you know you're asian when...

You ask your parents help on one math problem and 2 hours later they're still lecturing
Your parents still tried to get you into places half-price saying you were 12 when you were really 15
You have a 40 lb. bag of rice in your pantry
You shop at 99 Ranch
Everyone thinks you're "Chinese" no matter what part of Asia your ancestors were from
You've had a bowl haircut at one point in your life
Your parents enjoy comparing you to their friends' kids
You drive mostly Japanese cars.
You've learned to keep bargaining even if the prices are rock bottom
You've had to eat parts of animals they don't even put in hot dogs
Your pencil cases, erasers, and pens are pastel colored with cute dogs/bears/kittens named RooRoo, RaaRaa, HelloKitty, etc.
You've gotten little red envelopes filled with money around February
Piles of shoes tend to make it hard to open the front, back, and closet doors
Idiot people try to impress you with pathetic imitation Asian languages, like the ever-so-popular: ching chong woo bok chi, etc..
Your parents say leaving rice in your bowl is a sin
The Bio lectures on marine life (seaweed, sea cucumbers, octopii) was last night's dinner
You have bad eyesight
Your parents hover over your tired, caffeine-drugged body at 12 midnight to say, "In Korea (or other native country), we studied even more."
Your parents expect you'll be best friends with any one off the street in any given area as long as they are Asian
An Asian woman comes on campus and people ask: "Is that your mother?" Well then, "Is it your sister?"
Your parents say, "Calculus? I took Calculus in 8th grade!"
Everyone thinks you're good at math
You like buying 100 of something that's 50% off You like buying 100 of something that's 75% off even more
Your aunts and uncles bring you back adorable clothing from Asia with fuzzy bunnies, vinyl ducks, and English words that make no sense, in great colors like yellow, pink, magenta, orange, and the ever popular lime green
You go to an Asian restaurant and realize they're serving American imitation food
People see a bunch of scribbles on a chopstick and ask you to translate
You have to call just about all your parent's friends "Auntie and Uncle"
You have 12+ aunts and uncles
You've taken some sort of martial art.
At expensive restaurants, you order a delicious glass of water for your beverage and NEVER order dessert
The vast majority of the people related to you wear glasses. Thick glasses.
You're short.
Your parents have either made you play the piano, the violin, or both, since the age of 6
You get nothing if you do well in school, but punished severely if you don't
When going to other people's houses, you always have to bring a gift
Your dad still pulls his socks up to his knees, you know, the ones with the blue and pink stripes at the top
Your family owns a tennis racquet, golf clubs, or both
Your family always cheers for the Asian athlete on TV (i.e. Michael Chan)
The furniture in your house never matches the wallpaper, the carpet, the decorations, or any of the rest of the furniture
You own a rice cooker or two
You buy soy sauce by the gallon
Your parents tell you about how long it took for them to get to school, how horrible the weather was in their native country, and how much they still appreciated going
Your parents buy you clothes and shoes many sizes too big so you can "grow into it" and wear it for years to come.
You hate getting B's.
You eat rice everyday.
Your parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer.
Everyone in your school assumed you were smart and knew karate.
When you tell your parents you got a 95% on a math quiz, they ask you where the other 5% went


These pretty much sum up my life, EXCEPT it's the other way around for me for "Everyone thinks you're "Chinese" no matter what part of Asia your ancestors were from".  I AM Chinese, but everyone thinks I'm Filipino or Hawaiian or mixed or something else. But all the academic ones and shiiet are pretty much true. Even though I have been called an anti-Asian (I'm not small, I'm a good driver, I'm hella hella hella tan, I don't have small eyes, etc.), I lurrrrrrrrrrrve being asian! Gung hay fat choi bitchhhh!

family.

I'm a firm believer in the importance of family. At the end of the day, they're all you really have. Family is the only constant thing you have in your life as everything else changes to abruptly and so often. I love my family, even if I don't necessarily show it as much as I used to or as much as I should. But hey, most teenagers are like that these days. So this week, I'm gonna blog about my family members. I will start with my grandparents.

I am extremely lucky to still have both pairs of my grandparents, on both my mom and dad's sides. My maternal grandparents live in an apartment right on Lake Merritt, and my paternal grandparents live right next to the Lake Merritt BART station. My mother's side is Mandarin and my father's side is Cantonese. All of my grandparents know a lot about respect and family, coming from traditional China. My mom's parents are older that my dad's, but they all know have had a lot of interesting experiences and countless stories from China.

On my mom's side, there are five girls.  My aunt Rebecca being the oldest, Jacqueline is second, Yvonne third, Christine fourth, and last but not least, my mom. My aunt Rebecca is an amamamamazin singer, she could probably be an opera singer if she wanted. Whenever I'm at her house, she's always singing to herself, and it's really cute. Rebecca lives in Alameda with her family, too. Her son, my cousin Kevin, is a freshman at AHS. Kevin's half-sister (who really isn't considered a half, more like a whole) Katrina recently graduated from UC San Diego. She is my favorite cousin because she's pretty, smart, nice, and funny. Also, it doesn't hurt that she swam and played water polo for Alameda High School (: My aunt Jacqueline also lives with her family in Alameda, not too far from my house. Her daughter Dionna also goes to AHS. She's a sophomore. My aunts Yvonne and Christine both married white guys, which isn't really a bad thing, but it is kind of strange. My aunt Yvonne lives in Vallejo with her husband Jim. I try not to talk too much to him because he seems like a pessimistic kind of guy, who doesn't really have much respect for our family. Yvonne's son Brandon graduated from UC Davis, and he went to Alameda High School as well. My aunt Christine is married to my uncle Ken, who is a lawyer. He's really nice and extremely well educated. I think he's a bomb ass uncle (: My aunt Christine and uncle Ken have had it the hardest this past year, with my cousin Catherine's passing. She graduated from UCI. Her brother stephen went to UC Riverside, where his girlfriend Allison is currently attending. Christine and Ken live in Millbrae.

Now we get to my dad's side of the family. I have one uncle and one aunt on my dad's side. We're not quite as close with them as we are to my mom's side, but they're all nice people. My cousins on my dad's side are all girls. Lulu and Winn are sisters. Lulu is 27 and Winn is 19. It's kindof weird having Winn's name being so close to mine, but no everyone in our family calls her by her chinese name so it's cool. Lulu came to America from China when she was 18 to go to college. She went to College of San Mateo, then transferred to UC Bizzerkeley. she majored in engineering. right now she's going back to Berkeley, but i don't really know what for. Both Lulu and Winn are really perfect, which is kindof intimidating. My baby cousin Caroline
is 10. She is an only child to my aunt Sharon and OTHER uncle Jim (the one i actually like). She acts EXACTLY like me. and i wouldn't have it any other way.

So this is where I will stop talking about my family. It's too late right now for me to talk about my immediate family, maybe i'll do that next week. maybe this will be a 2 part series. KEWL. the very last thing i have to say for both sides of my family? they are both CRAZY but i love them will all of my heart. (:

catherine.

When I was younger, I was always close with my favorite cousin, Catherine. Even though she was ten years older than me, she always had a way of understanding me. She was the sister I never had. As we both got older, we drifted apart and before I knew it, she was off to college. Even though we were over 400 miles apart, I hadn’t forgot about her. I sent Catherine letters and cards for her birthday. When she and her brother Stephen came to visit during holidays, I tried to spend as much time as possible with her. Sometimes she couldn’t make it, and sometimes she brought her boyfriend Cole up with her, too. After she graduated, Catherine decided to stay in southern California with Cole.

My other cousin, Katrina, who is seven years older than me, told my brother and I in confidence that Catherine was back in the Bay Area. This struck us as very odd, especially when she told us why: Catherine was in jail for a night because she beat up Cole. Katrina then proceeded to tell us that Catherine was also in a mental institution for some time. This was really a blow for me because Catherine always seemed like such a stable and sure girl. This was the first shift in my paradigm, making me reevaluate the people in my life, wondering if there could be something wrong with their minds as well. Even scarier, what if this could happen to me?

When we had family gatherings, things with Catherine would always be awkward, and I hated it. I knew she was trying her best to reconnect with all of us, but it had been so long since we had last hung out with her. She started to come over to my house every week with her mother (my aunt) when she came to visit. Sometimes we watched movies, but she couldn’t sit with us because of her medications. She mostly slept or played with my dog while my brother and I minded our own business. She was a lot quieter, and never smiled for pictures anymore. I felt like I was losing her to her sickness.

One weekend, I was at a swim meet with my mother. After I was done swimming for the day, and we were about to get into the car, she turned to me and told me that somebody in our family had passed. I immediately thought of my elderly grandparents and how one could not possibly live without the other. But when I tentatively asked her who it was, she said it was Catherine (as she choked back tears). My immediate reaction was complete and utter shock. This wasn’t possible. My 24-year-old cousin could not have possibly died. When I asked my mother how she died, she told me that Catherine was home alone and had a seizure in the bathroom the day before. My aunt found her when she came home from work. That’s when I started to cry, because I imagined my aunt coming home to find her only daughter dead on the cold, hard bathroom floor, when she planned on staying home to take care of her. I could feel her regret and her pain, and it was overwhelming. My mother said she didn’t tell me the night before because she thought I was too young to handle it, but my father convinced her otherwise. I told her that I could handle it, but everything was still kind of hazy. I felt like I was in a dream. Was this really happening? I had never had a member of my family die before. Then I thought about how I didn’t even put in the effort to talk much with her in her final days. That really made me hate myself. I felt like an insensitive jerk for not supporting my favorite cousin when she really needed it. When I got home that day, I felt as if I was the last one to know about Catherine’s passing. I was so devastated that I had no sense of self anymore. I couldn’t even think straight. How could this have happened to such a good person? The next few weeks were all so hard for me and my family.

Several weeks after Catherine’s passing came her memorial service. I’d have to say that this was the hardest thing to get through in my life. When I walked in, I saw my aunt broken down in tears with my grandparents. I just couldn’t take it; I didn’t stop crying from then until I walked out of the church. When everyone was reading about their favorite memories of Catherine, I felt as if it was finally becoming real: Catherine was dead. She was never going to come back, and I was never going to be able to spend time with her ever again. When my grandma spoke, it was absolutely overwhelming. She had lost her first grandchild, and my aunt had lost her first child. It was terrible, but I could only empathize with them to a certain extent since I had never had any children. Finally, when her brother Stephen went up to speak, I lost control. I pictured myself losing my only sibling (my brother), and it was the worst. I put himself in his shoes and it was completely unbearable because for him, it was the loss of a sibling rather than the loss of a child (for my aunt). When we all went up to the open casket to say our last goodbyes to Catherine before she was cremated, I broke down once again. Seeing her lie there, so at peace, but so utterly dead, will forever be etched in my mind. Somehow, my whole family composed ourselves when we came out of the service, and I am so proud to know that I have such a strong family.

It wasn’t until the memorial service that I learned what mental illnesses Catherine had. She was diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. This surprised me because it never showed in her actions when I saw her. She always seemed fine, just a bit quiet. I was so shaken by all of this, but I think I was still in too much shock to wrap my head around it. It has been almost 6 months since Catherine’s passing, but I feel like I have only just begun to feel how it has changed me. Writing this paper has made me realize that her passing has made me appreciate life and my loved ones more, because you never know how much more time you have on this earth. Tragically, Catherine only lived 24 years of her life. It has also rekindled my interest in psychology and the study of mental illnesses, which is a little less profound than having appreciation for the little time we have left to be alive. I think that these lessons have always been in the back of mind, but writing this has brought them to the surface.

family

Between school, swimming, and water polo, I've become very stressed. I have very little patience and I often lash out at my family. If I saw someone else treating their parents the way I treat mine, I would immediately judge them and categorize them as an asshole. All the same, I guess I just feel like I can't just swallow my pride and treat them with patience because I don't feel like they can relate to my life.

My parents are both immigrants from China and they don't know anything about being a teenager in modern-day America. I know I should cut them some slack but on the other hand they piss me off almost every time I talk to them. I probably sound like a spoiled little brat but these are just my thoughts. I just wish that my parents would be a little more understanding of me and my problems. The reason I don't like talking to them is because I really don't want to have to explain everything to them.

For example, if I were to want any tattoos or any more piercings, they would immediately refuse. They think that others would judge me and they would judge THEM, which is a complete myth. They think that piercings and tattoos are a sign of rebellion and is a sign of a beginning of my life going down a bad road, but I consider them to be body art. Piercings and tattoos are a form of art, and art is an expression of one's self. Certain unique tattoos are beautiful, but I guess they are despicable in some people's eyes.

But basically, I cannot relate to my parents whatsoever so I just give up when they try to talk to me. I know it's bad but I don't even care anymore. I'm just counting down the days til I can get away from them.