Ceci n’est pas un Blog

I’m going to Italy again this summer! I’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon for 1.5 weeks of cooking and lounging in a Tuscan farm house. As usual, I promise pictures from the trip. I know I’ve also promised pictures of the apartment, but I’m just not happy enough yet with how it looks. It’s high ceilings have makes it seem empty and not cozy enough. Plus, need to buy a headboard for the bed, curtains, and an assortment of large wall decorations. I’m all ears if you have suggestion on decorating a wall cheaply or where to buy headboards.

On the topic of adulty-things like shopping for the apt, Mike and I have been considering investing some of our savings. It’d be good to invest our money is something very low-risk, just to make sure we’re not losing money to inflation. But the moment I open a wiki article on anything finance related, this little nasal voice pops up in my head and says “PPFFFFFFFF WHAT A BORING FUCKING LOAD OF BULLSHIT. Go eat some cake instead.”

(God I love cake)

Bonds, indexes, stocks, Roth IRA…I have no clue what any of it means. Which one is safest? And how do I invest in these things? Do I have to do it through something like Fidelity (which I presume requires extraneous fees)?

Yeah, this post is essentially soliciting you for advice. If you’re a woman, advise me on interior design ideas. If you’re a man, or an awesomer version of a regular woman (I’m looking at you, Koren and Linda), advise me on what and how to invest.

I graduated or something.

Both recipes inspired by Heidi.

Cauliflower browned in olive oil, tossed with chives, red pepper flakes and cumin.

Sauteed kale, leek, ginger, and tofu mixed with a blend of red and white long-grain rice, topped with a fried egg.

(I apologize for the bad picture. My housemates were yelling at me to stop taking pictures and just start eating.)

Having stuff stuck on your teeth when there is no floss around.

First you stick your finger in your mouth while thinking “I really shouldn’t be putting my chemically exposed finger in my mouth” and try to use your nails to pick it out but of course don’t do jack shit and now there are people looking at you and wondering what you’re doing with your hand crammed in your mouth. Then instead you decide to use your tongue to fish it out and you can sort of feel it but there’s no way it’s budging and now you’re sucking in your cheeks making disturbing noises doing anything you can do dislodge that goddamn string of meat until finally you’re completely fed up with this shit and you convince yourself that you will forget about it.

But you never do.

I need to bring floss to my office.

P.S. In other news, I’ve moved into my new apartment!! It was an incredibly stressful weekend, and I am still scrambling to get things unpacked and looking nice for my parents arrival on Wednesday night. I promise to post pictures to share when things are more in order!

Actually, that’s a lie. I had that for dinner a week ago. Tonight is packing night, so we had take-out. I’m just starting yet another category of posts, since I have a tendency of taking pictures of my food.

On the note of categories, I’m finally considering Usman’s suggestion from a year and a half ago to add categories to my posts. What for? No idea. Easier navigation, perhaps? Surf away, kids.

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The squeaking of wet soles on an indoor floor. It is why I hate rain.

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When all of the coins in my wallet add up to exactly the right change for my maple scone.

I always go to China during my “transition periods”: between Germany and Canada, middle school and high school, and high school and college. Therefore, all of my extended family back home expected me to go back this summer as I made my transition from an MIT undergrad to a Harvard grad student. But when my parents told me they would not be able to accompany me to my trip China this summer, I suddenly no longer wanted to go.

The reasons boiled down to language, culture, and time-related alienation from my extended family. This is actually quite difficult for me to admit, but I will bear the shame and try to elaborate on the origins of the estrangement from my family.

1. Language

I can count on one hand the Chinese friends with whom I speak on a regular basis. I speak English to all of them. When my parents call, they talk to me in Chinese and I respond in English. Sometimes I intersperse some Chinese words here and there, but hearing the way my words clumsily stumble over my tongue is like watching myself dog paddling through a pool of advanced swimmers. My cousins used to introduce me as “the foreigner” or the “American” to their friends when I visited them in China. I silently hated those words. Yet now, for the first time in my life, listening to my awkward and ugly Chinese has made me realize just how much of a foreigner I have become.

Sometimes when I am surrounded in a Chinese environment (ex. home), the muscles in my mouth grow accustomed to the language and the Chinese flows out with more ease. Nonetheless, the sporadic practice has worn my vocabulary thin and I struggle to communicate with my family (or even family friends) with pure Chinese. That’s the foremost reason I really depend on my parents being around if I go back to China: I need a translator.

2. Culture

You probably know by now that I am a complete nutjob. I curse like a sailor and I depend on crude sexual jokes, nerdy science humor, and references to internet memes to support conversations. None of that would fly in China. Plus, going back to the language problem, I don’t know how to say “quantum dots,” “photocatalytic water splitting with a metal oxide,” or “will be fucked in the ass by my Applied Physics quals” in Chinese. That, pretty much, leaves me with nothing to talk about.

3. Timing

Last time I was back in China for an impressionable time was before MIT. At that point, I was still a teenager, dating my ex, crying to mediocre singer-songwriters, and a virgin. A lot has changed since then (though sometimes, only sometimes, I still listen to bad acoustic guitar songs with emo lyrics that make little sense). Therefore, I don’t feel like my family doesn’t know me. The truth is, they probably don’t. They know me as well as I know them. Hell, I don’t even know most of their names. I call them Auntie or Uncle anyways. The large gaps between visits and the lack of communication during these intervals are probably the strongest sources of alienation for me.

Do I love my family? Undoubtably so. Do I miss my family? Quite honestly, maybe not so much. I have very fond memories of China, my childhood, and of course my family. They treat me much better than I deserve to be treated. I’m served the most expensive dishes and showered with unrelenting attention. “What do you want, Shanying? Tell me anything and we’ll buy it for you. Anything!” And they mean it. Thinking of my Chinese family elicits feelings of nostalgia, deep gratitude, and guilt. But not a sense of closeness.

Does this make me a cold and heartless person who turns her back on her loving family? Because that’s how I feel sometimes.

Comments, insights, and personal stories are always appreciated. Particularly on this issue.

I love my friends. Specifically, I love it when my friends compliment me on my cooking. Mike told me the meals I made this week were particularly delicious. And then Rodeo told me my meatballs were better than those from Rendez-vous, which is my favorite restaurant in Cambridge. Such flattery! I was soooooo happy.

I also made Ramen today, which I’ve been craving for weeks already. Everything was perfect…except the Spam that for some reason I thought would be good. It tasted like brain (and yes, I’ve had brain before). Never again!

“I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.” - Woody Allen in Annie Hall

It’s pathetic how good I’ve gotten at making excuses for myself. I’ve been very disappointed with myself recently, but I have yet to do anything about it. Because, see, I may be the world’s most unmotivated person right now…but, don’t worry, that’s all temporary.

Really, I will start working hard again once I move into my the new apartment with my own desk/have a thesis to work towards/have an advisor who’s on my case.

…right.

I feel pangs of guilt every time I intentionally ignore the alarm clock in the mornings, when I fall asleep on the lab couch while “reading a paper,” and when I go home at 3pm. But there are no consequences to my actions. I’m not being graded on this, I won’t be fired, and I won’t get anything published from this anyways. Suddenly, there’s no point in any of this, aside from the fact that I need something to keep me occupied and I want to leave the Belcher lab on a positive note. I feel so jaded over all this research, I have no faith that anything I work on in the next few months will amount to anything.

You’d think recognizing that the problem lies in myself is the hardest part. Getting the lazy side I hate to succumb to my reasonable side is truly the obstacle here. These are days when I just can’t deal with myself.

We have a new apartment!!! Move in date is June 1st. I don’t think I can describe to you how excited I am about this. I can’t wait to have my own (newly renovated!) kitchen, a desk that’s not the giantic mess that Mike likes to work in, and the space to bring out all of my shoes. While Mike’s current room is probably one of the biggest dorm rooms on campus, it’s still quite cramped with our queen-sized bed and the extra drawer.

Most importantly, however, this apartment has windows. Giant windows! That face out into an actual space that’s not the shaft of a building! Furthermore, our room is east facing, which means I will wake up under the warmth of the sun.

You should be excited as well because having my own apartment means I can host more dinner parties. There shall definitely be house-warming dates set. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open!