You Gotta Be A Diva
January 25, 2011 § 2 Comments
I’m currently taking an Editorial Writing class, which is basically teaching us to write our opinions persuasively and effectively. “Don’t be afraid to have an opinion,” my professor says. In fact, we’ll probably fail if we don’t present our opinions with enough punch and bias. Upon reflection, I find that I try to stay somewhat neutral in my blogging — wouldn’t want to offend anyone! But I won’t survive in this class with that kind of bland outlook. So as a preliminary exercise, I’m going to express my opinion on an issue that has bothered me for a few years. Of course, it’d be great if I could get people to agree with me, but because this is merely a rough editorial piece, eliciting any kind of reaction would be a boon. It’s a bit longer than the recommended length of typical editorials, but I suppose that’s because I have a lot invested in the backstory…
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Sexism is pretty deeply entrenched in the Christian church structure. We have multitudes of complementarians to thank for the lack of women in the higher strata of ministry – pastors, deacons, etc. Worship leaders also come in mostly the male variety, and as far as I know, worship leaders are the ones that write most of the worships songs used in contemporary churches.
Although they compose compelling songs, they naturally do so within a musical range that is comfortable for them to sing, and my seven years of youth group took place under male worship leaders that fit worship songs to their vocal ranges as well.
My voice is naturally lower than those of most women, putting my range somewhere between the typical ranges of males and females. As a teenager in my church congregation, I was at a loss during many songs simply because they were too high for me to sing. As the boys sang comfortably and the girls stretched their falsettos, I forced myself to learn to harmonize in order to participate. I gained an invaluable skill, but it planted a small seed that blossomed into resentment as I grew older and became more aware of the male-female imbalances in the world.
Last fall, I served as worship team leader for the Asian Christian Fellowship at Mizzou. It was my first time being a worship leader, and because I had difficulty playing either piano or guitar while leading, I could only lead vocally while the rest of the team took care of instrumentals. Thankfully, one of my friends served as the team’s mentor as well as member, and his expertise in both playing guitar and leading worship helped things run smoothly on the musical side of things.
Excited to have such a privileged position, I went through my entire 250-page songbook and transposed all the songs I knew into keys that I could sing comfortably — I knew from the beginning that most songs did not fit into my range in their original keys. I didn’t expect this to be a problem until our mentor brought it up during a practice early in the semester.
“These chords make it too low for me,” he said during a pause in the playing. “I don’t think most guys would be able to sing it.”
This happened more frequently than I would like to recall. Each time, we had to stop and come to some sort of a compromise. Either we would tweak it a little, or he would end up leading it in its original key, or we would nix the song from the set list completely.
I realize that being a leader means being a servant, and to serve my fellowship is to consider their needs. If the guys can’t sing part of the song, then it’s not very considerate of them, is it? And I might be espousing my opinion due to years of built-up bitterness, but I believe that I have a point worth arguing.
Even when I was a vocalist on my youth group’s worship team during high school, I don’t recall anybody wondering, “Is this too high for the girls to sing?” In most worship services that I’ve attended, it’s either sink or swim. The women don’t complain because they’re simply used to this treatment.
Men, on the other hand, are raised with inherent privileges that they don’t even realize. They expect small things like a worship song to be done in a way that is most beneficial to them because that’s the way it’s done. It’s no wonder that women are more successful in the corporate world when they behave like men, or that women who participate in “manly” activities [such as watching football] are glorified vastly over men who enjoy “effeminate” activities [such as knitting]. In this society, to be a woman is still to be a second-class citizen, no matter how rosy and progressive things might seem.
During today’s worship team practice, we played “In Christ Alone,” a hymn containing soaring verses that are typically way out of my range. Though I’ve retired as worship team leader, I’m still a member, as is our ever-faithful mentor. Our current leader, PN, was a soprano in choir, but even she had to transpose the song down a few keys to get it within range.
Our mentor usually played it in the key of E major. Transposing it to D was still somewhat uncomfortable for PN, so we tried it in C.
“C is too low for me,” our mentor said after going through the first verse. “I would prefer D.” He also mentioned something about “most guys.”
Blessed with an eternally good nature, PN agreed. I bit the insides of my cheeks and swallowed the protests that rose in the back of my throat.
Did you not hear that we were struggling to reach the high notes in D? Did you not hear her say that it was uncomfortable for her? Do you think that just because we could narrowly squeeze the notes out that all of the rest of the women in our fellowship will enjoy hearing and following our high-pitched melodies? And do you really think that the men will lose that much from not being able to sing a few lines when our needs as women have been overlooked for as long as I can remember?
He tries. I know he tries. But I’m outlining a larger issue here. It’s tiring to carry around this resentment, which is why I’m finally laying it out now. I don’t think anyone cares about this as much as I do, and if I have to come under fire for my opinion, then so be it. I would love to have kind thoughts and think lovingly of my brothers in Christ all the time, but in this area, it’s about time they tried putting us first.
Tiger Mother
January 15, 2011 § 1 Comment
I just finished reading Amy Chua’s “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” a hotly discussed excerpt from her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The first time reading through it was difficult. Somebody asked if it was a satire, and I wondered the same thing. It sounded like somebody was writing based off of pure stereotypes to portray Chinese mothers as ruthless tyrants.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.
This is like taking the little things Asian kids joke about to each other and publishing them as rote truth. I couldn’t even read this in one sitting because it just seemed so negative. Articles like this don’t do much to dispel the “model minority” myth. It’s not hard to see why there was major backlash against Chua after this was published; tales of no sleepovers and hours of piano practice will probably cause a visceral reaction in anybody raised in the United States, myself included.
But I read on because I really wanted to know what she had to say.
For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it’s a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what’s best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.
Western parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.
If anything, the final two paragraphs of the article are the most worthwhile to read. I don’t want to condone this kind of “extreme parenting” just as much as the next person. These lines from the Huffington Post describe me exactly:
Chua is prescribing life motivated by perfectionism — fear of failure, fear of disappointment. Not only is this a vicious form of unhappiness, but research by Carol Dweck and many others shows that kids who are not allowed to make mistakes don’t develop the resilience or grit they need later in life to overcome challenges or pick themselves up when they do fail.
So I have to say that even if Chua’s advice is not good & true, it’s at least accurate in my life.
My mother was born in the year of the tiger, and it’s something she treasures. Back when Beanie Babies were popular, we’d always have two of them displayed prominently on a bookshelf in the house: a bull for my father and a tiger for my mother. She wasn’t as extreme as the cases outlined by Chua; I was allowed to go to the occasional sleepover, and she never bothered coercing me into more than 1.5 hours of piano practice.
But I’ve also had my share of threats throughout the years, including this morning in the car, which was another lecture on the overall uselessness of my life. If my mother ever cared about my happiness, it was only from the perspective of happiness approved by her, based off of her own principles and priorities.
Ultimately, I’m not sure either the “Eastern” self-esteem-based-on-parental-approval method or the “Western” self-esteem-based-on-personal-approval method would bring true happiness to a child. People are so prone to mental and emotional changes that something as fragile as self-esteem can only be considered solid if grounded in something unchanging, like the eternal God.
In any case, I don’t hold Amy Chua’s work against her. I just hope that she doesn’t misrepresent Chinese people, and I hope she doesn’t damage her children, because they won’t always want to laugh and cuddle after hours and years of forced piano practice.
Family Trees and Wise Teeth
January 6, 2011 § 2 Comments
On Sunday night, my parents went to the airport to pick up a distant relative, who is currently a freshman at Virginia Tech. Apparently, his great-grandpa is my grandpa’s oldest brother, which makes this boy a distant nephew of mine, and it makes him my mother’s cousin. My mom said she would draw me a family tree, but she never got around to it.
His flight arrived around 11:30PM [way to be considerate of people who have work the next day…], and I made sure to leave my makeup and normal clothes on until they got home because I expressly wanted him to see how I normally look before getting my wisdom teeth removed the next day LOL. Is that vain? I just wanted to make a good impression.
They didn’t get home until 1:45AM, by which time my brother was already asleep. I padded downstairs and met a skinny boy who towered over both my parents.
“You can call him dà wēi,” my mom said.
“Do you have an English name?” I asked him.
“Mahoné,” he replied.
“…Is that a Hawaiian name?”
“It’s Icelandic.”
This boy was clearly atypical, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. At least he was a lot cuter than our last house guest. My parents set him up in the guest room and we all went to sleep.
The pre-surgery instructions directed me not to eat for six hours before surgery. I thought it would be easy, since I’m usually not hungry in the morning anyway. The instructions also prohibited makeup and nail polish, which made me laugh. I mean, I wasn’t about to make myself pretty for surgery, but how would nail polish affect anything? I typically always wear both, and I wasn’t about to remove my nail polish for no reason. What a waste.
The next morning, I woke up in a foul mood for some reason. I was hungry but couldn’t eat anything, and sat in the car hating everything about the world on the way to the oral surgeon. Mother didn’t help things. I dislike being in the car alone with her because there’s no way to escape if she starts lecturing me, and I certainly didn’t want to hear it that morning.
But it came anyway.
“Are you being serious about looking for a job? Do you understand what your choices are after graduation? What use is it if your father and I came to America if you’re going to be as poor as we were when you graduate?”
During his sermon the previous day, Pastor Alex said that on average, parents and children have 38 minutes of meaningful conversation a day. In my family, I think it’s less than 10% of that even if you combine my brother and me.
Mother was left in the waiting room as the nurses led me into the operating room. I felt nervous. I hate the thought of surgery, the thought of being cut open, the thought of drugs making me lose control of my body, everything. They fitted a tube around my nose for laughing gas, but I still felt too aware. When the IV needle pricked into the back of my hand, I closed my eyes and tried hard not to think about that one summer in China when I got pneumonia and had a needle stuck in my hand every day for two weeks.
One of the nurses fitted something onto my fingertip.
“Let me see if this will read through your nail polish,” she said. Oops. I wondered if they had nail polish remover in their office, but it turned out to be okay. Good thing I only painted two coats this time.
Eventually I lost consciousness. I vague remember the feeling of plastic instruments being shoved into my mouth, which is quite undignified if I think about it, but that’s all I can recall. I awakened with gauze in the far corners of my mouth and a numb bottom lip. We went home and I removed the semi-bloody gauze, sipped on a bit of chicken rice soup [while avoiding the chicken & rice], took my three pills [one for swelling, one for pain, and one for infections], put more gauze in and went to bed.
That night, my aunt’s family came over for dinner to welcome Mahone to town. They made dumplings — I’ve never wanted to eat dumplings so badly in my life [well except maybe when I watched Kung Fu Panda]. Instead, I sat next to Mahone and silently sulked over some bland egg pudding my aunt kindly made for me. She also kept asking me questions about my jaw, which I had difficulty answering due to the swelling. Moral of the story: Don’t try to get me to talk to you if I can barely open my mouth wide enough to stick a spoon in.
I noticed that Mahone wore one tiny earring in each earlobe. Interesting. During dinner, someone asked about his hair, which seemed an artificial brown color.
“Actually, I have naturally brown hair,” he replied. “My mom says that my father had light hair when he was young too, and it turned darker as he got older.”
We all looked at him. I mean, the kid wasn’t that old, but 19 isn’t that young either, to have that kind of condition still lingering about.
“My hair is usually lighter than this, but I dyed it a darker shade of brown,” he continued. What an interesting fellow.
After finishing my meager portion, I took my meds and went back to my room. It was too depressing to watch other people eat what I couldn’t have. I eventually started feeling nauseated and dizzy, so I curled up in bed again and watched Kuragehime, which was an absolutely delightful anime.
I woke up around 9PM to take my medicine, went back to sleep, and awakened again around midnight still feeling nauseated. I really didn’t want to eat, but I had to take my pills, so I went downstairs to reluctantly scoop a bowl of ice cream. It was Oberweis Black Cherry, but I couldn’t even eat the cherry chunks.
Surprisingly, Mahone joined me in the kitchen. He was by the sink making himself hot water when I walked out of the bathroom.
“Thirsty?” I asked.
“Just not feeling well.”
“Mm…likewise.”
I had brought my laptop downstairs with me.
“What are you watching?” he asked.
“Just…some Japanese cartoons,” I replied.
“Cool.” He took his cup of water and a small bowl of mixed nuts and bid me adieu.
I turned my attention back to my bowl. Ice cream is one of those foods [like chocolate cake and PB&J sandwiches] that I can eat forever and ever, so it was weird having to force myself to ingest it this time. The texture was smooth [once I scraped off all the freezer burns], but the enjoyment simply wasn’t there. I wasn’t even allowed to brush my teeth that day, so I just stumbled back into bed afterward.
The past few days have pretty much followed the same pattern. Wake up, nibble on something liquidy, sleep for a few hours, repeat. I didn’t shower for two days because really, there was no point. The good part is that my mom is actually taking care of me, unlike that one time I stayed home sick in elementary school and she made me clean out my closet, and nobody questions my strange eating or sleeping schedule.
On the other hand, I still have a squarely defined jawline, I can only open my already-small mouth partway, attempting to chew anything is exhausting, and I eat so slowly that my food gets cold before I’m even half done with it. Also, I’ve contributed even less to society than usual. I wonder when this parasitic lifestyle will get old? Life would be much easier if my house had a better Internet connection, too.
This is me as of yesterday [feel free to check out the “About Me” page for what I normally look like]:
And so I continue to sit on the couch while watching anime. Hopefully I will be well enough by tomorrow to pick my dad up from the airport!
It’s Been A Great Year
January 2, 2011 § Leave a comment
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 58 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 214 posts. There were 117 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 75mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was June 30th with 176 views. The most popular post that day was I Don’t Have A Heart..
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, WordPress Dashboard, Google Reader, wordpress.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for ninja assassin, taylor lautner, rain ninja assassin, ninja, and ninja assassin rain.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
I Don’t Have A Heart. November 2009
5 comments
Why Is The Moon Lonely? May 2009
Elevator Etiquette March 2009
The Greatest Practical Joke, They Said March 2009
3 comments
The First Step Is Admitting… October 2009
5 comments
auradis 