This past weekend, I had the ultimate American Grandparents experience: two whole days filled with discussion about the good old days and what it was like to live in a country that cared for its people. Some memorable lines:
“We’re a living version of that movie Dumb and Dumber. You know what movie I’m talking about?” ”Yeah…how does Michigan fit into that?” ”Well, I don’t know if Michigan’s the dumbest, but we’re up there!”
“Detroit and Chicago had a population difference of about 3 people in its hey-day. Then something – I don’t know exactly what – went totally wrong and now look.”
“Lee Iacocca….Lee Iacocca…”
All this was fun – to a point. It was fun because I had never had nostalgia sessions with my grandparents, who only speak Chinese, don’t believe me when I say I understand them, and don’t want to remember their horror-filled-escape-from-the-communists-and-all-the-other-cultural-revolutions stories. Not to mention, I don’t have any grandfathers now, not that the one grandpa I knew had much he wanted to share.
My listening muscles got tired after a few hours of hearing so many stories about the Motor City. But here’s the best part of the trip:
We went to a pizza place in Troy for dinner Friday night. Across from our table was a typical-looking family group: three adults and two young kids, one of whom was a cute girl no older than 7 or 8 with curly blonde hair. While I was laughing at one of Grandma Mel’s stories about what it’s liking living with Grandpa nowadays, my peripheral view saw that girl pulling at the outer corners of her eyes with her index fingers, alternating left and right, up and down.
It actually took me a few moments to realize she was addressing me – because, as those who know me even a little can attest, I often forget I’m Chinese, and even more often forget that I don’t look Caucasian. So I kept laughing, both because Mel’s story was still hilarious and because it was the second time I found myself east of the Rockies, in America’s heartland, and subject to attention due to my Asian looks (first time was in Nashville, Tennessee, where the Wendy’s employee about to take my order cut me off before I could speak: “Hold on there, do you even speak English?” in the nastiest Tennessee twang I’ve ever heard).
I planned to blog about this incident as soon as I got back to Chicago, but by the time we drove through Indiana for the second time, I had forgotten all about it – until today, when I was told that I might run into some difficulty getting hired for writing and editing jobs because my last name is Chinese. Goodness, people. The first thing you see on my resume is that I graduated from Cal with a degree in English. The English department doesn’t just hand those out like MCB degrees. My first thought was, “Ugh, I never had experiences like this in Santa Barbara.” I was told not to dismiss the entire Midwest just because both incidences happened here. So I conceded that, growing up in Santa Barbara, there were a few Asian-looking people and the community was so small that you knew who they were and knew at least 80% of their extended family as well. There was no need to ask about English proficiency (when the Chinese kid graduated as high school valedictorian) or make fun of the shape of their eyes (because it didn’t matter in swimming for those socket-rocket goggles anyway).
Ultimately, I don’t care if people comment or gesture because they don’t know any better. I’m ashamed to call them my fellow countrymen, but there’s not much I can do about voluntary cultural ignorance, so I’ll just leave it alone. What bothers me is the idea that prospective employers will dismiss (or even favor) candidates based on the sound (or unknown pronunciation) of a name on a resume. Well, I can’t do much about that, either, so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed while sending out my applications and hope that the hiring managers at the places I’m hopeful about have an appreciation for cultural diversity (not that I’m bringing much in that department anyway, other than a funny-sounding name).
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After two trips to the post office, three instruction pamphlets, and one hour of going back and forth between the kitchen sink and the living room with a pitcher, our new 5-gallon aquarium has been set up! It’s hard living busy, big-city lives in a building that doesn’t allow dogs. We need our animal fix, and visiting the local PetSmart so often is just getting creepy. So Doug and I are picking out fish next week. Depending on what kinds we end up with, we’re thinking about naming them Juan Carlos and Pablo (we miss southern California), with maybe an algae eater of some kind affectionately named Poo or Happy (and we miss Berkeley, too).
An old friend from Cal (speaking of Berkeley) recently confirmed that she, too, will be a fellow resident of the City of Chicago in the near future. Needless to say, I am extremely excited. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to spend time with one another, but I doubt we’ll have any difficulty coming up with ways to have some fun. So we’re both now participants in a lovely endeavor known as the Chicago Job Hunt.
In other (albeit non-exciting) news, I got my retainers tightened (super cool orthodontist, and a free visit to boot!) and then spent the better part of an hour at Walgreens because my health insurance card neglects to list pertinent plan information. Wonderful. At least Victoria Beckham is featured in the latest issue of Allure magazine – something I wouldn’t buy, but a publication I don’t mind flipping through while the poor pharmacist is placed on hold for half an hour.
Side Note: Aside from the whole humidity/sweaty thing, walking around to get from place to place is a treat I’ve forgotten about since the good ol’ Cal days. So nice to be on one’s own schedule (usually almost late) and never stuck in non-existent pedestrian traffic jams (except for Tastes of Chicago or a Cubs game).
Also getting pretty excited about the upcoming weekend getaway to Troy, Michigan. We’re going to visit Grandpa Richard and Mel “on the lake” for a couple of days to catch up. Seems like there are lakes everywhere you look around here – kinda seems unfair since the LA basin has been operating under severe drought conditions for years. (***A parking spot just opened up across the street!!***) I was initially excited about taking the row-boat out with a good book, but it looks like it might rain (always seems to be the case around here, by the way). I might just take the boat sans book, The Notebook-style, but without the geese or Ryan Gosling (funny - I wonder if the casting director had that pun in mind when he got the role).
Random thought before I sign off this post – after watching Casablanca last night (again), I think I agree more with Harry than Sally about the ending: he wants her to leave. It reminds me a little of the ending of Castaway – when Tom Hanks’ character finally returns to find that his wife had moved on with her life, he leaves her alone and goes on with his. Not to say that any of this is necessarily easy (btw, the parking spot just got taken), but it’s ultimately a message to all good guys out there that doing the right thing may be incredibly hard and while people may always question your motives, you’ll never have to question your own judgement.
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It’s somewhat official – my website, www.abrayeh.com, is up. There isn’t much on it, but I intend to keep the updates coming, both aesthetically and informationally.
In maintaining a website, I hope to accomplish a number of things:
First, I get to experiment with web publishing as a complete amateur (looking forward to dabbling in Dreamweaver one day). There’s nothing like a blank slate to trigger some fun creativity, and I hope that my publishing stumbling blocks force me to learn new things about the web environment (I guess starting with HTML would be a good idea…). At the moment, I’ve started out with Google to make things easier on myself.
Second, it’s been difficult for me to figure out what “my story” is. Having plowed through a number of biographies and memoirs recently, I’ve been curiously troubled by the fact that my life has no apparent theme. Even my hobbies are extremely varied (origami, anyone?), and I cannot claim any sort of “expertise” on a given subject (not even fashion – shocking). It doesn’t help that so many people I interact with all have established “causes,” ranging from Save the Rainforests to Autism. Hopefully, this website will eventually tease out a concrete number of themes in my life that I can focus on and develop a more certain sense of what I’m about. My best friend in high school successfully applied to art school back in the day. The one thing I remember most about her process is that she was always asked, “What do you want to say?” I want to find my one message.
Third, I’m terrible at keeping in touch. I find too often that 3, 6, or even 12 months pass before I pick up the phone or write an email to longtime friends, and by that time it’s too hard to “catch up.” And it’s well-known that once the catching-up window has expired, it becomes exponentially difficult to “start over” as time goes on. If people don’t change alongside one another, they often change too far apart to keep a tight friendship. The site and this blog will hopefully supplement my renewed efforts to keep in touch with people I care about – or, at the very least, let them know what’s going on with me.
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It’s been roughly a month since the trek from Sunny Santa Barbara to Chot and Chumid Chicago. In short summary, here’s what’s transpired since then:
All Around The Town
Explored Chi-Town with the Chicago Plus Card, the ticket to getting lost and getting home again with a discount. And by Chi-Town I mean Michigan Avenue. Sales tax in Chicago is 10.25%, needless to say cramping my style. But style itself is to be found everywhere, so by leaving the wallet untouched, window shopping has proven to be a great form of exercise, both physically and mentally. I have called it quits with Starbucks by feeding my chai addiction courtesy of Trader Joe’s and taking up a new, open relationship with Argo Tea. Also, people-watching has inspired a strange desire to pen a few short stories…
Independence Day with a Scotsman
Fraser hosted two barbecues in a single weekend to not celebrate the United States’ successful attempt to sever governmental ties with the illustrious United Kingdom. The food was plentiful, the music was lively, and the weather was rather cooperative. Frisbees and footballs entered neighbor territory only twice, and a brief encounter with a rather large, severely unfriendly dog finally called it a day with the ol’ pigskin.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Continuing in the role of innocent bystander and witness of my brother’s Adventures in Growing Up, I successfully (but mysteriously) remained “on his side” during a rather trying episode in which my parents’ best friends were somehow “excused” from their house-sitting responsibilities and suffered from an unexpectedly truncated vacation. Still not sure if this sequence of events reflects badly on me in any way, so I intend to remain as uninvolved as possible and hope that it doesn’t. After all, I tend to assume an “avoiding” stance when confronted with conflicts involving the brother according to a recent Thomas-Kilmann analysis. Ultimately, no one was hurt (with the exception of pride), no one was incarcerated, and the house is still standing. The parents have since returned home, and I haven’t heard anything since…
The Wife vs. The Working Girl
Not exactly a living example of The Feminine Mystique, but I’m currently struggling with the job search, although not necessarily in the typical sense. Leaving Santa Barbara involved a heart-wrenching farewell to an organization I believed in, work I had fun doing, and people I loved being around. Now that I’ve been on involuntary vacation for three weeks, I’m warming up to the idea of not having to work. I have enough money saved up for six months of living, and playing house for as long as I can is undeniably tempting. The random day trips to Lincoln Park Zoo, reading book after book and magazine after magazine on a comfy chair, experimenting in cooking, watching everything on Bravo…it’s been fabulous. However, I also realize that I won’t be able to truly begin “settling in” until I have more responsibilities tying me directly to this city, so I find myself perusing the listings while hoping that my existing connections present with some irresistible opportunity. Since re-creating my last work environment will be impossible, I’m going to have to be courageous and believe that I can do something different with people I haven’t met – yet.
Obviously, I’m not up to calling Chicago “home” yet, or any time in the foreseeable future. I’m still making observations like “It doesn’t rain every week at home.” “We don’t need air conditioning at home.” “I’ve never had to pay to go to the beach at home…and this isn’t even a beach.” Doug’s getting annoyed because I keep referring to the apartment as “his” place, but to be totally honest, I’m not doing it on purpose. There are so many things I could gripe about in this blog entry (how USPS doesn’t deliver any packages, the lack of parking, the weather, the bugs, how it doesn’t get dark at night for all the street lights and signs, feeling claustrophobic because there are always so many people around, and on and on….) but it all comes down to a general feeling of displacement and unfamiliarity that I trust with dissipate with time – perhaps lots of time. (Does anyone else here feel like people are always looking at you? Do they know I’m new? Is there something on my face? Am I just being paranoid?)
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