asian lesbians, WHAT.

I haven’t had a good Friday night for a long time. This weekend was a lifesaver.

Lovable C and I were itching to do something, which turned into movie night. With Ajisen Ramen. And Magic Hat. To top it all off, the movie was fabulous, aside from the cliche’d ending. It was great to be able to relate to a movie so closely, and we had a jovial (yes somewhat saddenned) hypothetical conversation about how our own parents would react if we told them we were gay or pregnant. (Pregnant would go over so much better. Clearly the lesser of two evils in the eyes of an Asian parent.)

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.

mothers

Me too.

My mother and I speak on a weekly basis, and since Bboy A and I broke up 2 months ago, she’s been asking me the same question on a weekly basis.

Have you spoken to him lately?

First off, wtf. Honestly. You’re my mom. You should be on my side. You should be the one who hates him even more than I do because he broke your daughter’s heart. You should be the one convincing me that I deserve better than that. You should be the one telling me to move on and meet “all the other fishes in the sea”.

Every week, I try to explain to you that “I really don’t want to talk about it”. No, I really don’t want to talk about it. No, I really don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ve even hung up on my mom once or twice because she just wouldn’t let it go. Today, I asked her why she’s still asking me about my breakup.

I want to know if either he or you changed your minds.

Secondly, wtf. I got dumped and since then, we have never talked, e-mailed, texted each other. Fuck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was dating someone else already. So no, we didn’t change our minds. I’m just waiting for you to change yours.

illusions

So I asked my mother why she hated Big D so much. It wasn’t something out of the blue, it was actually something that came out of a conversation about the state of marriage between my parents, and how me seeing Big D behind her back while my father was away really drove her insane and stressed her out.

According to my mother, Big D was unambitious, and even if he was ambitious, his intellect would have not be sufficient to carry out any ambition.

My mother is very bad at reading people. She can hardly tell if I’m lying most of the time. But it was definitely a sad conversation for me, because ambition and intellect are things that I worry about in Bboy A all the time. Maybe I am my mother’s daughter, but in that case, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell my parents about him.

homecoming

I came back to Montreal last night, on another agonizingly long bus ride. I read and slept for the most of the way, but as soon as we got close enough to the city for me to recognize the highway exit, I turned off the reading light and just sat there, enjoying my return to a city that means to much to me.

It’s a strange mix of fear and love each time I come back, because Montreal holds so much history for me, somewhat painful at times. I think of Big D, I think of my insane parents, I think of the hardships of college applications and clandestine rendez-vous. Because the me coming back from New York, from Beijing, from France is never the same person as the me who left Montreal not so long ago. And it’s scary to try and figure out how this new person fits in with the old life I left behind.

I come back this semester as an insane student who took 10 classes without telling her parents, as the girlfriend of a bboy from Philly, as the ex of Big D, as the new NSOP coordinator for Columbia… I’m not sure who I was when I last left, but it was definitely someone in a different mindset.

blast from the past

Almost one year ago, my parents and I had a huge trans-continental fight where I basically had to promise not to see Big D ever again (which worked out well, since we had broken up anyhow). My mom had gone into my closet and found my box of Big-D things (letters, gifts, stupid trinkets I’ve saved from our dates), which prompted her to call my dad and me in Singapore and the rest is history. When I came back, I assumed that she had the box of items in her possession…. but she told me that she had thrown it all out. I was pretty much devastated…

So today, I was helping my mother find something in her closet and I stumbled on the box of Big D things! I mean, even she probably forgot that she had kept it in her closet all this time and lied to me. I totally freaked out. It was kinda weird… now I feel strange knowing that 2 years of my love life is sitting in her closet. I don’t particularly want to go get it back because 1) she’ll start wailing on me again about dating a white guy and 2) because I have no particular inclination to relive that period of my life through mementos.

pride

I had a skype conversation with the daughter of a family friend in Singapore today. She was accepted at Columbia on the fated March 30th date, following which her mother emailed my uncle and I with a message titled “_____ is accepted by Columbia”. It brought a sinking feeling to my stomach, something for which I hated myself. I wasn’t able to be happy for her success because somehow, it took away from mine.

I met her during my Asia trek in the summer of 2006. Since most of my time there was marred by the fact that my father threated to beat me after my mother had called us with the discovery that Big D and I were still dating, I don’t quite remember the girl that she was. From the little recollections I have of her family, her parents were quite intelligent and typical in the sense of wanting their child to over-achieve. She, on the other hand, seemed mostly distant and pretty quiet, for a teenage girl. My family and I, in our usual fashion, discussed them in length, and especially examined her chances of making it to the Ivy League. The conclusion was that she’d had a difficult time, especially in a British Singaporean high school where the competition for top American school acceptances is fierce.

I had worked hard to get to Columbia. Probably harder than most of the kids here; not because I’m a better person for it (… mais si?) but because I’m not that smart to begin with. I’ve gone through a lot of shit to get there, not the least of which includes pleasing my parents with every decision I’ve had to make. I’ve also given up a lot to be here; an MD, a JD, what appeared to be the love of my life. This is not to say I regret any choices I’ve made to be here… but to see others, who I haughtly (and most likely wrongly) deemed as a lesser candidate arrive at the same destination… it seems to negate all those years of near-Hell I experienced.

To compound my strange superiority/inferiority complex, Asian families talk. A lot. I know that when I first got in, the general buzz was around how great of a student/daughter I was. Now that she’s also gotten in, the buzz will change its pitch, going from an evaluation of “great” to something mediocre (“Well, she’s just OK. I mean, our daughter got accepted too”).

My relief came in the form of an unexpected discovery. She was accepted, after all my self-doubt and criticism, to SEAS. A SEAS kid. Well, looks like I can sleep easy again tonight.