Fickle Hysteria

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Subject:	On being a CBC (or in my case, CRC)
Time:	8:20 pm.

It's always fun for me to see what other Canadian born (or raised) Chinese say about being an CBC (or CRC.) It's probably the thing I miss the most about my church. It was a Chinese Christian church so I had this community of second generation Chinese immigrants who understand trying to live in two worlds and trying to make sense of a dual identity, and who could personally share my pride in my Chinese heritage and sympathize with my feeling of exile from it.

I don't read Chinese and to this day, it's my biggest regret in life. I like to blame my mom for putting me in Mandarin classes when I so badly wanted to go into a Cantonese one (I was such a TVB wuxia whore as a child amd I'm convinced that if mom had put me into Cantonese classes like I asked, I wouldn't have quit Chinese school after grade nine) but I think that growing up in Canada would have been too big a barrier to overcome. It's the way my brain works. I've been trying to learn French forever, taking it up to university, and I still can't make heads or tails out of that language.

Three hours of Chinese school a week wasn't going to have me reading Jin Yong, no matter how much effort I put into it. (And I did put in effort. I got a trophy almost every year for my high marks. Still can't read the stupid language.)

It's a loss, and it's something I mourn. I wish I could read the language of my parents and my ancestors. It's sad looking into the mirror and seeing the emphatic black eyebrows and the yellow-reddish Asian face and knowing that face can't make sense out of the Chinese characters that everyone before her did. There is such a feeling of failure. My appearance gives the impression that I have certain abilities, and unfortunately I don't. Seriously, every time a non-Asian comes up to me and says, "You probably know what this says. Can you please translate it to me", I flinch inwardly out of shame and dread (dread because I'm going to disappoint them.)

And I'm lucky. I speak conversationally fluent Teochew. I can communicate with older aunts and grannies who speak Teochew. I can communicate fluently with my mom, even if a lot of the time I'm fumbling around for the right word and have on occasion stamped my foot and yelled, "Forgot I said anything!" because I have no idea how to say it in Teochew. I can still have conversations with my parents in their language. I know of CBCs and CRCs who can't and they only communicate in English, usually broken on their parent's part. I'm lucky in that sense.

But not being able to read Chinese does haunt me, and I do feel incomplete and incompetent because of it, like I'm not whole and functionally properly.

Mind you, not all CBCs feel this way. My younger sister has no regrets or feeling of loss with her lack of Chinese literacy. For that matter, she doesn't feel any connection to her Chinese roots. She very little love or affection towards her ethnic heritage. Being Chinese means very little to her, so her angst level is low. It's different with everyone.

There's a part of me that wonders if it's because I was born in Asia, and that's why I'm more sensitive to my lack of Chinese competencies. I don't remember those two years in Cambodia, but maybe they're somewhere deep within my brain and there's still a part of me that tied to it. Except that's Cambodia and it's my Chinese heritage I miss, so ???? (Mind you, if I could speak Khmer like my parents can, that would be AWESOME.) Maybe it's the Teochew-Cambodia self I'm missing?

I really like what that guy with the cool Ravenclaw scarf said in the youtube video, that identifying with "Chinese" isn't enough. It's too broad a term, and he identified specifically with Hong Kong. I know someone of Malaysian Chinese descent, whose outlook is totally different from Mainland Mandariners. I know I feel weird telling people I'm Chinese because they automatically assume I'm from China and it's like, no, Cambodian Teochew. It's still Chinese, it's just not what most people think of Chinese.

The good news is I've recently come to grips with my loss of language proficiencies and such. There's still a loss and a big regret and I still do mourn that I will never read Jin Yong in his original language, but I'm all right with being "not a true Chinese." My family moved away from Asia. Changes and loss were inevitable. At least no one profited off our loss

(Which is why I dislike International adoption and why I hope no one ever uses the argument, "well, second generation immigrants also lose their homeland and language" to an International Adoptee mourning over his or her loss. The loss sucks, even to a second genner still with her family. For the adoptee, their loss was someone else's gain - adoption agencies who made money off it and the adoptive parents who got a child out of it - and that is So. Very. Wrong.)

It's kind of like what I tell my mother when she tells my sister and I that she hopes we marry Chinese - if not, Asian - people: Lady, you're in Canada. There's not exactly a big pool of Chinese people for us to chose from. If you wanted us to have Chinese husband, you should have bloody stayed in Asia. You're in a country where Chinese are not the predominant race. There's a freaking good chance that the partners your daughters become involved with are not going to be Chinese. Live with it.

I did.

I'm still trying to figure it all out, the balance of living in two worlds, of treading two culture, of mourning my Chinese "purity" but also wanting to embrace my "Canadianness" without guilt. It's complicated and ever changing, like culture itself (yes, another post on that coming soon, with another youtube video!) but right now, at this moment, I feel oddly at peace with everything. In the end, it's about what's right for me, and I'll just stick with that for now.

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Old X Kusanagi/Yuzuriha fanfic
Time:	9:26 pm.

Disclaimer: The Dragons are the creation and property of CLAMP
Category / Summary : Angst / Kusanagi is tried at court

( Guilty )

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	"Pool got my daughter pregnant"
Time:	9:15 pm.
Mood:	incredulous.

The mother is adamant that her daughter didn't meet any boys while she was there...

Lady, I'm positive your daughter did.

ETA This is totally unrelated, but I suddenly got this ficbunny for a contest that's due in less than 48 hours and I'm freaking out. I'm not sure if I'm freaking out more about the fact that it's due in less than 48 and there's no way I'm going to finish it in time or if I'm freaking out because it's been two years since my last fic (which I'm rather proud of) and I'm just excited with glee that there's some writing left in me.

I miss writing. I miss a lot of things from the Dream of Sakura days, and churning out those X fics at what seems now like an unbelievable pace and volume is definitely one of them.

Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	High Dosage Squee
Time:	9:34 pm.
Mood:	gleeful.

I've been having way too much with The Fullmetal Alchemist Anonymous Kinkmeme. Delighted beyond measure that there's quite a bit of (really hot) Ed/Ling fic. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who slashes the wowzahs out of them. Hoo boy, do I ever slash them. I haven't been this into an m/m pairing since the CLAMP days. They're just so fun/snarky/teamworky together, plus I could so see Ed yelling at Ling, "that's not an appropriate place to put your hands when we're in public!"

I have this weird thing with Mustang and Hawkeye's relationship, in that I think it's an unhealthy and borderline creepy in the manga, but I can't stop reading fanfics about them. I'm hoping for more critical fanfics on why their relationship isn't necessarily a good one, like Sandwich Talk. While I'm not anti-RoyAi and I do love reading RoyAi fics, they have so much baggage and this weird codependency/accomplice thing that doesn't bode well for a relationship between them. The only way they could really work out for me is to throw Havoc in with them (warning: links lead to stories that rated NC-17) because throwing Havoc into anything makes it all better *is shallow*

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	It better be a good one! HUGS
Time:	8:49 am.

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	Weekend
Time:	7:24 pm.
Mood:	tired.
Music:	anywhere under the moon - dala.

This picture sums up my weekend:

Kiefer Sutherland`s face mask that Enkya and I got to see at the Ripley`s Believe or Not Wax Museum near Niagara Falls. Particularly appropriate since we finished season 7 of 24 the day before :D Bring on season 8, where Jack Bauer becomes a Muslim Grandpa. I did enjoy this season a lot. Not as much as season 5 (I LOVE SEASON FIVE), but I liked a lot of the new characters, especially Larry. LARRY!

( Spoilery comments on the return of various24 characters )

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAI!
Time:	8:58 am.

Feels like this year is going to be the start of something new and exciting for you ^___^ I hope it all works and you have a fantastic time *hugs*

( I tend to get wrapped up in fictional worlds too often that I often forget how incredible real life can be. A couple of cool CBC radio podcasts )

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	Remember how I said I normally don't like women with codependency issues?
Time:	9:32 pm.

Well, apparently I lied

( Rambling formerly not-Lj-Cut post about Riza Hawkeye )

ETA: I mucked it up. The line, "She's not devoted to him and his mission. She's devoted to him" should actually say something like, "She's not only devoted to him and his mission. She can't live without him." ~~Not an earth shattering difference, but an important one, I believe, that gives needed weight to the dependency argument.~~

ETA 2 w/ strike-out:AUGH! STOP CONTINUING TO SCREW UP YOUR OWN ARGUMENTS, YOU IDIOT! It makes a big difference. Not being able to survive without someone is on different plane than being totally devoted to him. Not that it makes my love for her any less fervent. Hawkeye kick ass, codependency or not. I'm even now thinking it's making her character more interesting because it's yet another thing like her role in Ishval that seems contradictory yet it doesn't jar. She's a fascinating, grey "good guy" and Frith, I really need to stop messing up this post on my favorite character.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Before I forget
Time:	8:23 pm.

Squidgeesushi sounds adorable on the phone. I love her accent! <3

Comments: Add Your Own.

Time:

6:43 pm.

Back from a very nice weekend spent at Essjayvee's and my brother's place. My sister-in-law and the baby were back from their overseas trip and seeing my little niece again was euphoric. I got to talk to Squidgeesushi on the phone, which was excellent! (Can't wait to see you!) And I got to see Arnold Schwarzenegger punch a camel, so it was a good weekend all around.

I did my grocceries when I got home, took out the garbage, prepared dinner for the week, cleaned up my room, and did a load of laundry. Go me. Now to reward myself by spending the rest of the evening doing something I've been dying to do since Friday -- read a crapload of FMA smut fics.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	You've seen this before, but not with the buttons
Time:	9:12 pm.
Mood:	tired.
Music:	Bratja -FMA OST.

Baby booties for one of my coworkers whose wife is pregnant. The buttons were made from hairclips. I simply tored the animal off the clip part and sewed them to the booties.

( Here's a close-up of the buttons )

Oh yeah, before I forget, I finally got a Ravelry account. If anyone is on Ravelry, I'm ficklehysteria. I haven't done anything on the account yet. Hopefully next week. Around the same time I better be filling out my passpart applications (I got the applications at least) and looking for a driving school and finishing off knitting projects.

I've been waking up before my alarm clock goes off all week and have been surprisingly alert and focused at work. I've even been making and taking breakfasts and lunches to work (and saving a remarkable amount of money) and going to go the gym during my lunch hour. Guess the energy and productivity could only last so long though. I crashed when I got home today and I'm still tired. Though the tiredness could be from the fact that I've been up at 6AM all week (I am NOT kidding) and my body is finally getting age-appropriate with bedtimes and waking-up times. I'm usually wide awake in the evenings and find it impossible to fall asleep before midnight. It's actually a good thing that I'm tired at this time. May this mean I'm wide awake again at 6 in the morning.

Yay becoming an old lady *waves flags*

Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	FMA Fanfic rec: Travelling Incognito by Roseveare
Time:	8:21 pm.
Mood:	impressed.
Music:	Tell Sally - Danny Michel.

If you're going into Fullmetal Alchemist withdrawal like I've been since I read the last published chapter (been iffy with how things have been going lately -- more about that after I sort out how I feel about certain developments) go read Travelling Incognito.

Hell, you don't even have to be in FMA withdrawal mode. There's no spoilers for anything past the first few manga volumes (if even that). It takes one of the earlier storylines at the start of the series of Ed and Al using their alchemy to help people and looks at it in a different way without changing anything of the formula. And still manages to say so much about the characters and the situation. It's extremely well-done, and captures the feeling of its manga, right down to the action sequences. Go read it.

(BTW, I also like Roseveare's more crackier fics too. "Theatre of the Absurd" is still one of my all-time favorite Angel fics.)

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Time:	9:06 pm.
Mood:	gay.
Music:	最愛 - Valerie Chow.

( Three (female) reasons why Fullmetal Alchemist rocks my socks off )

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	I'm going to be a jerk and use the various different spelling of the characters' name interchangably
Time:	9:02 pm.

Greeling: What's with you and red?
Ed: It's a badass tough guy color. Gets the blood going.

WAH! I LOVE YOU ED!

Hey, anyone else slashing Greeling (who shall henceforth be called Ling) and Ed? Because I TOTALLY AM! *selfthwap* I mean -- *selfthwaps herself harder* ULTIMATE!BROMANCE FTW!

( You have to love them in a scene like this one )

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	Just in case anything happens to her
Time:	5:01 pm.
Mood:	enthralled.

I want to take this chance to declare my love to Olivia Mira Armstrong while she's kicking butt left right front and centre.

OH MY GOD, BUT DO YOU ROCK WOMAN.

She alone is enough reason for why the manga pwns the anime. Actually she alone is enough reason for why the Fullmetal Alchemist manga pwns all the mangas I've read before this and all the anime I've seen. I am so in love with her.

Comments: Add Your Own.

Subject:	People who say you feel no pain in dreams are LYING
Time:	8:55 am.

Ever have a dream that's a continuation of dream you had before? I forgot about this dream I had weeks ago where I ate something, went to the hospital to check out my stomach, was told everything was fine, and then I went home and proceeded to eat a tabletop full of books and paper.

Well last night I had PART 2 of that dream. It went something like this:

*I go to the hospital
*For some reason I forgot I went to get my stomach checked
*The doctors look at me and say, "oh, her fluids are black" and then I hear, "she ate ___ tonnes of books and papers."
*I end up on an operating table with an incision on my right side. I'm glad the dream was kind enough to skip the act of the doctor cutting an incision in me because I found out later on they didn't bother using any anesthestics. I know this for a fact because they then proceeded to remove a piece of paper out me like this:

The purple square is the piece of paper they removed. It was intact and unwrinkled and they tugged it out the same way you tug out a piece of paper that's coming out of the printer but jams halfway. I felt every millimetre that the paper was being removed from my body.

And as they tugged it out of my body, the sharp sides of the paper, you know the ones that causes paper cuts if you run your finger along it at a certain angle, rubbed against both ends of my incision, and HOLY HELL THAT SMARTED. I lost my ability to breathe properly, all my nerves were jolting, and then I woke up because it was too much for me. Even after I woke up nerves at my right side were still flinching and I was breathing heavily the way you do after you lose your breath when something painful is inflicted on you. I put my hand on where the incision would have been told myself that if there is a part 3 of this dream, they better use anesthetics this time. Or better yet, it starts off with the doctor saying, "Ah, you're awake now. Everything went well. We got all the books and paper out of you and you're all sewn up."

Gah.

Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	Just finished volume 15
Time:	1:24 am.

That hurt.

Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	GLUTTONY! I WUVS YOU!
Time:	9:06 pm.

Good lord, I would never have thought that I would like Gluttony after the anime. I found him DISGUSTING. Every time he was on screen I wanted to throw up. He gave me the creeps, that freak.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading the FMA mangas and I started finding the guy kind of cute, and then eventually super adorable. I want to give him a hug so badly. He's basically an overgrown baby who doesn't know better. AWWWWWW! *GLOMPS* And his reaction when ( SPOILERS FOR VOLUME 10!! ) made me want to pick him and comfort him and kiss it all better. He looked so sad and lost there. It broke my heart.

I've lost count how many time I'd turn the page and start screaming/squealing, "GLUTTONY! YOU'RE TOO CUTE!" and pound the manga against the wall. Then I'd daydream of meeting Gluttony in person and crushing him to me until his bones break and biting huge chunks out of him and pounding him into a big sweet squishy puddle. He'd probably start salivating at the prospect of ripping me to bits and getting his lips all greasy with my mush and fluids while he chews on me, because, you know, he's Gluttony and eating people is almost his entire repertoire. We'd probably get into some big snarl of teeth and fingers ripping at each other.

But in the end, if it comes to his insatiable need to consume me versus my overwhelming need to release the energy that cute objects produces in me,

I'd put my money on me.

(Yes, I'm aware there are far nastier pictures of him looking actually fearsome in the manga that would have been more appropriate to use, but that one made me want to punch his face and then pound his head against the pavement so I decided to go with it. Just be glad I couldn't, for spoilers reason, use ( this one )

Good night!

ETA: I am so glad my baby niece is coming back from Korea this week. Over four months of cute deprivation is taking its toll on me *twitchy eyes*

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

Subject:	I foresee much capslocking in the future as I continue to go through the FMA mangas
Time:	8:20 pm.

My reaction to the first half of Volume 5:

EEK! WINRY! YOU ROCK ON EVERY SINGLE LEVEL POSSIBLE! *HEARTS**HEARTS**HEARTS*

I especially loved her on page 91. It reminded me a little of Huang Rong in Legend of the Condor Heroes when she finally met the Southern Emperor. Such a human reaction after having experience a extraordinary crisis. Aw <3

My reaction to the second half of the Volume 5:

IZUMI

@#$U&Y%&@#!!!

@#$U&Y%&@#!!!

@#$U&Y%&@#!!!

There are no words to describe how much I love that woman. I have to speak in expletive representative symbols. I love how she meets the terror of her students, but there are things she gets so well, and then there are things she doesn't.

Volume 5 of FMA kicked butt. I love this series to death (yes I did see the anime. It actually makes reading the manga more enjoyable because I know what's going to happen or what the backstory is so I'm reading extra meaning in all the dialogue and events.)

I borrowed 6 more volumes of the manga today from the public library. I went to pick it up branch near my workplace, which also doubles as a high school library since it's located inside a high school. As I approached the circulation desk, the clerk told me to check my books out at the school side. I was confused because I always checked my books out at the circulation desk facing the exit. I turned around and started to head off to the desk at the school's entrance, thinking that maybe they were updating their computer there so all circulation was done at the other desk, when it hit me. I twirled around and put my books on the counter and said loudly, "I'm not a student here."

"YOU'RE NOT!?"

Heh, I rather enjoyed the shock on her face. She told me I would appreciate my youthful looks in 30 years when gravity takes its course :D

Honestly, I don't look like a teenager. I do look younger than I am, but no way could I pass as a high school student. I think it was the mangas in my hands that made me look like one, but I'll take the compliment.

Comments: Add Your Own.