A bug's life in the Yang house

Whether clad in striped pajamas or a Donald Duck costume, whether lounging on the couch or perched on the dining room table, my mom is constantly prepared for battle. For while some choose to tackle countries or social institutions, her battle is with any cockroach, mosquito, and ant foolhardy enough to set an abdomen in her path. Usually this means the pests that inhabit this cauliflower-colored, 20 sq. ft. space we call home, and when the slipper smacks and the flyswatter sounds, the rest of us scramble to stay out of the way .

Though sounds of falling furniture or slamming bathroom doors have come to signal scrimmages in this ongoing war, most of my mom's work is done stealthily, in the hours after bedtime. It is not until I have woken in the morning that I learn of the mosquito that persisted in buzzing in her ear until she smashed it with my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at 3 AM, or the cockroach my mom ended up tearing in half (armed with tissues, she assured me) to ensure it would not revive (something, she also assured me, cockroaches are known to do). She recounts these campaigns with the pride of a seasoned general recalling battles hard won, and though her accounts involve discovering caterpillars in the vegetables and laying siege to ant colonies, they impress me more than any war story ever could. While I cannot understand battle tactics or army formations, I do understand the horror of stepping over a dried orange peel and realizing that it has legs and has begun scuttling across the floor, or the disappointment of uncovering the fruit tart you've been saving for days only to find that ants have nibbled their way through it.

But for somehow to devotes so much of her free time to wrangling with creepy crawlies underneath the refrigerator, my mom also seems to feel a strange affinity for these intruders. After once discovering an entire cockroach casting balanced on an orange in our pantry, she decided to mount the display, exoskeleton and all, on our kitchen shelf. She inspected it, admired it, gloated over it, and pointed it out to visitors as though it were an art exhibit. The cockroach casting remained there for days until we coaxed her to discard it with promises of a newfangled mosquito zapper.

Swimming upstream

Because my life tends to be a template of grays and browns, I often choose to deal in the figurative rather than the literal. With idioms come mentions of things thrilling and out of the ordinary (like lions and rolling stones), and when the closest you've come to selling your soul to anyone is succumbing to Bieber Fever, it becomes necessary to take certain liberties with language.

But this time, I have manage to transcend the curse of living only in the figurative. This time, I can, at last, use an idiom and mean it literally. This time, when I write that I swam upstream, I mean that I swam upstream. In a bathing suit. And goggles.

In an attempt to make something of a summer that has been squandered on Youtube and gummy bears, I agreed to go swimming for the first time since PE class ended a year ago. My friends and I headed to a swimming pool in a middle school nearby, they armed with towels and shampoo, I, with the flab I had accumulated over nine months of college (I had forgotten shampoo and soap). After floundering our way through several laps, we decided it was time to rest, and while the others relaxed in a warm bath, I ventured into another pool of cold water that wrapped around the spa. I found to my surprise, that the water moved counterclockwise. An invisible force propelled Spongebob-clad kids and neon colored floating boards in a gigantic circle, and I was riveted. I joined their ranks, amusing myself by kneeling on the tiled floor of the pool and riding the current, like a surfer, if surfers surfed on their knees.

Ten minutes later, the thrill of gliding around on my sore kneecaps had faded, and I decided I would become a rebel. I would swim upstream.

Maneuvering my way through the stream of swimmers so that I faced clockwise, I then began the doggy paddle of my life. The current shoved against my battered body relentlessly, and every so often, someone would barrel into me, and I would be carried several feet downstream. It was as though I alone had entered a salmon run, only for humans in swim caps, and though I had once watched a documentary on the salmon run, it was not until that moment that I began to feel a brotherhood with salmon everywhere. Only they knew this feeling of futility, of struggling against this single, unyielding force.

And though my thighs ached and the lifeguard was probably screaming "SOMEONE STOP HER," I felt strangely accomplished. As though, in my desperate thrashing, I had demonstrated the courage to not only swim against a current generated by powerful jets of chlorinated water discharged into a circular pool, but to carry myself with strength and determination even among naysayers, to paddle upstream even in life. I paddled forward, certain I had done what Elizabeth Bennet would have done had she snapped on a pair of goggles.

That is, until I paddled straight into one of the kids clinging to a floating board, elbowing him into the wall so forcefully that he burst into tears.

There is a time and place for swimming upstream. Wednesday afternoons at the Guangfu Middle School swimming pool is not one of them.

All in the name of beauty

In the name of beauty, I would endure an entire afternoon in shoes two sizes too small, simply because I have always wanted to don a pair of pink and black tennis shoes. In the name of beauty, I would wear rabbit pajama bottoms even if they gave me an unbearable rash.

But I would not, in the name of beauty, stop myself from wandering to the refrigerator at least eight times a day and rummaging around for a stray popsicle or leftover sandwich. I would not save money meant for pop tarts and candies in order to purchase that shirt I've been eyeing. And not even in the name of beauty would I end my gummy bear addiction.

Thank goodness I'm no slave to beauty.

nekosama by mayelle

TV Soulmate

my sister

It is important to watch TV with someone who understands you. Someone who doesn't mind that you spent the past twenty minutes trying to guess what will happen next and so now have no idea what's going on, who appreciates the esoteric humor of uneven nostrils, and who agrees almost as fervently that the two men should just ditch the girl they're fighting over and start a life together. Someone who won't try to strangle you after you've ruined the second kissing scene in film (she also noticed the string of saliva), and who looks forward to watching 我們這一家 as much as you do.

I did not come to appreciate the value of a television soulmate until I spent an afternoon watching television with my uncle's family. The episode we happened to be watching involved scene after scene in which the characters seemed to do little but gaze fervently into one another's eyes while dramatic music swelled in the background. I suddenly remembered that my biology teacher once reminded us to watch for saccades (rapid shifting of the retina to focus on certain parts of an image) when the camera zoomed in on the eyes, and snorted in amusement at the thought of the lovers' eyes twitching uncontrollably to orchestral accompaniment. Once the snort had escaped, I regretted it. Snorting out loud while watching TV on someone else's couch had to be bad manners. Had I been watching tv with Emily, she would have been amused to learn about involuntary eye twitching, but my cousin simply glanced at me, disturbed by my insensitivity to the lovers' plight.

Our TV-watching ritual at home involves yelling constantly at the screen, finishing each other's sentences, making irrelevant observations regarding asymmetrical eyebrows-and an unnecessary number of hi-fives. "She almost tripped! She almost tripped! Did you see that? Hi-five!" I don't know why I find romantic climaxes so hilarious, or "she almost tripped" worthy of a hi-five. I don't know why I feel a compulsion to make a prediction every few minutes (I am rarely correct, but I always speak with great conviction), or feel a need to substitute professions of love with lines about cucumber sandwiches and boogers. But at least Emily feels the same way. And while none of my friends can understand my obsession with 我們這一家, Emily knows why I laugh every time 花媽 starts lecturing her kids or wages a war against the mosquitoes in the living room. Because we share so many things in our lives, Emily has also come to share my sense of humor. She knows what I am thinking when orchestra starts and the male and female lead get that look in their eye. And she knows our mom looks exactly like 花媽 when she gets starts swatting those mosquitoes.

Smart

In the first two years of your life, smart is being able to repeat "mama" and "dada" under the scrutiny of ever-doting relatives who can't seem to find anything else to play with. As you enter kindergarten, smart is no longer having potty-trained yourself, but rather becomes remembering the words to "Yankee Doodle" or the pledge of allegiance before everyone else. In high school, smart is being able memorize every single formula, fact, and term in the textbook and knowing when to regurgitate them. Perhaps by the time middle age rolls around, smart becomes knowing which vendors to haggle with in the marketplace, and being able to buy a head of cabbage at your own price.

"Smart" is actually a measure of what society expects from you at that particular stage in life. As a baby, you are expected to entertain and perform, and once you catch on, you are deemed a smart baby. As a kindergartener, you begin training to become a moral, upstanding citizen, training that involves instilling a sense of patriotism by drilling songs and chants (sometimes of questionable nature--macaroni? "with the girls be handy"?) into your mind. Once you succeed in holding onto these articles of culture and legacy, you are smart. In high school, you begin amassing the knowledge and skills that will eventually transform you into a productive member of society. Exams and homework become essential tools in showing you how to structure your thinking, and if you find the right way to fill in the blanks and crank out those essays, you are smart. Being smart simply means fulfilling someone's expectations for you, and once those standards change, you are left groping for something you thought was unchangeable.

A taste of greatness

The transition from disgusting smugness to crippling self-doubt is almost always disorienting. Unless you are already familiar with the feeling, in which case there is nothing but numb resignation. Here we go again.

The cycle usually begins with unexpected boost in confidence. Perhaps someone "liked" your Facebook status, or you stumbled across yet another article on Paris Hilton's escapades. Their generous displays of support convince you that you are worth that thumbs-up on the screen, and their flagrant stupidities somehow allow you to forgive your own faults. You pull out your victories and lovingly polish them. For a moment, you are inconquerable. You are certain you will write a national bestseller, save the children, and change the world, all before the age of 21.

Of course, this lasts fleetingly. A self-image built on external sources has limited warranty, and you are inevitably reminded that you are merely mortal. That you cannot spell "occasionally" without using spellcheck, that you find basic math challenging, and that you are not a child prodigy. (It doesn't help that there are child prodigies out there.)Your newly acquired optimism and confidence crumble like the cheap wafers you find at supermarkets, the kind that flake all over your couch even though the packaging reads "crumb-free." Even the simplest tasks begin to seem like insurmountable obstacles, and you wonder how you could have possibly imagined accomplishing anything more complicated than brushing your teeth. Everything you write, everything you draw, everything you think seems worthless. No matter how desperately you flounder, you cannot cling to that energy that bubbled inside you only a moment ago, an almost irrepressible feeling that made you want to go out into the world and do good for mankind. Now you just want to rummage through the refrigerator and each whatever you happen to find. Even you are surprised by how much you despise yourself at that very moment, now that the effects of self-delusion have worn off. The only book you will ever write is an address book, and because you have tasted greatness, you are all the more bitter for it.

The Dragon's Hoard

There is something inexplicably comforting about knowing that there is a bag of candy waiting for you in the refrigerator, right behind the jar of peanut butter and yesterday's leftovers.

The summer after sixth grade, my Sunday school teacher handed me a parting gift, a paper bag. In it was the most colorful, most varied assortment of candy I had ever seen. There were gummy bears, chocolate bars, raspberry-flavored candy canes, jelly beans. There was even one of those gummy ropes with rainbow-colored nerds embedded in them. I understood immediately that this bag was something to be cherished, something to be preserved and savored slowly, colorful package by colorful package. Candy was meant to be admired and gloated over, not gobbled down at once. Determined to protect my hoard, I hid the bag in the furthest corner of the refrigerator, and over the next few months, though I peeked every so often, never touched the lollipops, the jelly beans, and certainly not the nerd rope. I congratulated myself on preserving this undiminished supply of sweets, and guarded it as jealously. My uneaten candy somehow made me superior to those who had none, and I was sure my candy starved parents were waiting for the chance to make off with a gummy bear or two.While I eventually did unwrap some of my sugary store, I made sure to leave most of it untouched. It was my greatest fear that I would one day crave a Hershey's bar and realize that the paper bag was empty.

The paper bag was far from empty when I finally took it out from behind the assorted bottles and boxes that had accumulated in the refrigerator just before we moved. Just as I had shaken out the jumbled contents of my drawers to pack into cartons, I eagerly emptied my treasures onto the dining room table. Only then did I realize the consequences of my hoarding. My treasures had been polluted. Most of the candy was no longer edible--some candies had frozen into tasteless lumps and somehow merged into one misshapen mass, others had absorbed the scents of raw fish and meat and were no longer fruit-flavored. The nerd rope was gone.

Thoughts on Hemingway

It becomes easy, after reading Hemingway, to say to yourself, "Well, if I lived in Paris, I could write my own moveable feast too. If I lived in Paris, and knew people like Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot by names like Scott and Major Eliot, I could write anything." Hemingway makes it easy because he writes with a frankness that can be mistaken for simplicity. To be able to create such an illusion is a mark of the mastery of his craft.

There is nothing simple about the sentence, "I found that many of the people I wrote about had very strong appetites and a great taste and desire for food..." Or "There was only the choice of streets to take you back fastest to where you worked." And while the directness with which he lists whose paintings he likes and what people he doesn't like reminds me somewhat of a child telling you which candies he prefers, Hemingway's unflinching observations of the people he encounters reveal an startling acuteness. Hemingway's short stories have often disappointed me, mostly because there seems to be a sense of dryness, a detachment from the characters in his stories. But his reflections on the people in his life, or his on own experiences with writing seem to be accrued with an intimate understanding that intrigues me. He puts things into words that inexplicably make sense, though I couldn't tell you what words themselves mean. What does he mean when he says that Ernest Walsh was "clearly marked for death as a character is marked for death in a motion pictures," or writes of Fitzgerald's mouth,"The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more"? Yet, Hemingway captures their charms and eccentricities-Fitzgerald's childishness, Ezra Pound as a mother hen, Wyndham Lewis as "the Measuring Worm."

Hemingway was lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, but he also knew how to glean material from the world around him. (He also had writing skills exceptional enough to win him a Nobel.) And while Hemingway's memoirs are both awe-inspiring and intimidating, it is also slightly comforting to think that there will always something to write about, whether you are in Paris in the 1920s or in modern-day Hsinchu, as long as you look in the right places.

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

Lunules and Tittles

In case you were wondering about how to refer to the crescent-shaped body part you discovered while looking in the mirror (from Merriam-Webster's "Words For Things You Didn't Even Know Had Names")

glabella : the smooth prominence of the forehead between the eyebrows

tittle : the dot over i or j

lunule : a crescent-shaped body part or marking (such as the whitish mark at the base of a fingernail)

muntin : a strip separating panes of glass in a window sash

fourchette : the strip or shaped piece used for the sides of the fingers of a glove

aglet : the tag covering the ends of a lace or point – e.g., the reinforcement at the end of a shoelace

ferrule : the protective point or knob on the far end of an umbrella

Watermelons

I consider my mom an expert when it comes to shopping for vegetables and fruits. She knows instinctively which tomatoes are sweetest, which mushrooms are fresh, and even which peas to pick. Over the course of countless trips to the marketplace, I have managed to collect some tips--tips that concern everything from the ripeness of wax apples and mangoes to the benefits of yellow kiwis . Papayas should be long rather than wide (those wider in girth tend to be hollow), and heads of cabbage should be springy rather than solid to ensure flavor and juiciness. Yet, such tidbits of knowledge are just that--tidbits, and this infinitely useful art form never ceases to bewilder me.

As it bewilders my dad. He is not so accomplished in the arts of grocery shopping--his area of expertise lies in physics, and in explaining things like gravity and rainbows in unnecessarily complex terms. But lately, he's begun to dabble in this other field of science, and he's been improving at a startling rate. My dad is now solely responsible for buying the guavas in our refrigerator. Not to mention the fact that he's also gained a considerable amount of confidence in his choice of watermelons.

Over the months, my two parents have formed dangerously different views on how to pick watermelons.

According to my dad, when picking a watermelon, one must vigorously tap the melon in question, and then listen intently for several seconds afterwards, measuring the frequency of the reverberations beneath the mottled green rind. To demonstrate his theory, my dad once tapped a "good" watermelon and a "bad" watermelon. Although my dim ears could detect little difference ("slap, slap" versus "slap, slap"), my dad assured me that the first sound was much "juicier" and "sweeter." (I let it go. He might have momentarily confused his sound and taste adjectives, but he really sounded like he knew what he was doing. I also didn't want him pressing his ear against the watermelons--with unusual tenderness I might add--any longer than absolutely necessary. What if we were seen?)

So when we went to RT Mart last week and stumbled upon the crate of watermelons in the aisle beside the pineapples, it went something like this:

"Look! Watermelons!" (That was me. I tend to state the obvious.)

"Here! I'll choose one!"

My dad made his way to the crate and proceeded to tap every watermelon in sight. The rest of the family winced. What if one of the watermelons exploded without warning? What if someone we knew was lurking in an aisle nearby?

"No, no, that's not how you do it. Here's a good one." No doubt thinking the same things I did, my mom quickly brushed him aside and, summoning her magical powers, pointed to another one. Of course, my dad then began to tap that one, and the echoes apparently told him something else.

"No. This one doesn't sound sweet enough."

"That one." This time, the watermelon my mom pointed to was beneath four or five other watermelons, but such an awkward position did nothing to deter my tireless father. Cramming his hand into the tangle of melons, he finally managed to tap the target. We waited in suspense.

"All right! This one it is then!"

Thus began a five minute struggle to move the other watermelons out of the way so we could place the chosen one into our cart. Emphatic gesturing and serious discussion of logistics was involved, and I am sure the people who happened to wander past aisle nine were shocked by the aggressiveness of our attack and the number of watermelons we balanced in our arms. But what may have seemed like chaotic juggling to others was somehow comforting to me. As we wrestled and heaved, chattered and grunted, I couldn't help but smile to the melon I happened to be cradling.

After ten years' worth of squabbles over toothbrush mix-ups and whose turn it is to wash the dishes, we're still moving watermelons together.