It’s almost time for Kollaboration again, so here’s a look back on the winner last year:

See more performances here.

Things have been very different for each generation of my family, especially on the marriage front.  I thought it’d be interesting to outline how it has changed from thoroughly Chinese and traditional to (eventually) entirely American and modern.  I’m counting from my great-grandparents’ generation through to my future children’s (and possibly even my grandchildren’s).  I guess five-six generations is what it takes to make the ultimate transition in terms of how the family will progress.

Starting off with my great-grandparents back in Communist China in the early years of last century, marriage was something that your elders decided.  Romantic love wasn’t really a familiar concept and whether you liked it or not, your future spouse was chosen for you by your parents.  In a way, being match-made was easier, since you didn’t have to find someone for yourself.  Plus, with the wisdom of their years, parents would generally match you up pretty well according to personality and wealth.  Think eHarmony, except substitute wealth for education in that case.

So one day your parents would strike a deal with his or her parents and a fortuitous date would be set.  Nothing with 4s and preferably with 8s.  You’d probably get really curious and nervous leading up to the wedding, wondering what your partner would be like, look like, act like.  Then the day would come and you would first lay eyes on this mysterious person you were destined to spend the rest of your life with.  After all the ceremonious duties were done, you’d spend your first night together, getting to know each other.  Over the years you would grow to love each other, or at least tolerate each other.  And you would propagate and continue the cycle for your children too.

Then came my grandparents’ generation, where things were starting to get a little less traditional.  Though your parents still chose your spouse, the two of you were allowed to meet before getting married and get to know each other a little.  Call it a supervised courtship of sorts.  As your parents did, you learn to love each other and build a life together.  By the time your offspring grow of age, rules have gotten lax and you let your children decide from a number of suitors you present to them.  With each, they get to know each other and court a bit before deciding if they like each other enough to commit their lives to each other.  The pressure of making the right choice started to become an issue, with this generation having the power to decide their own fates (within certain choices presented to them).  Now the concept of romantic love began to spread as young couples tried to figure out if they could love this person for the remainder of their years.

For my parents in particular, my maternal grandmother heard of my dad through the wife of a professor at the local university, which is where my parents both went to school.  My maternal grandfather was also a professor at the school and his professor buddy had my dad as a student.  Through the women talking, my grandmother learned that this young man was the professor’s star student and first in his class.  My parents were introduced to each other and my grandfather approved without ever meeting the man.  All he had to know was that he was a hard worker and an excellent student.  My grandmother, on the other hand, wanted to meet and get to know this potential suitor.  As the legend goes, she sat him down for an interview (probably mostly asking about academics and his professional future) and liked him as well.  My mom decided that of the guys she’d been introduced to, she liked this one the most, and so they were married.  Or something like that.

(More on my parents’ (and my) story in this future post.  Look for it in the following days.)

As for my generation, we’d moved to the US when I was young and I was brought up in a very Asian-American household.  I’d say my split was probably 60% Chinese, 40% American in my younger years, and now it has transitioned to 70% American, 30% Chinese.  It gives you a rough estimate anyway.  So for me, choosing a future spouse is mostly up to me, though my mom has certainly tried to introduce me to the sons of her friends and former classmates.  I get to pick him, but I still seek my parents’ approval and blessing.  If they don’t like him, I don’t know if I could go through with it.  Thankfully, they seemed to have liked Panda plenty at their first meeting.  :)  Also, at this point, love is very much an issue and the real thing driving my motivation.  Whereas before people learned to love, now I am looking for love.  Completely different priorities!

I anticipate that my children’s generation will do whatever they want without much, if any, say from me.  They’ll probably go chasing after their own fantasies and desires with little regard for my wishes.  But then again, I’d probably let them do their own thing and not try to interfere.  As for the generation after that, well, who knows how the world will be!  Maybe having a family will be so overrated that they chose not to procreate.  It certainly seems like more and more people I know are choosing to delay a family or throw that concept out entirely.  What’s important to us has shifted beyond recognition and I’m sure my great-grandparents would be utterly confused at the state of the world today.

And so, in five generations we went from no choice to complete choice.  In six we can go to no children, no seventh generation!  Yikes!  But hey, perhaps family values will make a comeback and the opposite will happen.  You never know.

I’m sure any of you who have looked carefully at a Chinese face have noticed that our eyes are shaped vastly differently from our Caucasian counterparts.  We have these crazy eyelids that kind of fold into themselves from the eyelash area when we open our eyes, whereas Caucasians have a crease at the top of their eyelid where the skin folds in.  Sometimes we’ll get this crease in the middle of our eyelid, toward the bottom and our eyes will start to fold in from there.  Well, in Chinese culture, it is considered attractive to have that look, which is called “double eyelids” because now it looks like there are two parts, separated by the flap.

I naturally do not have double eyelids, merely single ones, but as a child, if I rubbed my eyes a lot, sometimes I could get a temporary crease.  When I went back to China after high school, I took some glamor shots at a studio, where they taped little clear crescents onto my eyelids to simulate the look.  It was fascinating to me that they would do that and I’ve always wondered if it really does look better.  It certainly gives my eyes a little more dimension and now eyeliner applied along the top layer of lashes wouldn’t get buried in the depths of my eye when I opened them.  It makes for more “Western” eyes, which, perhaps, is the point?  It feels weird though, to have this crease in my eye, with skin folding up around it and sometimes I wonder if it’s one of those things like a displaced joint that needs a little boost to get back into place.  There’s certainly a kind of pressure there and opening my eyes larger makes that feeling even more pronounced.

Sometime while I was in Singapore (and I didn’t notice at all), I somehow developed a double eyelid.  That’s right, just one.  So now my eyes are uneven (much like everything else in my body) and I wonder if one eye looks bigger because of this incongruency.  It’s kind of cool and it has been pretty permanent, but I wonder how long this will last.  Will the other eye change too?  Will this one go back?  Or am I stuck with one single eyelid and one double eyelid?  Since I have no idea how I got the first one to begin with, I have no idea how to make my other eyelid like that, or undo this one.  I guess it’s fun though, to observe the differences side by side and feel the differences when I open my eyes.

photo credit: europa.eu

I’ve been going through another binge period of TED video-watching and many of the performances I saw were dedicated to that particular person’s mother.  It reminded me of this crazy phenomenon where so much of the population admire and adore their mothers.  It’s really amazing because mothers (and fathers and grandparents) are one of the most often-lauded “groups” in society.  There’s a certain mystical nature about the influence of a mother and it strikes me as a curious thing.  After all, all mothers were just women before that, and little girls before that.  At what point do they suddenly become wise and caring and protective and loving and inspirational?  I wonder if the hormonal changes during pregnancy suddenly mature a lot of them and prepare them for a life as a role model.  What happens to make women transform like that?  I don’t get it.  Do I just have to wait my turn to feel the magical effects?  Many really rise to the occasion and do a great job in their role.

Take my mother for example.  She’s smart, she’s capable, she’s supportive, she’s patient, she’s skillful; she’s a handyman, she’s a chef, she’s a gardener, she’s a bargain hunter, she’s a problem solver, she’s a nurse, she’s an engineer, she’s a planner, she’s a housekeeper, she’s a financier, she’s a daughter, she’s a wife, she’s an aunt, she’s a mother.  Honestly, a lot of the things she does baffles me and I hope I don’t need so many skills when it’s my turn.  She can fix almost anything in the house, she can scrimp on money to leave extra for me to spend, she can cook and clean and handle our finances, all the while never running out of energy.  I think about cooking sometimes and it makes me tired.  I think about the laundry stacking up and leave for just one more day.  I see the clothes lying everywhere and consider them part of my personal “style.”  Meanwhile, she’s bustling around vacuuming the whole house, hanging up my clothes, taking care of her plants, investing in stocks, teaching herself programming, auditing classes at the local community college, and working on a few projects for her job.

photo credit: parent24.com

There’s also truly something to be said for a motherly touch.  It instantly soothes me, between a combination of the warmth, gentleness, and pure psychology of knowing it’s my mother caressing my forehead when I’m ill.  I remember a Vick’s VapoRub commercial that advertised the effectiveness of their solution combined with a mother’s hands to soothe a sick child in bed.  It really struck me because it’s completely true!  A little bit of cooling and heating ointment, plus the soft touch of my mother and I would feel so much better!  There’s a tenderness in that sort of treatment that helps as well, melting away all my worries.  I know I’m safe and cared for.  It beats any other option for recovering from illnesses!

It’s funny to hear how mothers are, as I’m sure many of yours are too – protective, concerned, crazy, embarrassing… they’ve got spunk, they’ve got personality, and they’ve got style that none can match.  Some prance around doing silly things, some make you do silly things, but in the end, you can’t help but love them.  I especially love cross-cultural mothers who have had to make the best of their culture in a new culture.  If you’ve never heard of My Mom is a FOB, you should go check it out.  It’s a collaborative blog that chronicles some of the strange, but ultimately endearing things that Asian-American mothers do.  (There’s also a counterpart for fathers.)  And so has been my experience, with way too much advice and quite a few grammatically confusing e-mails.  But hey, it’s hard to consolidate East and West into some sort of cohesive cultural mold!

Really though, what woman do you admire more than your mother?  (And perhaps your parents’ mothers?)

I’ve noticed that I tend to make more Asian type noises when I’m in this part of the world.  I’ve always done that whenever I’m speaking Chinese and occasionally with Asian friends when I’m speaking English, but now I find I’m doing it far more.  It’s strange because I’m usually either in one mindset or another, but now there’s this mixing of speaking English but making more Chinese noises.  This ranges from saying “wah” instead of “whoa,” “aiyah” instead of “ugh,” and “ah?!” instead of “huh?!”  They’re subtle differences, but I notice them and I wonder if other people do too.  Isn’t it interesting how different the sounds we make are?  I guess that means that every language also has it own distinctive onomatopoeias to reflect the way they perceive the sounds that are made.

Additionally, I’ve been thinking in a British accent lately, which makes no sense to me since I’ve always sucked at pronouncing things the way they do.  Of course, in my mind it all comes out right, but that still doesn’t explain why that happened to begin with.  Perhaps I’m getting confused by all the British and Australian accents I’ve been surrounded by while traveling.  It seems like everyone but Americans are out and about exploring the world, and now I sound like them too, in my mind.  I’ve always switched between thinking in Chinese and English, but I must say this is the first time my English has taken on a new accent.  o.O

I seem to be very confused internally.

So many years in uniform.

Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered, Did I really do that? Well, I have.  It’s the strangest thing, to have this sort of disconnect with my old life.  Perhaps it’s because things have changed so drastically with each stage and each move that it seems odd that I lived through that.  Whatever the case, sometimes I’ll be recounting things in my life and then I catch myself and marvel that that was really me, that was really my experience.  There are times when I am talking about my life, but it almost feels like I am telling the story of someone else’s life.  I think it also has to do with a feeling of being so fortunate – was I so lucky to actually be able to have done that?  In fact I was, but it’s hard to believe at times.

ATVing in Hawaii after the Australia trip!

One of the main things I feel detached from these days is my childhood homes.  I’ll talk about how I was born in China and then lived in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Missouri, New York, and finally, California.  Then I’ll stop and think, how strange it was that I used to have half an acre of backyard to play with in Kansas.  Or that I went back to China for a year just for some cultural immersion.  With so many experiences that are so far-ranging, I guess it’s no wonder I feel like it was surreal at times.  Not many people get to go to Australia for two weeks or attend six boot camps or claim links to so many different places.  At times I marvel at the places I’ve had the chance to go to – it’s truly a blessing, though I’ll probably never have enough.  Travel is one of those things that doesn’t lose its charm as easily.  After all, there are just too many countries, too many cities, too many villages to go to!

My first prom dress was for this pageant.

Boot camps can be fun too!

Another aspect are the things I’ve been able to do.  They range from how I’ve kept a daily journal for thirteen years to working on a movie to visiting China annually in the summer.  Sometimes these things just seem too good to be true – did I really have that dedication?  Did I really rub elbows with Tom Waits?  Did my parents really spend that much money on me each year?  Even a basic part of my identity leaves me grateful – was I really fortunate enough that my parents were able to leave China?  It’s hard to live up to parents who are cream of the crop in intellect, but it’s a blessing what I’ve gotten because of that.  I can hardly imagine the disaster I’d be if I had grown up in China, being too masculine for my own good and not wanting to get stuck in a boring desk job.  Everything I’ve gotten to experience because of my American nationality is something that I may take for granted normally, but definitely not something I’ll ever forget was a gift to me from my hardworking parents.

At the same time, some of my own accomplishments amaze me too.  How did I balance 10 classes and two sports on three teams?  I was running around from 4 AM to 10 PM during my peak in high school, and then I had to do homework too.  Just thinking about that tires me out now, but I felt so good doing it then.  Similarly, the strenuous activities I did at the various boot camps I opted to attend make me wonder where all that energy came from (perhaps the MREs).  How were we able to march for so many miles and sleep so little?  How were we able to stay awake during classroom lectures (well, with the help of standing)?  When I stop to think of that it really takes to do that, it’s quite cool.

I'm on camera!

I’m sure everyone has something in their lives that if they stopped to really evaluate, they’d be proud of saying they did.  From my peers at UCLA who are attending a world class university to fellow ex-cadets who underwent the same boot camps, everyone makes themself worth something, somehow.  I think it doesn’t hurt to stop and consider how astonishing some of the things we’ve done are.  Maybe I’m just looking at everything through rosy glasses now, but I love thinking about all the cool things I’ve done.  Even the negative things I’ve experienced leave me in awe, wondering if I was really able to overcome that.  So to everyone who has done something extraordinary, whether it’s pay your way through college or excel at an art or sport, here’s to you!  May we all celebrate our accomplishments and learn to appreciate ourselves better.

I was recently found on Facebook by an old middle school friend, which then prompted quite a discovery journey for me.  She and I only have two friends in common since she’s new to FB, so I went to check out those profiles too.  One of them was my best friend from those St. Louis days, who I haven’t heard from in years.  I stopped by her profile to find that she’s engaged!  I still remember the days when her parents were still so overprotective that they wouldn’t let her sleep over at a friend’s house until she was about 12 or 13 (my house was her first sleepover, and probably only because we were a Chinese family too).

She got engaged on Halloween - how cool! photo credit: her FB

From there, I was checking out a bunch of my other friends’ profiles and so many of them are engaged, married, or are starting families!  It’s really amazing to remember them the way I do as young teenagers and look to see what their lives are like now.  We’ve all grown up so much.  I guess it’s such a shocker for me because I never watched them grow up and my last memory of these people was in middle school, when we were still in our awkward phases.  It’s wonderful to be able to see where they are in their lives now, from planning a wedding to starting their careers.

I think the 20s are the most exciting years, what with many educational, personal, and professional milestones concentrated in that decade of our lives.  It made me think about how each of us is reaching a different stage in our lives – from those who are still finding their way to those who are settling down.  I think marriage and children are still more rare in my peers right now, but in another decade, that landscape will likely change drastically, with the opposite true.  It’s fascinating for me to see the type of people each of ends up with and the lifestyle that we fall into.

Ah, the rings... I much prefer silver to gold. photo credit: katargonza.com

I know for sure that if I had not moved to California, my life would be immensely different.  One thing I’ve noticed was that my Asian friends from years past (which totals to a mere three) have all settled with Caucasian boyfriends/fiances.  I always thought I’d end up with one too, and more than likely would have if I hadn’t moved to SoCal, where the density of Asians is much, much higher.  Our surroundings play such a huge role in how our lives turn out, from the things we encounter to the people we’re exposed to.  I wonder if the environment in the Midwest and out East had anything to do with their decisions to get married at this age.  Maybe it’s just my sentiment, but I’d rather get my career underway first and that seems to be the vibe on the West Coast.

Nonetheless, I am intrigued to see who is married, who is engaged, who has a kid, who is still dating, and who is still single.  I don’t know why I find it so interesting, but I love going to people’s profiles to see their relationship status.  In fact, this prompted me to start going through all my friends to see what they have listed.  Other than the few who are married or engaged, I will likely forget the rest, but it’s still fun to explore.  It’s also a nice update, since some have changed their names and initially I was quite confused by their new surname.  I’ve never really thought about it, but when I did, I realized that I am far too attached to my name to just change it like that.  Panda’s ok with that (yay), so I can rest assured that I didn’t buy my domain for nothing.    It’s still weird to think that the kids will have a different last name though.  I hate hypenated names though, so I’d rather they take his than try to do some awkward combo (unless we’re allowed to do some hybrid spelling?  o.O).

So, where are all your friends at?  Where you thought they’d be?

I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and found that I’ve lost a bit of my sense of self (and self worth).  We were discussing my next steps when I go back to LA and I found that I’m rather confused.  There are a lot of things I want to do with my life and a lot of things I don’t want to do.  Between all of those desires, it’s hard to choose what exactly to do now.  Part of this had to do with my lofty goals of starting my own environmental consulting firm (or perhaps eco-consulting is more accurate).  There’s so much I need to do and learn and know to get that off the ground and sometimes I lose sight of how to do that.  However, talking to her has helped me get hope again, and find a better focus for my job hunting to come.

Reconnect with the lion within.

I’d slowly been losing faith in myself, finding that maybe I don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, a business owner, a CEO.  Though that’s always been my dream since I started thinking of what path to take my life on after high school, the work I’ve been doing has shown me that what I’m good at is not leader of a company material.  Instead, I’m far better playing second fiddle, doing all the background work and behind the scenes stuff to keep the front lines moving.  I tend to be strong with research, but that’s not what will take me to where I want to go.  There are a lot of areas I’m weak in, like interacting with people and managing things holistically.  Seeing this has slowly ground away at my self-confidence and blind faith in myself to make it somehow.

Additionally, I lost a lot of faith in myself since coming to Singapore because of the many obstacles I’ve been struggling with.  From the cultural barriers to more personal issues that have cropped up, each time it left me wondering what I’m doing wrong, what I’ve been doing wrong, and why in the world there are so many misunderstandings.  After a lengthy conversation with Typea, I began to see so many misunderstandings stemming from my Western upbringing.  There are so many small things that you would never really know about because it’s usually not worth mentioning.  But add them all up and you’ve got a very inaccurate interpretation of who you are and why you do what you do.  Singapore is still an Eastern culture after all, despite all the Western influence they may have.

It’s kind of funny, because now I’m starting to see Singapore much like myself.  It’s neither here nor there, with English as a primary language, but Asian cultures still dominating the way of life.  Similarly with me, I’m neither Chinese nor American, but Chinese-American and as anyone who has studied complex systems can attest, the sum of parts is greater than the whole.  What that means for me is that I’m not simply Chinese mixed with an American; the interaction of the two produces an entirely new result altogether.  Yet to those who have not grown up knowing what that is like, that’s a hard thing to understand, so they just assume I’m both put together.  Unfortunately, that means they expect me to know a lot more of the nuances of claiming either identity than I actually do.

Still foreign.

What I have trouble accepting is that I can’t do anything about it.  One of the quirky things about Asian culture is that nearly everything is suppressed.  People aren’t straightforward, but rather expect you to insinuate what they want and what you should do.  Not being armed with the right tools to figure this out, I am left to flounder and come up with completely bizarre conclusions (in their eyes, at least).  It’s frustrating because I just need pointers and guidance (albeit a lot) to help me along.  Also, because I look Asian, there is less leeway or forgiveness for many transgressions because it is assumed I should know.  If I didn’t look so, I think I’d either get written off as a foreigner or people would be more patient with the mistakes I made.  I always had that luxury as a child though, because whenever I went back to China to visit, I was with my relatives who knew how different I was, so they didn’t expect me to be like them.

So, my ego has taken a hard blow and it doesn’t help that no matter how hard I try, it doesn’t make things better.  I’ve been told quite a few times to just let it go – what is, is.  But to me, that’s like giving up.  Here I am in a foreign culture – how could I not try to adapt?  The difference is sometimes too great though, so to some extent I want to stop trying so hard.  I spend all that time and effort to avoid stepping on people’s toes or giving them the wrong impression only to do so anyway.  Is there still a point?  I’ve got one more month here and two of those weeks will be spent as a tourist going around to other countries.  There certainly isn’t time to fix things as I’d like, but should I keep trying anyway?

I’ve always been the type of person who will bend over backwards to try to anticipate what people want and do it.  At the expense of my personal enjoyment, I’ll let them have their way and enjoy something before I do.  I’m constantly proactively thinking about what I can do to not get in their way and to be more considerate to them in ways they may not notice, but would make a difference.  I’ve certainly not been completely successful and still step on people’s toes despite that foresight, but I still try, even if it means I’m always evaluating how other people might think.  It’s a tiring process and I’ve been jaded a few times, but I still tend to act that way.

More recently my strong-willed side has come out more and though I spend no less time thinking about how people would react to my actions, I care less.  After all, I can’t always live my life by everyone else’s rules and time and time again I’ve suppressed a lot to please someone else.  I’m worn out from years of giving, giving, giving.  Giving my time, my money, my energy, my resources.  I’ve got stepped on, walked over, and even trampled a few times that way when I allowed too much and didn’t stand up for myself.  So nowadays, I spend some time justifying my actions when they aren’t so people-pleasing.

Now this is how I'd like to work if I had to be at a desk. photo credit: expresspros.com

Take work for example.  My working style is erratic and varied, with plenty of distractions throughout the day.  I’m not the type of person to sit down and focus for hours on end, complete a task early, then call it a day.  Instead I meander through, sometimes chatting with others, sometimes checking e-mails or social networking sites, sometimes reading articles for personal enjoyment and enrichment.  All of this goes towards what I consider an important aspect of all our lives – personal improvement.

Often people get so caught up in their work that they don’t take the time to make themselves a better person, a better worker, a better friend.  I tend to focus on the gaining new knowledge aspect of it, but sometimes I’ll turn to my interpersonal skills as well.  This translates to a confusing picture for anyone looking over my shoulder, who will find that I have thirty tabs open at any given time and switch between them quite frequently.  To some, it may look like I’m slacking, but I’m too tired to try to make everyone understand.

So, I’ve been justifying it to myself: I still work quite efficiently overall and there are periods of intense focus (usually when nobody else is around).  The bosses know the product of my time and though we’ve talked about how I let my fear of failure hold me back, all feedback on the quality of my work has been positive.  My work is internal development, which is always ongoing and has no real deadline to meet.  Of course, I set incremental ones, but really I could be working until the cows come home and still have the bulk of work to do.  So, it’s not like I can just finish a project and be done for the day.  Put these together and that’s how I explain to myself why I don’t need to work like the others do.  It’s not my style.

photo credit: art.com

I almost don’t care what the others may think of what they see.  I used to worry that people would think I napped too much, but that’s just another way that my body copes with work.  I’ve come to the point where if I need to rest, I will, and for as long as my body tells me to.  Whereas before I may have tried to hide that fact by sneaking to a corner or setting an alarm so I didn’t sleep for extended periods, now I am accepting my personal work style.  It’s extremely unconventional and I’m lucky that this environment is very flexible and forgiving.

I guess that’s why I’m so adamant about not getting a typical desk job.  I know I’d fall asleep in the middle of the day.  I know I’d get antsy and want to move around or just surf around a bit online.  For me, it’s still a part of my creative and learning processes, so it’s not exactly time wasted.  I don’t know how I could stand to show up to work at 9 every day, sit and focus, take a lunch break, then complete the day and leave.  It’s such a stale routine.

Though I try a bit less to please everyone now (which, of course, is impossible, since not everyone will know all the factors and will often misinterpret things), I am still often concerned with it.  However, I’ve learned to not always change my behavior to fit what I think others want.  In fact, it turns out that some of the things that I have been doing that I thought were considerate was being seen as strange behavior.  Suddenly being independent was being seen as being aloof and being conservative with resources was being strangely stingy.  I guess I’m screwed no matter what.

Asian on the outside, Asian-American through and through.

It only struck me here that I am so strongly Westernized and even though Singapore has huge Western influences, it is still very much an Asian society at heart.  The things that I do that I never had a problem with before are suddenly all problematic.  There are many layers to the misunderstandings that have occured, but much of it stems from the cultural divide.  Just like I am deceptively Asian with my standard Mandarin accent, Singaporeans are deceptively Western with their lifestyles, but deep down, it’s a completely different story.

I guess the hardest thing is that people expect me to know all the nuances of Asian culture because I look the part.  They hear past my American accent and only see my Chinese face and assume that I know what it’s like in an Asian culture.  But in fact, I left the country when I was only three and have since spent twenty years in the states.  It wasn’t even until I moved to California nearly seven years ago that I met so many other Asians.  The bulk of my childhood was spent among white people (the Midwest doesn’t offer much diversity).

I wonder about all the things that I must have done as a child visiting in China (that I didn’t even realize were different) that my relatives just wrote off as a trait of being “the American” one.

Well, it’s that time again and everyone at UCLA is done with finals and have been spending the past few days graduating.  Today marks the final day of all the ceremonies, from commencements to departmental graduations to the ethnic-based ones.  I’ve been getting e-mails on the AKPsi listserv of people talking about taking pictures together, attending their respective ceremonies, and otherwise celebrating the Class of 2009′s achievement.  It’s really a festive time of year, as everyone has summer on their sights and just this one last hurdle before induction into the world of alumnihood.  For just a moment, any worries about the future can be set aside as we focus on the here and now and rejoice in the completion of a degree.

Still striking.

All this hubbub reminds me of my own graduation last year, with the drama of the strikers, the excitement of the surrealness, and the hectic whirlwind surrounding finals and graduating.  The summer of 2008′s kickoff will always be a bittersweet one for me, since some of my relatives were able to fly in from China to attend, but the strike drove away Bill Clinton and Ariana Huffington as commencement speakers.  I still feel it would have been better for Clinton to come and talk to us about the strike, rather than avoid the issue completely and leave us all so bitter over that outcome.  Overall, it was still a good time, to enter Pauley Pavilion and see so many of my peers filling the floor as their loved ones crowded the arena.  The Deans of each segment of the College of Letters and Science introduced us with flair and I got to be represented in both the Life Sciences as well as the Social Sciences.

Phil Wang at the APIG.

The following day I had both my Psychology and Economics departmental graduations, which my relatives split up to attend, with half coming for the morning Psych one and the others coming for the afternoon Econ one.  It was a crazy day that started way too early and had me going far into the night as I ran around to get to places on time and find my family amongst the crowd.  I still had some packing to do, which I needed to complete by the next day so I could go to the Asian/Pacific-Islander Graduation (APIG) in the afternoon and head back immediately thereafter to celebrate Father’s Day.

The APIG ceremony was truly special, since it was much smaller and was held outside in Dickson Court.  I gathered together with a bunch of my fraternity brothers and we sat quite close to the front.  Far East Movement and Wong Fu were there, with Far East performing customized lyrics and Phil Wang speaking to us about how the Asian-American community needs to unite.  We had a local Asian-American leader as a guest speaker, but of course I’ve forgotten his name.  All of the graduates even got t-shirts commemorating the event, with our names on the back!  It was great that one of my fraternity brothers was actually organizing the event – I was so proud!  Now he’s graduating as well.  Amazing how a year can pass just like that.