Incompeete

Here’s a scenario: You’re doing something. Anything. When suddenly, boom, you need to pee. Like really need to pee. You’re bladder’s about to explode. You’re sure that you’re going to end up urinating more than one of those weird bronze sculptures of babies doing the wiz. What do you do?

Well common sense would tell you, “Go pee you idiot!” But I’m too scared for common sense to even cross my mind. At least I was in first grade.

I’m going to set the stage. First grade. That was my first grade ever. Having skipped kindergarten, grade school was new to me. My primary teacher, Mrs. Bucher, wanted every student to greet her with a “Hey, Mrs. Bucher,” every morning. Except with enthusiasm. “HEY, MRS. BUCHER!”

Now I’m going to raise my hand to point out an exception. Don’t get me wrong, I of the present, not I of the first grade, am pointing out this somewhat common, but fully discouraging outlier. I was in that bag of kids that didn’t scream out “Hey, Mrs. Bucher!” in the morning. And it wasn’t because I was too tired in the morning either – not only did elementary school not start until 9 A.M., but I also didn’t have a giant mass of homework or a giant mass of brain that shouted louder than the kids bellowing to Mrs. Bucher, “Procrastinate!”

No, it was because I was about as reserved as a person can get. I was more reserved than the interest rate of the Federal Reserve on the day I was born. If you think I don’t talk in class right now, imagine that, but then you might as well add a layer of duct tape to my mouth because in first grade, I didn’t talk almost at all.

I don’t really know the reasoning behind why I was essentially a mime in my first year of school. Maybe it was because I was largely unfamiliar with the English language having been raised in a predominantly Mandarin-speaking household. Because sure I might be inherently introvert, but this much? It’s almost unimaginable.

But it’s the truth. Now in addition to being taught the core subjects by Mrs. Bucher, we would also go to other classrooms for physical education, art, or music. I’m going to focus in on music. Mrs. Daigle. Everyone called her Mrs. Bagel. In her class, we learned about basic music theory, thereby finding out that “even George Bush drives fast.” We also played some instruments. I think in first grade, it was mainly xylophones and glockenspiels. In fact, there were three whole rows of these instruments so that everyone in the class could bash them with mallets in lame attempts to learn.

When twenty kids create a cacophony rather than a harmony, things get loud and ugly. Too loud for someone to speak up and as Mrs. Bagel to go to the restroom. Because that certain someone needs to pee. Badly. Not that it would have mattered. Because in the minutes prior to the hullabaloo, that young procrastination loving brain was saying, no whispering, “Shhhhh. Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits in my imagination.”

So, abiding to Elmer Fuddbrain’s request, I kept silent. I did raise my hand in an attempt to miraculously get the attention of Mrs. Daigle so I could go pee-pee. No response. I should probably walk up to the teacher and ask, right Elmer Fuddbrain?

“No! You’ll wake the wabbits!”

Well, I better trust Elmer Fuddbrain’s judgment then. There is no other solution. Must pee now. I got it! I should just pee in my pants! Brilliant! Okay go let it out. Going. Going. Gone. Done.

“You idiot! Why would you do such a thing?”

Because, Elmer Fuddbrain, I didn’t want to wake the rabbits.

“There are no wabbits. I was just kidding. I’m not Elmer Fudd. I’m just your brain. I don’t know where you’re getting that Looney Tunes imagination from. You haven’t even seen the show at this point in your life yet! Let me make it clear, there are no rabbits.”

A few seconds later, the girl sitting next to me, Sarah, decided it would be a great idea to feels my khakis. I don’t know what about the visibly darker pants made her fingers that were sure to touch a sandwich an hour later want to touch what was clearly pee. All I know is, that was embarrassing.

With a face full of red, I walked up and asked Mrs. Bagel if I could go to the nurse. Why didn’t I do that a minute ago?

If you see me in a classroom today, I might raise my hand to participate, or maybe not. That brain has made some serious progress. Sure I don't imagine crazy scenarios like hunting rabbits in my brain anymore, but that's because I want to be in the real world rather than conjuring up fake stories to pass the time or to distract from the urge to pee. If you compare my word count on a given day between now and sixth grade, when I came to New Paltz, or even ninth, when I started high school, it has definitely increased drastically. Sure I might have dug my own grave from a social standpoint because of this common, debilitating outlier. But I’m climbing my way back up.

I’m working on it.

冠礼?

It's a bit weird. Having just Googled it, the 冠礼 ("Guan Li"), or idea of coming of age in Chinese Confucian culture, occurs when one turns twenty. What's weird is that my parents have always said from a young age that that date would be on the day that I turned twelve. Or fourteen. I don't remember and it really doesn't matter. What matters in perspective is that based on what they had said, I'd be an adult.

I’m not sure the reasoning behind the six or eight year disparity in when one comes of age. Maybe they weren’t following the Confucian aspect of Chinese culture there – in my family, the culture is essentially a soup with bits of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Americanism stirred together and served in a bowl with chopsticks or a spoon, you choose.

Or maybe my parents wanted me to grow up faster. To mature quickly so that I could take care of myself and my younger brother more quickly. Living in a middle class household where my dad makes an above average amount of money, I cannot say we are not well off. But with my dad getting on in years in proximity to the standard age of retirement and neither my brother nor I having gone through college (let alone potentially medical school), my mom even took up a job to help sustain for the future.

The moral of the tangent is that when neither of my parents were home for reasons x or y, I was de facto in charge of the house. I was to make sure nothing bad happened to or because of my brother or me (even if my mom would call every so often to tell me to prepare something or to do a task).

I think that little anecdote shows that there was not really one set event or moment that marked my transition into adulthood. I see it more as parallel to the biological punctuated equilibrium theory in which sudden spurts of evolution occur during an otherwise stable environment. In this comparison, my maturity would be likened to these evolutionary change spurts. From my experience, my growing mentally as I come more and more of age can be summed in that exact phrase: “more and more.” There have been little events that have gradually shifted me towards adulthood.

Like when my family went to China three summers ago. With my dad having to go to other places for his business trip with his company, my mom, brother, and I went to Beijing. Technically, I was the male of the house for those few days. And although that meant less than it sounds like, and rightfully so, I was still expected to watch my brother to make sure he didn’t wander off or anything and to help my mom make judgment calls so that when she started feeling as if she had to throw up from what must have been bad seafood, we could figure out what to do.

It’s the little things like getting three texts on the night that I was in Syracuse for the NYSML math competition compared to three plus three times three calls during the school field trips to Boston and Washington in middle school.

In Chinese culture, there’s no event similar to a Bar Mitzvah in which one crosses the line from boy to man. But who knows? Maybe by the time my “Guan Li” has passed, there will be one big moment that marks my transition into adulthood. Or maybe not. Maybe by the time I’m twenty, little events here and there will have turned me fully into an adult. Who knows?

Of Nights and Men

It’s quite incredible. My mom was just a girl born in the countryside of a country which, at the time, saw the acceptance of next to zero girls in her situation into college. Yet she remarkably overcame all the obstacles to make an unlikely entrance into college.

Years later, she has a Ph. D. degree and is telling stories of her crazy childhood to me. Having heard all these tales, we finally ventured back to her hometown in China.

Now I have actually been to China once before but since I was essentially a toddler, I have absolutely no recollection of that experience. So for me, this trip to Zhejiang province in 2009 was what really felt like my first step in China.

After leaving Shanghai, my dad’s hometown, my mom’s little country town seemed to directly contrast the big city. For one, the village, surrounded by sprawling, green farmland, possessed much less than one percent of Shanghai’s crowded, overbearing population. In comparison, Shanghai is New York City to Houshan’s Esopus. But most strikingly, the entire ambiance felt different. Out in the country, everything felt expansive yet beautifully open, whereas in the city, I felt crowded and encountered the nastiness of Shanghai.

Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a city person. But maybe it’s something about the grueling reality of urban China, where beggars without arms or (or, in even worse cases, and) legs plead haplessly for change, that really made me like my mom’s small town hometown so much.

Juxtaposing the image of a bleak, smog-filled Shanghai, where the gray made the birds go away, to the vision before me of a calm and clean backdrop, where the red sun could shine on the songbirds all it wanted really made me feel at home in a place that never had been my home.

In the house where the roof was the sky holding the sun, I felt as if I was in a natural environment that was like habitable. It’s the moment when you can feel perfectly peaceful living “outside” (there were fruit trees within the house), with no disruptions whatsoever, that you feel truly serene.

The moments when I could sit under the open roof in the sun, eating a persimmon, and feeling carefree about the things I needed to do later capture the moments among which I have felt the most at ease, ever.

Yet there’s more to this “house.” As I look back at the stories my mother told about her childhood upbringings, I realize the greater connotations of the house. It was the place where the Red Army confiscated much of my grandparent’s belongings, much of which dated back to the Ming Dynasty. It was the place where they raised four children from very little. But most of all, it was the place where my mom spent countless nights studying and stressing in order to near-miraculously make it into college.

When I think of my grandparent’s house in Houshan, I think of all this. It really is all comforting. Not only do the summer moments of blitheness bring back feelings of relaxation, but my mind’s flashbacks to my mom’s teenage years remind me that as long as you work and toil, you will achieve success. This is what gives me the most comfort.

Describing such a countryside town such as Houshan, the video seems to be of no relationship. It’s a video of Shaoxing, a city a few miles from Houshan. But Shaoxing is significant. Years ago, my grandparents took in their poor friends’ 7 year old and raised him like their own. Today, he is a successful and rich businessman in Shaoxing. He remembers my mother’s family and has given back for their hospitality.

From the stories of my mother’s childhood, I’ve learned much about the convoluted roller-coaster called life. I’ve found a comfort in seeing the importance of following these lessons.

Now Imagine. That Everything You've Ever Imagine. Is Possible

Did you know that there ARE high states of existence?

During the Super Bowl this year, the Ponzi scheme cult organization Scientology aired a one-minute long advertisement promoting this “spiritual technology."

The ad features the sun rising random science-y things, a girl in a wheat field, a man looking into the distance, and super lens flare!

Audiovisually, the advertisement was as generic as a pharmaceutical commercial, containing motivational music, and never really tell us what the advertisement was promoting.

Usually, when I see an advertisement, whether it be a commercial, a billboard, or some whacky inflatable arm-flailing tube man, it will get straight to (or at least point to) the subject being promoted.

For most advertisements out there, the company will immediately bring the product to the foreground, then go over reason after reason about why you must buy it.

But Scientology is different. For example, there’s Operation Snow White, where Scientology operative hacked into governments all over the world. For one, they tried to plant evidence that the “church’s” critics were responsible for genocide.

Plus, there was Scientology minister Reed Slatkin who funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the “church” in the 1970’s and 1980’s before being convicted on four counts for his Ponzi scheme.

Simply put, Scientology has gained a reputation as maybe not the most genuine organization.

So the main question I am wondering is, what is the cult trying to achieve in displaying these generic advertisement?

The only feasible thing I can think of is that some naïve people are going to want to know more about Scientology, and a few of them will be brainwashed into paying $100,000 to $130,000 in order to become a Level 4 Operating Thetan.

When I look at an advertisement visually, I try to see what the advertiser is trying to do to appeal their product to me. For example, this Audi commercial tell me to “Stay in school” so that one day I will get to drive that sleek car.

So the Scientology commercial and this Scientology billboard (another generic ad with a girl creepily staring into my soul) only make me think, this is the shadiest, biggest joke of a cult ever.

But hey, at least movie star John Travolta is a member. Maybe his amazing films can promote his religion.

Oh wait. He stars in Battlefield Earth, based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book of the same name. I’m sure that the critical acclaim and box office success of this epic film must have shined a bright light on Scientology and propelled Travolta’s career back to greatness.

The thing about this commercial is that I can't really connect it to me. And that's why it's such a laughable joke. Maybe if I were to be brainwashed into Scientology, they should try to make a commercial that actually appeals to the masses and makes them think, "Hey this is interesting, I should find out more."

Close, But No Star

I started taking piano lessons at around the age of five or six. At that adolescent stage, it seemed like a fun little gimmick of a machine to produce some cool sounds. At the time, it also seemed to be not only a joy-inducing, but also an easy instrument to play. I’m not sure if it the original pace of learning songs was slow, or if the 2+2’s of piano pieces were actually just unchallenging, but I breezed through the beginner practices for piano with the full on excitement of a newly inflated balloon.

As an incentive to motivate her students to give their full effort into practicing the piano, my piano teacher developed a reward based system based on the quality of the student’s playing at the actual lesson. In the case that the student accrued four satisfactory checks, four weeks consecutively, they would be awarded by having the ability to pick a reward out of the prize drawer. There were all sorts of prizes: candy, pens, toys, hmm… thinking back, they were all simple, lackluster that nonetheless appealed as much as anything to the childhood mind. But the great point was that by devising this reward system, my teacher successfully beckoned her students to think twice about neglecting to give their full effort to practicing the piano.

For the first year or two, I’d always amass four consecutive stars. Every four weeks, I’d have the opportunity to choose between Charleston Chew and Starbursts. Possessing the interest that one would after they purchased a brand new car, I was attentive to all the minutiae of the delightful little pieces.

But just as enthusiasm of a new car’s owner wanes as the car becomes old, less revolutionary, and more repetitive, I had begun to feel gradually less interested in playing the piano, almost comparing it to a chore or a burden. But despite the decline of my interest, my will to play the new pieces continued to be strong. With every new composition, I discovered the nice, special perks that they possessed that allowed them to stand out among the other pieces.

Therefore, I was particularly devastating when, on one rainy day in March, I found myself struggling to perform a certain piece while I was trapped in the forest that was my piano teacher’s house. I couldn't play the notes correctly. My fingering was off. My counting was offbeat. The domino effect had discombobulated the precision of the entire piece.

What’s going on? Is she going to not give me that star? I need to step it… what’s this? She’s telling me I don’t deserve it this time? Nonsense. Poppycock. How could… Never have I ever… Why…

Yet soon, this flabbergast had turned to dejected woe. I was bawling at the thought of failing something that had seemed so humdrum yet elementary to me.

As I sobbed through the car ride home to the angry disappointment of my dad, who had shared my expectations for novice piano playing, I realized that it was a stupid way to go on. I had to move forward without looking back in anger. Having fallen off my high horse, I realized that the difficulty of my piano pieces was constantly increasing. Now, I’d have to adjust my effort to the piano to stay proportional to its difficult.

By changing my mindset and developing a new plan to go about my piano practicing future, I had rebounded from my irrecoverably lost star. I had set my mind onto a different goal: to retrieve the new star, not think about losing my old one.

What’s going on? I’m in the middle of playing the piano. Hey brain, stop being such a distraction. Get back to practicing.

"Earth and Space, Living World, Human Body, The Way We Live, Science and Technology, History, Atlas of the World"

As I try to remember the first book I ever flipped through, I realize that what happened less than ten years ago seems to be such a colossal eternity ago that I will never be able to connect all the dots of my childhood. Yet I can remember the one thing that piqued my adolescent interest what was going on in the “real world:” an illustrated encyclopedia. Encompassing topics from the human body to space, the massive hardcover put me through many distinct polarizing emotions; one moment I’d be cheerfully captivated by lymph nodes and the next I’d be earnestly pondering my fate after discovering that the universe was nearly 15 billion years old (I’ll admit this made me sleepless on countless night). Being a naïve child, everything I read seemed to be an amazing breakthrough to me.
 Since I was reading the encyclopedia at such a young age, it is obvious that for a large part, I wasn’t really reading; I was actually mesmerizing myself with the hordes of vivid visuals. From the human skeleton to jambalaya, it was all a huge phenomenon to me. But there is one specific drawing that I can hauntingly recall. It was a sketch of the instant before beheading of King Charles I of England. At that age, I was suddenly struck by the devastation of how a powerful king would lose his vision of the earth forever by one swift chop of an axe. Flipping through later, I read a short bit of how Americans fell from “riches to rags” thanks to “stocks.”

What the heck were “stocks?” At the time, I thought to myself, how could anyone lose all their wealth by the “crash” of a single word? Even today, I still do not fully grasp the concepts of economics or “total equity” or Wall Street. Yet there was one thing I held to back then that I still grasp today. I wanted to strive for a decent future. Because reading about the eerie, infinite depths of the universe, of the chilling and swift death of Charles I, and of the scary reality of families going “cold and hungry” because of “stocks,” I realized that my life was fitted and limited. Reading the short blurbs of great historical figures, I noticed how no one lived past ten decades yet everyone had built a destiny for themselves in such a short scope of time. Looking back, I see how this illustrated encyclopedia really molded my perceptions of the world and of my life. I can safely attribute my ambition of my future to my enthrallment at the wonders human body. From the moment I flipped out of the encyclopedia and into the moving and increasingly (though as a kid, not really) real world, I’ve been continually working towards a medical path without getting beheaded by an axe.