How honest can you be?

A few days ago, I discovered Penelope Trunk’s blog and I have been reading it almost non-stop. She is insanely honest and extremely sharing with her insightful and practical advices on networking, job hunting, career and life in general.

“How to decide how much to tell about yourself on your blog” was among the very first few articles I read about her and I was stunned, but the more I read into her writings the more I came to understand why she could be so successful as a blogger, a woman, and a careerist. Because she dares to put herself out there; she dares to take risks to explore around in order to find her true desire and strengths; and most importantly she admits and accepts her failures (or anything bad that ever happened to her), be cool about it, and then just moves on.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/07/21/how-to-decide-how-much-to-tell-about-yourself-on-your-blog/

Boys used to hate me in elementary school, because I report to the teacher. I didn’t see this as a problem because I always got the top scores anyway, until one day someone started throwing snowballs at me and many other boys joined him.

My first year in middle school was just ok. My school was again pretty dominated by guys and only those who play basketball liked me because I always go cheer for them when they are playing against other classes. Then one day my head teacher called me to her office and told me some guys didn’t like me that much because they thought I was selfish. I was shocked, but more than shocked I was confused. I asked my teacher why would they think that way and my teacher replied I don’t know either but it seems to them that being the team leader, you don’t do enough cleaning work when your team is assigned to be on duty.

Oh I see. It was clearly a false claim to me but for a moment I didn’t know how to tackle it. It was toward the end of the semester and then I got an idea, or an idea naturally came to me. We write self-analysis report every semester in which we summarize our performance on a bunch of things, and we are supposed to read it out loud to the entire class the last day at school, every word. That semester, besides commenting on my studies, my dancing, cheerleading, meeting hosting and a bunch of other activities, I said:

It seems some of you thought I was selfish, I am not sure where you draw this conclusion from but I don’t think this is true about me. In my team I have assigned the work according to gender, height and the workload. The work I assigned to myself is by no means easier or less time consuming than any other work that other people are assigned to. For the sole purpose of effective allocation, I think it’s most efficient for me to do this piece of work because I think everyone else is doing great and is the most suitable person for every other job. If anyone still thinks I am selfish simply because I used my judgment to better use everyone’s time, please let me know and I am more than willing to exchange my job with you if that will make you happier.

Yes I read these words out loud to my entire class, and it is no surprise that everyone else, including the teacher, was stunned. However what went beyond my imagination was that I became the most popular kid in the class, especially among guys. Was it because I was being logical and I honestly played a powerful defense? I highly doubt that. I think it was simply because I even dare to talk about these things in public, to reveal the fact that some people pointed out that I was selfish.


Most people will downplay anything remotely negative to their image. It is probably highly unnecessary. When Ellen finally revealed that she was gay, yes she lost her job, but it opened up many windows and eventually a completely refreshed and relieved world to her. Come to think about it, it’s not even that hard.

Be honest, and set yourself free.

A Random Walk on a Rainy Day

I was walking on 9th street toward 2nd avenue, when it started to rain. I went into the Starbucks around the corner and waited in line to get my favorite mango banana Viviano. The woman in front of me ordered 2 packs of coffee that would probably feed a zoo, and the guy behind the counter had a smirk that reminded me of an old friend.

It was another Sunday late morning, and I was walking in the rain in East Village, without an umbrella. I was in my white dress with black roses and I was not in a hurry. The raindrops caressed my hair and crept down my face, I was too lazy to raise my arm to my eyebrow so I let the water blur my green color contact.

It was not blurred however, it was crystal clear.

I wandered under the sidewalk shed and I remembered how she posed against one of the bars while another Indian/Middle Eastern looking guy, in suit and sports shoes, was sitting right next to her talking loudly on phone, how they completely ignored each other’s existence, how the photographers worked so hard to capture the asymmetry from different angles, and how random people on the street took out their cell phones to shoot this bizarre assembly of a Gothic dressed vampire looking model with an innocent looking stranger on phone.

I was looking at them from across the street, and I was smiling. It was one of the moments that you would feel so close and so remote from the city, like you are in a complete crowd and suddenly you yearn for solitude.

It was probably the first time I began to appreciate a rainy day, just like I began to appreciate the mindset of being alone. Alone but not lonely, it’s the state of mind I was trying to pursue. But every so often we confuse the two, and the other night at the club I suddenly felt so lonely and almost desperate. It was not healthy I know but it was so hard to control. I had to leave that place crowded with happy faces and drunken music. I had to find a place to hide, somewhere safe, somewhere I could call home.

I have been away for so long. I saw the picture of my dad the other day. I haven’t seen him for 2 years and he got so slim that really scared me. I called home immediately and it was busy tone again and again. I was devastated and water started to come out from my eyes. I remembered when I was little how I used to sit on my dad’s hand and he twisted my little butts around; I remembered when he came back as a visiting scholar from the US (after 3 years and then I was a first year in middle school) and I was stunned by how short he became and how tall I had grown…

And now I was so scared and I almost felt I was losing him. Luckily it was just he has been doing a lot of walking, like several hours of intensive walking every day. He didn’t lose any weight but just got fit. Maybe it’s good for him. It was a relief to me.

I talked to my parents, for the first time, calmly, about this guy I have been kind of seeing, and I was surprised that they took it amazingly well. It was almost incredible that my parents didn’t vote negatively immediately and they were even patient enough to hear all the details that I couldn’t even recall. My dad said, it was a positive that your mom was not yelling at you. But I think it’s because she hasn’t heard from you about anyone for so long so she didn’t want to disappoint you, or herself.

I took a long breath in the rain, and I hear people talking, about irrelevant things. New York is amazing as in it’s so big, so nobody even notices you; and as in it’s so small, so you can totally run into someone you know almost every day, at randomly corners, random times. Last Halloween I was intimidated I had to take the subway dressing up as a pirate. My roommate told me, don’t you worry, you’ll only see worse.

And she’s absolutely right. Sometimes I wonder if I would even find a place for someone as tiny as myself; but one day you will know that New York has the power to accommodate every character and uniqueness.

You remain alone though, in this world that can be a little bit crazy. The first step to appreciate everything and everyone else, is to enjoy the very moment and be absolutely comfortable, when you are with yourself.

And my parents, I love them too much, they don’t even know.

When you lose everything

I randomly discovered Ellen DeGeneres’s commencement speech at Tulane. I watched Ellen’s talk show 4-5pm almost every day my senior year. She used to make my afternoons filled with laughter and joy, and some contemplation about life. Now I have a full-time job so I have to skip but this clip reminds me how sharp and hilarious she is.

Enjoy!

500 Days of Summer

Joseph Gordon-Levitt
500 Days of Summer

Justin Long
He’s just not that into you

Rodrigo Santoro
Love Actually

I love these 3 movies, and these guys are so cute in them. For some reason I thought they are all half Asian. But turns out Joe was born in LA and raised as a Jew; Justin was born in Connecticut and raised as a Roman Catholic; and Rodrigo is a Brazilian.

This demonstrates how wrong I can be about people a lot of times. Or again, people see what they want to see: you notice one thing, and you completely ignore everything else. I see them as half Asian because I like them, I want to relate to them, and because I know nothing else about them, I could probably only assume that they are half Asian, which makes me more comfortable liking them.

Yes I want to relate to you, to identify with you, to find another self within you, maybe then I could be safe. But a lot of times, no matter how hard you try to understand a person, you end up finding a complete stranger. As weird as you are, you couldn’t figure out the other person’s weirdness. There are too many question marks haunting your little mind, so then you freak out, then you want to escape.

And the worst thing came when you said, I don’t think I’m coming back again. And He looked at you for a couple of long seconds, and said, Ok, I understand. Not knowing what else to say, you rushed out feeling incomplete or even betrayed, and the next second you know you wanted him back but oh too late, he now refuses to respond to any of your messages or calls.

It was your decision to quit, no? But why you are so mad, or so sad?

Take your time when you decide to enter something; cut it off quick and clear when you decide to end something. Most of the time, however, we do the opposite; that’s why we suffer. But would you really know more when you take your time? Aren’t those things you already know to start with but maybe for some reason you are afraid to admit?

Maybe the ending was sad in 500 Days of Summer, I mean she got married, with another guy: “I just woke up one day and I knew…Something I was never sure about with you.” Such a courageous yet heart-breaking line, but it left me wondering, is this love then, when you wake up one day and you know?

Who even created this whole idea of love? Those beautiful words sitting next to each other on the greeting cards, what if it’s just another complete lie we constantly tell ourselves? One of my best friends once told me he wanted a girl who is bad tempered and not easy to control, he thought life would then be more fun and more colorful. I couldn’t make any sense of what he’s talking about.

This is like a disaster to me. I thought ultimately we want to find happiness, peace and understanding. Maybe we’re all fundamentally different: me, and almost everyone else. My best friend once told me, I think you need to find someone who is of your kind.

My kind, uh?
Wow, good luck with THAT…

P.S. I just discovered this blog “Crucial Minutiae”, which is about the little things around us everyday, contributed by a group of talented writers bound by friendship. I added the blog to my Google Reader immediately. They have this very insightful article on 500 days of summer, so enjoy some painful fun here:
http://www.crucialminutiae.com/500-days-of-summer-a-love-letter-to-a-not-love-story