A lot time ago, I basically quit the internet and interacting with people over that medium. I was once on Twitter with other anime artists and I think I had fun chatting with other people about anime and artists from other countries. But I eventually quit after meeting some people and becoming disenchanted with forcing a persona over the internet. There was also not a lot that I was interested in discussing with people, that was fandom culture which was pervasive on Twitter. If I expanded my search for peers into discord and 4chan, maybe, just maybe I would have found some better friends. But I had enough and stopped about ten years ago, ultimately erasing myself from online and from friends I knew in high school. Instead, I became very close with my siblings and the few friend I had.
I can express myself however I want over words, but that isn't a guarantee that we will get a long in person. Chances are, my prescence and communication style will frustrate you as my attention fades in an out, I dissociate mid conversation, and continue the conversation with a forced question as I am too shy to ask you to repeat yourself. So maybe the internet is a more ideal medium to communicate?
So why have I returned? In the last two years I got my shit together and moved abroad, learned at least two new languages, and achieved career goals. But I have been struggling with a strong cloud of ennui. It took a summer back home, in my "hometown", Las Vegas, closely conversing with my sisteer and spending time doing errands for family (my dad has lymphoma) that I realized.. I was sick of exploring and wanted to start creating something of my own. I envied my friends who never really traveled but where well-read and strong writers, discussors, and musicians. I think I have to stop trying to be so outward and start focusing in on myself inwardly. This is not to say the outward efforts are for nothing. I enjoy going to concerts on my own, to restaurants on my own, walking the streets of Shanghai on my own. I think it is a necessary part of the "learning how to live alone" venture. But I think I had enough after a few months and two years of doing it. I want to retreat back into my apartment to dedicate myself to the skills that I probably.. possess... but do not cultivate.
I suffer from extreme lack of self-esteem but becoming a teacher kind of opened up my eyes, that people like me, pursuing language studiesm, learning humanities (philosophy), and STEM while also loving arts and music are rare... so I might as well make something out of it here. I think when I was younger, I was praised by teachers for writing. I never suffered from writer's block or whatever, and would instead blow out the word limits. I felt ashamed to neglect this skill, so maybe after two decades I will start writing and drawing again. I love learning, and continue to do so by watching The Great Courses for random classes but things kind of pass through my head, especially if I have no one to discuss them with. So I will try again to start writing again to coalesce these into essays and comparisons to allow me to deep dive.
Some projects that I am interested in:
1/ Get good at Chinese and write a post on how to learn Chinese from Visual Novels. I have two years to get sufficient.
2/ Get good a Physics and write some books and textbooks review.
3/ Cook some more! And draw a little cookbook with it
4/ Watch some movies and think about them or something
5/ Complete a zine. I have one in mind called "Toumei(na) Onna
Whenver I make a new friend I am always bumbling over this anime that inspired me to move abroad. Few people havve heard of it, but it is one of my favorite anime. I think in general, I like anime that feature travelors or nomads that pass from place to placce. Other series that pop up in my mind are Mushishi or Girl's Last Tour. As for video games that Igew up with, I think there is a similar theme., I grew up watching my brothers play games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ico and Nier Replicant, where the main protagonist could race through open fields, slashing shadowy monsters or rusty robots, without encountering much, if any, NPCs. Somehow I really envy these characters that travel from place to place without a root. In fiction, the characters are very calm and collected, and in my eyes it just seems like such a pure way of living, of just existing. The don't concern themselves too much with the things that normal people in real life are worried about, money, work, relationships. Though sometimes I do think work is the main purpose of Ginko in Mushishi and the characters in the video games have some end goal, Kino is uniquely just a travelor. In real life, I feel like travelers, whatever they are, are so sensationalized. They are content creators, at best backpackers and vanlifers, at worst they can be sexual deviants. They escape from working for corporations, but instead fall victim to capitalism as content creaters, whatever those are, or prey on others with their money. I find those "travelors" extremely obnoxious. So it feels like to me that characters like those in Kino's Journey mostly only exist in fiction. But maybe these proverbial, quiet, travelors and nomads exist. They just don't flaunt it online. They simply continue to exist and "be", they take in these experiences and do not feel a great need to share them. Maybe they do exist.
A lot of sources praise Kino no Tabi as being highly philosophical. As someone who came from a philosophy background, I don't really see it as the case. It doesn't make you think too hard, at least it doesn't make me think too hard. I remember showing it to a friend, and after the show he was a bit perplexed, and went.. ".. So is this irony?" I suppose that's it. The show is just a bit ironic. I think if it is philosophical, like anything can be, it is an exploration of moral relativism, which is kind of how it felt for me, naive, and leaving my country for the first time to travel..
I guess a personal struggly that I grapple with, is that there is no real person in real life that I really aspire to be like, and Kino from Kino's Journey is meant to fill in that gap. Sure, she is female, and some people debate over the fact that she is non-binary, I will not digress to that point because she was ultimately conceived of by an old, heterosexual Japanese man. In episode INSERT HERE her backstory was revealed, where she comes from the City of Adults. In such a city Kino was a nice girl who liked singing, but she observed how when her fellow peers reached a certain age, they would have to undergo a surgical procedure that turns them into adults. Then the travelor Kino enteres the city and disrupts the social order, getting killed in the process... Kino, the girl was next, but then she fled!
I like to imagine how there were parallels to my life. And these are rooted in notions of culture and coming-of-age ceremonies. I watched a Great Course about these adulthood ceremonies, how a lot of them are brutal, sometimes involving sex and genital mutilation, and how that renders the person as an "adult." In American society, the professor stated that we don't have the exact ceremony anymore. Sure, we have these milestones such as drinking age, driving age, and weddings, but nothing to actually signify that we are adults. In my household, we are Asian-American, we are kind of expected to stay forever until we get married. I was not going to put up with that. Due to modern society, the lines between child and adult are very much blurred. But I knew if I stayed home, I would never become an adult. There were an onslaught of other obligations, like caring for aging grandparents. There was an event where I was trying to call 911 to get help for my dying grandmother, and I was chased by my crazy aunt (she is against medical interventions and just wanted my grandmother to die!) in the streets. As the ambulance passed by me she socked me in the cheek and I re-entered the house bleeding. The ambulance people said I can file a police report, but I didn't. The whole scene felt very absurb, but I was filled with adrenaline:
"This is how Kino felt when she was about to be stabbed with a knife too!" I thought.
Did I become an adult by virtue of leaving and moving abroad? Hardly. I find that I am stuck in a position of liminality between child and adult. And this may persist throughout the rest of my life as I skip other major milestones in American society, these include marriage, buying a house, etc. In a way, it felt like Kino escaped from those obligations. At the end of every episode there is always a villager who yells at her "Hey why don't you stay here?" We can get married!" . This vaguely reminds me of when the driver of the bus we took in Vietnam last year invited my family over to be treated for dinner, during which their grandmother began bombarding me, trying to set me up with her son who supposedly also likes learning Japanese and living in Japan. Instead, my mom defended me and we just left. So am I like Kino, who takes no notice of that and just zooms off on her motorbike, Hermes. And Hermes makes some remark about the city.
In a way, it calms me down as Kino gives an example of a character, however fictional, living outside of the bounds of society. She is just a traveler! And somehow people in the show and novel respect that. Whenever she arrives at a city she receives a lot of accollades for just arriving. They give her a personal tour, show off the city's cultural artifects, and sometimes provide her dinner and a place to stay. Gifts. I soon discovered that those parts of the sotyr is fictional, and I was not prepared for the deep feeling of alienation that I experienced among moving abroad. "It's a blessing and a curse!" A friend of mine would say, commenting on my status as ethnically ambiguous-- I do not look like a foreigner, yet I am. I suppose I do not stand out as a traveler until I open my mouth and speak. That is something that is not depicted in anime with travelers, the vast amounts of language and accents that the traveler encounters, and stresses and frustrations associated with learning and communicating through foggy mediums. But it is what it is.
I go back home to the states, and sometimes I don't feel like I quite belong better. There are scenes that are predominantly white and in those cases, I stand out. So the status of liminality persists. I imagine the scene from Mushishi where Ginko from Mushishi is stuck behind his eyelids, watching the stream of light underneath his light flowing accross, it is a like a river. But within that river are members of society - Chinese, American, whatever -- and they proceed forward on in life-- hitting the usual milestones.. [like buying a house]?. I am removed from such a society, it feels. A bit. I do have a job. But at my workplace I hardly interact with my coworkers. Instead they just leave me alone, where I can eat lunch at my own little table, situated between the Chinese and Singaporeans works and the foreign expats. Today my coworker commented on how I look younger each year, more like a student. I am unsure if it supposed to be a compliment or crticism, maybe it is kind of racist.. I have no idea how to dress like an "adult" and I gues also Asian and immature like the students, in some ways.
Somehow, I am complacent with this. Even back in the states I feel like I have only experiences the outeshell of American life, not knowing or being allowed into areas that are iconically "American" in my mind. I don't know. There where things I never went to, like prom, raves or house parties. But at the same time I guess I will be American and always American. Unlike Kino, who has none of these heritages or ethnicities, she is just Kino and most of the time they don't even hassle about her gender.
Lately, I have been accused of being avoidant. This is probably due to my upbringing, how I desperately devised a plan to leave the states. But I always lacked and feared notions of "community." I cherish friends, but communities! I reject all- be it ethnic, religions, schools or online. There are a lot of ingrained fears to this. One is that I fear that others may hate me. Some people don't like me. The other fear is that I become bored, or fall out of touch with the other person. I struggle to connect with most people, so I think it is okay to just "be" and not force myself to belong somewhere that I ultimately will never belong. The second fear is that they are draining - all the voices, and opinions of people who ultimately do not give a damn about you. I need the energy for myself! And finally, I have the fear that communities will trap me and keep me from pursuing my dream, which is to move to many countries. That is, if the community is comfortable. Wait, I have one more fear. It is the assimilating force of communities. I am highly impressionable. But also too nice, someone can really force me to act a certain way and admit that I like certain things that I do not. So I think I am better off going solo, but sometimes I see things that my friends like and they remind me of them. That is the most I can limit "community" to.
Initially, like the standard weeb, my plan was to move to Japan. Instead I ended up in the land where people who want to go to Japan but cannot go, that is China. But as I learn more about myself I think I am open to any country. Maybe even Vietnam, to reconnect with my heritage.
Sometimes I think I will fail to become like Kino. I think I am more like Hermes, which is her motorbike. I am a bit silly and aireheaded, and Hermes did this thing where he would forget certain words, scrambling them up with other words. I misuse and forget words all the time. And Hermes is a yapper! Like me. Kino is more of a listerner, which I suck at. But she also doesn't offer advice or emotional support, so I suppose we are the same in that way.
There is a thing about travelors in anime though, and them just being perpetually young. Kino is 15. I am in my 30s. Or maybe that is just a thing in anime, in general. She does have a boss from which she learned how to use her revolver from. I think characters like Boss are cool and miss the spotlight too. I always have that though, it is okay if I do not amount to anything this year, as I can be old and cool too.
In a way, I imagine my life as a kind of Faustian bargain. I gave up a lot, probably the chance of having a consistent sense of community for.. money? There is a lot of things I do not have to worry about, such as paying for my housing or what not. But sometimes it feels like I did really sell my soul. I don't know what is is like to want normal things that normal people want. So in a way, I have sold my soul. Kino is different, she doesn't really get paid anything! She just is, and goes where she wants.
I am sitting in my room as I write this, reflecting on my time in Shanghai and the rising action and fall. There was the novelty, culture shock or living abroad. I had friends, and then we kind of drifted apart.. or they got new friends so it is mostly me having to reach out. Sometimes I can go a day or two without corresponding with anyone on WeChat. I think that is okay. I had periods where I felt pretty distraught, after breaking up with my boyfriend. But maybe I can reach the stage of peace, solitude and comfort. because I know if I move to a new country, be it Japan, Vietnam or somewhere crazy like Kazahkstan! Then there is a chance that I can end up utterly alone, more alone than I am in Shanghai, where I have supportive coworkers. my job is busy, but they kind of just leave me be and respect me. What if I was power harrassed like before.
The more I think about it, I cannot help but wonder why I am one of the only ones and not more women, who have the passport privilege and ability to move, do it. I suppose normal people have roots and commitments. I had a very special case that birthed the opportunity -- there is a sudden convergence of factors, the internet proliferating such news about such a life path, demographic transition allowing me to graduate with several degrees, and the sheer moral luck of me being born into a certain conuntry. I think there is also a desire to run, run, as far away from my mom as I can.
Lately I have been thinking about that book, called the Runaway Bunny wherein the rabbit runs and morphs into different objects, like clouds, trees, etc. It is a really trippy book, and occassionally my siblings would joke about it. But maybe it was extremely formative.. as I have become the runaway bunny, and evertime my mom finds me she never fails to treat me like a child, her child. And in my mind, I am forever her child, unable to escape her as she chases me from country to country.
Also, I think of Millenium Actress and the them of just chasing, and how chasing makes one fall in love with themself. There is also the theme of living and acting out different lives. I think I always liked the idea of that, sometimes I would fantasize how my life would be if I had different jobs or chose different paths in life. I think moving to different countries is a way to kind of manifest that, it is like a forced upon reincarnation cycle again and again..
When I went back home, I saw the traits of my family members and it gave me more insight on my problems. I think I just have very intensive avoidant issues. Sometimes when instead of s*icidal ideations, I think this feeling transformed it into wanting to move and flee to a new place again and again. Like if I become dissastisfied myself, I get very intensive feelings of wanting to destroy myself, thus self sabotaging, to start over again and again. This is kind of very Yukio Mishima and edgey, if I think of that, to will my death and to bring it about..
When I think about how quiet my phone and lack of messaging has gotten, I try to console myself by imagining Kino. She doesn't depend on devices or receive messages from anymore. Or any traveler in the past. It was truly lonely, but in that, there is a greater peace. I can carefully observe other people around me and the environment without any distractions (other than doign Anki, I guess).
Lately I have been having very intense fantasies about moving to Kazakhstan. I guess my goal has always been Japan, but I already learned Japanese to a decent level and traveled there, like twice. But I have never been to Kazakhstan. Actually, I hardly knew anything about it until my ex and his friends joked about it being "Soviet Japan."
The dreams were triggered by a conversation that I had with saddleblasters about wanting to climb a mountain. Maybe I want to do that. Before I moved to Shanghai, I would follow a bunch of WeChats where they took groups of people to hike or go swimming. Back in the states, hiking is a pretty big thing in Vegas. I went camping with my friends once and enjoyed it. Oh, maybe if I accepted the second date with the Bumble guy who liked backpacking, I would have been happy..
Now I just am kind of a recluse, hiding away in my apartment. But I looked up pictures of Asatana, and it looks pretty, like a scene out of Brokeback Mountain. But I was reading a bit more, and it is pretty dangerous to hike alone, because it can get below freezing at night. You can get lost. I recalled when I actually did get lost in Japan, climbing down Takao-san. The sun set and I panicked, it was completely dark, and I raced down the the mountain and almost tumbled and lost my phone! But that was Japan.. what if that happened to me in Kazakhstan. I would be frozen overnight!
I also read that in the winter, they burn coal. I think I have grown too comfortable with life in Shanghai and that would be intersting to experience..
These dreams are motivated by me wrapping up a Kierkegaard lecture, where the professor was talking about Hiroshima Mon Amour, about how the woman is a knight of resignation or something. She is committed to this memory of her first love who is like a German soldier who died. Sometimes Kierkegaard had a great impression on me, especially his use of Hegel's categories, like the lower immediacy, mediation, and higher immediacy, and aesthete and whatever. I really think I am an aesthete, but not like Don Juan or my polyamourous brother. I just cannot commit to one set hobby or place. I jsut scramble around to different interests, it can drive me and others a bit insane. But sometimes I want to make that "leap of faith" and have something weird and paradoxical to commit to. I guess I can do that to learning Chinese and Japanese but I am kind of bored by them.. another result of being an aesthete..
So Kazakhstan has this air of mystery, but it is also connected to my ex who loved Anki too and studying Russian. I used to study languages for so long, alone with Anki, and was excited to meet someone else who understood me. Maybe by learning Russian and Kazakh I can feel close to him, without actually being close to him. He is an awful person, but I long for that, having something to dedicate my life to and commit to. It also feels weird and paradoxical to shift my target away from Japan to Kazakhstan, almost thrilling.
Sometimes when I am sad, these ideations about Kazahkstan are kind of like the suicidal ideations I had when I was back in the States and depressed. I really have nobody here, other than a few friends, so I must go, kind of feeling. I feel like it is better to to be ina relatively remote country (again, another assumtpion) than one sardined with people and commie blocks but without community. I don't think I will every have community, but I think I can at least have a change in setting, and restart my reincarnation cycle. I would once again be too busy learning the languages, learning how to survive and live again, to worry about loneliness.
I think these dreams are also triggered from that girl named Crete in Wind Up Bird Chronicles. I have been reading this trilogy for MONTHS now in Jpaanese, and the progression is slow, but that one woman always talked about wanting to travel to Crete. I guess there are characters who are a bit like me, though they exist only in fiction.
Today I looked up pictures of Almaty and looked a a video for the alphabet of Kazakh. I might lock in... maybe living there is goals.
Upon further reserach, Kazakh learning resources are scarce, but the video made the language sound so charming. Today I looked up Russian resources, which there is an abundance of. Kazahk doesn't even have a basic alphabet Anki deck! I would have to download the video on youtube and strip the audio files apart to use it.
Today I browsed around and there seems to more Russian resources. It would be a pity to learn Russian, as I see it as the colonizer's language, but there are so much more resources than Kazakh. Learning Kazakh... the equivalence in Chinese would be trying to learn Shanghainese. Somehow I am a bit jaded by Japanese and Chinese, and I think my overall langauge profile would seem a bit more "cool" if I add Russian, though! I already study too many Asian languages, Russian seems like a nice one to add to the mix because it is a devil's language. The other European languages that I dabbled in, such as Spanish and German, are too simplistic and bore me somewhat.
Somehow there is a strong desire to learn a language *right*. I feel like I wasn't able to do that with Japanese nor Chinese as I waited too long to receive comprehensible input. But I feel like I can introduce it a lot earlier with Russian. And not put it off for too long. I want to lock in the next one and half years to get decent at Russian so when I arrive in Kazakhstan, I am brimming with the excitement of a child to interact with other people. I feel like my Chinese is finally at that point, where I can kind of understand surrounding conversations and communicate, but it feels so lame and too late. I lived here for two years, but have been learning the langauge for a decade (dropping and picking it up, an onslaught of leaving and forgetting). I wish I was this good when I arrived.
Maybe there is no "there is too late." Maybe it is all in my head. I should keep langauge learning as a solitary hobby and just continue to progress day by day like I am doing. Anki card by Anki card. Podcast by podcast. Book by book. And it will be okay. I don't have to compare myself to others, but it's hard not to do that when I am thrusted into a hypercompetitive world. Maybe that is why I want to get far away from Shanghai, where I feel like the "yali hen da" among the people and my workplace.
Growing up as a second generation Asian-American is strange. There is a lot of diversity involved in it. It feels if there is a big, close-knit community, you will generally preserve your mother language. Examples of these include Korean-Americans, when I was in college I regularly tutored at a Korean Lutheran Church. I feel like Chinese communities may sometimes preserve their tongue, but my closest friends are Chinese-American and none of them speak Mandarin, instead using Cantonese, Tchechow, etc. I feel like because we are so disapora'd, I grew up with very little to no Vietnamese friends so there is little motivation for me to preserve and learn Vietnamese. This would have been different if I grew up in Westminster's Little Saigon where the rest of my other cousins were raised, along the warm coasts of California.
This summer I went back home to visit my family. My dad had lymphoma, and a lot of my friends were egging me on to converse about him and his life, which I knew little of. In spite of that, I was rather reluctant to be too direct with him, as I did not want to make it seem like his life on earth was limited. It seemed like he could win the battle against cancer, so I just spoke orgnicallly with relating topics.
story to buddhism
story about my envy towards functional white families, where the reserves of knowledge is more "useful"
relevations about the value of learning how to cook and speak the language
story of my dad and the vietnamese james bond that he likes
story of how I am learning other asian languages, and not my own
story of how my parents came to america
is culture a social construct and not real?
Now I am darting through the possibilities of different anki decks. There are decks for Vietnamese. One has all of the Glossika sentenes, and another a set of 7000 words from memrise. It is northern accent, but perhaps meaningful to investigate. I am in a very strange stage where my Chinese and Japanese higher level vocabulary is larger, so I can understand complex conversation topics about economics, stocks, etc if I follow a transcript, whereas my Vietnamese remains colloquial. If I open up a Vietnamese podcast, I cannot understand it! Chinese I can! How humiliating..
But also next year I am excited for a Korean deck as well.
I know Japanese. It is a bit like knowing Latin, I practically never use it other than to read a few pages a day and when overhearing it in the wild. My main reason and motivation was that I consumed a lot of Japanese media, anime music manga, and thought that I can make these more productive if I learned that language. It took so long and most of my life! But now no one is impressed. "What is Saku" I proceed to blabber about how it means that blooming of a flower. My friend says he is not interested in that, he just wanted to know what they sold at the restaurant.
Learning languages, or learning things in themselves is a testament to getting really good at something but not having anything to show for it or any praise of interest given about it... I think that is nice. Sometimes I occassionally get praise, but a lot of it is derived instrinsically, because I know learning languages... if I didn't do it everyday with my daily Anki, would be impossible, so the final product, be it just some listening comprehension and reading ability, is enough to be a testament to my dedication and hard work.
Learning Japanese was tricky but was pretty linear as most of the media I consumed was in Japanese. In the end, I progressed to an intermediate-advanced level and can generally read and listen to Japanese and understand it. Chinese though... was a different story. I picked up Chinese from taking some classes in college. I initially transfered my knowledge of Kanji over. Back then writing Kanji was still easy because I used some production cards. I also transfered my Vietnamese tones. I was using an Anki deck called Spoonfed Chinese, which, though monotonous, taught me how to construct basic sentences (It is like Vietnamese anyways).
Regardless, it has been almost a decade and my Chinese has stagnated. I dropped off progress in the Anki deck and deleted it (I do not remember why, perhaps I started work and got too busy). Or I was disatisfied with my progress, or it was too much to balance with Japanese immersion. I really struggled. But two years ago I moved to Shanghai. And my language skills sucked, I forgot even the simplest of phrases. Coworkers would rely on me when I knew jack shit! I'm a laowai too! I felt burnt out from learning Japanese to a high level and from moving and possessed little motivation to pick up on Chinese again. But then i dated my ex who loved Anki, and somehow I began using it again, determined to do the old reviews for Cinese from a MegaMandarin deck. It just had a bunch of vocab cards, and I did not even order it i+1 as I should have. It was just random words in random difficulties, but I persisted...
And now I reached the point, after two years in Shanghai, my Chinese is still shit but I can force myself to parse together sentences if I wanted to. I can read pretty well if I had nothing else to depend on, just very slowly. But I still see I have a dislike towards reading WeChat articles and mometns for fun, but notice that when I am doomscrolling I am able to pick up more and more. I think what makes things really hard for me to learn and practice my listening comprehension is taht I am so used to tuning out the world around me. Be it at my work place, with so many students screaming, or out in public. but if I try at this point, I think I can get the general gist or "feel" of a conversation as some words present themselves. I think my low listening ability makes it frustrating for people I try to converse with in Chinese. Still, I will continue to force myself to use my Chinese..
But recently I am ready to move onto stage 2 of my language learning process: Visual Novels!
Originally this should have been my place
Stage 1: Anki cram 10k words (immerse with comprehensible podcats) and maybe some website to learn grammar
Stage 2: Massive Input, visual novels, harder podcasts while maintining Anki
Stage 3: Delete Anki and just read and consume with a dictionary
Stage 4: Presumably keep on going but practice output and use langauge-language dictionaries
Today is a great day, I was just letting my Spotify roll, but it began playing a podcast. I glanced over and there were words, being highlighted character by character, time stamps, and I can skip forward or backward 15 minutes. This is a 30 minute advanced podcast, the main guy was just interviewing people about stuff. But the seller were the transcripts.
I always say that if people had subtitles below them when they speak, life would be much easier. I guess it would help with English as I am hard of hearing. But with Chinese, I would want them in Chinese, as I know the hanzi. In the past there were websites like viki that had a "Learning mode" and you can watch shows with dual subtitles. I tried using the Netflex dull subtitle thing too. It was just too fast. And I cannot concentrate simulataneously on the plot and subtitles.
So when I saw the subtitles, I was shocked. ANd they "seemed" pretty accurate. I have a pretty superficial understanding of the language but as I skimmed the transcript it seemed to make sense, this particular episode was about a CHinese woman who was led on by a man from a host club.
I started my career teaching at a Title I school in North Las Vegas. Yes, that meant most of my students were Hispanic or black or Native American. The culture is so different than where I work now, which is internationally. I had students seeking me out during lunch to "hang out with me." They would talk about everything, ranging from Spinoza, YMO, video games and anime, how jailmates hide shivs in their asses, how they have a crush on their cousin, it was all utterly insane.
Today we had a training during our contact time on how to use an AED. But I was having flashbacks about a training I had in the states that was called 'Stop the Bleeding!" We were about to bitch and complain, thinking it was fancy language about stopping the turnover of teachers, but instead it was a training about school shootings. They had dummies and we working in groups to simulate what we would do if someone... maybe a student or a teacher... was taken out by a gun, shot in the leg, and we would have to stuff it with gauze. If we didn't have gauze? We would have to stuff the hole with absolutely anything! To stop the bleed.
I think something that I honestly gave up with is any expectation of having a lifelong partner or relationship, ever since I decided to move abroad. It isn't something that I have denied that would happen, I think that I am decently symmetrical looking and a woman, but is it something that I practically want or would exert enormous effort to will into existence? Not really.
I hate to say it, but a lot of it is the economic argument. I would say that if I do decide to enter into a relationship, it would require a career suicide or compromise. And also a compromise of my time and space. So far, I have adjusted enormously to having a tight routine that consists of Anki, reading, cooking, drawing, crocheting, watching a movie and playing my visual novel. I guess I can imagine a man who would seamlessly blend into my schedule, but he isn't going to just manifest himself into my place. So it is what it is.
In a world that has become increasinly atomized, is this necessarily a bad thing? Not really, I feel like unlike most women I have my assortments of male friends and pretty solid friendships that can span space and time. I do very well prefer the solitude. Not having a lot of incoming text messages keeps me in touch with the old times, I often wonder how it was like before the need for instantaneous communication, and love the freedom of just existing without it meaning anything to anyone else.
Recently I have been watching some media to reinforce that this way of life isn't necessarily a bad thing! I think an anime that comes to mind is Wakakozake, the character is pretty much just a foodie. I am not much of a foodie but I have recently been loving how to cook. The thing about getting food is it would require me to go out. And most places that I want to go to are downtown, so if I go out, I am not coming back home until the evening, which can be a bit disruptive of my schedule. I much prefer to get food at night. It think this is uniquely Las Vegas thing, it being a 24/7 city, you can get iHop or Blueberry Hills or ramen deep into the night, as late as 2 am, but that is simply not true in most cities. Instead, after going out to a concert, I end up in restaurant that I would read in my head half CHinese and Half Japanese a "Gege no Shinya Shokudou" (I think originally it is just Gege de Shenye Shitang). It is supposed to be like a cheap Japanese izakaya, I guess, so I always sit there and get my unagidon or fried udon. This place is open generally until 2 am. I suppose other places are open too, but what place would have workers saying "Arigatou gozaimasu!" in a Chinese accent as you enter and leave?
When I went back to the states in 2025, I was persistent on acctually enjoying it. This was motivated by conversations I heard and the current political climate. Everyone hates America! And when i went back last-last year I made that evident. I was a bit of an asshole, complaining about how Shanghai has this, Shanghai has that, and Vegas doesn't. This of course, made my family sad and upset. I think people may hold similar sentiments when they leave Shanghai and visit their hometonw during Chinese New Year -- I hear there is nothing to do, and the parents always nag you. For example, my mom nags me about Buddhism and about my short hair, it is always too short!
Frankly, the things that I loved the most about the states seem to be the Japanese shit. I was talking with saddleblasters about things that are uniquely only found in the States, but not in Shanghai, I suppose, as suboptimalist's blog mentioned, Vegas has arcardes with indie video games. Well, did he know that they also had a Japanese restaurant with Japanese maids! That was one of my favorite parts. I expected American teenagers to be the maids, but they were Japanese and casted the moe moe kyun magic spell on my pink ramen. After my dad got emitted from the hospital, I did not hesitate to take my family to "experience Japanese culture" as well.
Vegas has these weird enclaves that are hypperalistic, I suppose I discoved a block that was like the little Italian enclave with my sister. It is almost desserted, but you can sit in the cafe while she regains her eyesight after an eye dilation to check up on her optical migraines, listening to Italians around you. But I think Shanghai has this too, in the expat packed areas, like Funkadeli.
Americans love matcha, cybertrucks and Labubus, it seems.
I think this to myself I see women buying eight matchas to go, and girls in cafes with a protected Labubu itai-bag.
Story about the aware coffee
Sotry about the meaning of aware, and the Tale of Genji
Story about Sen no rikyuu
story of how matcha went from being ceremonial, wabisabi thing to like an instagram trend
Recently, I began cooking. I guess my motivation was to kind of reclaim something as a part of doing something just for myself. When I was in my shortlived relationship, I felt a brimming bit of excitement, and wanted to cook for my ex. Instead he kind of shrugged it off. I don't need a boyfriend to cook for! I need to learn how to cook for just myself, or my friends and family.
I first started my cooking adventures last summer. I was inspired by my friend (I feel like I already wrote this)
In ym kitchen in my apartment, I am seeking to spend more time indoors and at home this year, instead of traversing the huge city. I have discovered that I really like my kitchen. I have been in other apartments where the kitchen is basically the walkway into the apartment, and that's it. My kitchen is pretty nice and clean. I have a good routine of listening to a podcast in Chinese or a Great Course while cooking.
I guess I initally never liked cooking, and when I lived with my parents and family I was usually the one that was delegated to wash dishes. I love washing dishes, but I guess there is a carthatic component of it similar to standing in the shower. I always imagined Utada's music video in Hikari where she is just singing in front of a running sink.
Our mom always, always cooked for us. In away, she dominated the kitchen. A part of why I really value having my own kitchen is I really do not have to fight for a place and time to cook like I did when I visisted back home. My mom is notorious for hoarding food, and we had two refridgerators and freezers, which were packed to the brim with food that may be years of age. In my kitchen, it is small and I know everything that is in it. I can eat everything and cook just for myself. I know where all the ingredients are.
It is embarrassing to say that my mom cooked for me way into adulthood. I would pack lunches which were her food. When my naturally curious coworkers asked about it, I had to fess up and said I did not know anything about the food, alas my mom made it for me! When I first moved into my apartment in Shanghai, I barely knew how to cook, just chopping vegetables, stir-frying them, or boiling them and adding mushroom boullion to them. I sufficed on Lawson sushi, it is like a weird sushi catered to the local tastes, with corn and pork floss sometimes. I found it yummy. It took me awhile to learn that I shouldn't be walking to the wet market, but instead ordering groceries here.
(Segment about groceries comparison)
I had a coworker in the states who would also cook vegan chocolate chip cookies for us. It was delicious. But I always wondered how he had enough energy to do this. It seems to me that Americans, occassionally, can be stricken by this manic energy to do something, almost obsessively, to perfection. My coworker was one of those people, and for him, it was his work... teaching science to underserved students and providing them with freshly baked cookies.
How can someone havee the time and energy for this? As I heal in Shanghai, the fog of depression that always clouded my perception is starting to fade. It feels like a Maslow's Hierchey of Needs thing. If my lower pleasures are satisfied, then I want to try to cook now. I also want to bake, and I guess, if I have extras I can always give it away to my coworkers just like my coworker did for us in the States.
I also love sharing cooking tips and trying out recipes from my friends. It seems like recipes and making foods are the only thing that I am remotely receptive too. Movie and TV show suggestions, or book suggestions.. not as much. But recipes? Hell yes!
I love being exposed to the challenge of a new recipe. Today is a Tuesday but I was very excited to try 罗汉斋, but I kind of failed. The tofu blew up in the pan (I didn't know how to fry it and ate all of the fried tofu). I always have a habit of wanting to add too many vegetables, as I love them, so the wok was filled to the brim. There is always something new that I slightly screw up on, be it adding the napa cabbage a bit too early, and having to painstakingly pick it out. Or be it failing at frying (I did not add enough oil and it stuck to the pan). Every day I spend cooking is a learning experience, much like learning a new song in guitar, it is extremely jarring going through the steps, prepping the ingredients and sauces, and putting it together. But it feels so fun and tactile cutting the ingredients, or being exposed to new ingredients. The one too were dried shiitake mushrooms, apparently I soaked them and they do have a unique texture after. The mushroom water is used for the broth. There is also cornstarch taht is used to thicken the sauce a bit. What else.. I found napa cabbage (or the baby ones) very easy to cut. And it was also interesting soaking the vermicilli noodles, these ones that I got are made of sweet potatoes!
It is highly stimulating and I just feel like I completely missed out on a dimension of life. When I lay in bed hungry, I now imagine and romanticize cooking the other dishes that I love, such as falafels or brownies after being recommended reels of them on instagram. Can I do it? We will see!
I guess the weird thing is that I cook mostly only vegetarian dishes. I have no idea how to prepare and cook meat. This can be compounded by the fact that I mostly follow vegan and vegetarian instagram accounts. I think it is fine, as vegetarian dishes are generally more healthy. If I want meat, I can always get it when eating out.
I was also really wanting to try baking and making cookies. I think of Americans who really loved cooking, there would be discussions during lunch about making sourdough. Somehow, it feels like here, not many people have the time to cook or bake as a hobby. During lunch I was interrogated by a coworker on why I wasn't really interested in traveling. Nowadays, instead of traveling, I am just thinking about cooking and the feeling of success [chengjiugan] that I would feel after it. I looked up the statistic and only 20% of people in the world have rode in a plane before, so in a way, I am already traveling. I am thinking of memories of sleeping over at my Mormon's friends house when I was little, and she would make bagels.. how nice would that be.. to make bagels..
As it the day moves onto another day, other memories are flooding back. I spent the evening browsing WWOOFing again. I completely forgot about this possible life path, but yeah, before I moved abroad I used to fantasize about working on these little farms. I was reading reviews of them and some do seem sketchy, but maybe if I hae all of these breaks this may be something that is worth trying out for some risky fun and to fulfill one of my dreams. I investigated the difference between bread flour (which I bough 5 kg of..) and all purpose flour. It seems like bread flour has more protein! As I scrolled through instagram some of the vegan and vegetarian content creaters were casually commenting on the modern day obsession with protein. I guess that is strange. I suppose I was always so used to just eating carbs - rice, noodles, and potatotes. During lunch I ordered some more supplies to bake with and briefly compartmentatized making pretzels, bagels, and flatbread with the bread flour in my mind. I looked through the taobao page and saw some people making the bread shaped, I will have to look into how to do that...
My diet is a mix of Vietnamese taste. For most of my life, my mom cooked for me and I always preferred having rice and Vietnamese dishes to school lunch rather than sandwhiches. That swas something that I commentated on when visiting last summer. My mom would pack peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches for us... I HATED them. I hated how the jelly would mush through the bread. Since it was just in a paper bag, the sanwhich would be utterly obliterated. Without a doubt, I would throw them away. But I was somewhat evil back then, and caught my sister for throwing away her luncha dn snitched on her to my mom, for which was was duly punished for. Why did my mom pack sandwhiches for us? I never really noticed it, but did she not want us to be singled out and bullied for having weird foods in our lunch? But wait, I did have Vietnamese food at times, especially the deep fried egg rolls (cha gio). Those stunk. And I loved them. So maybe my memory shouldn't be clouded by that "Asian-American growing up in the States ashamed of their heritage" dialogue. My mom did make a Vietnamese dish for a school potluck or project once, that was with the (starts with a k) root. I guess that didn't really have an appeal to AMericans due to their carbs limit.
My family's obsession with carbs has led them to all have diabetes. Both of my parents and my grandmother, and many of my aunts. But they cannot stop eating white rice, they love it! In spite of them being vegetarian, they still ate pretty badly, by Western standards. A lot of the food were sweet and glutinous, or very salty. But there were a lot of greens. But I suppose the greens do not override the carbs and sugar. I still am obsessed with vegetables. I cannot imagine how some people ahte them, let alone go their whole lives without eating them. I always try to have my daily intake of vegetables. Maybe that is why I love cooking or just eating vegetarian. When I go out, it seems like you pay a lot for food, but not for a lot of vegetables. At home I can just boil a whole head of pak choi or something and that will just be so yummy. My school's canteen is fortunate enough to have vegetarian options, since we havve a lot of students and teachers who are of Muslim or Hindu background and just a lot of Western vegetarians. And also a decent salad bar. I suppose something I never got into until I moved to Shanghai were salads. I hated them in the States, because I felt like, without rice, they were just lacking and would not be filling. But I suppose I have been brainwashed to understand that I don't need rice to have sustaination, but rather, I just needed a "protein" or "healthy fat" so for the past two years in Shanghai I would order these overpriced salads but they had something that was filling, like salmon or avocado in it. I now go ham at my school canteen, they always provided cherry tomatoes, and various greens like red cabbage, arugala, and carrots.
I suppose something that makes my taste distinctly American is my routine of eating oatmeal in the morning. From an Asian-American perspective, it tastes like cardboard. But it was something that I picked up on eating in high school, kind of like daily jogging. Recently I switched to steel cut oats. I was about to eat this sweet matcha and read bean granola I recently got as a treat, but then my mind raced at the thought of waking up without my steel cut oats, so I prepared them. I find that if I do not eat them on a weekend morning, then I may be voracious in appetite and that may be distracting when I go through all my daily tasks and hobbies. There are some other gross American things I haven't tried. My sister commented on being taking to Cracker Barrel and trying "grits" before. I never tried grits, I guess. But maybe they are like oatmeal but savory. I also never grew up with cornbread, but loved the sweet ones. (I guess a thing is I absolutely love donuts and cookies, but those are scarce in Shanghai! Japan and Korea has so many donuts but they are nonexistent in Shanghai..) One time, my sister for a school potluck or project (the theme was "American foods" so I always think back on it when my friends and coworkers comment on the lack of culture in American food. When I did it I just brough buttered corn). and she was assigned cornbread. SHe made it from a box bought from Smith's and went by the proportions. But I remembered trying it and going "it's so bland. You failed." ANd she thought she did... but when she brought it to school her classmates simply loved it! They were asking her for the recipe and everything. And they were saying it paired so well with the chilli that someone else brought. This is a clear and distinct memory that we would always lose it over, between me and my sister. It was just a great defining moment between what separated our tastes as Asian Americans and American culture. We had no inkling of how it would ahve been like growing up with this bland,m disgusting cornbread, let alone eating it with chilli... but they did. Why didn't it have sugar?
I feel like if that is something taht characterized my American education and made it somewhat fun, it was just the excess in these potlucks at the end of the year where the teacher would just ask us to bring in food and put up a movie. But it was exciting trying foods from different cultures, that is how I grew to love tamales.. so yummy. At the last school I worked at they also had "chilli cooking competitions" amoung the teachers. It was so strange. They had all the staff and students come to the cafeteria and taste it and vote for their favorite. It all tasted the same for me. But it was fascinating how everyone got really into it, I remember there being at least a dozen options to try. When I reminensce back to my time teaching in the states, I guess it was just as alien working in a school there as it is in an international school in Shanghai.
I think food is something that is universally shared. I have a difficult time fathoming growing up with American cuisines, such as chilli.. but in away I did. I don't have that difficult of a time fathoming growing up with Chinese food. I suppose a common question I got about moving to Shanghai was whether I experience culture shock with the food. No, not really. I grew up eating some pretty strange stuff. Pho had tripe in it, the lining of a cow's stomach. I remmeber loving eating water snails. We would stick a toothpick in them and penetrate their flesh. I remember they had a little shield to separte them from the outside world. And there is hot vit lon. (Funny enough, this is one of the only Vietnamese loan words that I know exit in Japanese, as I remember a character in Shirobako despising hobiron). Hot vit lon is like an unhatched duck or chicken. I remmeber being so scared of looking at the bird that I... smashed it up into bits with my spoon before eating it... as if putting a body through a meat grinder makes it more palatable. My favorite part underneath was the egg sac, which become rubbery and hard and mostly tasteless. But I enjoyed eating rubbery and hard things like that. I think that is why my front tooth is a bit chipped. I loved gnawing on bones, and I meant eating everything off of it, including the cartilage. I have a habit, from my parents, of eating the entire shrimp. I mean the entire shrimp, shell, head and all. My coworkers would look at me in shock as I do it. No, it is not a common Chinese thing. It is a "me" thing.
Culture does not exist. This is an argument from one of my friends, and I kind of understood it as a social construct argument. Is it good or bad that it exists? I guess now that I am in a foreign country, culture is inexticably something that I will fail to escape. "If I wasn't Buddhist I would have divorced your dad long ago," said my mom to me, while driving me around. She liked having me in the shotgun so she can lecture me about Buddhism.
"Why? Are you not allowed to divorce in Buddhism?" I asked.
"No, but I accepted that this is my karma and I did not go against it."
I wonder what my karma is. I was probably depressed and mentally ill for most of my life. When I finally moved abroad, I struggled to do basic tasks, like taking public transporation, etc, I didn't know how to ride a bike. In many ways, I am lucky. I don't know why, but I chose to study the two subjects I loved the most, physics and philosophy, though I am not good at them.
When I went back to the states, I briefly visited my aged aunts and uncles back in Little Saigon, Westminster city. They were watching a youtube video of the woman building a house, obviously staged. As I left, one of my aunts gave me a crocheted bunny, insisting that I give it to my little sister. Later, I would pick up crochet from my sister and now I do it every night as a part of my daily routine before I sleep. At this point in Shanghai, I feel like I have grown distant from my friends - at the beginning we were excited to meet each other, but now all of my group chats are silent. If I am lucky, I can go a whole day or two without texting or corresponding with anyone on WeChat. Somehow I feel like my aunts and uncles, back in Westminster.
"They're all retired. We're the last ones to retire," said my mom, in response to me asking her who retired as I help box away files in my dad's dental office.
"But it's sad. They just spend there time building things and doing small hobbies. Some people do not have a spiritual life."
She concluded.
I don't know why, but ever since she said that, it struck me that a lot of the things I did were meaningless. I suppose I always had that perspective, from say, reading Camus and how absurd it was. But my mode of living, as well as my aunts and uncles, was something different, completely void of spirituality.
I do sense that I get a lot of disapproval for moving abroad. One time was when my older sister called on me to check in on my dad, who was undergoing chemotherapy. I was yawning during the call, and she seemed to sneer on the other end, asking if I was tired from partying? Partying? I never partied. Well. My friend was about to invite me to a house party, but I got uninvited becuase they wanted to keep it exclusive to their friends. No, I woke up early to take dad to the hospital!
Am I like my aged, retired aunts and uncles? Just picking up on random hobbies -- crochetting, projects, etc -- to pass by time.
It certainly feels like that. It feels like I reached the end of my life expectancy in Shanghai, but I still have two more years. So I will wither away my time, learning guitar, learning Chinese, crochetting, reading...
And once those two years are over, I will disappear, soon to be reborn in another city..
Since I am now in Shanghai, I keep the sutra book next to my pillow. Sometimes I don't read it, and just fall asleep next to it, but occassionally I reread it. These sutras I chanted innumerable times, but they were complete nonsensical. But now for the first time, below them are the Chinese text and the English translation. They are illuminated with meaning. I suppose if I am the last one in my family, then I would also be the last one to recite the heart sutra as we go
I took the first international flight of my life, alone, to Shanghai. I was about to miss the connecting flight because my first flight to LAX was delayed by 30 minutes and then it was parked at the gate for an additional 30 minutes. Afterwards, I booked it and darted through LAX, and arrived just in time, 10 minutes before the departure of might flight, drenched in sweat. They didn't expect me to make it. My luggage didn't.
Often on planes, I sit next to very old Chinese or Taiwanese women who are probably some of the most supportive people who are overjoywed to learn about me moving to China. Sometimes they talk about their daughters, who are also itnernational teachers, but now married to some French person. Or they will talk about adventures they had when they were younger, traveling on their own in China without the internet or phone service. Somehow, for the first time, I felt pretty cool. But I am not really that type of person.
When I landed, I hand no luggage but thankfully my work provided housing and that place came with it completely pre-furnished with a bed, couch, TV, and kitchen. But for a long time, I just did not know how to live on my own, and felt very lonely, calling my family back home every weekend. But by my third year, I finally came the realization this is the life that I have always fought for, I just didn't know what to make of this freedom. For the first time, I am kind of functioning as an adult, on the weekends I explore recipes, learn how to cook and soon, bake. For the first time, I am turning on the TV to watch movies by myself.
It is strange to me how a lot of women don't really rock the short pixie hair cut style that I have here. Instead, I think mostly old, middle-aged women, the ayi, have it. I didn't know how to order groceries to get them delivered back then, so I would make a 30 minute trek to a local wet market every weekend to get groceries. No other person did, other than the old ayi and grannies and grandpa, and walking among them, with my short hair, I felt like I blending in completely with them. I find it a lot different from Vietnamese women, who can sometimes have long hair, at my local temple growing up with leave their hair long. But then I realized that is probably due to the volume of hair of Vietnamese women in general.. we are so hairy. So they have the luxury of leaving it long. By the time of my last two years in Shanghai, I realized that I never really would desire to communicate with people and am already getting a lot of satisfaction from just listening to podcasts and playing my Chinese visual novels. One day I will be able to read poetry or books.. one day. But I rarely get a lot of validation or encouragement towards using Chinese with locals it's always a bit discouraging. But I think there is a lot of merit in using Chinese, maybe later on when I work in another country where there isn't a Chinese majority and a single Chinese student, I can help them feel a bit less alone. It is funny here because I find myself using my basic Korean with a random Korean student at might school. Her face seemed to light up. Damn, was I studying the wrong language the whole time?
Sometime, along the way, by the second year, I felt like the taxi service, didi, implemented something into their interface to inform drivers that they have a foreign passenger. Before, I used to get all types of drivers attempting questions with me. Now, none of them try to communicate. None of them at all. If I enjoy Shanghai, or any other country that I live it, it is probably a blessing to be left completely alone. Sometimes I forget that this experience is entirely exceptional to me, I just happen to be of a certain face and appearance for it to be possible. The quietness of taxi rides contrast enourmously to the rides in the states, where the taxi drivers would talk about their day, and recommend movies with the actress Jane Fonda in it. I wonder, if I was Chinese, can I have conversations about favorite movies with taxi drivers here? Somehow it feels a bit more atomizing. There are a lot of ayis locked in their own stalls, people just ignore them most of the time, unlike the clearners in the states that I loudly thank and greet. And the atomization pervades even more with the QR codes, where I always fumble and make mistakes in my order by clumsily clicking on the wrong button. Whenever I return to the states my friends always chide me for not cleaning after myself at the restaurant. So I think if I stay here too long, I may become more solitary and cold towards others..
I feel like by the end of my secocond year, I would start to finally understand the language. I don't have a lot of childhood memories, but among them was flipping through a book, thinking that it was utterly insane that adults can read, and thinking when it came to that point, and I was older... I would just feign it. I can just "pretend" to read. Well, it has felt like that up until then, I can nod and feign like I comprehend what the other person is saying, but I really don't know. I think I always found that extremely frustrating, how my listening comprehension was nonexistent. It made me lower than people who can speak English and understand it, albeit with a slight accent.
I feel like I can finally overcome that. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts - gushi FM has transcriptions of interviews by people. For the first time, it felt like I can kind of fianlly understand Chinese people, as I follow along with the transcript. Among these stories is a woman who visits Japan and attends a host club and gets pulled into a situationship, an intersexed person who was raised as a woman, people who try to spread the tuberculosis initiative in China, a Japanese woman who supposedly strangled her own children, but was taken into China to be a midwife for hundreds of Chinese kids-- the podcast narrative discussed how they wanted to look for her. For the first time, the gentle voices had comprehension.
But I am approaching the end of my life... Yet I know Chinese will always come in use. No matter where I work I would probably work with Chinese students. I find that if my ability is oversaturated, it really isn't a surprise if I can speak a bit. But the lonely Korean or Russian student does appreciate it if I know a word or two in their language.
I am just thinking of the anime Mushishi and the episode where they sniff the flower, and it turns them wrinkly, but they are pretty happy. I had a hard time grasping the episode as a child. Why are they so happy? It is as if they reach the end of their life, and only have a day to live. I remember looking at comments on Youtube and everyone was commenting it was like a drug flower. But somehow I think of one of my coping mechanisms, is avoidance, perhaps taht is why I cannot imagine staying too long in one country... and another one is fantasizing about finally, just finally, overcoming my depression, setbacks, and becoming a good person.. but at that point I would probably be very old and wrinkly.
It is like I am simultaneously young and old. It is kind of like when I was a child, thinking I would never learn how to read, but suddenly, I do. It is such a simple task that took a Heruculean amount of effort. Sometimes it is a bit disappointing. but maybe I am trying to avoid my inevitable end by making that endless pursuit to learn new languages.
As I said, when I first arrived in Shanghai I had to learn how to shop on my own and cook. The first two years were probably haphazard endeavers. I was walking tot the wetmarket or ordering from an overpriced grocery service. Nowadays, I order groceries weekly from an RT market. I find it strange how I order from this supermarket every week, yet I have never set foot in the store.
When I arrived back home in Vegas, I was eager to practice cooking. It was part of my "reclaiming" of my life narrative. And doing things more for myself. The first time I wanted to cook was when visiting my ex-boyfriend. But I think he just wanted to eat korean bbq. I was thinking that it also was related to Maslow's Hierchey of Needs, I was always confused about how people have the time to cook abnd bake. But I suppose for the vast majority of my life my mom cooked for me, and I was not ready to battle over for space in the kitchen and refridgerator., I never really felt a need to learn how to cook, but after eating out at various overpriced places and restaurants, I felt a kind of emptiness that I would like to engage less and less in. My friend said things that are of meaning require time and effort, and I suppose that is like any other skill, such as cooking or crochetting! What I learned to enjoy the most about. I also learned that I knew nothing about vegetables, words like scallion, shallots, garlic cloves, green onions were extremely foreign to me. Concepts such as aromatics with green onions first and the cold water over noodles were completely foreign to me. There is also the transfering of skillset from mother to child. My mom was overjoyed that I was finally learning how to cook, how I was finally "Just like her." And Vietnamese dishes are very yummy I guess. This was galvanized by how my sister purchased a cookbook in Seattle called "Vietnamese Vegetarian dishes."
I think I was inspired by part by my friend who hosted dinner parties for us. I guess this is unforeseen, I never had friends do this and my mom would not do this for anyone beyond their Buddhist temple community or family. But it is nice seeing him set up a little menu, put up a sign naming referencing the restaraunt in American psycho, and then cooking up all the dishes. A lot of people would claim that people who attended his college institutions as elitist, but I was suprrised he really is on a whole another level of Maslow's Hierchey's of needs, where he can devote and give something back to the community. I think this fits into the narrative of just taking care fo friends and abolishing the family -- We don't have to cook for just the family anymore (somethign that I may never have) but also just our friends and ourselves.
I find doing the math stressful, making the right portions. Even witht he support of ChatGPT, I still make too much. And then I end up eyeballing things. I think I have always been bad at interacting wtih units, even with a physics background, and I believe cooking and baking can help bridge the gap between my lack of real world application and knowledge. Baking I have not attempted yet, but I heard it is a lot of chemistry.
Back to the detachment from RT market, I would like to talk about how in Vegas, I really enjoyed going into supermarkets. I guess I can enjoy it in China too. But there was a recipe that I was attempting, called banh khoc, but it required vegetarian shrimp. I had to stop by many different supermarkets in Vegas to look for it. I searched in the new H mart (according to my friend, Vegas is now officially a "real city" because we opened on), one of the Vietnamese Markets, one of the Chinese 88 Ranch markets, but none of them had it! My mom took me on one last trip to a Vietnamese market, and there it was, in its overpriced glory. I found that experience a bit peculiar, because obtaining vegan shrimp is a nonissue in China, but it was so hard to find it, we had to physically drive from store to store and search down the ailes.
There is a huge contrast between the glamore,. diversity in foods at H mart, but it still did not have the vegan shrimp. The Vietnamese markets were obviously a lot less fresh. I learned that some plants like basil and mint where sold in pots still, ready to be snipped at H mart, whereas the Vietnamese market they were kind of there just rotting. My brother always accused my mother of feeding us rotten food, but I thought, if she was sourching it from the cheaper market then the issue is not her, but rather the market.