Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit, kits, kit kat, the smart girl, foxay, an chin age: 18 location: oakland, ca hobbies: anime, manga, reading, writing, doodling, video games, french horn likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, cheese, animals, laughing loudly in public dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink@mailcity add .com wishlist playstation 2car a good night's sleep money stress-free life trigun long colt keychain cowboy bebop dvd box set ipod realistic wishlist dayworld by philip josé farmerkabuki by david mack lucifer by mike carey lion king platinum edition any indigo girls album long-term obsessions anime/mangayaoi/shounenai writing music animals life and living current obsession(s) triguncurrently reading the gunslinger by stephen kingthe last unicorn by peter beagle currently watching hana yori dango (20)utena (23) gto tv (39) witch hunter robin (18) naruto (49) get backers (27) rose of versailles (19) matantei loki ragnarok (15) scrapped princess (14) peacemaker kurogane (8) shingetsutan tsukihime (3) fullmetal alchemist (6) |
Tuesday, December 9, 2003 [link] 10:33 p.m. listening to: "Galileo" - Indigo Girls A to-do list for myself this week: - pack - call cab company to take me to train station - ask Joyce for her family size luggage thing - study for finals - do whatever it is on the memo they gave us about checking out Aaaargh, too much to do. Can't they give us a week after finals to pack and stuff?! Tuesday, December 9, 2003 [link] 04:02 p.m. listening to: Bible as Lit final went fairly well. I think I got an A. If she grades the same way she did for the midterm, I'm fairly sure of it; the only reason I didn't get a perfect score last time, actually, was because I screwed up two of the definitions. There were no definitions this time, though, just quote identification and an essay. Speaking of the essay, these were the two prompts we got to choose from: 1. In the Old Testament, women are usually portrayed in a negative light. 2. God is a savage tribal God in the Old Testament, concerned more with unrelenting justice than mercy. I could have written a good essay on either of those prompts, I think, but I opted for the second choice. If there's one thing I've learned from AP testing, it's that you should choose the prompt that less people want to write about. I've reason to believe that a lot of people would choose the first prompt (ie: Women's College Syndrome), so I opted for the second one. In the essay, we were supposed to determine to what extent these statements were true (or false) and use three examples to support and clarify our view. My thought: oh God, only three examples? . . . I hope I did all right. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I took a strong enough stance. **sweats** Auuuugh. Tuesday, December 9, 2003 [link] 01:28 a.m. listening to: big honkin' playlist I woke up this morning (well, yesterday morning, but you know what I mean) covered with bites. Well, not really covered; they seemed to restrict themselves mostly to my shoulders and arms, and I think there's one on my face. The one on my hand itches the most, probably because of my dermatitis; no matter how much hydrocortisone I put on it, it won't stop itching. ARGH. When you wake up in the morning covered with bites, it's either mosquito season (which it is not, currently) or you have something in your bed. Like fleas or something. I highly doubted it was fleas, so I thought it was probably a spider or something; I frequently get spider bites in the middle of the night. So I pulled all the sheets off the bed onto the floor, and then piled them back onto the naked mattress. And, what do you know; a few minutes later, I discovered a spider scuttling down my arm. My first compulsion was to squish the thing that was the cause of my suffering, but that's petty. And also, spiders are useful. I tried to catch it, but it scurried off into the unknown depths of my room. Oh well, I'll be out of this room in a week or so, and it'll have a month to either die, find its way out, or build a residence somewhere out of the way where it will hopefully catch moths and gnats and other pesky things. I am well-prepared to partner with a spider as long as it doesn't try and eat me. I washed my sheets anyway, and Kitty helped me make my bed. She's very good at making beds. I really don't know half the things she's doing. My first final is later today. It's my Bible as Literature final, so I'm not too nervous (I am convinced that I cannot possibly get a bad grade in a class I love so much), but still. Augh. I am seriously worred about my Logic final. I really don't get anything we've done in that class since, uh, the midterm. Fortunately, it's on Saturday, which gives me more time to figure out what the hell I'm doing, but argh. Worried. Also, I'm visiting China in about a week, and I'll be gone for an entire month. Just so you all know. China and Malaysia. My Internet access is likely to be severely restricted while I'm there, which is unfortunate, but I'll try my best to check in every once in a while to let you know I'm alive. Monday, December 8, 2003 [link] 04:11 p.m. listening to: "Lord, I Have Made You a Place In My Heart" - Cry Cry Cry I was raised by a family that doesn't really concern itself with religious matters. I vaguely remember visiting a Buddhist temple when I was very young--something to do with my grandmother's death--and I attended a Christian private school for two years, but that was more because my mother thought it would offer me a better education rather than any sort of Christian upbringing. My relatives are, above all else, practical. They concern themselves with more tangible things like taxes, rather than worrying or wondering about a higher being. I remember being taught, when I was very young, that you can pray to the gods all you like, but you still have to do things for yourself. I've lived most of my life that way, concerning myself with more pragmatic matters. Up until a few years ago, I was a Very Angry Teenager, ready to fight against The Man. That included, for a while, being fairly anti-religious. Not atheistic, mind you, but I was really against most religious institutions, which naturally includes the Christian (or Catholic, or whatever) church. As far as I was concerned, Christianity brainwashed its followers into mindless sheep. Well, where was God during [insert event here], huh? Where was He? Where's the justice in the world, if your God is so great and good? I'm older and wiser now, of course, and--I think--a lot more spiritual than I was before. I don't think I'm going to be a regular church attendee anytime soon, but I have a much better relationship with God (or higher power of your choice; I think that if you dig deep enough, they are all essentially the same being) and religion now. Which is not to say that I don't struggle; I'm too old and bitter and cynical, I think, to completely put my faith in anything anymore. It might be easier when it's something you were raised with--but then again, I know some people who've rebelled against what their parents taught them about God and faith, so maybe not. Faith, as one of my friends and I were discussing last night, seems to be a lot like love, and vice versa. There is no moment of discernible impact. There is no sudden revelation. It's maddening, unpredictable, and frustrating as all hell. There are some days when I think yes, I can do this, I can reconcile this, and then there are some days where I just want to cry and beat my head against the wall because no, I'm too weak and human and insecure please let this cup pass from me. But I want to. I want to at least come to some sort of resolution. I've been struggling with it for too long to just put it down and walk away and live as I did for the last eighteen years of my life, not thinking about it at all. I think that maybe it's because I feel so rootless right now that I'm looking for another foundation to stand on, a rock to brace my feet against. In a phone conversation with one of my aunts, who is a deist (and how many other of my relatives, I wonder, are deists or agnostics?), she expressed the belief that, "The way you live your life is your religion. Your religion is the path you walk, and how you walk it." An old Taoist saying, she says. I think I like that a lot. Saturday, December 6, 2003 [link] 01:03 a.m. listening to: nothing Just got back from watching Cirque du Soleil perform Alegria. It was beautiful. Stunning. I have no words. Except maybe words like, that must be what it feels like to fly and of course it's dangerous it has to be dangerous it is not a comfortable passion. But that makes no sense and it's rather purple prose, so I'll leave it at that. Where did the phrase "purple prose" come from, anyway? I shall finish drinking my soy milk and go to bed. And perhaps I will eat an orange. I am hungry. Friday, December 5, 2003 [link] 11:11 a.m. listening to: nothing This entry makes me feel so much better. I've been wrestling for a long time now, and I'm tired, but the struggle's not over yet. (I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.) Wednesday, December 3, 2003 [link] 03:42 p.m. listening to: "Lord, I Have Made You a Place In My Heart" - Ani DiFranco If I'm not listening to this song, I'm listening to "Hotel California." This needs to stop. Still alive. I think that I'm going to do absolutely nothing today. I turned in my paper early so that I could get my DVD back early. I love college because it lets me write papers about anime. And thus I force my professors to watch anime. I guess I'll go find people to hang out with. Monday, December 1, 2003 [link] 03:33 p.m. listening to: "Lord, I Have You a Place In My Heart" - Ani DiFranco Have I mentioned what an amazing cover this is? Because it is. Semester's almost over. I'm almost sad; there's really nothing quite like your first semester of college. But that's an entry for another day, I think. When I'm more coherent. Rainy today, on and off. I, SoCal girl that I am, keep forgetting to put on a coat before I go out, and I inevitably freeze or get soaked. I don't mind being wet--I love the rain--but I like to get wet on my own terms. Getting wet on the way to class or to lunch, far from the comfort of my dorm and my towels and my hot tea, is not the way I'd prefer it. I don't know why I've been so zoned out today. Maybe I'm just tired, or maybe I'm preoccupied. If it's the latter, I'm not really sure what's on my mind that would cause me to be so spacey. I'm surprised I haven't walked into a wall yet. Monday, December 1, 2003 [link] 12:12 a.m. listening to: "Lord, I Have Made a You a Place In My Heart" - Ani DiFranco I'm home now. As you can tell, if you pay attention to my livejournal. ^^;; There's a fic of sorts up over there. FFX-2, believe it or not. I suppose I should write something in-depth about my Thanksgiving, but I think I should really go to bed. I have class tomorrow. Bleah. Wednesday, November 26, 2003 [link] 07:47 p.m. listening to: people playing Bomberman in the background I'm at Kelvin's house right now. We're playing Bomberman. See ya in LA. Tuesday, November 25, 2003 [link] 11:41 p.m. listening to: "Galileo" - Indigo Girls This is such a brilliant song. I kind of want to say something insightful about religion or spirituality. Or just ramble on at length. But I'm not sure if I'm up to that right now. Thanksgiving Break starts tomorrow night. I'm not taking my computer with me, so you'll probably see some sort of farewell note from me tomorrow and then nothing until Sunday night at least. It's hard to believe first semester is almost over. I feel like I've been at college forever, and yet not at all. Monday, November 24, 2003 [link] 10:00 p.m. listening to: "Lord, I Have Made You a Place In My Heart" - Ani DiFranco (marvelous cover!) So, I think I'm going to talk about race again. Because I had a good conversation about it over AIM before I had to go to a meeting, and I hope she doesn't mind if I mention her here. Sometimes I remember, in a half-assed sort of way, that I'm Asian. That is to say, my ancestors are from China (or Taiwan). I was born here, but my parents were not, so that makes me a second-generation immigrant. I get to be the one who's caught in between. I speak one and a half languages, and I react to certain situations and certain things differently because I was raised differently. I do not consider myself "a woman of color." That's something that just never came up in my life. I am fortunate to not have been held to a stereotype very much. The area I was raised in was not quite predominantly Asian, but they made up a significant portion of the population, so I didn't stick out or anything. Recently the influx of immigrants have increased to the point where the "natives" have grumbled that "the goddamn chinks are taken over," which I think is hilarious. I think if anyone called me a chink to my face, I'd laugh and ask them to say it again. I thought we were beyond such words, but I guess we aren't. Now that I'm here, in Oakland, at college, I realize how very few people in my school speak Chinese. Actually, I haven't met a single person here who speaks Chinese other than the immigrants/exchange students, who speak it as a matter of course. Today, I tried to think if there were any Asians in any of my English classes, and I realized that there weren't any. This is a striking contrast from the AP Literature class at my school, where you could count the non-Asians on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to pick your nose. Kaie is half Hispanic and half Caucasian. She doesn't look like a "woman of color," and she's glad of it. When you look Hispanic, she says, people assume things. They assume that you don't hablo, that you're a gangster, and that you have 6+ kids/siblings. It's easier for her if she's not associated with those things. And yeah, she admits it's terrible, but I can see why she doesn't want to have that extra obstacle of having to prove something. You could say that I'm fortunate, because the only stereotype I have to deal with is that of the supernaturally intelligent hard worker. But the question is, would you rather have the stereotype that you have to overcome, or the one that you have to live up to? I look Asian; there's no getting around that. I'm not mixed race. I don't have a fancy family tree of pioneers and Native Americans and slaves. It's a blessing and a curse. I don't demand special treatment, but I demand acknowledgement (more on this later). But at the same time, I will always be Asian before I'm American. Which may not be a bad thing, considering the direction this country is going, but it's damned annoying when people ask you when you moved here, or when people compliment you on your English. A while ago, I was given an essay by Amy Tan called Mother Tongue, told that I would identify with it. Embarrassingly enough, I don't like Amy Tan much; she's a fantastic writer, and I love The Joy Luck Club and I identify with much of her work, but I think it starts to read the same after a while. They all center around the same themes, pretty much. When I told my father that I wanted to be a writer, he extracted only one promise from me: don't be like Amy Tan. The essay brings up an interesting point about the "Asians are only good at math/science" stereotype, and it's very simple: for most Asians, English is not their first language. Most humanities are very language and/or country-based (I mean, they came from China/Taiwan/Japan/Indonesia--why in the world would American History come easily to them?), so naturally Asians struggle. And since they struggle, their teachers and counselors point them to something they take more easily to: math and science. Numbers are the same in any country and language. The kids' parents are happy, because Asian parents tend to focus on the professions that bring in the most money, most of which are currently in the math/science fields. A while back, I mentioned that I want acknowledgement of my race. I'll go back to that now. Like I said, I don't demand special treatment. I want to be judged on merit, not race. Considering that Asians are no longer an "underrepresented minority," I don't get any special freebies anyway. However, I do not want people looking at me and purposely ignoring the fact that I'm, well, not white. Colorblindness is a wonderful concept, it really is. I'm a big fan of equality. But by treating everyone equally, are we imposing whiteness on them? That's what it comes down to. That's why it makes me so uncomfortable when people say, "It doesn't matter, they're still people," or "S/he's Korean/black/Hispanic/whatever, but I don't notice." Of course you notice. You notice because they look different. You just choose to ignore it. That's wonderful of you, but at the same time, I find it a little offensive. Or maybe not offensive, just rude. You can't treat, say, a Japanese person the same way you treat a Hispanic person, and you can't treat a Hispanic person the same way you treat an Greek person. Everyone has their own cultures and their own obstacles to overcome, and not everyone's experiences are universal. People who want to "treat everyone the same" usually mean "the way I want to be treated." And not everyone wants to be treated like they're white, or black, or Hispanic, or whatever. It's a fine line to walk, I know. It's hard to tell who was born here and who's just been living here a long time, and it's hard to tell who wants their heritage to be respected and who just wants to be American. But, you know, we live and learn. And dammit, don't bring me a fork just because I speak English well. I demand my chopsticks. Monday, November 24, 2003 [link] 06:34 p.m. listening to: big honkin' playlist A quick to-do list: - study for Visual Communications test - watch Citizen Kane - read/critique stories for Beginning Fiction - pack Sunday, November 23, 2003 [link] 03:22 a.m. listening to: nothing I AM HAVING THE WORST ALLERGY ATTACK EVER AND MY HANDS ITCH LIKE CRAZY AND I CAN'T SLEEP BECAUSE I CAN'T BREATHE. Thank you, that is all. Friday, November 21, 2003 [link] 07:35 p.m. listening to: nothing Spent most of the day in Berkeley today. Had an early lunch and hopped on the 12:15 Mills Van. Refilled a prescription at the Tang Center, then hiked up to Telegraph, seeking a cafe at which I could leisurely sip a cup of coffee (or tea) and do some reading. Did not succeed. Visited the ATM, then went on down to Shattuck to visit the Berkeley public library. Spent an astounding amount of time there simply being lost; the library is four stories and far larger than any library I've ever been in. After asking several helpful and friendly people, I finally found some Robin McKinley books, which were for some reason in the "young teens" section, squirreled away behind the reference books. Discovered that the Berkeley public library also has a small selection of manga, translated and non. I found a desk and managed to get some class reading done. After about an hour, I realized I was hungry, packed up, checked out my books, and trudged back up to Telegraph to find food. I had a bowl of miso tofu ramen, of all things, then read one of the books I'd checked out of the library until I realized I was about to miss the Mills Van. And now, I am going to take a hot shower. It's cold enough out that I can see my breath, and I forgot to bring a coat. Silly me. Wednesday, November 19, 2003 [link] 02:36 p.m. listening to: Cry Cry Cry Still alive. Still tired. Nap now. |
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