Girl and City

When I first came to Canada, I was six. My parents and I shared one room with no furniture except a double mattress on the floor. We shared the washroom and kitchen with six other tenants of the house. We had a third-hand bicycle, which my father used to get to school (he was studying his PhD at the time). My mother and I would walk everywhere because even public transport was considered a luxury. We’d walk four miles round-trip to Chinatown for groceries – traditional supermarkets were far too expensive. Those first two years also happened to be two of the coldest Canadian winters in recent history. I had no gloves, but I wanted to help mama, so I would always carry two grocery bags, and my little fingers would quickly become pink and frozen. I never complained, but mama knew how cold I was, and on our way home we would duck into a supermarket to warm up. Just inside the doors, they had those gumball machine candy dispensers, and I would avert my gaze because I didn’t want mama to think I wanted any. Without a word, she would give me a quarter. I would look uncertainly at her, and she would give a subtle nod, as if to say “Go on.” I would drag out my time deciding what type of candy I wanted, even though I already knew. I wanted the multi-coloured gum tabs, because gum lasted the longest. I would dump my handful of candy into one of my coat pockets, and all the way home, I would have something to chew on as we walked.

Even though we were poor, my parents didn’t want me to miss out on North American traditions, such as Halloween and Christmas. For my first Halloween, I dressed as a garbage bag. You see, my parents thought that the point of Halloween was to be as ugly as possible. So they cut out some holes in a garbage bag, smeared my face with something black. and I was off. I was a six year-old girl. I could have been a princess, a fairy, a Disney cartoon character, but no, I was a garbage bag. I didn’t care, I was overjoyed that perfect strangers were giving me candy – for free! (more…)

I have always been a very picky eater. Before I could talk or walk, I already knew the difference between good and bad food, and I refused to eat bad food. Even if I was force-fed, I would promptly throw up after the meal. Unfortunately, you can’t reason with a toddler, we do as we please. So my father would rush to the market every day after work to buy fresh vegetables, the best cuts of pork, and live fish¹, and would spend hours cooking when he got home.

As an infant, I was what one may call a vegan. I disliked meat – it was never tender enough – and I would chew a piece of meat in my little mouth until it was all fiber, and then spit it out. I never swallowed. I also disliked seafood – it was never fresh enough. Basic human instinct should tell us not to eat something that smells like ammonia. I would throw up if I even glimpsed dairy (my parents had to feed me milk when I was asleep).
Food-wise, I was a difficult child to raise, and I have been making up for it in other aspects my whole life. (more…)

1. This was in China in the late 80s, so supermarkets did not yet exist, and everyone bought their groceries from farmer’s markets. When it came to meat, for example chicken, you had to buy a live chicken and slaughter it yourself at home. [↩]

It’s amazing how crazy things can get when you’re with some of your closest friends and you know it’s going to be your last time out together and you just don’t want the night to end. What was supposed to be a night-in with some Thai food and a board game turned into a fancy dinner, clubbing, strip club, and a very late night (or early morning) shisha session.
My night in numbers:

• Number of cigarettes: 5
• Number of lesbian kisses: 2
• Number of lap dances: 1
• Number of unattractive strippers: 6
• Number of attractive strippers: 1
• Number of slices of pizza: 3
• Number of units of alcohol: what do you think?

(more…)

“What is that smile? That is a boy-related smile, isn’t it? Who’s the boy?”
“Actually, there are two. A Norwegian boy and a German boy. Both ridiculously cute. I can’t decide between the two, so I’m going home.”

This was the exchange BI and I had on Saturday night. She bumped into me as I was leaving The Club. I must have had a stupid grin on my face, because she guessed right away that it was boy-related.

“Why don’t you just pick one?” BI asked incredulously.
“They’re leaving tomorrow, what’s the point?”
“That’s even better! You should take advantage of tonight.”
“Believe me, I have had enough attention tonight to last me months. I’m good.”
She could see that I meant it, so she let me go.

I went home feeling particularly pleased with myself. Sure, I was flattered by all the attention I had received, but I couldn’t be too attached. Because it felt too good to be true, it couldn’t be real. And I wanted to walk away before something brought me crashing down to earth.

Rewind back four days and I’m standing in the middle of a crowded banquet hall, greeting forty-four students from eleven different countries and glad-handing eleven advisors (professors that accompanied them) from their respective business schools. It was the beginning of The Case Competition, and I, as one of the main organizers, was feeling relieved to see that everyone had made it and that Opening Ceremonies went without a hitch. I had been planning this competition for months, emailing back and forth with their advisors and business schools, so I knew their names by heart and was only now meeting them in real life.
They were an incredibly friendly group, not to mention astoundingly good-looking. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we had invited a group of international vampires as opposed to business students. (more…)

I was looking through old emails and chat logs between MFL and I (despite knowing better than to wallow in the past – or rather, our past – because I am a glutton for punishment obviously), and I noticed that I rarely told him how I felt about him. In our entire three-year relationship, I probably said things along the lines of “I missed you,” “I thought about you,” etc. a total of four times. And I never, ever said “I love you.”
Similarly, I never discussed my relationship in my blog entries from that time, to the point that when I mentioned “my boyfriend” in one entry, one of my long-standing blog friends actually left a comment asking, “What?? You have a boyfriend? Since when??”

I was reflecting on this over coffee with BI yesterday, using it as an example of how I’ve changed since high school.
“I was so ignorant about what it meant to be in a relationship. I had no idea what was considered normal behaviour as far as showing one’s feelings. Sure, I showed him I cared in my own way, but maybe by missing out on all the cliched things, I made him feel more unsure about our relationship.”
Like a horse being whipped, words started tumbling out of my mouth at lightning speed. “I was so clueless! I didn’t know what it meant to be someone girlfriend. I didn’t know what to expect of anything. And I never talked about my feelings – not to him or to my friends.”
I took a breath.
“But now, now I know it’s ok to talk about my feelings. In fact, it’s expected that you tell your partner how you feel about them – they want to hear it! I also know it’s ok to talk to your friends about your relationship, I mean I’ve seen Sex and The City, which taught me all I need to know about commiserating. Since then, it seems like all I can talk about on my blog, with my friends, is boys! Boys, boys, boys!”
BI nodded with comprehension.
“Given that I’ve come such a long way in terms of understanding relationships between men and women, you’d think that I’d be better at it. But guess what? In the last four years, my longest relationship lasted two months.
That is the greatest irony of all. When I was in high school, I didn’t plan to have a relationship at all. I didn’t take high school relationships seriously and would have been just fine if I had graduated without ever having a boyfriend. Instead, I ended up in a three-year relationship.
But when I went to university, I was totally ready for a relationship, and guess what? In the last four years, I haven’t had a single relationship where I would actually call the boy ‘my boyfriend.’”

BI chuckled and shook her head. “Maybe ignorance is bliss after all. Once you knew what to expect, those expectations may have actually been a barrier to you falling for someone.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s why first loves seem so perfect – because they’re easy. We’re all clueless with our first love, and it’s a clean slate. Our expectations only grow from there.

But my own statistics still left me baffled. “Four years. Hundreds of boys on campus. I mean, you’d think I could find one genuine love interest, right? Even if my expectations have changed, what are the odds that I would not like a single person in four years of university?”

For that, BI had no answer.