all the single ladies

Today is International Singles’ Day. Best invention ever, right? There is so much about that Wikipedia article that makes me happy.

First of all, leave it up to China to come up with something like that. I’ve always admired the way Chinese culture, despite repressions/oppressions of many kinds, has been able to handle Western taboos with such blunt honesty. You could always count on Chinese people to ask you about your salary, your health/weight, and your relationship status. All within 15 minutes of meeting you for the first time.

I also love the bit about the traditions for this “holiday”.

The main way to celebrate Singles Day is to have dinner with your single friends, but it’s important that each person pay their own way to show their independence. People also hold ‘blind date’ parties in an attempt to bid goodbye to their single lives.

Chinese people have always had the habit to congregate at any occasion. The collective nature of the Chinese people has been… well, troublesome, most of the time (see: Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc). When it comes to relationships, it’s not uncommon for people to mobilize friends, family and colleagues to find that suitable mate. My parents have often hinted that, should I run into any issues “finding someone”, I should go to them for help. I dread the day I have to sit through a date set up by my parents.

change is coming / change has come

I saw Nicholas Kristof today. To be more accurate, I attended a panel talk in which he gave a presentation on “Modern Day Slavery” and the oppression of women in many developing countries around the world today.

I didn’t expect him to be so eloquent (but I guess writers usually are…) or so witty (which could have gone either way in a serious event such as this). Most of all, I think I didn’t expect my own reactions to what I was hearing. For most of the presentation, I felt a numbness in my limbs from the utter shock of the facts that were presented. I felt a cold paralysis, because of the seeming hopelessness of the situation. I also felt relief, for being so fortunate as to win some sort of birth lottery. I could have easily taken the place of any of the girls who were trapped in a cyclical world of oppression and abuse.

When it comes to charity, I’m not one to be quickly convinced. Sometimes, as powerful as I can feel as a priviledged Ivy-League student in the so-called first world, it’s easy to brush off the problems of the world as too large to tackle. It’s also easy to forget about what’s not immediately in front of me, that is, an Econometrics problem set.

It’s not often that my life is turned upside-down like this. Lately, it’s been happening more often. I think that’s a good thing; I like reinventing the person I am… the person I’d like to become.

time, re-discovered

It was a little strange to be alone on the weekend. Usually, it’s a scramble to get myself to Philly or to get Bboy A here to NYC. Unless there was anything mandatory, I would go to lengths to just see him for 24 hours; skip practice, forget homework, leave friends. It became a routine of naps on 2-hour bus rides and sleepless nights in a twin-sized bed. I know that I didn’t mind the strange hours and long distances, because of the oxytocin and the company.

It’s strange to rediscover time. I missed doing some of my own reading, on my own time. I missed having done the reading for classes and finishing problem sets before midnight the day of. I also forgot the need to connect with friends and acquaintances.

It’s nice to finally have some time to myself.

re-views

I have checked his profile again. Not because I’m obsessed, but because it’s a way to help myself through the process. If you hit yourself in the same spot enough time, it will eventually go numb, right?

I’m not good with dealing with shocks. I like things the way they are, the way they were. And so here he goes, taking off his “relationship status” from his profile page again.. What? When? Why? Who is she?

You should probably try to resist looking at his profile.

Probably. Try. Resist. Is he dating someone new? I thought about this for a while. There was an initial shock, and then a glimmer of hope (he’s still in love with me!) before I settled into cautious acceptance. I always ask the same question:

Are you going to date someone else?
… Eventually. Probably. Yes.

Cautious acceptance. And with that, I let him go.

rebirth

I saw it coming. I almost willed it coming. But yet, when the moment arrive, I met it with disbelief and trepidation. No, with denial and fear; like I never wanted this to happen even though I had toyed with it in my mind for months to come.

Bboy A and I broke up two weeks ago.

I pity the man who comes to the conclusion that he must break my heart, because I am so bad at letting go. In the span of a four-hour conversation, I rushed through the stages of grief:

1. Denial: Are you serious? Do you know what you’re doing?
2. Pain: You don’t know how hard this is for me, you don’t know how hard this is for me…
   
3. Bargaining: Can you just give us a chance? I can change, we can do better.
   
4. Depression: My body knows of its loneliness. In times of grief, I can rarely sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, no matter how tired my mind becomes. After the finally hanging up the phone at around 5 AM, I rocked myself to sleep, only to wake up 2 hours later.

It wasn’t a new tune for me. When I was dumped by Big D, I couldn’t sleep for days. My body refuses to give me the rest that I need, it forces to me encounter time and time again the initial pain of the conversation. It’s true that it gets easier with every breakup, maybe because Bboy A was never “the one” or even one of “the ones” for me. It’s dealing with the habits that make it hard; the way I called him just to hear his voice, the way I would pick up things for him at the local store, the way I would get excited to spend a weekend out of New York.

this is not a picture of me

This is a poster that Bboy A and I enjoyed in Beijing. It took me a year to my hands on it, for him, for us. I am ashamed to admit that I used it as a final bargaining tool. I told him, through sobs and confusion, that it was for him, for us.

I’m so scared to tell you this, because I’m so afraid that it will mean nothing to you.

I will hold onto it, for the day when Bboy A and I could be friends. Perhaps never in the truest sense, but at least in the sense that Big D and I are able to be friends. I will hold on it, for the day when I could give it to Bboy A without any hidden agenda, malicious intent or unrequited love.

gradesgradesgrades

I got a B+ in Java Programming, ranked 90th out of 194 students.

B+ isn’t a bad grade, really. It means that I”m ahead of the curve, and at a place like Columbia (where I sometimes lose sleep over the intellect of others) it’s something that I can realistically hope for. B+  is a good job, a pat on the back, a semester well spent learning something that I’ve more or less mastered.

The problem is, I can’t help but cringe at a B+. Not only because I actually had a dream that I was ranked 70th and that the first 71 students in the class got an A, but because I worked damn hard on all those problem sets. The success I felt every time my programs compiled was greater than whatever sense of accomplishment I could get from a B+.

A B+ is a mediocre grade, and I refuse to be mediocre. I guess if you looked at my entire transcript this semester, a B+ isn’t bad in light of the fact that I took 27 credits. But the truth of the matter is, I bombed that final exam. I spent the time gossiping about things like Azia Kim and G. Michael Guy instead of going over static methods. And maybe it was poor judgment that got me this mediocrity, but maybe I was just stretched too thin.

It’s hard to realize when my limits are, mostly because I’m pretty awesome, but also because I refuse to settle for less than my best. The grades I got this semester weren’t awful, but they weren’t stellar either. I’m not sure how I’d present it to my parents, my Academic Advisor (who really told me to stop taking so many classes), myself. And how am I going to learn from this when I’m still signed up for 23 credits next semester?

Is this it?

So I just got off skype with Emo-tastic A… after talking to him for waaaaaay too long. -___-”
And I was all pensive and shit about crap that is way too complicated.
(Talking to my past has that effect on me sometimes. Damnit.)
And I’m kind of freaking out because I have so much work to do tomorrow it’s unreal.

Fuck. What am I doing?

I learned tonight that I’m not completely over Big D, that he was some kind of big shot in high school, that he was the better looking of us two… It’s not that I’d want to get back together with him… at this point, it’s hardly possible and it would be so destructive for me. But maybe I just miss our physicality? The way we connected? Will it get better between me and Bboy A? Was it ever this… awkward… or… whatever this is with Big D?

Bboy A told me that he missed me over the phone today, and even though I missed him a lot today, I just couldn’t say it. I tell him all the time, though text messages, e-mails… but putting it into words is a lot harder than either of those. Maybe it’ll remind me too much of the sweet words between me and Big D… I stared at Bboy A’s lips the last time we made out, from the nose down, he looks exactly like Big D… maybe all boys do. Making out with Bboy A is messy, jarred, and at times… too urgent. Maybe I just need to give it time. But, do I like him enough to give us that luxury?

Long distance relationships bite. One-sided relationships suck even more. Thanks, Big D.

on love, loss and the loss of love

M and P were my closest friends in CEGEP, and even before that they were such good friends that the rest of us even came up with a hybrid of their name. In Linear Algebra, we were also known as “Team Asia, A for Awesome” or “Shut up, your team is too loud”. In Physics, we would sit together and come up with ultimatums for physicists, such as “Wife? or the Principle of Conservation of Energy?”

M e-mailed me back today, a really unexpected reply to my “back in the same time zone as you!!!” message. Last time I had come home, M and I sat talking for a long time, about everything under the sun. And of course, as every young adult conversation goes, we ended up talking about relationships, namely, how I still couldn’t (can’t?) get over Big D, how M was doing with her boyfriend and how everybody else we knew where handling their love lives. I guess you can call it a “gossip-fest” (as P refers to it), but to me, it was honestly some catching up and some moving on.

I must have let something slip to P, I don’t remember. But if I had, then it obviously showed that we hadn’t intended anything malicious by our conversation about others’ private affairs, and I guess I definitely believed that M, P, and I were close enough to share these things with each other. After I left for my adventures in the East, P sent M an e-mailed expressing her disappointement, and it was pretty much downhill after that. M never had a chance to clearly express herself in person to P, and P only responds with nasty e-mails.

Obviously, I feel really responsible. If it wasn’t for me and my… inability to get over Big D, M would have probably not started talking about all kinds of other relationships in our circle of friends, and M, P and I would still be on speaking terms. It’s strange, how helping me getting over the loss of love, we wound up losing more of it.

things you learn after not blogging for 97 days

1. you always run out of toilet paper much sooner than you think you would
2. when China blocks access to WordPress.com and you’re quite too lazy to blog, you will chalk it up as a slow internet connection
3. when China blocks access to WordPress.com and you’re quite desperate to write in English after spending 7 hours daily studying Chinese, you will employ all means to gain access and realize that all the google results for “China access to WordPress” will be pages hosted on WordPress
4. as much as a dump-ee believes that there will be no one like him and there can never be equally amazing chemistry between two people, that dump-ee is wrong
5. a size “S” in North America is suddenly an “L” in Asia
6. the most convenient fashion for babies is crotchless pants. the most convenient way for babies to relieve themselves is on the street or in a wastebasket
7. if you’re at a street bakery in Xi’An and you have your camera in a messenger pouch, it will get stolen
8. China is awesome. China during the Olympics is arguably awesomer.

Stay tuned for details…

they gets no respect

Here’s an old SAT analogy:

Business majors are to Economics majors what Engineers are to Physicists.