV shows and the random Netflix recommended rentals in the kitchen.  Occasionally, I would run to the store, rub a bit of spice on a red slab of beef for the grill or drive out to do silly errands.  I find any excuse to leave the house before it gets dark. 

And these past few days, driving around St. Louis in the afternoon rain through the same routes that I have been taking for the last 10-ish year, something is gloomily telling me that I will miss this place.  Though I have never admitted to calling a city like such home.  With its silly racism and its awfully narrow segments of stolen cultures from the bigger cities overtaking the actual culture that is St. Louis, I am almost embarrassed sometimes when I tell people about this city that I inhabited for many years.  Yet, I get this weird feeling.  This worry when I think about moving for good to a new city.  The feeling is like…

You know when you spend your entire night up doing something incredibly stupid like reading a book, baking a cake, or wrapping your own wonton dumplings.  Or simply just thinking so much that you can’t fall asleep as you switch sleeping positions for the nth time.  Then you shower because you are too sweaty from the exhaustion of not sleeping.  You get back into bed and you realize that the sun is rising.  And through your curtains you see the sky turning a soft bright grey color.  You get this awful resentment of your inability to sleep but you relish in the warmth and comfort of your own sheets.  That incredibly knot in your stomach that tells you that you will miss most of your day and by sleeping you are abandoning certain responsibilities and daily adventures you owe yourself.  Yet the familiarity of your own bed and the fluffiness of your seven pillows stop you from forcing yourself down on the cold floor.  You want sleep but at the same time resent your bed for making you immobile. So you end up staying in bed awake debating and talking yourself out of the situation.   The whole mess is fine balance of the comfort of familiarity and the trap of being immobile. 

St. Louis is like my messy bed at the crack of dawn.  I owe it to myself to get out. Out of the Midwest, out of St. Louis, out of bed.  Most days I sit around waiting for a final end to a chapter of my life.  Most days I lose the battle between my wants and my bed.  And I walk around my house looking for pieces that I can take with me to remind me of my mom’s kitchen and the small house we grew up in.  Occasionally, I would try to drive around the city looking for something I can pack and ship to Seattle.  And in between, I just watch TV. 

Investments and returns.

At the end of each semester, out of curiosity, I would log-in to check my grades.  Whatever the screen reported would always have this lukewarm and haft hearted feeling that gives me nothing more but an urge to shrug.  However, the last 2 semesters have been pleasantly surprising.  As I study the repetition of A is each row, my brows would pull closer together in puzzlement and my gut would swell in pride.   And I softly whisper to myself: what the what!?! 

The classes this year has been harder and more time consuming than any other combination of classes I have taken on campus.  And I wonder if it is a sign of my maturity. A sign of my understanding of how classroom work. Maybe.  A sign of the progress of my intellectual capacity. 

As I wonder these things, my jaw would hang open and occasionally repeating "what the what" in soft monotone hums. 

Honest though, I think its cause I have different study habits.  The habit being that I study at all, do assignments and sometimes would skim the book before I head to bed.  I mean, I just put some effort.  Not that I am toting a wheeled bag full of text books around or anything.  Now, I live at home, am unattached in my social involvement, am distancing my sluttier, more outgoing days, and took a job with no responsibilities.  I have a lot of ideal and free time to do silly filler things like assignments. 

If I had a time machine and decided to take a trip back 2 years for coffee with myself, I would face a mean-ass punk who would look at me full of disgust.  And I’m sure I would get laugh at and slap around by the tan, blond b.  And the only thing I would have to cling on to my dignity would be my neat and clean repetitive rows of A’s.

After-all, most of the accomplishments that I hold high today are his doing.  And this me, with this new discovery of my ability to achieve in conventional ways, do I want to sit across from him giving him tit-for-tat? 

And I wonder, who would laugh last? 

Minh-ing-ful Profile: Tina Li

In the last 3+ years, I have had to write many ample letters of recommendations and other miscellaneous nominations for Tina.  As her best friend, we both know that it would be up to me to accurately portray all the fine habits and strong ethics to award councils and other silly parties out there.  I remember corny comments like “friend, mentor” or “the ladder that knowingly drops when you fall into a ditch”… etc.  But I want to set the record straight.  She is the type of person that eats off my plate.  She is the type of person that would ditch me sometimes for the comfort of her Family Guy and squishy bed.  Tina is the type of person who says I am socially awkward when I am just being myself.  In honesty, she kinda irks me sometimes.

I remember a night about a year ago.  I took her out to introduce her to this new guy I am seeing and who I am totally crushing on.  I was hoping that she would be that good representation of who I am in class and intelligence.  She proceeds to leave the house in a see-through top… As the night continues, I would glance over to find her terrorizing young Chinese dancers and allowed them to grope her.  After a few hours, I found her lying on a couch outside the club rambling things off to this fine guy.  I had to take her home where I believe she almost puked on me.  Not the best image, I would imagine.  Significantly and strangely, I continue this routine with her.  Taking her to gay joints and allowing her the chance to terrorize poor young gay boys across the bar with her bodaciousness.   

Actually, I take her everywhere.  While in college, through most of my daily life on campus for the last 4 years, I needed someone.  I needed someone to go with me to my meetings. I needed someone to go out with me on Halloween nights when I hardly had a single gay friend in the city.  I needed someone to go with me to get my HIV test results.  I needed someone to go to lunch with me so I can crap about how unbelievably crazy the people I have to deal with is like.  And sometimes, I needed someone to sit at home in my matching robe that I bought for Steve, watch TV, eat my food and laugh at stupid romcoms with me.  All so that I do not feel so alone. 

Sure. Tina pukes.  Gosh knows I puked.  The see-through shirts were mostly my ideas.  The badly drunken ordeals must have mostly been my peer pressure to increase her tolerance.  And the plate eating, it’s probably because I started the tradition.  I guess I am socially awkward most times and she makes me feel kinda proud that I am. 

It’s weird that I know she will probably read this.  I think it’s my thank you for her being there.  I guess be both know that we are too asian and too passive aggressive to talk about real emotions like our parents.  But it’s what makes us close. 

I know it’s our last week together for who knows how long.  And maybe we should do something together instead of playing on our computers.  But why break a tradition?  Thank you, though, for the last 4 years.&  Don’t get hot chocolate on my white robe. Happy graduation.

Pre/Post Finals

 

And that is just one part of my life that I need to organize.  

In the present.

I’ve been told that I am the type of person who always wants to move to a different place and be in a different moment.  It’s mostly true. I do reminisce about the past more than I like to admit and am always dreaming about the future.  My mind has always and I think will always do as it pleases; I think to a certain point is satisfy me.  Maybe I am opportunistic. 

I’ve been trying to live in the present.  And the present has been finals after finals.  I roll out of bed most days for the last week around 11 or noon.  I sit at my kitchen table for the next 13-14 hours doing the combination of researching, writing, emailing and the gambit of social networking.  The early summer heat in St. Louis makes it possible for me to open the kitchen window and very rarely feel a slight breeze. 

I watched my fingers as I type, studying the layouts of papers across the cherry wood surface and cannot help it but travel back to Ho Chi Minh City.  To June 2007, when I was in a similar moment; looking at my fingers while I type in hopes of inspiration for what else to write and noticing the mess of student profiles and coffee stains my few hours of work caused.  It was the summer of my freshmen year.  These thoughts, strolling through memory lane, only reminds me of where I am and the small contrast of our lives: my present and past.  I try to think of my future in the same fondness. 

(Me in Summer of 2006.  Not much different from now.)

Instead of comfort, my stomach feels like as if a hundred espresso shots have been injected and I feel the adrenaline making me want to gag.  It gets worse when I think about driving across the water to work every day and driving home in the notorious Seattle mistiness. 

Then I try to focus on the present and my thoughts trail off once again to a moment somewhere in the past and to a possibility in the future.  Both thoughts make me happy.  And I wonder if I need to be living in the present all the time.  Is it so bad to live in a world of pasts and possibilities?  It sure does beat finals.