notes from a coffee shop.: 2014

The Wizarding World of Orlando, Florida

Saturday, October 25, 2014 / 7:59 AM

Through some complicated game of telephone when I was 13, my mother got word of a Vietnamese herbalist in San Francisco. It was 2002, and after months of spraying that awful Rogaine formula on my head with no results, my parents were ready to try something new.

Vinh Khang Herbs & Ginsengs was located in New Chinatown in the Richmond District. During all the years we'd been visiting San Francisco, I never knew such a thing as "New Chinatown" existed. I was used to the overcrowded bustle of the "old" Chinatown that attracted tourists and film crews, but New Chinatown was different: it was quieter, cleaner, less grandiose--but the area was more diverse than its name hinted. The stores were a mix of Chinese, American, Vietnamese, Burmese, Irish, and more. It was as if this "new" area of an old city existed to catch the outcasts from the places they once called home. Would it catch me too?

The second we entered Vinh Khang, the mixture of pungent herbs hit me and I gagged. It was bitter and sweet at the same time, claustrophobic all around. I wanted to turn around and leave, but Mom guided me toward the tall glass counters.

Half of the tall store was devoted entirely to drawers of various plants and herbs. Two middle-aged Asian women worked efficiently, scooping contents from the drawers onto rows and rows of pink butcher paper. They barely stopped to read the labels of the drawers, they just knew what to grab. One by one, the women would pick up the papers filled with herbs and dump the mixtures into plastic bags, tie them shut with one quick gesture, and packed the bags away into larger plastic grocery bags. Neither women blinked an eye as they worked.

Across from the women was an assortment of people waiting for their orders. Some were waiting to see the doctor, and when it was my turn, I walked to the back and sat on a stool as Mom spoke in rapid Cantonese with the man behind the counter.

Doctor Tony was an old Vietnamese man with dry, bony hands and gray hair. He spoke three languages, one of which was broken English. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance, though I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Was he a shaman? A magical healer? I wasn't sure what being an "herbalist" actually entailed.

Out of Sight

Monday, September 29, 2014 / 9:16 PM

Fill-in-the-Blank Friday: Panda Dreams

Friday, September 19, 2014 / 7:18 PM

A Note About 'Notes'

Sunday, August 24, 2014 / 5:51 AM

Ticket for One

Saturday, August 23, 2014 / 7:26 AM

Jeremy Lin is Heading Back to California

Sunday, July 13, 2014 / 7:48 AM

The 20-Year Gap

Monday, June 16, 2014 / 4:44 PM

'Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle'

Monday, June 16, 2014 / 8:28 AM

Confrontation is never easy. Some people say they're confrontational by nature, but when the going gets tough, they're the first ones off the boat. Recently, I confronted a friend over something that was bothering me. She's always painted herself as a confrontational person herself, so I figured, "Let's do this, let's hash it out." She responded by cutting me out of her life and accusing me of being someone I'm not. Her judgement that my life was perfect and that I made her feel insecure was hard to hear, and we haven't really spoken since. In typical "water off a duck's back" fashion, I've been courteous and kind to her, messaging her occasionally and forwarding emails with fun summery things, but she's made it pretty clear she's not interested in being too friendly anymore.

There's this quote that gets shared all over Pinterest and Tumblr all the time: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

I think we all say things we regret from time-to-time, and real friends know when to take a breath, spend a day or two cooling off, and then pick things back up with the understanding and the knowledge that they've hurt one another and they'll do better--because a friendship is worth more than one's pride and ego. You can still be close to someone you've fought with. Fighting doesn't mean it's all over.

But when you prioritize your pride over a friend, you lose something important: not just that friend, but something inside yourself as well. Remember that Boy Meets World episode where the gang gets into a prank war and then fights over who "belongs" in what group? And then the fighting drags on and the episode flash forwards into the future, where everyone is still fighting and hasn't spoken in years, but then Eric shows up at their college reunion and reads his manifesto: "Lose one friend, lose all friends, lose yourself." When asked why he didn't write anything else but that, he responds, "Because nothing else seemed important."

You can stand in the midst of a storm and declare you are stronger than the pain coming your way, but shouldn't you want someone to celebrate it with when it's over? I don't believe we are meant to walk through this life alone. I crave that others believe the same.

'Tomorrow's World is Yours to Build'

Monday, June 2, 2014 / 7:58 AM

“Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.” -Yuri Kochiyama, "Consciousness is Power" (Nov. 3, 1995)

* * *

via 18 Million Rising

I wonder if it is the American education system that fails us, sometimes, or if it's our own lack of curiosity for the things we aren't being told. In grade school, I never learned about the Asian-American civil rights leaders who helped shape this country; but in high school, I was introduced to one.

In Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States, I came across Yuri Kochiyama's essay "Then Came the War." I read it, not as an assignment, but because after reading Farewell to Manzanar, I was seeking more voices from the Japanese American community. Kochiyama's essay stood out as rare:

"Everything changed for me on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. On that very day--December 7, the FBI came and they took my father."

She goes on to write about the hysteria of war and the cries to "get the 'Japs' out," about the evacuation of thousands and thousands and about sleeping in a horse stable on army cots and muslin bags filled with straw. "And for chairs, everybody scrounged around for carton boxes, because they could serve as chairs. You could put two together and it could be a little table. So it was just makeshift."

And, most importantly, she writes about feeling betrayed by her country--not a betrayal filled with rage and resentment, but with confusion and pain. "I was so red, white and blue," she writes, "I couldn't believe this was happening to us. America would never do a thing like this to us."

Reading Kochiyama's essay, just a few pages long in a large anthology, made me realize how much of my own family's history needed to be explored. We too were a people disempowered and disenfranchised when the Communists took over China. My grandparents were forced out of the place they called home, my parents were brought to a promised land around the world, and sometimes I wonder if America will ever feel like home to them.

'Women Can Do Great Things'

Thursday, May 29, 2014 / 10:21 AM

I started writing this four years ago, around the time Sacramento Magazine published its feature on the "Last Days of Loretto." It had been a year since the school announced its closing, and there were still so many answers never given, and a statement from Sister Helen to Sac Mag: "There isn't a Loretto High School."

I never finished writing this, and I never sent it. But as I was clearing out drafts in my inbox, I stumbled across it, and perhaps finishing it now and posting it online will one day reach the eyes and ears of the IBVM, who have had so little to say about the great loss that affected so many.

Dear Sister Helen,

I remember so clearly the afternoon in August 2003 I sat beside my fellow classmates and you welcomed us to our new home. We were incoming freshmen, shy and anxious about what high school would bring, and you said something that I've carried with me ever since: "You are Loretto wherever you go."

I believed it then, and I still believe it now--even if you've disowned your own words.

There are a lot of things about Loretto I personally didn't "get" when I first arrived--things that ranged from choosing individual class colors/mascots to the debutante-style graduation ceremony to Baby Think It Over (I still have nightmares about the crying) to "Why don't we have Home Ec classes?"

But as my first year came to an end, I started to appreciate all of those things I had panned before: I'll forever think of Loretto (and crazy, fun Homecoming traditions) whenever I see the Pink Panther because of that unique stamp on the Class of 2007; and I liked that we celebrated ridiculous days like Pi Day, made events on campus out of building catapults in Physics class, and gave special assembly days for a Shakespeare Festival. I didn't lose anything by not sitting in a class to learn home economics because we all still would sit around at lunch and knit, and there was always somebody on campus to teach you how to balance a checkbook or sew a button if you needed to learn, and they would never once belittle you in the process.

At Loretto, we were taught by some of the very best, who didn't view their jobs as just something they did to get a paycheck. They were passionate, and it made us passionate. It made me passionate, and I can say for sure I wouldn't be where I am today without those folks guiding and encouraging me at such a young age. For every challenge that confronted us, Loretto tried so desperately to provide the answers--whether it was in an eccentric counselor's office or inside a quiet chapel. I began to understand that Loretto was not just a campus on El Camino Avenue, but it represented equality, education, sisterhood, and faith. Because of Loretto, I am more confident in my ability to be that woman in the world who can "do great things," as Mary Ward insisted.

And sure, Loretto wasn't perfect--but no family is. You don't always have to like each other, but you always love each other.

Being Lonely vs. Being Alone

Tuesday, April 1, 2014 / 7:00 PM

I Want to Be a Hufflepuff

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 / 5:00 AM

Made to Shame

Sunday, February 23, 2014 / 11:00 AM

Have a Little Faith

Tuesday, February 18, 2014 / 5:30 PM

Ugly

Sunday, February 16, 2014 / 9:00 AM

The Living Room

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 / 3:00 PM

When you walk through the door of my parents' California home, you're immediately placed in an impeccable living room. The white couch is adorned with silk pillows, the piano is dusted and ready to be played, and my mother's glass cabinet of international collectibles is unmissable. It's a living room, by name, but I don't remember much of my life happening in that room.

The room was always a room for entertaining, a room for visitors. The real living room, as far as we were concerned, was through the dining room toward the back of the house: the "family room," we called it. There was a plush floral couch, a TV next to shelves of videos and books, a corner for our toys when we were young, and a desk that held our computer--before laptops ever entered our lives. It was a room where we did all of our living. It was a room just for us.

But in every TV show I watched growing up, there were never two rooms for living as a family. On the sets of every sitcom family's home, the front door opened up straight into what I knew asthe "family room." It was the main room where the sitcom family would sit down for "family meetings and where conflicts and resolutions would often take place.

I could never understand how a family could keep its problems so close to the surface. How was it so easy for the Tanner girls to open up to their father? How could Will Smith be so candid with Uncle Phil after his father walked out on him yet again?

I never saw a family that looked like mine on TV. The TGIF lineup I watched religiously contained a variety of non-traditional families (single parents, extended families), but there were hardly any characters I identified with at all. In my family, we didn't talk about problems the way the families on TV did. When my parents fought, when my dad got mad at my sister and me, when I was bullied at school or got a bad grade--our first instincts were never to sit down and talk about it. In my family, as with many Chinese families I came to learn over the years, we kept our problems in the back--in the family room.

If TV shows were a portrait of American families, I often wondered what that said about mine.

Your Worst Date

Monday, February 10, 2014 / 6:00 AM

Someone asked me last week to describe the best date I ever went on. I don't think I have an answer to that (there have been plenty of decent and pretty good dates/things-I-think-might-have-been-dates), but I don't know if there's really a "best" or "perfect" label I can slap on anything right now. But I can tell you my worst--or, at least, the oddest one:

I met B on a bus in Maryland. I was heading home after work and had forgotten my book at the office, so I had nothing to do but eavesdrop and, apparently, think of ways to complicate my existence. B was talking to the bus driver about when his stop would be coming up because he was still trying to figure out the lay of the city after moving from California, and because it had been two very long weeks since I moved was still friendless and bored, I decided to insert myself in their conversation.

"You're from California?" I asked. He looked over at me, which I took as a cue for some reason to literally get out of my seat and sit next to him. "I am too!"

We started talking and I learned he was in DC for an internship for the fall (he was a college senior) and was staying with his uncle just a mile from where I was living. Before I got off the bus, he asked for my number and I gave him my work email address instead (because that felt less complicated), and texted my best friend about how I finally made a friend (how kindergarten, I know).

The next day, B emailed me and asked if I wanted to hang out that weekend. I had told him I was still new to DC and he said he could show me around since he'd spent a summer interning before on the Hill. I said yes, we exchanged numbers, and met up on Saturday at the metro stop--where he instantly started rambling about the day he had planned out in hopes I would have fun because he wanted me to like him.

If there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I'm really bad at discerning signs. The first time one of my exes asked me out on a date, I had no idea it was actually a date until he kissed me at the end of the night and I said, "Wait, was this a date?"

Yes, I am both that oblivious and that awkward. If you want me to know it's a date, you should probably hire a skywriter.

So when B started talking about how nervous he was, the thought, "Is this a date?" crossed my mind once, but then I ignored it because I didn't want to ruin the first friendship I thought I was making in DC.