cindy's world

I skipped jujitsu today because my wrist and knee aren’t feeling up to par and I don’t want to risk further injury, and because my family has relatives visiting from Taiwan and their tour group put them in a local hotel tonight. So I had dinner w/many relatives I hadn’t seen since November, 1998.

I was a bit pensive going to dinner and took care to look presentable because Asian relatives like to make physical observations and commentary. “Your head’s unproportionately big for your body.” “You Americans must like the unruly hair look. We proper Chinese prefer the neatly groomed student look.” And because I threw my clear contacts away and am wearing out my gray ones before I throw these away, “I’ve noticed you American-grown Chinese kids like to pretend you’re white.” But it turned out that no one made any such commentary at me. Instead, my mother said to her cousin (in front of his wife and kids and everyone else) “You’re a lot fatter now than the last time I saw you.” “That’s rude,” I told her under my breath. She looked surprised.

I remember that cousin of my mom’s fondly. When I was 4 or 5, he let me run ahead of him while he followed me on his bike, then when I got to the finish line first, he panted and said to me how impressed he was that I beat him. It was years before I realized he had let me win. For years I claimed to be able to outrun a bicycle, and everyone thought I was a conceited liar. (And by “years,” I mean until I almost finished junior high.) Then, on 11-13-98, I stayed with this same cousin’s family (him, his wife plus 2 young sons) in their apartment when vacationing with my mother in Taiwan. That evening’s journal entry reads:

As the kids were being annoying & violent to each other yesterday morning, their dad suddenly said, “Hey, I just thought of a great game!” That stopped them from fighting over their stupid water balloons. “Wanna play?” he asked them. Of course they wanted to play. He said, “You two run downstairs & stand under the balcony outside.” (We’re on the 7th floor.) “…I’ll throw the water balloons down and you try to catch them.” I had to bite my tongue, but the kids’ mom said to her sons, “You think you’ll catch them? Don’t let Daddy trick you!” So they didn’t go for it.

Later, I told my mom about how my coworkers think I’m getting too skinny and how I think I could still stand to lose a few more pounds, and she readily agreed, without any malice aforethought, said “I think so, too. You should lose at least another 15 lbs.”

I just got eyelid surgery and had a deep Caucasian crease put in! Just kidding. Altho I am wearing my gray contacts for kicks.

I was waiting for the elevator this morning when my (Irish) judge walked down the hallway toward me to catch the elevator also. He said, “What do you weigh now? You’re wasting away!” I said, “There’s no such thing!” Some time ago another coworker (Mexican) said I was getting TOO thin. I gave the same response. “There’s no such thing!”

In Asian circles I am still considered chubby, and I personally feel I have more fat to lose because I figure anything that jiggles (except for my chest, obviously) can afford to come off. This is interesting. I have been at the point before where non-Asians consider me normal and Asians consider me chunky, which disparity I had just tossed aside as non-Asian acquaintances trying to be polite. But I’ve never been considered too thin for one side and still chubby for the other before. I’m not sure what to do. Even the women in jujitsu who lift me to prep for a throw pause and say, “Oh my gosh, you’re so light!”

Maybe this is why I get hit on by Hispanics, blacks and whites and never Asians, and also why I’m so bruised up from jujitsu.

Vacuuming – check.
Laundry – check.
Change winter flannel sheets to summer sateen sheets – check.
Remove Dodo’s winter coat with comb – check.
Wash dishes – check.
Shower – check.
Next: going to visit the ‘rents and washing my car at their house. Probably having dinner there, too. (My car is once again at that stage where it has not only changed color, but also changed shape from the generous layer of dust and road grime covering.)

I watched Jim Carrey’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” this afternoon on HBO. The movie triggered some things in me that started the waterworks again. What I will always remember:
Me, on the second stair, suddenly collapsing internally as my world folded inward. Him, leaving his anger, resentment, hurt on the sofa where he was sitting and rushing over to me, catching me in his arms in a protective hug. As I sobbed incoherent things and my mind started shutting down in a spiraling loss of everything except for the pain, he pulled me up, forced me to stand against him, still surrounding me with his arms and chest, covered my hair with kisses as he said over and over, “No, no, come back, I’m not going to lose you to this. Come back, come out of it.” It was all very What Dreams May Come.
*sniffle*

Where the hell do people get off contacting MY closest friends to bitch about me, (admittedly to me) hoping and expecting that my friends will take his side and come to me to tell me off?! What the HELL is that? My ex has NO rapport with my friend, he’s met her twice and both times, very briefly, and he thinks he can write her long-ass emails out of nowhere manipulating events, as if she weren’t there with me thru all the crap and KNEW step-by-step what was going on with me, and win her over to his side so that she would tell me off for him?! He’s got to be delusional AND insane! And what a huge freaking ego! Well, what can I expect from someone who has no loyalties of his own? I am just…incredulous, and incredibly offended.
Update 11:32pm:
Called him to say if he’s got beef with me, to bring it to me, not to my friends because does he realize how retarded he looks bitching about me to my friends who KNEW everything that he’d done AS they were being done to me? He said he does have beef with me but doesn’t want to deal with it. But he wants to throw it in my friend’s lap and have me deal with it indirectly? How obscenely chickenshit is this?! Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve cussed like this.

Just thought I’d post some photos of my friend Lily’s wedding that I went to on June 11, 2005 and blogged about that weekend. (See 6-12-05 entry, 2 Burgers; But Hold the Patties, Part II.) She’s such a beautiful bride. I wanted to post photos as a supplement on that entry, but no one goes back to read an old entry, so here we go.
Kind of the quintessential bride and groom look. Congrats to the good doctors.

Before I logged onto the computer, I spent more than half an hour wiping the mini-blinds in my upstairs restroom. It was an amazingly pain-in-the-arse job, but I really wanted each blade clean. So I see my horoscope after I log on and it says for today:

Today’s Forecast
Taking care of your prized possessions will be foremost on your mind now. That goes for your car, your clothes and gifts you’ve received. Just don’t forget about the people in your life who may also feel ‘broken.’

In Detail
You’ll end up washing, waxing and buffing out your vehicle in the driveway now — and doing it for a good long time, too. You may also spend hours replacing buttons or meticulously wielding Krazy Glue to repair a broken ceramic wing or tail. No matter what it is, you’ll put all your attention into it. Just be sure to save a teeny bit of time for the one who loves you — who might also feel the need for a bit of your attention.

All right — who needs me?

Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how easy it all feels. Even earlier today I was convinced I am a much better, happier person without a relationship or a man even on the horizon, because men add so much stress that I can’t control or alleviate to my life. And I looked forward to a low-key Friday night by myself. Even hanging out at Outback after work, I wanted to leave the people I was there with and go home so that I can lounge on my couch and finally watch some of those DVDs I haven’t yet unwrapped, while laundry’s going so that I feel productive.
And then there is the reality of now. I am disappointed at the things I miss, and how much I miss them. I want to call, but what is it I can say? “Hi, I wanted to connect with you, but I’m still in the same place and haven’t changed my mind.” What’s the point? I guess it’s progress that I can resist calling at all.
The radio was playing Dr. Dre’s “Nothin’ But A G Thang” on my drive home. It put me back in high school, and I instantly took on the persona of teenager Cindy. What a difference. My biggest misery back then was, “How come this boy I like doesn’t like me back?” I had no idea what a blessing in disguise unrequited love is back then. What can possibly go wrong if one person isn’t interested in the other? I can’t get cheated on, I can’t be lied to, I can’t be disappointed, I can’t be betrayed.
Let’s see if I can get my act together tonight and complete the plan: vacuum, laundry, and yoga.

Something is wrong. I should not be this injured after 6 sessions of jujitsu, just a week and a half into the class. At first I thought it was just me. Today I had to skip my lunch workout because my entire right side is tweaked. Right knee joint is painful, pain on the right side of my lower back, right wrist is bruised on the outside and the joint hurts, tightness on the right side of my neck. My left arm has bruising all the way from the wrist to mid-forearm, and a bruise on the inside of the left wrist. I have bruising, abrasion burns and scratches on the inside of my left shoulder from other students grabbing me too hard through the gi. All of these were from yesterday. And yesterday I was wearing the full garb so it’s not like they just went thru a t-shirt.
I went to lunch with my blackbelt coworker. We talked about my class (he’d taught martial arts before, too), and he wanted to see me demonstrate some of the blocks, hits and sweeps. “Okay, line it up,” he said.
My response was, “Huh?”
“You don’t even know how to line up? Just show me your fighting stance.”
I was lost. Didn’t know how far apart to put my feet, where my toes were to be pointing, where to place my hands, how high up, what angle, closed-fist or open-palm. My coworker was horrified. He did a tutorial for me and explained the basics, and throughout the demos I’d say, “Oh, I saw them do that.” But I didn’t know how to do it myself, when to apply it, why I would apply it. I didn’t even know what part of my hand/arm was supposed to make contact for a block. I explained we just went thru the motions by imitating someone else showing us the motion, and the instructor would walk around correcting us and kinda fine-tuning. “Hands farther out. Good. Quicker, like a snap. Good. Turn your hip more. Forward. No, forward. There.” That means nothing to a beginner! It’s not like learning to dance where the position is just for aesthetics. My coworker is scared that I’m gonna get killed because I don’t know how to do anything properly or which leg to use to sweep or why and how to manipulate the move so that I could still do a sweep if someone’s lined up with me on the opposite leg. We’re all formless masses of dough and this instructor doesn’t seem to remember how to form raw dough into a pastry, he only knows how to fine-tune, like making the edges really pretty and crispy and giving it that nice brown glaze.
My coworker told me to get out of the class now before I really injure myself. I’m not learning the basics of the techniques and I’m not being protected from someone hitting me or throwing me too hard. If I wanted to be more serious about my training, I’d have to unlearn the bad habits I pick up now from not knowing how to do it correctly from the beginning. “You can’t tell an illiterate person to just copy a sentence in calligraphy. First you have to teach them how to use a pen, and teach them the alphabet.” I should’ve picked up on this myself, the way the instructor teaches abs. It’s rather a messy teaching, so when I stepped in to lead on abs instruction, I corrected the students on proper form, ab isolation, and explained why I wanted their chin up, how high I wanted up, how they can achieve it. I’m going to talk to the instructor next week and explain this to him. He probably doesn’t even realize we’re so lost.

A friend/coworker who is a blackbelt who trained under Chuck Norris (before Chuck became a celebrity) and frequented different schools/studios to study a variety of martial arts told me today about a counter-culture of martial arts. Apparently it’s a very common thing for blackbelts to hit on and pick up on female martial arts students, and there is a market of female “blackbelt groupies.” My friend said he’s seen this in virtually all the studios he’s been in. Guys even say things like “I’m right about to get my black belt. Then I’ll be getting all these women.” And there are women in these studios who have slept with most of the blackbelts there. Ew. And here I thought that the people I’d meet in martial arts would be nice people because no one expects hot feminine women to be taking martial arts so picking up women can’t be the guys’ motivation for attending the class. Armed with this knowledge, however, I felt empowered and liberated as I drove to jujitsu. As another friend suggested, I am just gonna step back and watch the train wreck that’s about to happen between the new girl and the blackbelt.
The class was totally different for me today because of my new nonchalance. I was more easy-going, more open, and made a bunch of new friends. I think I shall go to the September convention in Arizona. In our after-class discussions today, it looks like it’s going to be a co-ed hotel room situation between me, the new girl (who I now get along with because I no longer care about the competition), an intermediate level Japanese guy named Josh (who tried to talk to me yesterday but of course my head wasn’t in it then), and another intermediate level guy named Gerardo. I had a really good time chatting and sorta hanging out w/these 2 guys today throughout class. From the bits and pieces I observed, it didn’t look like the blackbelt appreciated my new friendships. He ignored me unless he was dealing directly with me (like during grappling), and if we had to deal with each other, he’d throw liners at me like “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” At one point he touched the side of my neck with his fingertip and said, “Oh, you’ve got a pretty bad burn there.” I shrugged. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and the burn must’ve totally and completely healed itself. It was all pretty laughable.
Oh yeah. And I led the class again on abs, and was happy to see that the 3 new ab exercises I added in were strains to them. Brave class, tho. They are very gung-ho about a good strenous workout.