Girl and City

Classes have started, although that is not as ominous as it sounds. Last semester, I had to take a couple mandatory courses that were dreadfully boring, but this semester is all electives. So in order to pick ones that I will actually enjoy (it is my last opportunity to get a bang for my buck tuition-wise), I registered myself in eight courses even though I am only allowed five. So after I went to the first class of each, I had to cut three. The result? I have an excellent schedule and some very interesting classes.

One of my classes is called “Global Strategy,” taught by a Taiwanese professor with a very thick Chinese accent. Half the time, I can’t understand what he’s saying, and I’m Chinese! It doesn’t help that listening to him speak makes me want to laugh. I can’t even hold it in, it’s that bad. His accent is so classically Asian, he can’t pronounce ses for the life of him, and he kind of makes up his own sounds when he doesn’t know exactly how something is pronounced. Like “strategy” comes out sounding like “training” – I mean, how do you even do that?
But even without the accent, he is a very amusing professor. In our first class, he was trying to convince us of the necessity of this class by showing us the extent of globalization (foreigners invading our home environment even if we don’t have any intention to go abroad).
“You wake up in the morning, you put on your underwear, made in China. You put on your jeans, made in Bangladesh. You put on your t-shirt, made in Pakistan. You drive to school in your car made in Japan. You buy a coffee, imported from Columbia. And then you get to class and you realize, your professor is imported from Taiwan!” (Imagine this whole monologue with a thick Chinese accent, the kind that Russel Peters imitates.)

Anyway, other than school, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get things back on track with PLB. I knew a month-long break at the start of a (potential) relationship would be hazardous, and I was completely right.
Actually, it’s more my fault that his. Ever since we came back from the holidays, I have been really awkward around him. It’s not like I want to be, but I just get really nervous around him, because now we are both fairly aware that we like each other¹. He was in my first class when I came back, and I didn’t prepare myself at all for that, so I barely acknowledged him there and left right after class. The second morning (we had the same class again), he did come over to talk to me, but I wasn’t really helping the conversation and avoided his eyes the whole time. The same sort of thing happened over and over again as we ran into each other over the next few days; I would be too nervous to flirt or say something remotely interesting, even if I told myself not to freeze up.
I was hopeless, and my awkwardness was going to ruin this!

Last night, I decided to try to redeem myself. I was going to Zee’s going-away party², and afterward, DG and I were going to The Club (the club that The Business School students go to every Thursday night). He was going to be there, that much I knew. So I drank, a little bit more and a little bit faster than normal, at the going-away party, so I was sufficiently drunk (but not sloppy) by the time we got to The Club. He was one of the first people we ran into, but it was in passing so I didn’t get to talk to him. The rest of the night I spent switching between the dance floor and the table where he was sitting. But every time I went to their table, some guy I knew would spot me and come over to talk to me. Many of them were my classmates from last year, so we’d always be very excited to see each other (one guy even picked me up and twirled me around – he’s really strong). I don’t know how it looked to PLB, that every time I sat down, a new guy would come to the table. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the jealousy card was a viable strategy for me at that point. In between guys, I tried to have a conversation with him, but it was hard with the loud music. I did find it more easy to talk to him, and flirt, now that I had lost my nervousness. But still, he did not make a move.

DG got frustrated and decided that I needed to redeem my self-respect, so she dragged me away from him for nearly an hour. When we went to the washroom, we ran into him at coat-check. He was leaving?!
I waited outside the washroom for DG so that he would have an opportunity to talk to me. He did come over, explaining how he had an interview the next day so he didn’t want to party too hard tonight. Understandable, but I was still disappointed. We hugged a couple times, but he seemed no more interested in me than any other guy I’d seen that night.

DG was more upset that PLB left than I was. “What the hell is wrong with him?” She shouted, a little too loudly. A guy nearby overheard us and said, “Forget him. I would never ditch a girl like you.” I rolled my eyes as a signal for him to move on³. Why was it that, today of all days, when the last thing I felt like was hooking up with a random guy, guys would hit on me so aggressively? Even the cab driver had offered to go out with me to “make that guy jealous.” (Yeah, I was pretty creeped out. I mean, obviously cab drivers eavesdrop, but isn’t it a cardinal rule to pretend not to be able to hear the passengers? Much less getting yourself involved and hitting on a girl at least ten years your junior?)
“Come on, let’s go get you a guy,” DG said as she dragged me to the dance floor.
“But I don’t want a guy,” I whined, although I didn’t think she heard me.

In the end, DG found a guy, and I went home alone. Am I really that pathetic? I guess I am.

1. God, I hope so. Because if I’m just making things up in my head again, I am going to feel like a huge fool. [↩]
2. She’s going to Australia for medical school at the end of the week. [↩]
3. Later, that guy found me on the dance floor and I literally had to push him away and tell him, “I don’t want to dance with you!” before he got the message. [↩]

PHB invited me to his place for a karaoke night yesterday. In my seven (or eight?) years of knowing him, I had never been to his house. It turns out he lives in a mansion. Somehow, I’m not surprised.

He had also invited a good friend of his, BDB, who was bringing two girls to introduce to PHB. Like all his friends, BDB was trying to help him find his next girlfriend. I thought it would be awkward, since I didn’t know anybody, but surprisingly, I enjoyed myself. I was singing most of the time, because BDB couldn’t read Chinese, and one of the other girls only spoke Cantonese (we were singing in Mandarin). But everyone was friendly and easy to get along with; it helped that I have a good voice and knew a lot of songs, so I could do duets with people when they were too shy to sing solo.

Although I had joked I could be PHB‘s wingman for the night, I realized I’m not all that good at that. Other than maneuvering myself so that he could sit with either of the girls, I felt pretty useless. But the fact that I monopolized the mic meant they could have a conversation, so maybe it wasn’t a terrible strategy.

However, I didn’t consider the side-effect of my seating strategy, because I ended up next to BDB a lot. When he started flirting with me, PHB suddenly became very alert and even a bit snappy to his friend.
BDB: So, SassyGirl, what are you doing tomorrow?
Me: Nothing, why?
BDB: Do you want to go see the Olympic torch run with me?
Me: Hmm–
PHB: No. She can’t. She’s not from here.
Even though it took me about 25 minutes to drive here on the highway, I thought to myself, but judging from PHB‘s tone, I could tell that he didn’t want me to go. I kept my mouth shut.

PHB‘s strong reaction surprised me. He had been deep in conversation with one of the other girls, I don’t even know how he heard BDB. And yes, BDB was cute, but I wasn’t there to match-make myself, so I was kind of taken by surprise. I threw a cautious look at the girl PHB had been talking to. I didn’t want her to think that I was “PHB‘s girl” or something along those lines. Luckily, she didn’t seem to hear the edge in his voice when he interrupted, but BDB did. He didn’t try to ask me out again the rest of the night.

Although PHB has sometimes acted like a boyfriend around me when we’re alone, I didn’t expect him to be so protective when we were with others. Granted, this was the first time I had spent time with him when it wasn’t just the two of us. But still, tonight was supposed to his night, he had two girls to choose from, and yet he was worrying about his friend hitting on me. I felt like a terrible wingman.

Other than that, I enjoyed myself immensely. I stuck around after the others left and PHB and I sang duets for two more hours. Even though the other people were nice, I was still more comfortable when it was just the two of us singing. I didn’t feel awkward for monopolizing the mic, nor did I feel embarrassed for having a good voice¹.

Being a wingman is no walk in the park, it turns out. In the end, I realized I’m just not cut out for it. I’m more of a spotlight kind of girl.

1. I was afraid of intimidating/upstaging the other girls when I sang earlier in the night, so I didn’t pick any songs that might “show off” my voice. But even with that, I still clearly had the best voice. I was embarrassed and flushed the whole time. [↩]

At noon today, I got a text, and before I looked at it, I thought, “Hey, it’s almost lunch time. If I hadn’t been such a doorknob around PLB the other day, we would be having lunch together.”
Then, I read the text.
PLB: Do you want to go to sushi for lunch?

YES!

I may have done a little dance.

Ah, I love the beginning parts of relationships…

Not that I’m in a relationship with him. Ahem.

But it wasn’t a date, because his roommate and another friend were also there. But at least he took the initiative to ask me to go. Plus, the other two people didn’t really know me, so I was, without a doubt, his guest. I wonder if he told his roommate that he liked me? Did she egg him on to ask me to go with them?

Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It was a good thing there were other people there, because I was still kind of nervous around him. I ended up talking to his roommate and friend more than I talked to him. I also told a few stupid stories because I can’t keep my big mouth shut when I’m nervous. Oh well, can’t be helped.
(more…)

If you’ve been following my Twitter, you’ll know that I officially have a crush! This is incredibly exciting, because I haven’t had a “real” crush (i.e. a crush on a guy who is actually available) in over two years!

For all intents and purposes, his name is PLB and he is so cute. Why is he my preordained lover? Because someone I met over a year ago had tried to match us up before I ever met him! She was a friend I’d made in the first week of TheBusinessSchool, and when she heard I was “single and looking,” she started gushing about this incredibly sweet boy in her class. For whatever reason, she wasn’t interested in him herself, but she thought the two of us would be perfect together. I lost touch with her, but when I met PLB earlier this year, I remembered what she had said. It seemed she had told him about me too, because when we met, he asked me if I knew her.

Perhaps it was because we were pre-disposed to the idea that we might make a good couple, or perhaps we really are fated to be together, either way, we got along swimmingly. I met him around recruiting season, so I asked him if he wanted to practice case interviews together. It was weird to be alone with him so soon after we’d met, but we became comfortable with each other quickly. He’s quite disarming. Pretty soon, it felt like we had been friends for ages.

Now comes the good news, and the bad news. The good news is that he seemed totally into me. The bad news is that the more he flirted, the more nervous I felt around him, and the more I closed up. You could say I was playing hard to get, but I wasn’t playing anything. It might have actually been better if I was playing, but I had no strategy, no game plan. I just was hard to get – my own fault, and as a result, he probably thought I was indifferent towards him (which couldn’t be further from the truth).

After recruiting season ended, I rarely saw him. We could no longer use interviews as an excuse to see each other or commiserate together. Also, when he found out I had gotten a job offer in Singapore, it probably bummed him out. After all, he had only had a few interviews that led nowhere, and this prestigious job offer only made me seem more inaccessible to him.

Recently, however, we’ve been in contact again. It started with running into each other a few times at dinner parties and bar nights. I would always hug him when I saw him to demonstrate how close our friendship could be. But he never sought me out at these events, so I didn’t put much hope in it. At the bar last Thursday, I ran into him again and while we were talking, he put his arm around me because I was cold. His hand was even colder than my skin, so I took his hand with mine to try to warm it up. It was a reflex, I wasn’t even thinking about flirting. But in the days afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He might have felt the same way, because now when we run into each other, there’s this energy between us. There’s more play-fighting and physical contact¹. But I am such a huge doorknob when it comes to flirting that I totally missed my chance to go out with him:
Him: I didn’t know you were so into food [after seeing my food blog]. Have you tried Restaurant X?
Me: makes a face. Yeah, I’ve been there once. My bulgogi was burnt. It was pretty terrible.
Him: Oh.
Me: But I’ve heard they have good soup. Maybe I just ordered the wrong thing…
Him: Yeah, they do have really good soup. We should go there for dinner sometime.
Me: Oh, maybe. Sees someone running by that I haven’t seen in a while, and starts talking to him enthusiastically.

I really didn’t mean for the conversation to have gone that way, but it somehow did. When he mentioned us going to the restaurant together sometime, his tone was so casual that I completely missed it! At the same time, I saw KEB run by. I had a question for him, so I ended up ignoring PLB and talking to KEB enthusiastically. After KEB walked away, PLB was totally jealous and threw a little fit about how I was overenthusiastic in my conversation with KEB². That was when it hit me (yeah, delayed reaction, I know) how I had nonchalantly ignored PLB‘s invitation to go to dinner with him.

Needless to say, when I replayed the conversation in my head, I immediately proceeded to bang my head against the nearest wall.

Luckily, all is not lost, even for a huge doorknob like me. After going to see Where the Wild Things Are, with KEB no less³, I sent a simple one-word text to PLB – just to show him that I was thinking about him even when I was with KEB. A few minutes later, he texted back – hurray! I had redeemed myself, slightly.

The next night, I was thinking about him again but I didn’t want to always be the first one texting him. If he was into me, he should text me! I was starting to feel indignant when I checked my phone and realized he had already texted me, over an hour ago! Hurray!

Between the emails he had sent me during recruiting season (my bad for not replying), asking me to have dinner with him (my bad for ignoring him), and texting me (my bad for having my phone on silent), I’m thinking I have a pretty good chance with this one.

I just have to stop being such a doorknob!

1. Although I always avoid his physical contact as part of our play-fighting, even though I really, really want his arms around me again. Why do I play so hard to get? Geez, I even frustrate myself. [↩]
2. He might have also been jealous because I was going to see a movie with KEB that night. [↩]
3. Not a date though, really. [↩]

Last week, I went to a CD release party for an indie band that was too hip for me. Apparently, I have terrible taste in music because I listen to whatever is on the Top 40 charts. So bite me. Suffice to say, hipster indie parties are not my scene.

So how did I find myself mingling with indie artsy kids who were all wearing the same outfit (plaid shirts, ripped jeans, and vintage lace-up shoes) in the contemporary gallery of a downtown art museum? I was there because my cute co-worker insisted I go. He was best friends with my other cute co-worker, who was in the band that was hosting the party. CC1 had gone out of his way to invite me to their shows several times, but each time I’d said no because I’m not really into indie music and I’m busy as hell. But last week when he asked me whether I was free Friday night, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was so insistent because he liked me. Maybe he was just wanted to see me outside work. Sure, he rarely talked to me at work, but maybe that was because he was shy or weird. Artsy types are always a little bit weird, right?

Anyway, I convinced BI to go with me to provide a second opinion, since she was always good at picking up signals where I am utterly clueless. When I arrived, CC2 (the one in the band) was the first to spot me and gave me a big hug. Half a dozen of my coworkers were also there, all of whom were surprised to see me. At first, CC1 was nowhere to be found, but then I saw him mingling around the room. Oddly enough, he didn’t come talk to me until nearly an hour after I arrived. When he did come by, he was very friendly, and we flirted as if we were much closer than we actually were. However, it wasn’t long before he ran off again. It started to dawn on me that CC1 didn’t want to spend time with me, that perhaps he had just been adamant about inviting me to their shows because he was the self-appointed promoter for his best friend’s band.

Eventually, I had to confess to BI my true motives for inviting her, since it was clear that I wasn’t actually there for the music. When I asked her who she thought had a crush on me, if she had to guess, she guessed every one of my coworkers except CC1. Embarrassed, I decided not to tell her what I had really been hoping for all night. Why had I even thought that CC1 was interested in me? Just because he had invited me, and several dozen others, to this party? Just because he was a little flirtatious? Maybe that was because I’m a girl, not because I’m the girl.

This is why, as a general rule, I don’t respond to flirting. Because when I go out on a limb to give a guy a chance, it never pans out. Perhaps it’s better to stay clueless.