06.25.10
Posted in Racism tagged race fail, The last Airbender at 11:17 pm by kyrias
I saw a promotional poster for The Last Airbender a while ago with Nora and made some comment about it. Nora came back with something like it wasn’t a big deal because of something regarding how no one complains about how Japanese anime is drawn.
I had some sort of weak reply about how the chillens are sad that Asian actors won’t be chosen for a movie based off of a Asian-themed cartoon series, but I didn’t have all my links at hand to quote, so I’m re-opening the discussion now. I was tempted to just make it a link-dump because I’m really tired of explaining why institutionalized racism is a bad thing to people — but I couldn’t very well ignore the comment about Japanese anime and so on.
Btw - -I think the Japanese really don’t have as much self-hate going on as Westerners would like to think. Really.
Why I’m personally boycotting this movie:
- The original casting race-fail where they asked for “Caucasian or other” for characters who were obviously either Asian or Inuit
- The utter lack of response to the race-fail backlash.
- They killed a lot of the Asian influences of the original show, such as turning the Chinese script into gibberish.
I don’t really watch movies anyways, so I refuse on principle to have this abomination’s movie to be on the short list of movies I’ve paid to watch.
So, about that Japanese anime issue…
According to Matt Thorn — no matter how the characters in the anime or manga are drawn or portrayed, unless they’re “marked” as other, then they’re automatically assumed to be Japanese. The art form, which it is, not withstanding, it’s not about self-hatred or a desire to portray all people as Caucasian.
Also, I find it hysterical to insist that all characters in Japanese drawn anime and manga with light colored hair and eyes are automatically assumed to be Caucasian. As one of the commentators said, in an art form where wacky is the rule and nothing except perhaps clothing is recognizable as being of a particular bent, to insist that all light = Caucasian is just plain weird. This is the world of cat-eared girls and tailed men with fangs, after all.
Personally, I’ve always seen Japanese drawn anime and manga as talking about Japanese people, regardless of hair color or eye color unless indicated otherwise — so I’m really tempted to say it’s Western privilege talking when Caucasians automatically see themselves in anime characters.
As Ampersand says, the stereotypical circle with eyes in it, and a curve for a mouth is seen as Western by Westerners and it must needs have exaggeratedly slanted eyes and dark hair for it to be seen as Asian. I note that in China, that same simple drawing is seen as being Chinese, without the need for the slanted lines for eyes.
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06.24.10
Posted in Renting with friends at 2:03 pm by kyrias
I don’t think I’m being pessimistic when I say that. Note the open letter which people pretty much ignored.
The current kitchen, shared between four people, not including me because I’m not really here for most of the time and I don’t cook anymore even if I were home — is a disaster. The sink is perpetually full, the stove often has pots sitting on top of it filled with putrid, moldering water, and the floor has visible stains from where people dripped stuff and then didn’t bother to mop up after themselves.
Then there’s the clutter. The used baking sheet with aluminum foil sitting on top of the stove. The things left out in random places.
I will admit that part of it may be a legacy from when I was in residence and there’s so much stuff on the shelves already that people just got frustrated with the idea of looking for space to put the new things they bought. Maybe. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
The new place currently has a dishwasher half the size of our current one and a sink that is both smaller and more shallow than ours. I think this is a recipe for disaster unless we avert it by making smart rules about dishes and who does what. Noting that sometimes when I was in residence, I had to load the dishwasher at least two times a day and I wasn’t keeping up with the dishes.
People are busy, is the problem. All of the people will be working. Some of them will be working and going to school. I get that.
However, I also see things going up in flames because things. won’t. get. done because everyone is busy and everyone won’t have time and things will just accumulate. If everyone in the house runs out of the door, leaving their breakfast plates and glasses in the sink — there’s a load of dishes right there. If lunch and then dinner and the odd snack is factored in, the sink will be overflowing before anyone can say Jack Robinson.
There’s also only so many spoons a person has, and if someone has to choose between going out to socialize or have dinner out or whatever is going on and staying at home to clean up a bit — guess which one they’re going to choose? People in this house work so hard that if they have spare time, there’s no way they’re going to spend that spare time cleaning. Especially if they see it as “not mine, dammit!”. Except, the sink, the floor, and the stove-top kind of are a shared responsibility between everyone who uses it.
Then there’s the problem that people just don’t want to clean up after other people. This is a perfectly human and reasonable response — except it’s not possible to think like that when you live with other people. Heck, I see significant others who have rousing fights because of the tit for tat game.
The fact is, nobody is going to be able to be perfect all the time. There will be that morning or afternoon where you just have to run and you leave a dirty pot on the stove and a glass on the coffee table and by the time you get home, you’ll have forgotten all about it and suddenly there’s multiple orphan dishes and everyone is studiously ignoring them because “dammit, it’s not mine” and the house goes to hell in a handbasket.
If people can’t get over themselves and I’m going to bet they won’t be able to — the only answer is a maid service or housekeeper.
I just hope that either people will be amazing at the game and prove me wrong, which is bloody unlikely considering the current state of the kitchen, or they’ll realize that they need a housekeeper before the entire household dissolves in flames.
Knowing people’s potential for drama, I have no real faith in either one happening. May the gods have mercy on us.
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06.21.10
Posted in Big Sister Association tagged Little Sister at 11:58 pm by kyrias
Part of my main problem with my little sister is that I have no idea what to do with her at this point because on some level I don’t even want to do nice things for her anymore.
I tried making cookies with her. She was interested in the first half of it, which involved measuring ingredients, dumping them in the bowl, and mixing it. Then when I was scooping cookie dough onto the cookie sheets, she lost interest and asked to play the Wii. We tried again with cupcakes and banana bread. She would be interested at first, but then she would disengage after things went in the oven. So as to not put all the blame on her, although she didn’t seem interested in helping cleaning up after making an unholy mess, I also didn’t ask her because I thought she’d have difficulty washing the big mixing bowls in the sink due to height issues. I quit the cooking projects after Caesura called me to task for letting her play the Wii whilst I cleaned up the kitchen after a particularly messy baking project.
We tried games. If there’s any sort of learning curve to get to the fun part, she’s not interested. I think she doesn’t like appearing less than competent in front of people, but I don’t know how to get around that. We’ve tried the encouragement route, but it seems like she would rather just give up than anything else. I’ve asked people if we could try playing Settlers of Catan or Munchkin with her, but the universal opinion seems to be that she won’t be able to, either because she can’t or won’t learn how. Again, to be fair, we tried playing a Tetris like game and Scrabble with her and that’s the extent of the sample size. Then again, she’s 9 years old. Maybe we’re expecting a bit much? Google doesn’t seem to agree, with nine year olds competing in Scrabble competitions.
I tried taking her walking around. She tires easily, doesn’t seem to enjoy the walking all that much, and starts passive aggressively lagging further and further behind until I decide to call an end to it. She’s actually mentioned wanting to go to a pool or skating rink, but I’m not convinced it wouldn’t be a complete waste of money from what I’ve seen of her athletic prowess.
Then there’s the eating out. I took her out to eat a couple of times during the winter months when it was really just too cold to do anything outside and I wanted to do something relatively stress-free since I was working at that time in Framingham.
Now she asks to go eat out at Mary Chung’s all the time if we don’t go. Or she mentions that I mentioned that Vietnamese food is tasty. Or she says that she would like to try sushi.
Here’s what happened the last time I listened to her when she said that she would like to try Indian food:
I pick her up. She asks me what we’re doing. In some surprise, I say that we’re going out to Indian food, just like she wanted to the last time we met. She mumbles something about why don’t we go to Mary Chung’s again and I say that we’ve been multiple times already and didn’t she say that she wanted to try Indian food?
We sit down in the restaurant, get our menus, and she looks around surreptitiously before she says: “My cousin told me that Indians hate Haitians and they will give us nasty food.”
Appalled, I say: “Shh! That’s really rude.”
She subsides, but looks very unhappy. I relent and ask for details. She tells me that her cousin told her that the brother of a friend of his went to India and because they hate Chinese people and Haitians, they fed him nasty food that resulted in him having to have part of his brain cut out and he had to be hooked up to life support. Or at least I assume she meant life support by “had tubes stuck into him and down his throat”.
I have to wonder if she mentioned that Indians hate Chinese and Haitians so I would have more immediacy to the horror that is Indian racism?
I tried to explain that her cousins were probably pulling her leg, that the worst that would happen would be if we got food poisoning and that food poisoning never results in brain amputation. I also said that Indians didn’t all hate Chinese people and Haitians and if this particular restaurant had people who would do such things, Azora who ate here last week would have fallen sick and since she was fine, clearly we didn’t need to worry.
She seemed to accept what I was saying — until the food came.
When my soup came and I offered her a taste, she refused. I didn’t think much about it until she also refused a taste of my samosa. My suspicions were confirmed when her chicken biryani came and she just picked at it.
Finally, I asked her if she was afraid to eat the food because she was afraid the Indians would poison her. She gave me a sort of nod-shake of the head. I sighed and decided to finish my meal at least and worry about it later.
Then, whilst I was eating and she kept picking at her food, she suddenly started to make the strangest expressions. She would contort her face and then when I asked her what that was about, shake her head furiously. Then, every single time the waiter walked past, even if he was paying no attention to us, she would announce in a very loud voice and a clownishly large grin that everything was delicious. Of course, then the waiter would glance over and see that she hadn’t had any of her food and be confronted with her “everything is wrong and I’m pretending the ship isn’t sinking” smile. She must have done this at least five times.
At this point I was pretty much speechless. It was one thing for her to refuse to eat after she ordered the food and after she asked to go out and try Indian food — but it was quite another for her to behave that strangely. I tried to keep the conversation going, but my consternation must have showed, because she started complaining about how it was a bad idea to come out to Indian food because I wasn’t smiling as much as when we went out to Chinese food. Then she started making strange expressions again. I tried explaining that it was because she wasn’t eating her food, but she would have none of my logic.
When we left, the manager said something sympathetic about her not eating her food and I could just smile sheepishly and say that it was her first time.
Very. Embarrassing.
Aside from that particular incident, I really hate how she constantly asks to go out for food. I’ve explained to her, numerous times, that we can’t go out to eat that often because I’m broke and I really don’t have the money for it. This is not a lie, because I’d be willing to go out to eat once a week if I only had the cash. Of course, at this point I don’t want to take her because I really don’t like how she ignores what I say about not having the money and just keeps asking. I actually started telling her that we could go eat if she would pay for it just so she’d quit asking after I told her that I was broke for the umpteenth time. There was one incident where I called her in the morning, told her we were going to be walking around Davis Square and that she had to eat lunch. In the middle of the outing, she started whining about how she was starving with a capital S. I asked her if she had something to eat, and she said that she hadn’t because there was nothing in the house to eat. She also said that her father, who was home, didn’t make anything for her to eat. At that point, exasperated, I told her that then she should probably learn how to make food for herself, or tell her father that she needs to eat before she goes out. What’s really odd is her habit of asking to bring home all the leftovers of lunch if I bring her back to the apartment and feed her lunch. And I mean, all the rest of the leftovers as in the entire pan of lasagna. I don’t know if that’s just her hoggish habits of if she likes something, she’ll take it all, or if her family actually doesn’t feed her enough. Considering that she’s rather chubby, I can’t imagine it’s the latter. Could be wrong though.
Two weeks before, she mentioned wanting to go to the Science museum. I told her that since tickets were around 28 dollars a person, we couldn’t go unless we had free tickets. Azora’s boss offered her three free tickets, but the kicker of the situation is that neither of us really want to take her with the free tickets. I think that she’s going to get bored with the museum halfway through and want to leave because it’s too much walking around and so I don’t want to ask Azora for the tickets when she might have a better use for it. Azora doesn’t want to hand them over because she doesn’t want the LS to keep thinking that all she needs to do is ask and someone will come up with whatever she wants.
I don’t think this a good mindset of ours at all, but I can’t help it. Just don’t want to do anything nice for her anymore. After the knitting incident, I’m doubly disinclined to believe her when she says that she wants to do something and it’s a terrible response to a child, but I just can’t help the gut reaction.
Blegh.
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06.20.10
Posted in Big Sister Association tagged Little Sister at 11:22 pm by kyrias
I hung out with my Little Sister this past Saturday and man, was it a doozy.
I had planned a nice, soothing, not-too-strenuous afternoon of dim sum, yarn shopping, and then teaching her how to knit. It was supposed to be fun and drama-free.
Right.
It all started in the morning when I was walking out the door at 12:05. I was leaving early so I could go to the farmer’s market, pick up some strawberries whilst they were still in season, and then pick her up. This was when I noticed that my phone was flashing at me.
LS’s mother had left me a voice mail at 11:30AM, telling me that she was taking LS to the Saturday program she goes to sometimes and I could pick her up there. Or I could pick her up somewhere else. Then she said if I had any questions to call xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Main problem wrong with this scenario: I couldn’t make out either of the street names or house numbers.
I started freaking out right then and there.
First of all, she really shouldn’t have changed pick-up places on such short notice without actually getting ahold of me. She didn’t give me the option of telling her that I couldn’t do it if it had turned out that the place was going to be really hard to get to via the T. Then, when I tried calling the phone number she provided to figure out the address, it went straight to voice mail and her voice mail box was so stuffed I couldn’t leave a message. When I called LS’s grandmother’s, some woman answered the phone and said “blah blah blah blah Creole” and then hung up. I took that to mean “I don’t speak nothing but Creole, bai”. I tried calling my social worker, but since I was calling her office phone, that also went to voice mail.
I was worried that LS would be stuck somewhere waiting for me, without knowing my phone number and without a way to get in contact with her mother when I didn’t show. I was hoping that she would call me by 1:00PM, when I was supposed to show up, but she didn’t.
Finally, her mother called me at 1:44PM and asked me if I was showing up. I really had to sit on myself not to unload on her, and told her that I would head straight out the door — if she would only tell me where she was. She then said that she would bring LS back to her grandmother’s place, which is my usual pick-up spot.
The 91 bus was running 15-20 minutes late according to the MBTA site, so I decided to take a taxi because I really didn’t feel like wasting any more time. Also, I was on the verge of nervous collapse after a full two hours of happy-fun times. I ended up tipping 7 dollars for a 10 dollar fare because my brain was just. that. fried and I didn’t realize my math was wonky.
Picked up LS and went to lunch.
Side note: LS has pretty poor table manners. If she likes something, she’ll keep taking more of it without considering that other people might want some. She’ll fill her plate to near overflowing and still reach out for more. She also has the bad habit of not just taking a little bit of something to try when she’s never had it before and if she doesn’t like it, she won’t make an effort to finish it. I’ve been trying to teach her better table manners, and actually Azora has poked her twice about it the last time we went out.
LS had a full plate of food that she had tasted and given up on. Then she started eating the custard out of an egg tart and was about to give up on the pastry shell part. I told her that she should finish it. She asked why. I told her because wasting food was bad. She seemed on the verge of asking why again and I just decided to slam her with “Children are starving in Africa” except I was tired of kids dismissing that, so I decided to hit closer to home and presented her with “Children are starving in Haiti”.
Yes. She’s from Haiti.
Azora reprimanded me for it. I had forgotten that LS had family caught in the earthquake and I stewed over that insensitive and tactless statement for the rest of the afternoon until I got a chance to apologize to LS about it.
Then we went yarn shopping and Azora tried to teach her how to knit. She watched Azora knit a couple of stitches and when it was her turn, she just looked at the needles without picking them up and refused because it was too complicated. Azora and I tried to encourage her to just try and see, but she still wouldn’t.
Right.
Let me clarify here that she had been asking for knitting lessons for the last two sessions now.
So we packed up and took her home.
I have to be honest. At this point, I have little to no interest in hanging out with her. She isn’t inquisitive or curious, doesn’t like reading, doesn’t like learning things, even learning how to play board games, and what she wants to do (nail salons, Six Flags) is utterly at odds with what I want to do. What’s worse is that she doesn’t seem particularly out-doorsy either. When I tried taking her walking around Quincy Market to look at street performers and such, she would complain that it was hot, that it was too tiring, and that she wanted to sit down.
I don’t think I actually even like her. She’s not a bad kid, but she’s spoiled in ways I can’t stand, I’m not clicking with her, and the entire situation is absolutely frustrating.
My social worker finally got back to me today, told me she was sorry but she didn’t work weekends, and asked me how things panned out. I tried to talk to her about not being LS’s Big Sister next year because I didn’t think that we were interested in the same things and if I tried to get her to do something she wasn’t particularly interested in, she would sit there and be apathetic about it.
Social worker told me she understood, but that we should try compromising and trade off on things that we wanted to do.
I tried explaining that it didn’t seem like LS wanted to do anything except eat out, go to Six Flags, or to a nail salon.
Social worker repeated herself. We should compromise, because that’s key, and surely we could find a list of things that we both wanted to do if we tried.
I gave up, thanked her, and hung up.
I swear, everyone in this mess is driving me crazy. Including myself.
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06.15.10
Posted in Chinese medicine, Health tagged acupuncture at 11:36 pm by kyrias
As a result of the on-going effort to find out just what is wrong with me, my mother hunted down an acupuncturist and has been dragging me to go see her for about three weeks now.
Short version of my health problems: PCOS, major depression, debilitating ADHD, extreme fatigue (sleeping 18 hours a day), disfiguring amounts of acne, and a noted failure to lose weight. I suppose there’s some other stuff around there, but that should cover most of the major points.
Everything aside, just the inability to stay awake for more than 2 hours at a stretch and feeling extremely tired all the time was pretty frustrating.
The first week, the acupuncturist felt up my pulse, told me that I had “heart fire”, a “kidney deficiency”, “liver fire”, a “spleen deficiency”, and then proceeded to stick needles in me. If anyone tries to tell you that acupuncture doesn’t hurt — they’re lying. What they’re leaving out is that when something is wrong with you, then it can be painful to press on certain pressure points corresponding to whatever has gone awry, and sticking needles in said pressure points can be quite painful. Sometimes it just hurts going in, sometimes it hurts like the dickens going in, and sometimes it will continue to feel sore, throbbing, and in general not at all comfortable.
Second week, she took a look at the mass of acne on my forehead, and decided to “cup” it to make it heal faster. According to her, I have congested blood in that area which will not dissipate readily on its own, which was also probably causing the on-going acne, and that a couple of sessions of cupping should solve matters. I wasn’t quite so credulous, but decided to go with it anyways in the hopes that it would help. She pricked the area all over with a needle, causing pretty acute pain, and then created a vacuum in a glass cup and proceeded to try and suck out all the bad stuff. By the way, by acute pain, I mean “nearly peeing in the pants” pain. The vacuum action was also very, very painful. It felt that there was stuff trying to crawl out of my skin and rupture my face. The “cupping” did indeed suck out quite a bit of black blood, more than you would guess from ten or so needled pricks, so I guess something good (?) happened. When she was done, although I had a raised bump on my forehead from the vacuum action, it seemed like the acne did go away much faster than it otherwise would have. The discoloration that remained from previous acne bouts also seemed to be gone. Perhaps that was the congested blood she was talking about?
Today was the third appointment. She took one look at the acne on my forehead and asked me if I had been eating spicy foods. I had to admit that I did. She proceeded to give me a laundry list of things I can’t eat.
- spicy foods
- black or white pepper
- beef
- lamb/mutton
- lobster
- shrimp
- fried foods
- “heating spices” which probably include cinnamon along with star anise and stuff like that
I’m sure I’m forgetting something because that honestly was a long list. Then she proceeded to stick more needles into me, stuck electric currents to needles in my face and head, and in short delivered PAIN. I was almost disappointed when she didn’t cup my face this session, but the rest of the painful stuff and the NUMEROUS needles in my face with electrodes attached dissuaded me from asking for it. Next time maybe. I do want that acne gone, gone, gone.
I kid you not, every single time I leave a session, I feel utterly drained from all the pain and anticipation of pain and stuff and end up spending at least a day or so sleeping it off. Today, there was pain in the places where she stuck needles in my head every time I bent or crouched or did something to my head that I haven’t quite figured out what except that it hurts to move too much.
I’d quit going, except going to a Chinese doctor in Taiwan did help me immeasurably, and I did commit to giving it a fair try. Also, it might just be a placebo effect or cognitive dissonance at work, but I think it might be helping. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t sound too far off though: Needles! Pain! It HAS to be doing something!
Oh well. More updates to follow! At least I can attest that whatever she does will work on bad acne.
ETA:
No alcohol, curry, chives, or spices of any sort. Yes, that includes cinnamon. FML.
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06.14.10
Posted in Writing tagged fanfiction at 11:54 pm by kyrias
I heard about the Clan Mitchell fandom_wank from Thene and just had to go wade around in the glorious, beautiful dramaz.
Couple of things that I thought:
What is wrong with a family that pushes each and every single one of their members to be the best they can possibly be?
Well, I didn’t find that triggering until someone pointed it out because that idea is so ingrained into us, but once I realized what that entailed, I immediately felt as if someone had lit a match under me. Most of the worst mental issues I’ve ever had have come from that concept of “being your best possible self”. In fact, I still routinely get my parents sighing over me and lamenting that “you’re such an intelligent person”!
Yes, well, maybe I can be a rocket scientist if I wanted to be — but isn’t part of the point of it being my life that I get to decide what is fulfilling for me? That maybe I should be allowed the decision to not push myself to the outer limits of my ability because I personally don’t find that necessary for my gratification? That I get to decide if my mind is wasted on what I choose to use it on?
So to answer that question: Yes, there is everything wrong with such a family. In fact, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t stepped up before this and asked for a prompt with someone not being able to take that particular family with its particular set of problems in stride.
Then there’s Synecdochic’s reaction to the “Mitchell-bashing”.
She claims to be gutted by people’s interpretations of her work, that apparently she either hasn’t been writing the story she thought she was or people haven’t been reading the story she was writing, and if so many people agree with that viewpoint, clearly she has failed in communicating the core essential nature of her story and she both doesn’t see any point in trying to correct it and doesn’t know how to.
I’ve read the filling for the prompt. So can you, it’s the first post on this page of screen caps. Personally, I don’t see a problem with that filling. I thought that the writing wasn’t anti-Mitchell, per se, but it brought up issues that probably should have been raised earlier, and that it was a bit of a criticism, but it never went into “bashing” territory. I suppose I can see how she’d be hurt by that interpretation of what she saw as a big happy family, but I can’t see the intense amounts of drama that resulted from it.
After all, I see how my friends relate to my relationship with my parents. I see how I personally relate to their relationships with their parents. It’s pretty clear that what is an optimal parent-child relationship for someone wouldn’t work for someone else, and on the darker side of the scale, what one person can tolerate might just drive someone else running for the hills. Especially when that other person doesn’t have love as a tempering force for the madness.
Fun times all around, I guess.
I’d have to say though, it should probably be taken as a compliment when someone spends enough time in the heads of the people in your universe to be able to write something that well-considered for it.
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06.13.10
Posted in Cooking tagged Recipes, sharing at 1:16 am by kyrias
“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” - Thornton Wilder
I have to admit, there’s little that peeves me more than people refusing to share recipes. I dare say it may even border on the irrational, but there’s definitely a lot of rage generated when someone decides that they’d rather take something to the grave rather than pass it on. It’s almost acceptable if someone refuses to give out a family recipe that they promised to keep a secret, but even then it’s still more than a bit irritating.
There’s a couple of aspects to it for me:
I’ve heard of certain arts gradually fading towards mediocrity when masters of the art decide that they would rather bring their expertise to the grave rather than pass it on because they want to be known for their superlative work, forever surpassing every other person. Even if not quite descending to mediocrity, I find it almost criminal that something which might have been used as a basis to create something better than ever before was deliberately lost because of someone’s pride.
When it’s a recipe and all you’re getting is street cred and not necessarily any monetary gain out of it, it doubly confuses me. It reminds me of a saying that Caesura’s grandfather used to say: “The machinations and backstabbing is only the more dramatic because the stakes are so low.” I hear of people deliberately leaving out ingredients, substituting ingredients, leaving out small but key steps in the recipe… I have to say I don’t understand that level of passive-aggressive pride-mongering. Bad enough if you’re just going to say you’re not going to give it out, but to mislead someone in that way is just petty and cruel.
Even when there’s monetary gain to be discussed, the pettiness only seems more pronounced when famous restaurants are publishing cookbooks to give the public their information. I can understand if a restaurant refuses to give out a prize-winning recipe that keeps the customers coming, but for the average cook, it just boggles the brain.
I think ultimately I don’t believe in hiding information. I believe that the sharing of something good, perhaps even great, is much better than taking it to one’s grave. I think that the sharing of food is a joyous and communal ritual and to refuse to pass on recipes that are enjoyed embitters and distorts the experience. For me, if I had a family recipe, I would be glad to pass it on because then I would know that part of me and my loved ones would forever live on in the minds of those who remember the recipe as “kyrias’ mother’s red braised pork recipe”. I read cookbooks for fun, and I can’t say how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel when I see recipes listed as “Aunt Maude’s cookies” or “Granmma Lucy’s brown bread”. Even if it was a certain food made for special occasions — I believe that the sharing does not dilute or diminish the symbolism and may in fact lend new layers to it. Traveller mentions that there is a special recipe passed down in the family that the women make for their menfolk when they have come back from deployment or a long trip and which she would not consider giving out. To me, that’s a lovely story and if it were I, I’d be more than happy and proud to share a recipe with such a history.
What kills me is when people actively brag about how much other people have begged for the recipe, how they’re taking it to their grave rather than share it, even with their own children.
To me, that says something about you. Nothing complimentary to be sure. It smacks of a sort of pettiness, a passive-aggressive way of wielding power, and failed kindergarten lessons. As my brother loves to say: “Sharing is caring, friend!”
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06.12.10
Posted in Crafts tagged Alternative income, cottage industries, Etsy, income generating at 11:29 pm by kyrias
In order to support this endeavour, we are asking any and all friends who play with string to donate scraps of yarn one foot and up to the cause. We will take any and all colors, weights, and compositions from synthetics to wool to bamboo.
At some point in the future, if this cottage industry takes off, we may be trading petty cash for scrap yarn. Please do not throw out your yarn and keep us in mind.
We have decided to knit sundries out of scrap yarn and sell them on Etsy. This will not only use up the store of random bits of yarn from finished projects, therefore being environmentally friendly and de-clutterfying, but will create income out of what was previously conundrums to be worked into new projects.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I will be designing said sundries, Azora will be making them, and I get 10% of the profits.
Right now, we are looking at bags.
So ladies! Or women, or womyn, or current noun of PC choice…
What do you like to see in a bag? Cell phone pockets? Digital camera pockets? A separate pocket to secure chopsticks/fork for the environmentally friendly?
Lastly! Spread the word — we are taking in all yarn, all spare strands that may be arousing the ire of spouses, family and friends who want to know “just what are you going to do with that last two feet of yarn anyways?!”, all string that is too lovely to just toss and too short for even that oh-so-useful book of one skein wonders.
Hrm, who knows — if we actually start getting donations of yarn or buying yarn, then I might actually be compelled to start learning to knit. In fact, tomorrow sounds like a good time to start.
Hey Nora! You and your many female family members have scrap yarn, right? Also, you wants that you should join in this endeavour?
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06.08.10
Posted in Renting with friends tagged money woes, omg moving at 11:28 pm by kyrias
Or rather, we’re renting a new house this year.
It’s in Malden, is a 5 bedroom house with a decent attic and basement that appears to have potential, and we’re really hoping that we can make this work for the next few years at least.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy.
This new place is 2.4k/month, not including utilities, and Zach’s commute goes from about an hour to almost an hour and 45 minutes. This was almost a deal-breaker, but then we managed to decide that four of us were going to buy a car so he could commute so we could take the house.
This decision isn’t as rash as it might seem, even though I have to admit that we also have to buy a dishwasher, washer, and dryer. Even so!
The problem being, of course, that 5 bedroom places just aren’t growing off trees. There’s not a great supply of them to begin with and when you factor in that we have a pretty limited budget, suddenly the pool of choices shrinks drastically. This place has new floors, new insulation and windows, and the kitchen has been re-done recently. Frankly, it’s gorgeous. I can easily see us living there three years from now, assuming that the current collection of people haven’t exploded in drama-fire. I could not see us living in our current apartment for too long, so that thought was what finally prompted me to suggest that we could buy a second-hand car.
That said, there’s still a bit of rough sailing ahead.
The finder’s fee of 1.2k, a month’s rent as deposit, buying the new appliances, and paying for July when we’re still paying for July in our current place is going to be a killer. This isn’t even including what we will have to spend on the car, insurance, and gas when we get the car.
What I’m currently conflicted about is that Ren and Dochola are asking for help with paying for the first portion of July’s rent. They will be moving in July 1st, whereas the rest of us anticipated moving in after the 15th. As such, they two will be responsible for 1.2k.
Usually I would have no problem about helping out. After all, it’s not only a friendly thing to do, it also opens up the possibility of more leisurely moving — which considering that I’m living in Framingham and Caesura works until 11pm every night, is a good thing.
Right now, however, I’m struggling with the idea that Azora, Zach, Caesura and I are already sort of taking one for the team in the form of buying a car so that we could live there. Even if I accepted the argument that we might not have gotten the house if we weren’t willing to pay for the entire month of July, part of me thinks that with our intending to buy a 5k car (at least) and paying for insurance, we’ve more than evened the scales in that regard. Assuming that they’re paying 600 more once so that we could have the house, whereas C and I would be paying 2.5k and insurance — I’m not too inclined to be made to feel like I’m upsetting the scales here. I’m not going to accept the idea that Ren and Doch were sacrificing their own financial security to allow us to live in that house because frankly, much as I liked the idea of living in that house, no one was going to force them to live beyond their means.
I have to admit that I was already a bit miffed that no one else offered to help with the car issue, or anything else in order to help us out, even when it was clear knowledge that we would be struggling with coming up with that money. Especially since C wants to go back to college, we really would have appreciated even a token offer of a hundred or two hundred dollars towards buying the car. Token of intent is always good, people.
Even so, I was going to sit on myself because after all, we did want that house. Ultimately, this will not break us although it might make us very, very unhappy financially for a while. I was thinking about opening a ROTH IRA for C and had been saving up my paychecks for the 3k that one needed to open an account with Vanguard, but not only has that entirely gone down the drain, that won’t even cover all of what we need. Credit card debt repayment will probably also have to go on hold with only minimum payments made until we sort out what is happening with the car and how much money we need to haul out. In fact, I can see the need of having a bread and water month, or months.
Ultimately, I suppose that C and I will give over a token $100, perhaps even $200 between the two of us, and call that acting in good faith. In all seriousness, if Doch and Ren are fine with us sitting on that helping out until later, that’d be great because frankly we have no spare cash at the moment. All I have in my checking and savings account is that 3k and I think I’ll need all of it in the two months ahead.
So — faithful friends, what would you do in our situation? Keeping in mind, of course, the CC debt, the student loans, the going back to college costs, the start-up costs of at least 2k for just the house, moving costs, new appliances, and the purchase of a car.
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06.04.10
Posted in culture tagged culture issues, culture shock, drama-ilama, family drama, parenting at 2:31 pm by kyrias
One of these days, there will have to be a very sad, very drama-laden, angst-ridden discussion with my parents about why I don’t think that my depression will ever get any better if they keep acting the way they do. I was just going to say that my depression is unlikely to get any better, ever, if I keep living with them, but their arms reach a bit father than that and to ignore that is to be stupid.
It all started today when suddenly, after I’ve been talking about moving back to Somerville for the summer for a while and nothing had been said to the contrary — my mother suddenly pops the topic, phrased in a “your home is here and you should stay here” manner.
Then there was the usual cultural crap; the “I won’t lie to the relatives for you” crap; the “omg, what will the Chinese people we know say?!” crap… etc etc etc.
Finally, at the end of my tether, I snapped out that I could just get married and solve all her problems.
See, there’s a Chinese phrase called 嘴贱, which literally translates to “mouth inexpensive / despicable”, but which actually means that someone just doesn’t know when to shut up. No mind-mouth filter. No tact. But it can also mean someone who trolls, who deliberately says inflammatory things.
Yeah. That would be me sometimes. Granted, it’s sort of hard not to trigger things with my parents, but you would think that I would have learned better by now.
Um, clearly not.
As a direct result of that retort, there was more talking at me. The usual topics came up again:
- Now is not a good time to get married because you and C both have crappy jobs with no real job security and you don’t make enough money.
- You’re fat and so if you don’t shape up, C will ditch you for someone else later when he’s seen more of the world and realized what a bad deal he’s getting.
- The Bad Deal consisting of having a wife who doesn’t want to work outside the home, therefore being a life-crushing burden and giving him additional stress over being the sole provider of the family, having to put up with someone who is sickly, stressed, and depressed.
- Putting all your eggs in one basket (C) is stupid and haven’t you seen enough TV or read the news or opened a book lately?
- If you get married now, don’t anticipate any well-wishes from us.
- ….more reiterations of variations upon the above points ad nauseum.
…where to even begin?
I didn’t know where to even begin and so I didn’t bother defending myself.
My depression and stress will probably not get better under their roof or under their tender mercies because that is how they see me.
Not having a conventional job and lacking the ambition to have a high-powered career apparently makes me lackluster, boring, and stagnant. In their eyes, I’m a burden, a defective product that needs to be fixed.
I swear, it is on these days when I just want to tell them I’m done. I’m utterly done. Tell them to stop trying to help me because all it’s going to do is drive me closer to the brink and watch out because I’m going to jump.
I was upset because despite my lovely, neat 5 year plan, it turns out that they’re going back to Taiwan once my brother gets into college. Therefore, there would be no one to look after the kids on weekends, so if I kept this job, I wouldn’t have any weekends for 10 months. I didn’t think I’d want to keep this job if it meant I would have to deal with spoiled rich kids day in and day out for 10 solid months.
Now, I think it’s probably for the best if they went back to Taiwan, because I am so tired of this constant bullshit. Maybe if they went back to Taiwan, then I’d stop getting the “this is your home because you’re not married yet” talk. Maybe I could have a social life again without them constantly harping on how I’m utterly consumed by my obsession with my friends, about how I revolve around them and have no properly grounded existence of my own. Maybe we could stop having these talks about how disappointing I am, how much of a failure I am, and why won’t I just get a nice job so they could quit worrying about me.
Something else that came up was that apparently my brother and my parents all think I won’t survive it if C dumps me. Therefore I need to find a job to center myself so when I get dumped, I can bury myself in my job and think that “hey, it’s not so bad after all, at least I still have a job and therefore am not a total failure”.
Too many things wrong with that assumption to even parse. Just. Too. Many. Damn. Things. Wrong. with that sentence.
I swear, what I won’t survive is their particular brand of tender loving care. Yes, lets destroy my ego for breakfast and confirm once and for all that I’m a failure in all things. That’s exactly the sort of thing I need.
After this debacle, I have decided that I need to find a job in Boston for the summer. If I’m working at a summer job, then I have a proper reason to be in Boston, and so they can’t quibble about it, right?
Even if not, I’m going to find a volunteer gig of some sort and not go back more than 2-3 days a week if I can help it. I’ll bloody offer to stand on the street asking for donations if I have to. In fact, I’m just going to not go back except for two days out of the week and then see what happens.
If it wasn’t that they’d probably be paying me better this year than I’d be making at an entry level job, and if it weren’t that I promised I’d take on the students — I’d be looking for an entry level job right now. Just so I can move back into Boston. Just so I can prove that I can find a job if I have to. Just so they can bloody shut up about how I’m going to end up starving on the streets.
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