What type of Asians are you? What type of Asians am I? Or rather am I Chinese?Of course I am Chinese. I am proud of my ethnicity. Whenever someone asks about my ethnic origin. I always pronounce it out loud, "I am Chinese from *a country's name*."
However I have one very interesting observation after residing and traveling in different continents and meeting up with a diverse ethnic and nationality of people. What is this interesting observation then? Almost all non-Chinese people, Europeans, Hispanic-Latinos, Africans, Middle-easterns and others and some time even other Asians think that I came from China, especially when they found out that I am Chinese. Conversely, Chinese people from China and Taiwan that I have met thus far, none have thought of me as Chinese. Some assumed I were some Eurasian. Some thought I could be some Asian minority. But whatever it is these people always spoke to me in English and had no doubts until I started replying them in Mandarin. Then many would respond, "Oh wow, you speak Mandarin. Are you Chinese?"
Just two days ago while I was having lunch at the department's kitchen and was talking about something casual as part of a lunch chat, this technician from former Yugoslavia joined in the chat and asked, "So how is it in China? Do you see many foreigners in China?" I looked at her and looked around the people dining at the table. There were two more Chinese sitting there but none of them were from China. Knowing that this technician is from the same lab as those two other Chinese, I was pretty sure she was referring the question to me. I paused for a few seconds. She was looking at me waiting for an answer. "I don't know. I have only been to China once. I am not from that country." She was astonished. "Oh really?! You are not from China?! Where are you from?"
This is not the first time. I guess non-Asians especially those from a more homogeneous country do not seem to be aware of the fact that Asia is a large continent that consists of many different ethnic groups. Some of them tend to associate a particular ethnic race with a country. Some even equate Asians as Chinese. And many of them assume that if you are Chinese, you must be from China. Well, I would not say you are wrong about that. But to be precise, Chinese is not only referred to people from China, but more so as a race itself as well. There are Chinese people who had moved out of China decades or even up to a century ago (if I passed my History) and settled at a particular place with their descendants since then. After several generations, some still uphold and maintain all or partial cultures of their own whereas some began to practice an integrated hybrid culture. One good example is the ABCs (American born Chinese or to a general definition Chinese who were brought up in America) where Chinese people from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or other parts of the world emigrated to the United States.
Regardless what ethnicity we are, we all should just pride ourselves on it yet at the same time do not go overboard. Respect our own culture as well as others.
@@@ Addentum@@@
All right folks, I knew the forwarded message (that I had removed from this post) was meant to be a joke. :P I hope those who were reading it did not take this seriously. Yet I was also trying to share another message here that regardless of what ethic group we belong to, we should be proud of it and at the same time respect other ethic groups. :)
♥ every page of my imagination
5 people traveled to my fantasyland
I was reluctant to throw away a pair of torn socks yesterday. Hey, it’s just a pair of socks but does it deserve to be mentioned here to everyone? Well, yes, it is just a pair of socks; in fact it’s one of those cheap ones. Yet when I saw the torn socks, I recalled the lunch conversation we had with my supervisor, who is a mother of three.“The kids will only take good care of their things if they have to work on getting them.” My supervisor made that remark speaking of her experience. “What about you?”
“I agree. I did not seem to appreciate whatever I received from my parents as well.”
Why didn’t I appreciate what I was given? They just came too easy. I remembered there was once I saw my classmates, a pair of identical twins, who were apparently my primary school classmates, were reading the Enid Blyton series of children books. I felt like I was so out of the loop. Therefore I told my dad that I had to get some Enid Blyton books too. My dad immediately agreed to get me some. In fact we went to the book section of a departmental store on the same night. Guess what? I did not end up with an Enid Blyton book, but a series of fifty books. I was all elated that night, showing off my books to my family and even chose a book with the nicest cover to school the next day to show off to my neighbors. My greed did not cease there. I requested my dad to buy the remaining from that series. In the end we bought another 30 books more. I was ten at that time. After all these years, I probably had only read 10 books out of the eighty books. No one had touched them in my family. They are now sitting at my parents’ book shelves gathering dusts.
When I was eleven, we were learning table tennis at school. The next thing I did after signing up for a competition at school was to tell my dad to get me the actual table to practice at home. Dad had always been really supportive to whatever I wanted to learn. He told my mom to get one for me while he paid for it. I only played once at home using that table tennis. Since then it’s only been utilized as a “table” when my family organizes parties at home. The story did not end there. I have a long list of being a spoilt child who did not appreciate what she was given. I am too embarrassed to illustrate further here.
Well, I am sure I am not the only one. It is certainly not difficult to figure out why some of us tend to do this. It is because when things seem to come too easy, we take them for granted. We tend not to appreciate how difficult it could be in getting them. Hence when we see something newer or nicer, we can easily throw the current ones away.
Anyway, I am thankful I no longer behave that way. It is definitely a 180 degree change. Who could imagine someone who hesitated before throwing a pair of torn socks was the same person who bought things and then threw them aside and never used them again? After leaving home, leaving the warm shelter of my parents’, I started to appreciate every little thing I own, be it a cheapo pair of torn socks or a worn out T-shirt, because I am buying it using my own hard earn money.
Damn, I am going to pass down all my eighty Enid Blyton books to my children and make them read them all. I’m going to tell them that they are gifts from their grandpa. They better appreciate the books because it’s been preserved for decades. They are antiques that worth more than a fortune. Hey, don't take things and people for granted.
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
"Wow, your daughter has a pair of big round eyes! They are elegant!"That was the first compliment I could remember about my eyes I heard when I was probably around four. I remember that was one afternoon that my parents brought me and my sister to visit one of my dad's friend's place. When I was fascinated by the children's play area in the house, I heard that remark made by my dad's friend's wife to my mom. And you know how did I respond? I immediately smiled and tried to open my eyes more to make them bigger. Yes, hilarious I know. That was such a childish behavior. From the wife's facial expression I think she was suppressing herself from bursting into laughter after seeing my childish foolish behavior.
That was just one small foolish act I did when I was a child. I had done numerous but I am not going to reveal them all here. Let me diverge the topic slightly now. Few weeks ago I was attending a course. One of the guest speakers invited was someone who was extremely experienced and skilled in a special technique. That was introduced by the course organizer throughout the whole course from the first day. Everyone was convinced. That we had no doubt about it. Then when it was finally this particular guest speaker's turn to give her presentation. She kept emphasizing how hardworking she was in her work, how good she was in trouble shooting the difficult steps of this tricky technique and how many people had came to her for advice and consultation yada yada. I looked around my fellow classmates and even the course organizer; they all had some weird expression on their face. Well I was not totally surprised with observation as I myself could not enjoy the whole presentation, especially since she spent way too much time in emphasizing how great she was until she ran over time and still did not deliver her supposed to be helpful tips in applying that special technique she was apparently good at to the audience!
Have you met such type of people in your surroundings? I'm sure there are quite a number around. These people just love to brag how good they are and how important they are. I have also met someone from work who is constantly keeping others informed how smart and capable he was. Some really believed his words. As for those who knew him a little longer, soon enough they just shrug their shoulders and laugh it off. Don't you find this some what childish as well? This also makes me wonder why people love to brag about themselves. I do understand we all human-beings love those compliments. Yes, it is so flattering to hear compliments about us. But compliments are just some remarks by others, which may or may not be sincere after all. Ok, let's not discuss about should we not get compliments. Sure, if you get a compliment from someone, it is human nature to feel elated. Yet do we have to fish for compliments? Or worse still, do we have to go around to tell people how great we are?
There is a phrase in Chinese language, "If there's rice, you'd smell it.", meaning if you're truly good, people will naturally know. I'm sure if you're capable, smart or whatever positive trait you are harboring, others will know eventually. There is absolutely no point of going around telling people, especially what you claimed is not the real case? Even if you are truly good yet if you do not have a humble attitude, it certainly is less admirable. I think it's just good to do our own role and do our own things. Someone who's truly good is someone who really does the work and be humble about it. An empty can sounds loudest.
Hey, I really have a pair of big eyes, I tell you. *opening my eyes wide as though they were going to pop out* Quick. I'm waiting for some compliment.
♥ every page of my imagination
2 people traveled to my fantasyland
Chinese language is a beautiful and sophisticated language, in fact it is more than just beautiful. Each Chinese words resembles a meaning and sometime more than a meaning. Almost all words have their story of origin. When two words or more form a specific phrase, it gives a specific meaning and often more than one meaning too. I could be bias since Chinese is always my first language. But let me give you an example to support my little statement here.In Chinese language, we have this phrase called, "hold hands". Yes, hold hands literally means two hands holding each other, hand in hand. As simple as that. We all know about this. Yet did you know that in Chinese language, this phrase also resembles your spouse or to some your life partner?
I find this phrase really explains it all. It signifies how we share the rest of our lives with this person, whom we regard as our spouse/partner, be it happy moment or while going through rough time. Hence "hold hands". One might think this explanation is so obvious, yet how many of us really understand the true meaning behind “hold hands”? Many hit it off immediately in the initial stage. One might just adored the person’s personality, or was attracted to his/her appearance. One could also be drawn to this person for whatever reason, or possibly no reason at all. But whatever it is, the bottom line is one feel excited and happy to be together with this person. Yet soon enough, not all survived for whatever reason because attraction does not last.
And then there were some moving along pretty well, but when an external factor (as minor as a change in career to the more severe situation such as sickness) was introduced, the routine was stirred up. Say you were promoted to take up additional responsibilities at work. Hence during the transition period, you were struggling hard time to cope with the mess at work and hence spending less time with your spouse/partner. If your spouse/partner does not understand enough, may start to complain how much you have neglected him/her. Well, this may not be it, small matters could blow up for no reason. The tension between you and your partner makes you feel that, “Gosh, is this the person I met few years ago?”. Believe it or not, at the same time your spouse/partner might be thinking the same too. Some decided to part from there while some might be able to move on after much communication.
One might think being able to share one’s happiness with others is easy. But what about getting along with someone who can bring happiness to you, not to make you upset and vice versa? Isn’t it a bit tricky then? When I say happiness, it is not about finding someone who is a talented comedian or have a good sense of humor. But more of a person, who could be the most boring uninteresting person to others, yet you would still feel happy to be with this person, because he/she literally can share happiness with you. Well, perhaps that would do too. Just imagine when you were all cranky and grumpy that day, he/she was understanding and caring enough and made an effort to crack a joke or two to make you laugh. You know, all in all is your "hold hands" is able to be there for you when you're having a hardtime, making you laugh or doing whatever, just to give you al the support he/she could and going through the countless roller coaster rides hand in hand with you.
Sharing is not an easy thing. Some did not make it all the way through just because either party was not able to share happiness. There were instances where conflicts occured to an untolerable extent that both sides had to call it off just because one was doing excellent in expanding his/her career yet the spouse/partner was unable to share that happiness. And then there were some who could not enjoy roller coaster ride with their spouse/partner and therefore decided to ditch their spouse/partner and go after other easier rides.
Do you get it now? Why the phrase, "hold hands" to signify spouse/life partner in Chinese language? Anyhow, if you've found your "hold hands", remember to cherish and appreciate this person. Things could go wrong for any reasons and changes are happening all the time. But no matter what happens, your "hold hands" is meant to be there going through all ups and downs hand in hand with you. This is why he/she is your "hold hands" but not others. Oh by the way, don't you agree with me now that Chinese language is one of the beautiful and sophisticated languages in the world?
♥ every page of my imagination
5 people traveled to my fantasyland
It was not long ago, I met a new friend on the day I arrived in this country (refer earlier post: Glad to know you). Was it already 3 years already? Had I not realized I have known AA for three years until I read this, "To Ms Jade, you have been a great friend over these last 3 years. I know we will remain the same over the coming ones." in her newly bound thesis freshly baked from the oven. Yep, after much pain and tears during the last 6 months, AA finally summarized her four-year hardwork. Nope, I lied. I did not read her thesis. Well, at least not yet; I only read the acknowledgement section. AA took some pictures of her thesis and the acknowledgement section and shot me an email over the weekend.My heartfelt congratulations to Dr. AA! It has been really tough to get to where you are now. Since I'm going through similar process and struggling big time, you don't know how envious I am of you now that you are there already whilst I'm still hanging somewhere. In spite of all the pain, tears, frustrations and disappointments, you made it!
Congratulations Dr. AA, you're now utterly and officially a Permanent head Damaged! How cool is that?
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
The gloomy winter is making it difficult to get out of bed. But I found a message sent by a friend of mine that he read of somewhere after getting out of bed. Make it happen! Maybe this is the message of the day for me. I need to get out of the house to go to work! All right, making it happen now.Some Sound Advises
************
If you wait for things to be perfect, you'll be waiting a very long time. Instead, go ahead and fill your life with as much love and joy and goodness and positive experience as you can imagine.
There are plenty of reasons for not taking action, and numerous things that can go wrong. Be wise, careful, and reasonable to be sure, but don't be afraid to joyfully live.
This very day is overflowing with wonderful possibilities. Take hold of the best of those possibilities, and dive deeply into their richness.
Let go of your concerns about what others would think. Let go of your far-fetched worries about what might could go wrong.
Fill this day with the unique energy that is you. Make a positive and glowing contribution to the world that comes straight from your deepest purpose.
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
“How’s Bushy doing today?”This is the question posed by my Travel Companion everyday, since my birthday (refer birthday post "How old are you?"), which was 8 days ago. You must be wondering who this Bushy is. Bushy, apparently, is the pot of flower surprise gift from my Travel Companion.
“I am not crazy about flowers.” I told my Travel Companion about this when we first started dating. “But I do expect flowers from you for once on some very special occasion.”
After months of the conversation, there was still no sign of flowers. Maybe he was waiting for a special occasion? No, no flowers for both anniversaries (refer earlier post). Well, maybe it’s just not time? Maybe he wanted to throw me a surprise all of a sudden. Whatever reason it was, I decided not to let the disappointment grow. It’s just flowers. Plus I’m not really into flowers. It’s just a girl thing.
When the flower was delivered to my apartment, I was not as thrilled as I thought I would be. The romantic feeling was totally not there. Part of it was my Travel Companion dropped me the hint few days before. Another reason was I was expecting a colorful attractive bouquet of flowers and better still delivered directly from my Travel Companion. It turned out to be very far from how I wanted it to be. Was I disappointed? A wee bit; the whole flower thing just did not come out the way I imagined. On top of that, it did not completely come out as a surprise surprise since I had been teasing him for not getting me one earlier on. And now I finally got it. The whole feeling was just, "Oh he got me flowers for my birthday."
But soon enough, I realized I should not feel this way. The root of disappointment is expectation; when our expectation is not met, we feel disappointed. If the disappointment expands, the more frustrated and unhappy we would become and might even end up being unhappy about the other person or party.
Sure, it is absolutely all right to have some expectations of someone. It is just like our parents expect us to do well and have a happy and successful life. So does expecting a birthday gift from my boyfriend. These expectations do sound reasonable. But do you think all our expectations are truly reasonable? Say our parents expect us to do well and be happy and successful in whatever we are pursuing. Maybe to them, being a lawyer or engineer or earning 100K per year is successful, whilst to us we are happy with a job we are interested in albeit the pay is low. Are we not fulfilling our parents' expectations? Not really. As long as we are happy with what we are doing, we have already succeed in meeting their expectation. he same goes to my expectation(s) of my Travel Companion. He could have forgotten about my birthday. He could have just sent me a birthday card or just wish me "Happy Birthday". And he could also just keep ignoring the disappointed expression of my face whenever I was teasing him about not getting me flowers. But he did not. Not only he was aware of my expectations. He made an effort to search an online florist and got me something I presumed he thought was very nice. In fact he did. Apparently what I received was completely different from the picture he saw online.
So later that night when he saw the actual flowers that I received, he was not quite happy about the florist. He described the flowers as weed. But we were cool about it. In the end, we decided to name it as Bushy and kept joking about it everyday.
Strangely enough I started liking Bushy. I was searching some tips in drying the flowers since they don't last today. Not that I love flowers all of a sudden. But because I really appreciate what my Travel Companion did for me. It is no longer important anymore about all those (unreasonable) expectations of how I wanted the flowers to be, how he should had surprised me earlier without my direct and obvious hint. Because in the end, he did whatever he could to make me happy. Why was I so fussed over getting flowers from him? Seriously it is not about flowers. Well, it is difficult to explain. Yeah, now haven't you already realized how unreasonable our expectations could be sometimes?
♥ every page of my imagination
5 people traveled to my fantasyland
I do not write as frequent as I used to. Why? Busy. Lazy. Visitors stop dropping by due to the lack of update and creativity of the content. If you are still reading, wow, I'm so touched.My lack of update does not mean not much has been going on. In fact interesting things do pop up here and there. My mind has not ceased generating thoughts from all those observations made. Yet my laziness really prohibits me to put down all thoughts into words. Recently I have been putting my center of attention into completing my degree. Along that, I am still aiming to find a balance outside work. As such, I find myself taking away some activities that I was doing before. No, I am not referring writing. So what is it actually?
I realize I do not have time in chit-chatting with coworkers that much anymore. It is either I was stressing out big time preparing for my assessment earlier on, busy juggling experiments to get them work, sticking myself on a chair in front of a computer to do some writing (I mean scientific writing), running for lectures or tied up with whatever at work. I am not complaining. I see it as a positive thing. Well, I still drop by and say hello if I bump into some familiar faces. Sometimes I even pause for a minute or two to interact with some. And I still make my complaints to a few of them. But looking closer, I find there is less idle talk nowadays. This is really a great thing. I do not favor gossips but somehow it is so easy for me to join in one. If we use our time meaningfully and cut down idle talks and gossips, I'm sure we would get more things done or to the least avoid in engaging those gossips that do not bring any benefits to anyone. Gossiping about others will not only affect whoever is being gossiped, if it keeps rolling, whoever has participated the gossip might bring themselves in trouble. Just imagine Mary getting upset about you if she found out you talked and discussed about her stuff to other people. You do not want that to happen to you, do you, especially if Mary is a friend of yours?
If only we just do our own things and cease those idle talks and gossips, the society would be so peaceful. Who cares about whether Tom is marrying Kate or is Britney truly filling a divorce? Does that matter to us?
Oh by the way, let me tell you something I just heard from John...oh come on, no idle talk please!
♥ every page of my imagination
2 people traveled to my fantasyland
I won't say I have heaps of experience in life encounters. But thus far I have met and worked with a heterogenous group of people; I am impressed by the self-confidence of some whereas I equally admire the humbleness of others.There is also another group of people whom are totally over-confidence, which makes me shake my head a little. Don't get me wrong; many of these are really genius. I am absolutely envious of their intelligence. But no matter how smart or great you are, there is always still room of improvement. However if we are get too proud of our capability, we tend lack the urge to want to learn from others, since we thought we are already the best of the best. It is just like the rabbit competing a race with the slow tortoise. The rabbit should had won, but because he overestimated himself, or I rather say he underestimated the supposed to be slow tortoise, he lost the race in the end.
Then there are also time when we start doubting ourselves. Can we really do a good job? Can we handle it? This is the time to get some confidence booster. Have some confidence in ourselves. Who knows we could do much better than we thought of ourselves.
I do not feel comfortable working with people who are over-confident, although it should have not bothered me. But their self-centeredness does create certain obstacles in a teamwork. I guess finding a balance between confidence and humbleness is the way to go. We should just be confident in ourselves and in whatever we are pursuing/want to pursue, in a moderate way. Not too much and not too little.
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
"How old are you today?" That is the first question I received after waking up this morning from my sister who strangely enough made herself "visible" online, just today.I don't usually celebrate birthdays, not even with my family. When I was a kid, I only had a few birthday parties. The last one I had was when I turned 10. Since then, most of my birthdays I had to spend away. I mean away from my homecity and sometimes away my family. It was either I was traveling or when I have already moved away from home. There were times that I had to sit for examinations on my birthday during college time. Last year I was in Argentina and spent the whole day shopping by myself.
Birthdays to me is not so much a big deal. It just marks a year older and hopefully it also reflects you are wiser. It also means that you now have to increase the number/digit in any form you are required to fill up for the age column.
Although I tried to keep my birthday thing as low as possible, there are still people who remember to send me birthday well-wishes. My mother is the first one. Well, if anyone suffered hours in pain before delivering a cute baby out on this day "X" number of years ago, it is rather difficult not to remember this day. So thanks mom and of course dad (although he doesn't remember our birthdays) for bringing me into this world. My siblings, except my little brother always remember my birthday, albeit some tend to be more creative such as the sister who asked me, "How old are you today?" this morning. Then all these years, my best friend's greeting messages always arrive punctually regardless of where I was geographically. I could recall when I turned 15, after coming home from a trip, I found a card with my name written sitting on the table of my parents' house. I looked at it. It was from my best friend. She wrote me a lengthy letter illustrating how her end-of-year vacation was. The letter was accompanied with a birthday card and a handmade praying mantis hair clip. I never used the clip but I have kept it in my "goodies" drawer since then. However, this year I was surprised to get an email from an old college mate, whom I was not that close with yet still keep in touch (like emailing once or twice per year). Funny how she could not spell my name properly but she remembered my birthday correctly! Seriously I felt really touched about it, especially her birthday, which I later on recalled, was actually a month ago but I did not remember to drop her a line wishing her "Happy Birthday".
This year, as usual, I kept my birthday pretty low key. But this year is really different from the rest of the 26 times of my birthday. You must be wondering how different it could be. Hmmm, well, I received a surprise birthday gift from my Travel Companion. Surprise number one. "What is it?" You must be asking. "Flowers". Double surprise, sort of. SinceI know he really made an effort to give me this surprise, hence a triple surprise.
So how did I answer my witty sister this morning regarding how old I turned today? Well, I'm not going to tell you. But if you're good enough to pick up hints, you could easily do the Math.
♥ every page of my imagination
3 people traveled to my fantasyland
We had our first snowfall for this winter yesterday. Nothing unusual since it is already November and hence the arrival of winter season. Yet when I was all covered with my winter gear to leave work from work, someone yelled out at me while I was approaching the exit. "The bus is still not running!" I looked up. I saw my other friend who dropped by an hour earlier was still here. He came by to our building after waiting for an hour outside the cold. Here we are talking about 20F.So what happened? Well apparently many people (including the bus company) were not prepared for the arrival of the first snowfall. This was shocking since a snowfall was forecasted for this week on last week's weather report. However I was told that this is always the case for the first snowfall every year. Interesting.
Did I stay at the workplace since we do have a small cozy room equipped with a bed or I could even sleep in the office on the sofa? Actually without much hesitation, I told my friends that I would walk to the nearest subway station to get home. On our way to the subway station, the streets and freeways were packed with cars. Funny how the cars were moving slowly like a tortoise. I arrived at my warm appartment an hour later, which in usual days should only take about 10-20 minutes. Not too bad.
Thankgoodness that there was an alternative route to get home. Just imagine if the bus route was the only way and in situation like yesterday, it was totally impossible to reach home by any type of vehicles that travelling on the road. Yes, I could walk home. It would just be 45 minutes walk. But to be honest, I haven't done it before and I am uncertain of the route. I could explore but definitely not when it is below 20F.
It isn't a bad experience. At least it provides some content for me to talk about here. Oh one more thing we learn, learn from experience, be prepared, have alternatives if possible and most importantly, know your way home.
♥ every page of my imagination
2 people traveled to my fantasyland
