Monday, December 5, 2011


Flash Blog--Déjà vu

I saw myself in front of the university gate a few days ago. I was walking by the North Gate of the Homewood campus one evening, and in front of the marble slab that our school’s name was engraved on was a family of three. The parents looked on proudly as their teenage daughter posed for a picture next to the marble sign. The daughter looked like she was between twelve and fifteen years old. She held a cross-body messenger bag and she tugged on the handle in a shy pose while her dad took photos. Her dad finished taking one and as she ran towards them, her dad shook his head and asked her to go back and pose for another shot.

Several years ago, my parents would take twenty-hour plane rides just to spend two or three days to help me settle in at a summer school program. And every time before they left, they would ask me to stand by the school’s slab (whether it be Johns Hopkins, Harvard or Columbia of university) to take a picture—just like this young girl I passed by. My parents would ask me to re-take the photo several times because my dad’s finger covered the lens or they accidentally pushed the video-taping function instead—just like this family. Once I entered college, my summers no longer involved my parents ‘sending me off.” I ride planes alone, I drag my suitcases up dorm rooms by myself, and I no longer take photos of myself to remember the day an adventure started.

The last time my parents ever “sent me off,” was the last day of freshman orientation. They were done stocking my dorm room with instant noodles, toilet paper rolls and over-the-counter medicine. There were no more parents events scheduled and it was time for them to fly back to Hong Kong. However, there’s something different about this trip. We did not have a photo to remember the very day my college life started.

Right before they drove off, they did not ask me to stand by the slab to take a picture. They could not ask me and I could not offer because we were all too busy holding back tears. 

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Testing..

Debuting this literary blog took up much more time that I thought it would. I got sucked into things like what color the time stamp should be, where the "archive" or "about me" section should go on the page, the width of the posts, etc. I had to get all those small details right--it's an OCD of sorts. Usually, a practical voice in my head will tell me I've just wasted two hours fumbling with Blogger features. Then a slight sense of guilt will slip in and will force me to get to work. But not today--not after the last week of undergraduate classes in the year of 2011. 
Instead, I'd say this is a Saturday morning well-spent. Next stop: two hours of grocery-shopping. 

(Stone-Cold) Facts

student (not always studious) artistic (can't call myself an artist) scientific (not a scientist, yet) health conscious (not always healthy) pigheaded (but not a pig) daughter, sister, girlfriend, cousin and friend (at all times)