#Driving Fears

Two months ago, Austin joked about how it would be so great if I could get my driver's license before we got married. 

Yeah. I know. I was 25 and I didn't know how to drive. I had always been afraid of the road and there had always been a boy(friend) with a car. 

In the heat of over-optimism and an eagerness to be the perfect fiance, I signed up for a driving class. The online one. 

Sometimes when I was staring at the computer screen, trying to memorize how many feet of distance you're supposed to leave when parking away from the fire hydrant (15!), I felt my heart beating down on my ribs, demanding to be let out. 

What if I remembered all the facts and passed my online test? 

Then I would actually be on the road. 

The big day came. Austin randomly pulled into a church parking lot after errands one day and waved the keys in my face with a large grin. Your turn, babe. 

I swallowed and managed my sweetest smile. Why don't we do something else? Like catch a movie? Go grab drive through? Make out? No go. I dragged my feet over to the left side of the car. Austin explained the mechanics of the stick shift in way too logical terms while I anxiously scanned the parking lot for stray dogs. Ok go. 

Clutch. Gas. Clutch. Desperate brake. I cried the first four times I was behind the wheel. Story of our drives.

Anyhow, Austin kept asking me what I was so scared of. So I finally made him a list:

Random dead body in my trunk. 

It happens.

Proving the Asian female stereotype true.

I asked my driving instructor whether this was true or not -

his hilarious answer is for the next blog post. 

Oh dear. There's a deer so near.

The stick snaps.

Run out of gas in the middle of the desert.

And water.

Broken brakes.

During a classic car chase scene.

Jack falls on me when changing tires.

After all, Jack did fall down the hill. 

And he dragged Jill with him.

The text that got me in an accident was a lame one.

Sometime like "hey sorry. Can't text. Driving now"

My fiance would reconsider us when he sees me drive.

Others warned us not to risk our relationship on 

having Austin teach me how to drive.

We should have listened. 

Ultimately, I am just afraid that I will hit somebody and kill them. On a Christmas eve. When his wife is giving birth in the hospital .... yeah. Too complicated for a sticky note.

At the end of the day, I am learning. Not very well, but I'm making progress. And we're still getting married. Miraculously (#6 days!). 

Discussing Love on a Lake

We discussed love while rowing on a freshly painted boat on Phewa Lake in Nepal.

He rowed. And I pretended I knew how to.

In the far distance, we could make out the faint outlines of the Annapura, the more accessible mountain range of the mythical Himalayas, which stood proud and silent on that hazy spring day.

Alex steered our boat around the small island that held the non-descript Hindu temple, dressed up like a blushing schoolgirl for the tourists, while we gazed upwards towards the pearly white Buddhist stupa planted up on a neighboring hill.

Sandwiched between the two symbols, we talked of love in the abstract. In the practical. In the religious.

I asked Alex what he knew about Buddhism. He shared with me the few tenets that he knew, most notably that of non-attachment.

I leaned back and frowned at a memory of a dear friend who recently embraced Buddhism. A year ago, she was bitterly and vocally unhappy with her marriage because of a void of understanding, touch, love, and common ideals.  She had dreamed of something different and contemplated divorce. Now, with the smile of the recently converted playing on her lips, she preached non-attachment to me in a crowded, cheap Italian restaurant. While her rambunctious 7 year old son screamed and kicked for his mom's iPhone, she patted him absentmindedly and explained to me why she was happy now. The key was letting go. All couples, regardless of the quality of their relationship, would end up apart at the end of mortal life. So why obsess about the journey? If she stopped hoping for love, then she would not despair over the deafening silence between them. Or the late nights she waited up for him to come home. Or the lack of gentleness.

If she stopped being attached to her husband, then she would be happy.

I swirled around my cream of mushroom soup with the tin spoon, hiding the torrent of anger behind my masked attempt to understand her sentiments. I wanted to scream that she was giving up. That she was settling for a shell of a happy life. We ended our lunch early because her son whined about going to the arcades and snatched my spoon to drum out his demands. I also grew weary of my curious burst of anger.

Alex listened quietly to my story and disillusionment with the concept of letting go.

I passionately argued that at least for myself, I either cared all the way or didn't care at all. Despite my parents cautioning temperance and 'it's just a job' whenever I cried on the phone because I wasn't sure how much more I could physically/ emotionally give to my work, I would still dip into my bank of inner reserve and drum out more energy to find solutions to never-ending problems. Or how I kept reaching out to a family member with a hopeful tentativeness even though she's hung up on me multiple times.

Isn't that what love is? I asked urgently. Not letting go?

In between a few more gentle paddles to maneuver us to a quiet alcove, Alex mused that love, in its ultimate form, is one of letting go of expectations of outcomes. It is the unconditional love that Christ spoke of, because He still loves us eternally regardless of our actions. He brought up the example of a proverbial modern mom who became angry because despite repeated reminders, the daughter was not practicing her instrument. The motive was love and hope that the daughter would develop her talents. But the anger arose because the daughter was not conforming to a set image the mom had crafted. Love, within the context of our conversation, would be for the mom to let go of the story she had weaved in her mind about her reality and instead persevere in love through the difficult, messy, and wonderfully unplotted life she ended up sharing with her daughter.

On our way paddling back to the muddy shores, I scanned the lake for the attachments in my life and saw them splayed out across the rippled surface of the the deepening water. Tangled in my thoughts, I decided to throw my stories, chained to their imagined endings, overboard and just let them sink to the bottom of Phewa. I decided to try to love in the best way I knew how and let things happen as they may. I would let go but not give up.

Across the lake, a proper Nepali storm was rolling in, a harbinger of the monsoon season.

Don't Play the Victim

I once loved a boy.

People thought we were really cute together. We thought so too. We would both get so pumped about the same things, volleying our excitement back and forth with wild gestures, and yet get so incredibly mad at completely different things, scattering confusion and hurt in our wake.

Sometimes he would make an offhand comment that would sting in the tender and secret places. I loved him so I didn't make a big deal out of it. I knew he didn't mean it that way so what was the point of brining it up? Since I cared, I would brush it off.

But the comments would continue - not because he knew they hurt, but because he didn't know they hurt. He was just being funny.

Meanwhile, I swallowed one and another and another till I was ready to burst with resentment. Even though I knew that he didn't have bad intentions, I started to question why he wasn't sensitive enough to figure it out. I wondered if that's what he really thought of me. I instinctively flinched every time the topic came up because I was mentally expecting to be hurt. I started to doubt whether we were good together. And so we weren't so good together anymore.

A few years and some growing up later, I realized that I had purposefully played the victim, even though I didn't realize it.

Ironically, in the name of love, I jeopardized our relationship. I wasn't fair to him because I judged him more and more and he had absolutely no idea. When you play the victim, you are turning your loved ones into attackers. That is not fair to them or to you because they didn't even know they were in the arena in the first place.

Sometimes, being faithful to somebody you care about means not giving yourself an opportunity to be a victim. If you really want a meaningful relationship, whether with friends, family, boyfriends or colleagues, you have to be ready to teach others how to love you.

Take the time to carefully explain why a certain comment bothers you and how you prefer they rephrase it. Bring it up (lovingly) right when it happens so it's a low risk conversation. Here are some phrases I try to use:

'Hey, by the way, can you explain to me why you said that? Right now, it makes me feel X" 

"I don't think you mean it this way, but it makes me feel a little judged. Do you really feel that way about me?"

"That kind of hurts. I think it's because I'm having a hard time with ____ right now."

"Honestly, I need some time to process it alone and then I will love to discuss it with you. So can you not ask me about it in the mean time? I feel pressure when people ask me about it."

Hint: it helps when you're saying these things while smiling or touching them reassuringly (except when it's a colleague)

Most of the time, the other person will be genuinely surprised that her comment has that effect and if she cares, she will do her best to change her future approach.

And yes, it will be easier to brush it off this time. But how about the next time? You need to take a stand for your relationships and fight for them. Taking the initiative to have those tough and awkward conversations. Show how you want to be loved. Don't play the victim. You and your loved one deserve more than that.

Reexamining Evelyn

I was raised by Filipino women. So for me going to the Philippines was like getting off the steam boat and arriving in an ancestral homeland that you had only ever heard about. Except Andrea and I had stepped off a budget airline and booked ourselves onto an eight hour bus ride across the Pilipino countryside to unplug in a little fishing town called El Nido. We wandered around a lot, got lost in curio shops and avoided chickens on our bicycles.

Street snacks like Chippy (chips) or polveron (crumbly cake) made me feel like a happy little kid again, who was rewarded for finally putting my school shoes on without a tantrum or for keeping my mouth shut/ stuffed when I watched cartoon as Evelyn, our maid, talked future plans with her fiancee on the phone. She annoyed me with her incessant stories of sunshine and happy endings. I tried to explain to her in my six year old bossy tone that she needed to stop pouring sugar over every story twist when we played pretend. Life was more like scolding nuns, school rankings and custody battles. I hated her stories because they were so naive but somehow she was hurt when I didn't buy them. Like that story about the cashew nut tree and how the nuts ended up growing hung upside down outside their protective fruit because they complained so much. Or how you should always be smiling in case the wind changed all of a sudden and your expression froze like that the rest of your life. She really believed the one story about how the more you counted your freckles, the more you would get them. She always applied face creams to "whiten" her freckles. As a weapon of last resort, I terrorized her by loudly counting her freckles when she made me take baths at night.

In a weird way, she did seem to get more freckles after each count. After I noticed that trend, I also started practicing my "wind-changing" face when she wasn't looking. Sometimes penitent, I hugged her and assured her that she was the most beautiful out of all the maids in the park because she was my Evelyn.

I figured out why she thought us playing marbles was the solution to everything. On our frequent walks back to the hostel from the bakery, Andrea and I often saw giggling filipino kids squatting outside their slated tin huts flicking marbles for hours, always narrowly missing their prized fighting roosters who looked at them indignantly from their wooden poles. I could wax philosophical about how happiness was simple there, or rather, simplicity was happiness but that would be understating what dodging torrential rains in the Philippines or laughing with our local hosts did for me in reexamining Evelyn.

I wonder if Evelyn was excited to be in a big cosmopolitan city like Hong Kong and whether she welcomed the wafts of cool air conditioning to the sticky heat in her village. She was probably lonely, so far away from her large family, and a little irrational with her love for her fiancee. She constantly verged between reading me lines from her love letters she was about to send (to help me with my English) and ranting about how men were unreliable because they just gambled away your nest egg money. Her fiancee was at once the most talented prince and the laziest artist. She peddled his drawings during Sundays after church to fellow Filipinos. My impression of him was slick hair and an exaggerated Minnie Mouse card he drew me once for my birthday. She never ended up marrying him. She never ended up married at all.

Honestly, I had never really considered Evelyn as a separate entity from me. In my selfish little six year old world, Evelyn was the nucleus of my life, there to make me happy. But I was unhappy a lot. So I chalked it up to her stories not being good enough, to her not letting me stay up late to watch TV, to her not being able to learn Cantonese as fast as I could teach her. She wasn't able to magic away my parents' divorce so I exacted revenge by being as difficult as I possibly could. But somehow her optimism was indefatigable and the stories about fishing and nuts and marbles kept coming. She really was trying to teach me to be happy and more trusting.

I fancied that whenever I turned a corner on the streets in El Nido, I would somehow bump into Evelyn selling bread or her fantastic deep fried banana fritters. Maybe she did eventually find her prince and build her dream house. Then I could finally show her what "wind-changing" face I had decided on. I think that would really make her throw her head back and laugh.

Evelyn used to make the best fried chicken in town. 

Somehow these kids were always so happy. Even when one

of their balls fell into the water.

Chickens roamed free everywhere.

A stereotypical Filipino hut. 

Wooden fences, tin roofs, and banana leaves walls.

72 Hours of a Startup

Day One

We sat around in bean bag circles, sort of like a benign underground brotherhood of nerds, and volleyed questions back and forth on the next steps of gamifying our apps. We argued passionately for elements that should be in there, weighed it carefully against our actual IT development capacity, and sketched out/ erased/ redrew UI designs on our glass walls. Man, assumptions. We had too many assumptions about the blue collar workers and the HR. So we jotted down the ones that we needed to test and braced ourselves for the humbling and fascinating discovery of their actual behaviors. 

We're trying to go more lean in our product development. Fail fast. Succeed faster. We're very good at the failing, so so on the fast, and blah on the succeed. But we're good at learning and applying. A gamification professor from Columbia University hung out with us while we went through this process so we could pummel him with questions as he chowed down on cold pizza.

I spent the afternoon interviewing candidates, so we could fill our empty chairs and dramatically increase our capacity. We're projected to double by the end of the year, expand to 95 next year, and grow to 200 ish by 2015. That meant a lot of interviews. And a lot of tears (from the interviewees). We're super picky about our candidates because we wanted to not only hire talent, but also potential and cultural fit. So we did interview panels, where regardless of whether you were a receptionist, a finance manager, a product developer, or a salesperson, you had a chance to get to know the applicants and pitch in about whether you would want to sit next to this person on a plane for 14 hours.

Then there was the email that sucked out the positive energy of the whole day.

We had hit an unexpected snag in our fundraising, especially when we were so close to tasting the term sheet. Just a delay, with the sincerest regrets. But still. I swallowed acid in my mouth just thinking about doing more client tours with potential investors for due diligence. I stayed slumped on the bean bags until somebody turned the lights off, thinking he was the last one in the office.

Day Two

I woke up uncharacteristically earlier than my alarm, but remained hiding underneath my sheets, holding onto the momentary safety of procrastination. I felt the full vulnerability of building a startup today more than ever and wasn't ready to face it square on.

I tried to give some of my accounts a call in the morning, but couldn't bear to dial back when the line was busy. It was one of those courage zero days.

I dragged my frustrations around the office like rattling cans on a frayed string. The HRD and I finally spilled our concerns to our boss, once again on the bean bags. It felt like we were back to a year ago, when fundraising was at square one and cash flow was a constant, desperate topic. He chuckled and pointed out that we're at a very different place now. We had a working model. Enough cash. Clients who loved us and gave us referrals. Actual products and services to sell. A very supportive board. A team that loved each other.

Oh. And a ping pong table.

I went home and watched a dumb movie, recharging before another conference call at 11 pm. Through a connection of a close friend, I had a call arranged with the CEO of an English learning company to discuss potential collaboration. Ended up with a notepad full of ideas for pushing affordable English programs to blue collar workers. Remembered why I was doing this. All of this. 

Day Three

Still groggy from the late night skype call but woke up at 8 am to talk to a brand name HQ. 

Hallelujah.

A major brand name wanted to work with us and asked us to fly to America to talk to them (honestly, at this point in my brain, I wasn't even thinking about the business opportunity, I was thinking friends + siblings + nieces + burgers). The brand name kept asking what our bandwidth was, how fast we could launch, and how many factories we could handle at the same time.

To those in sales like me, those were the most beautiful questions a client could ask.

This collaboration pushed us closer to our tipping point - the defining moment that could launch us.

The rest of the day was set on fast forward with sales reports, investor briefings, and a panel interview of a designer who teared up when he couldn't give an example of his innovation track record but somehow all the women, but me, voted for him.

Marketing called all hands on deck to help unpack/repack product kits for an upcoming client launch because of an error in printing. Man. We really needed to standardize our processes so we could catch avoidable mistakes like this. Some time while unpacking the 3000 kits, a team member told me it was obvious that I was burning out and that I was stressing out at every one. He told me that people loved me and appreciated my hard work but I had not been acting myself. While my eyes turned watery and my nose red, he said that he wouldn't say this to anybody else, but only to me because he knew that I could do better, since I was Sisi.

I was so tired of being Sisi.

But he was right. I had not been managing my perfectionism and laser focusing it to help the team optimize its performance, instead, I had been letting it manage me and my emotions all summer long.

That night, we grabbed Korean BBQ as a team and as we did our signature group cinnamon twist and yells of "Vegas!" (that's a different story), I realized that I really did belong here. Here where I constantly stretched and shrunk and then stretched some more. Here with people who loved me, forgave my excesses and laughed at my whims. Here dreaming, creating, building something that we're all proud of because we're still young and idealistic enough to brave the roller coaster of a startup 72 hours at a time.

Dare Greatly

While walking aimlessly around Hong Kong with a dear friend one night, I spoke passionately of taking deliberate risks, especially in early career decisions.

Then he looked at me earnestly and said, "You can say all that about taking risks, but you've never really failed, have you?"

I paused.

I have been asked that quite a few times recently. Sometimes by siblings who feel the pressure of the supposed precedent. Many times by friends who are in a frustrating job-seeking low. Other times, it is implied by colleagues who speak with a mix of awed respect.

I am never sure how to respond. I know what they see. They see Sisi Messick. The girl who delivers time after time.

My reality is very different from theirs. In my mind, there are many days when I have failed. Then there are some worse days when I feel like I am a failure.

While potential investors praised me, my boss promoted me, my friends loved me, few of them understood how in the past two months, once my family took off to vacation in America like impatient migratory birds, I started having a hard time breathing. I would have a fantastically productive day when all of a sudden I would be seized by a cloud of debilitating uncertainty, weighing on my chest like a Gestapo boot coming down against the iron-grey concrete. My heart would beat faster, faster, faster!, until I felt that I physically needed to hold it down with my hands. But my hands were occupied, covering my face, encasing me, protecting me, trapping me, and there I would sit like that, torn between shielding my face or saving my heart. At first it happened only after 6 pm, when the office emptied out. Then it started happening between meetings. Finally, I had to run to the bathroom so people wouldn't notice that their boss was cradling her shreds of self-confidence so precariously.

Regardless of how things really turn out that day, to me, sometimes, failure is such an intensely physical  and tiring reality.

As a perfectionist, I feel the magnitude of each mistake, each weakness. So when people think that I don't know how failure tastes like, I pause and fumble clumsily for a polite response because the real answer is much too raw.

I won't go into it because this post isn't about failure. It's not even about perfectionism (that's for a different time) or being gung ho confident in your natural self-worth.

It's about how despite feeling so weak, I still dare. More importantly, I still dare to do great things.

I get up on stage and speak passionately about our solutions for blue collar workers, in Mandarin, shortly after I threw up in the bathroom. I own up to being wrong in front of my whole team to show them what it means when everybody is truly equal. I keep smiling when the potential client just yelled at me in front of her boss and our investors because we really need that sell as a startup. I lay bare how I feel about him even though that leaves me exposed and uncomfortable. I still dial that number, trembling, and leave cheerful invitations on her voicemail despite being hung up on more than five times. I choose to believe that love can be so fulfilling, regardless of how many marriages I've seen disintegrate into flames.

No matter how vulnerable I feel, how much I want to stay in bed, I consistently show up. It is a constant choice, day after day, but I show up and when it comes to it, I stand up too. In the grand tally, it's not about how I did, it's about the fact that I simply did.

And that's how I really want to explain it to people when they ask me why great things just seem to happen to me.

A History of Kindness

He ran his fingers through his hair, shiny with grease, and brandished his practiced smile. Let me be your tour guide. Your bodyguard. Your little brother. Just follow me, I'll take you to the best shawerma places.

The teenager bounced along, constantly hovering next to Mike, protectively guarding us away from other begging children and shooing them along to find their own foreigners. He could hardly contain himself, his bits of English phrases spilling out of his lop-sided mouth and his hands always patting, edging, pulling, beckoning us constantly into dark alleys and overpriced cafes.

I hung back with our German friend, Nina, and watched. Even though I had flown into Bangladesh with wads of US dollar bills prepared to hand out to begging children on the streets, I was vastly unprepared for the overwhelming want. At every stoplight, hordes of the previously invisible swarmed the vehicles, peddling books/posters/maps/tupperware/giant baskets and cupping their fingers together at the mouth to indicate that they were hungry. I tired of putting my wallet back into my purse because I would be pulling it out again five seconds later. And beggars could be choosers. Often, the hand that took would shoot out again and ask for some more. A lot more.

So at the end of a sticky, dusty day, I ran out. Out of small bills. Out of patience. Out of get-out-of-skeptism-free card. And I watched carefully and felt anxious the more Mike clapped his hands on the little bodyguard's shoulders and asked about his family and laughed at his jokes. I mentally starting calculating how much each extra minute would cost me.

Am I a good bodyguard, no? You be my bigger sister, yes? 

And at the end, I steered Mike and Nina towards our actual destination, paid the little bodyguard, told him no, we wouldn't pay you three times more and relaxed.

Little bodyguard telling Mike about his music.

As I kneeled at the edge of my hotel bed that night, smelling the cheap laundry soap from the white-grey sheets, I realized I was in the box about the whole situation (re: "Leadership and Self-deception"). Even armed with good intentions and a seemingly bottomless wallet of small change, I did not pause to engage with them as people. I saw them as objects that constantly needed something from me and that by giving, giving, giving, I was merely fulfilling a social obligation and justifying a personal moral high ground.

When I paused to give freshly-picked strawberries and a little pocket change to the old man on the street in front of my China office, I felt genuinely happy and fulfilled. I talked to him about how nice the weather had been. I smiled and felt what it meant. But somehow, when I was in Bangladesh, perhaps because of unfamiliarity or a sense of being overwhelmed, I was acting charitable but not feeling charitable.

So that night, I prayed for true charity. I begged for an open heart. I pleaded to see the goodness of the people around me and let it change me.

The next morning, Mike and I cruised around on our rickshaws down the forgotten alleyways and looked out for good places to buy some local garb. Then, in the midst of a sweaty crowd of onlookers, in one of the densest countries in the world, our little bodyguard waved to us enthusiastically. Hey! Big sister, remember me?

Something whispered in my heart - This was the second chance you asked for.

I got off the rickshaw looked at him in the eyes, and smiled.

How's your family, little bodyguard?

Ah man. You're my family now. Come, come. I'll take you to buy a beautiful dress. 

They were forcing a little fluffy yellow chick to open its beak.

And they were dripping clear liquid through a plastic syringe into its mouth.

It was a street exhibition but I couldn't figure out what

 they were doing with the poor thing. 

Can't wait for spring so I have an excuse to put flowers in my hair again.

"Are you formed yet?" 

Bangladeshi tailors often marveled at my lack of curves.

Strawberry Gloves Forever

I kept punching my memory foam pillow and readjusting my sleeping position within my down comforter cocoon, but I just couldn't ignore it.

My wisdom teeth were growing out in full vengeance. They were violently penetrating my fragile gums and trying to make their {teeth} mark in this world. And instead of counting sheep, I was trying to decide whether to rank this higher than period pains or not. 

 

I picked up my favorite croissant on the way to work this morning and happily plopped down on my office chair to get a bite before my conference call. I opened my mouth, ahhed, and closed it again. Food wasn't even worth it anymore. The receptionist was unsympathetically happy at my plight because it turned out that she hadn't had breakfast either. 

Your pain = someone else's gain.

I even looked at some GMAT practice questions today during lunch and was disappointed that I didn't get two full wisdom teeth's bump in IQ points. 

As a self-respecting adult, I naturally sent whiny SOS texts to my parents. My dad said to contact mom and make an appointment with the dentist right away. My mom, majorly proud that she's never had wisdom teeth before (her fun party fact), told me that 1. I was probably not getting my wisdom teeth and 2. I might just have Korean BBQ infection. 

I knew it. She wasn't happy with me texting her back at 1:30 am with the excuse of hanging out with friends. I suppose parents have to sneak their lectures in somewhere.

Hopefully, the dentist will wear strawberry-tasting gloves when the time comes. 

Korean BBQ with American roommate, French intern, 

and Uzbeki Russian friend in China.

United Nations much?

A Pillar of Salt and a Floating Cat

At the start of every new year growing up, we would prop our short legs up on the engraved chest in the living room and scratch out our New Years resolutions in our diaries. To minimize the angst we felt, our parents advised us to divide out into five main categories: Academic, Spiritual, Physical, Social, and Personal.

I switched from a Chinese Catholic girls school to a British international school in seventh grade. So for my goals that year, I had something like this:

Academic - Keep getting those grades

Spiritual - Pray every morning and night. Don't fall asleep during them.

Physical - Walk more. (Which meant that I walked a ton around my dining room table while I was talking on the phone)

Social - Stop being a nerd ball.

Personal - Fall in love.

I had to make up for those lost co-ed years. We learned a lot about taking baby steps and tracking progress in goal-setting so I was prepared. I picked five boys to maximize my chances. A hello here. A smile there. All documented. I practiced winking and clicking my tongue simultaneously in the mirror (yeah. I actually did that. A lot.). But mainly, I just observed Chelsea and noted down how she flicked her hair, shifted her weight, while rolling one shoulder in as she cracked up at the boys' jokes.

Fortunately for my parents, I failed miserably at flirting.

Fortunately for me, I got a lot better in college.

---

While Alice got lost in her Wonderland, she asked the psychedelic Cheshire cat which path she should take. He replied lazily, "That depends where you want to go. If you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take."

My previous resolutions were very check list-esque. Ask more questions in early morning seminary. Make more eye contact. Learn Spanish.

My boss at work goes crazy if we ever submit performance targets that are activity-oriented and don't actually contribute to an important business outcome. Create three power points this month. Have a great attitude towards customer complaints. Similarly, I have let easily measurable quantitative goals satisfy me enough that I'm not demanding progress in what really matters.

Who do I want to become in 2013? In five years? Ten? Who do I want to be ultimately? Purpose in life determines what one does with her time, energy, resources, and ways of asking directions from the floating cat.

So now I am accountable in a whole different way. The ancient Jews not only sacrificed livestock to praise God, but they offered up their choicest lamb. Have I similarly given Him my best 20 minutes of the day, when I am alert and thoughtful in my alone time with Him? Or did I just check God off my to do list?

----

New Years is seen as a cut off point for change. People are filled with hope for the better in January and guilt for the lapses in February. But in some way, every day constitutes an opportunity to do better. Even Jesus improved, between 12 and 30, and "increased in wisdom (academic) and stature (physical), and in favor with God (spiritual) and with man (social)" {Luke 2:52}.

The whole Christian religion is about change; not about where we have been, but where we can go with the help of Christ.

My uncle had always considered himself unlucky. He was born during the Great Famine when China starved in idealistic communes. He joined the military right before China reopened its universities after ten years of Cultural Revolution. He didn't drink, but he often exploded. During those lazy summer afternoons, my cousin would come scurrying down and hide underneath our beds while my uncle pounded out his string of failed marriages and businesses on the wooden door. A good man underneath, he searched desperately for change. Behind his locked door and papered window on the second floor were stairs that led to a small shrine dedicated to and smelling like whichever religion he was exploring at the time.

We invited him to church when he stayed with us for an extended period of time to help out with incoming baby Cody. But he would always prefer to hammer more nails into the elaborate storage system that he built for us while we were getting ready for church. One day while waiting at a stoplight in Central, the busiest district of Hong Kong, he pointed to a pair of young missionaries across the street and asked my mom who they were. She pulled him over to meet them and he was baptized shortly afterwards.

Young as I was, I couldn't miss the new light in his face and the genuine happiness in his eyes. He walked as a younger man, no longer bent over with regret and bitterness. He had found the change he needed.

We cannot stay the way we are and hope to become who we need to be.

If we have the hope that we can change, are we allowing the same hope for others to change? To say sorry? To grow?

-----

In the Bible, Lot's wife was warned not to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and was turned into a pillar of salt because she didn't listen. When I was younger, I used to think that God must have needed a whole lot's wife of salt (bad pun), but I suppose it's really because she looked back longingly.

President Holland gave a fantastic talk about how faith is always forward looking. Lot's wife was not ready to put down those things she needed out of her life and she was stuck facing the past.

And finally, some words from the apostle Paul, a man who epitomized change. He switched from being one of the most adversarial persecutor of the early Christians to their most fervent teacher and advocate. In Phillipians 3: 8, he says,

"Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."

He must have lost everything important to him. His prestigious position in the orthodox Jewish community. His friends. His family. His conviction of what he thought was right. They were all things, but yet counted as dung, when compared to his newfound faith.

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phillipians 3:13-14).

And that is what a man who understands clearly his individual purpose in the grand plan, armed with his faith to move forward and courage to not look behind, can win.

{Excerpt from church talk on goals and resolutions}

Choice

There were a lot of pathetic apologies from my end (I wasn't sure what I was supposed to apologize for). There were a lot of swearing and phone smashing from her end.

Around half a year ago, because of a series of miscommunication and misunderstandings, my friendship with a dear friend went up in flames, disintegrating in a very dramatic fashion.

Last week, during Thanksgiving, in between serving my first turkey with its odd patches of skin still barely attached and whipping up a banoffee pie, I felt prompted to call her and tell her how thankful I was for her friendship. She was my first friend when I arrived in China with my college life packed up in 8 suitcases, overwhelmed and underprepared. She was the reason why I could tell my mom that no, I really wasn't lonely, when I spent my birthday sans family and friends a week after moving here.

But eating the turkey did not give me the courage to call her. I wasn't joking about the flames.

Yesterday, while blow drying my damp hair, there was a more insistent tug at my heart to call her that day. I shook my head. Sure, I missed her, but I had moved on and it was best to leave it alone.

Then my mom called. Sisi, you need to check your email. Right now.

A mutual acquaintance, extremely protective of my friend, had felt obligated to write my mom a lengthy, passionate email and ask her to tell me to apologize.

Instantly, hurt, anger, disappointment, incredulousness formed a toxic mix in my heart, churning, wrenching it tighter and tighter, fueled by my feelings of being misjudged and mistreated. My parents spoke love and support to me and advised humility and faith, seeing this as a chance to act on the promptings I had received earlier.

I ate nothing all day, filling my hands with meaningless tasks so they would have yet another excuse to avoid the phone. My pride was equivalent to seven hours of pacing around the house.

Finally, I had to unclench my fist, actively choose to not be offended and recognize that this was the push I needed to call her. She picked up immediately. Hey, it's me. My heart, previously wrung tight and hard, literally softened at her voice. I told her how I was really grateful for her and that I had really missed her. As I started apologizing, more sincere this time because I actually understood more of her own hurt and disappointment from the email, she cut me off.

She had hit rock bottom recently. She really needed a friend. She also felt strongly that she should call me the last two weeks, but was afraid of my indifference. She said that my call had meant more than I would ever understand.

We both cried on the phone while telling the other how amazing she was. An hour later, we were still laughing and reminiscing about my terrible falling-asleep-in-awkward-places habit and her crazy colleague stories.

We both healed on this call. We chose to forgive and so we were forgiven.

All it took was a little unclenching of the fist.

Even the pricks can be beautiful.

Taken in Sahuarita. 

Spinster Catalogues

You learn a lot about yourself when you're living alone. I wonder if registered spinsters have these self-inventories all the time. Because I do.

I finally realized that I am terrible at mopping.

There's also nobody else I can blame the shedding on. Not even J's "other Asian girlfriend" that I make up. (Apparently, having a girlfriend is a lot like having a dog in terms of the amount of hair that winds up in your man stuff).

I belt out radio tunes when I'm doing laundry, but never in the shower.

Nobody bakes you roommate love cookies just because we have a surplus of butter. Ok. Fine. There is never a surplus of butter in China.

Not thinking about how much clothes you {do not} have on while wandering around your apartment is a such a privilege.

A lot of things wind up unfixed because I've read too many scary things about delivery/ handy men.

I can pass out for four hours on a Sunday afternoon without concerned roommates banging on my door, worried that I will repeat that 23 hour "death nap" I once had after finals.

Don't worry, I'm still far from my raising-60-homeless-cats days.

Because my new roomie is moving in next week!

So excited to call water heater fixer man . . .  in ten days.

The legendary Triumvirate apartment. 

I will be seeing one of these girls in two weeks!

Ignorance is Bliss

. . . when you're riding a bike with a billowing skirt and all the men walking towards you can't take their eyes off you because a gust of wind just swept through.

The best part of the scene isn't that I might be flashing lots of unsuspecting strangers before breakfast (pretty much every other day given my skirt habits and the weather).

The point is that I can now ride a bike with one hand on the bar and the other holding down my skirt, while dodging fast cars/ bikes because I'm riding against traffic.

 I can now ride a bike. Boom, baby.

When I was 4, I was a high flyer on that tricycle. Then the third wheel came off and I started losing playground races.

When I was 14, I gritted my teeth and rode a bike to conform to the Messick stereotype of athletic, outdoorsy kids and crashed into a horse. A stationary horse hooked to a carriage. My face tasted horse sweat and my shins concrete. I narrowly missed the warm pile of grass green manure.

When I was 21, I promised a boyfriend a romantic day biking around Santa Monica to make up for past whatevers. He yelled at me because I nearly got run over by buses and nearly ran over old ladies. I thought I was already doing pretty good. That was the last time I saw him.

When I was 22, I mentioned casually to a friend that I would be running home to grab something. He tossed me his public bike rental card. Sheer embarrassment forced me to the bike rack. It took me 35 min to bike home when normally it took me 15 min to walk.

But hey. 35 min turned into 25 and then 20. I'm still stuck at 15 min though. Perhaps I just bike slow. Or I just walk really fast.

Oh The Places You Will Go!

Recently, I've had a quite a few people who I look up to look at me in the eye and tell me that I'm going places.

They seem so excited about all the good I'm supposedly going to do with my life.

The thing is, while I smile and thank them, I can't help but wonder - is it going to be a good place or a bad place?

I try. Because that's what the scriptures say. Pray. Work hard. Step into the dark. The light will follow. Listen to the spirit. When you don't get an answer, just do it. Did it and everything was telling me to stop doing it. So back to square negative one. Shake off emotional paralysis.  Start from scratch.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The parents are calling. The boyfriend is wondering.

The deciding-your-whole-life-course crisis that seems to hit me once a year is so draining.

What are they seeing in me that I'm not?

When Girls Grow Up

Just came back from girls' camp where I played camp leader to 60 girls. Jody was there for her first time. I tried not to hover too much, backing off my instinctive older sister slash mother hen role. I cried when she stood up, so confident and strong, sharing her beliefs with the others in front of the glowing camp fire and underneath the sheet of stars. After I had done the same, she reached back, hand seeking mine in the dark, as a show of support, love, and strength. I think that was the first time we've held hands in a long time. 

I went through old files on my hard drive today and was amazed at how much she had grown. Her spirit that shined through each photo hadn't changed a bit though.

(Cody was super cute too. And according to the late night girls' camp gossip, he still is.)

When they were angels

When they were Indians

Those curls kill me

And that smile has killed many mothers at the park.

Beijing Safari: From China with Love

Written on July 22nd, 2010. An email I wrote home while on my internship at the US Embassy in Beijing. My dating experience in China this time around has been pretty similar.

"Here's the most succinct summary of the difference between Western and Chinese dating: In the West, prior to marriage, a man may have plenty of girlfriends but after marriage, only one wife; In China, a man often struggles to find the one girlfriend before marriage but after marriage, he has many girlfriends.

Indeed, many men that I have talked to believe that it is an inherent right to have many women. One coworker even explained to me how having affairs keep the marriage fresh and interesting. To them, women are part of the trappings of power. And it seems that the younger the woman, the better. Sometimes my friends and I play the "mistress or daughter" game in restaurants. Whenever an older man with obnoxiously large rings and an over-priced suit walk in with a much younger, scantily-clad female who is wobbling on dangerously high heels, we wait to see if a wife and mother shows up. If not, then well, we know.

Perhaps it is for this reason that women in China are unusually demanding of a potential marriage partner. Apparently, they will not marry a man unless he has a (nice) car, an apartment (or two), and a sizable bank account (and stocks). As a result, the embassy is full of thirty year old single men who don't really know how to date and who still live with their mothers. My coworker dutifully hands over his paycheck to his mom (who saves it so he can get married) and then negotiates his monthly allowance.  My single coworkers’ dating lives consist of a myriad of blind dates that their second cousin twice removed have set up for them with "this really nice girl back in the ancestral village".  I once told a colleague that people should marry for love and then work together to build a life they want. Since then, I've been getting emails from thirty year old plus coworkers who randomly want to know what I'm doing after work. After figuring out that I'm Mormon ("You want so many kids and you wear too much clothes!"), some of my coworkers ask if I date people who are not Mormon. I said no. They then ask how people can join. I told them that since the Chinese government wouldn't permit proselytizing of any kind (100% true), I could not tell them. Even though I’m just following Church instructions, I feel that God is shaking his head every time I use the Church as a deterrent for dates.

It is a pity that you can't use the same excuse with the young single adults in the ward though. After an awkward date, a boy gallantly declared that he has decided to "pursue" me. When I politely said no thanks, he claimed that he would persist because it was probably divinely arranged if he randomly met somebody at the metro station in China and she turned out to be Mormon.

For those of you who are curious, so far, my dating life in Beijing mainly consists of dodging dates. Marines, thirty year-old coworkers, and overly friendly old men are very different from the average Utah boy who just wants to take you out biking and then, if he's getting fancy, ice-cream afterward. I think I figured that out a little late. But at least I now have more interesting stories to tell you!"

True Story

J always jokes and says that I "never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

Most of the time, it's because I am talking about our awkward first semi-date, which he asked me on in his excited good-interview after glow (he interviewed for an internship at our company). He mentioned that he would be in Shanghai, a neighboring city, that weekend and it was too bad that I would not be there otherwise he would love to take me out for dinner. I thanked him and accepted as I pushed the elevator button for the second time. His smile froze. He stammered. He didn't know that I normally headed to Shanghai to see my family for the weekends.

We had sushi. I suggested an exploratory walk around the colonial neighborhoods afterwards. He wanted a plan and directions for my "aimless stroll". I talked about loving visits to Kenya's Masai villages but being appalled at the female circumcisions performed. In between checking GPS for our location, he told me that he was fine with that lifestyle choice. I blanched and gave him a fiery human rights speech. He was similarly horrified when he realized that he misheard me and thought I meant women choosing to have operations to prevent having babies in the future.

His cheeks flamed under the yellow street light. I did not offer to help as he fumbled around for words. He finally mumbled that going to dinner with me was exceeding his "one date a semester" quota - his usual flimsy exercise to appease matchmaking bishops. Smirking, I asked him if I made him nervous. He avoided looking at me the rest of the night.

(That's what made his later confession so much more surprising.)

------

Anyways, I was thinking a lot about the truth in story telling today. I absolutely love stories. Hearing them. Reading them. Making them. Telling them. There's something special about sharing common experiences through words that, when strung together beautifully, become transformative.

If I can captivate you with the story of eating snake meat Lady and the Tramp style then later realizing it was sheep penis, does it really matter if I said it was this long or that long? Or if I made your eyes go wide at my story of being bitten by a copperhead snake and not knowing it at the time (and hence revenge through snake meat quest), who cares if I mentioned all the details of the three nights in ICU?

But today, I questioned myself. I had blogged about a dear friend and her family's move across the country, filling in the descriptive blanks with my romanticized notion of her story. Except, I shockingly found out, that there was no basis for the story at all. No moving van. No family camcorder. No pouting mother.

I sat there at my office desk, deeply confused and bothered. If I didn't hear that story from her, how on earth did I pull that from the recess of my mind? For better or worse, that story had shaped my perception of her upbringing for the longest time and now I scrambled around to "fact check" against myself on what I knew about her.

And because I could "remember" the exact spot in Beijing where I thought I had heard that fantastic story, I now doubt myself. What if all the stories I have ever told are tainted with my overly active imagination? What if I have been dressing up my truth until what's left is a darn good story and I've forgotten the original? What if my mind automatically selects the interesting, shaves off the accurate and presents the sensational?

What does that say about me as a story teller? What does that say about me?

Things are heating up

Gilbert, Arizona. So hot that I yelped when I tried to close the car door. We left the car windows cracked when we got out in case the windows burst from the heat.

We apparently broke a record today at 114 degrees Fahrenheit (around 47 degrees celsius). The last record was at 113 degrees in 1991. Crazy.

J took me hiking to see some petroglyphs (ancient etchings by Native American Indians) along a parched pottery-red trail, lined with equally thirsty cacti. Since I had stayed up the night before, catching up on all my work emails, J didn't wake me up till 9:00 am. We set out with J shaking his head, hardly believing that we were crazy enough to head out at this time. Aside from being a little surprised at the assaulting heat, I felt confident, determined even to show that I was well-fortified by the Hong Kong summers. Once on the trail, I was more generous with taking photos than sips of my water bottle. I wanted to save my H20, for the time when my cells actually cried out for it. I drank in the surrounding scenery instead, rattling off questions about the make up of cacti. 

So I was a little confused when my legs started missing their target rocks. My ankle buckled on narrow ledges. I was pricked by a "jumping cactus," which buried its sharp spines through my shoe into my foot. And my head felt light.

But otherwise, I felt perfectly fine. And I didn't even want any water. 

J became insistent. He kept stopping, refusing to go further until I took sips every few steps. He carefully led me down slopes with loose rocks. He hurried to head back once we saw our first petroglyphs. And he kept refilling my water bottle with his every time I turned my back. 

Later, when we were back in the car, J explained to me that I started to exhibit the symptoms of dehydration, especially the decreasing desire to drink water. Apparently, people died of dehydration in Arizona, found with all their hiking gear and full bottles of water all the time.

Hmm. I still think that J overreacted though.

That was my excuse

Jody, recently joined Model United Nations (MUN) at school, a club where kids apply their knowledge of current issues in simulated UN settings. MUN was my big college obsession, so I cannot help but hover a little bit. To help her get started, I send her links for foreign policy articles and set up weekly calls to discuss them.

Yesterday, after a spirited discussion on China and Russia's vetoes of the draft resolutions regarding the Syrian crisis -

Jody: Thanks, Sisi. I really like these calls.

Me: So, is there a particular topic that you want to cover next time? Balance of power in Asia? The differences of peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding? A little Security Council background?

Jody: Or you can just tell me how work is going.

Me: . . .

Jody: Sis, you do know that you don't need an excuse to call me right?

Me: What do you mean?

Jody: It's simple. We're sisters.

---

Wow. She's eleven and she takes charge of her relationships. I need a little more of that.

Similar height. But not for long. 

A Little LBD Magic

Fashion magazines swear by the rule that every girl needs a LBD (little black dress). I have one, but mine isn't black. The body of my dress is made of fuchsia thai silk and rimmed with a black trim. It's high collared, mid-sleeved, sewn onto me until it hits my waist and then spreads itself out into a flowing A-line. It makes me feel a little bit like Audrey Hepburn with a dash of Julie Andrews.

In the two years since I got it made, I've only worn it three times. I zipped it on the first time when I had to run a new members recognition ceremony as the president of the BYU Golden Key Honour Society. I was juggling econometrics, two jobs, and an upcoming thesis deadline that semester. So when I found out that my speech was erased from my computer in the TA office 20 minutes before the ceremony started, I just lost it. But crying took too much effort with that fitted bust. So I wiped my eyes and winged it. Later, a few people came up to me and told me that they got a little teary-eyed when I spoke. I thanked them and credited the dress.

The second time that dress made it out of my closet was the day after a very long night's fight with an ex- boyfriend. I saw him at church. He saw the dress. When I walked past him to leave the room, he pulled me in and told me that I looked nice.

We had a long talk that afternoon and got back together.

Last week, when I was exhausted, a little emotionally fried, and unreasonably nervous for the translation that I had to do for my boss at an HR conference, I pulled out that dress again. It worked. Things just went well. That day, the COO approached me and told me he thought it was time to discuss promotional opportunities. I felt like a million bucks. Well, okay, just a million yuan. But hey, at least the exchange rate from my side of the world was looking better every day.

And the HR conference I was so worried about? No problem. It was super chilled, with raunchy dances and an amateur magic show where I got to be the lovely assistant for a small moment. Oh and Chinese men with hairless legs who were dressed up in tutus for laughs. I'm telling you - it was all the dress.

The Reality of Powerpuff

This week, I was told, twice actually, that I was "too nice."

I guess it's a compliment and a constructive criticism meshed into two little words.

They want me to change. But what is the alternative supposed to look like?

I guess the Powerpuff Girls got it wrong. People don't really like "sugar and spice and everything nice." Not really. But I'm not too hot about becoming Mojo Jojo either.