Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: weird

I’m weird–and damn proud of it, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how the Democrats are harping on the Republicans being weird. At first, I thought it was a good move (and I still do), but then it started annoying me. As I mentioned, I have been a weirdo all my life. I have never fit into any group, really, and I got comfortable being on the fringes of society. I embraced ‘weird’ as a descriptor and wore it like a badge of pride.

There was a time when I was defiant about it. Being weird was my cloak and my shield against the brutality of the world. Once I embraced it, I didn’t feel as defensive about it. I was rather proud of being different and staying true to myself.

Side note: On the inside. On the outside, I was constantly adapting and molding myself to societal norms. I am really good at social interactions beacuse I’ve spent so much time making myself that way. It was not an option,o and I have learned it to a fault. I am not displeased about it, to be honest, because it has made my interactions with the gen pub easier in general. I can talk about weather until the cows come home without even breaking a sweat.

In addition, I can read other people’s facial cues and body language to a ridiculous degree. Sometimes, too much so. I jump the gun and freak people out when I react to how they are going to act, even before they do or say anything.

This has been somethnig I’ve been doing all my life–constantly adapting to how others react to me. That’s not unusual in and of itself. Everybody does it to some extent. In my case, though, I felt like I started on square -100. I liked to joke that I was raised by wolves, but it was not far from the truth. My parents had no interest in American culture. Well, more to the point, my father didn’t so my mother was forced not to because of course she had to do whatever my father wanted.

Back to being weird. If I were to shuck off all my masks and just be myself, I would be labeled a huge weirdo. Again, I’m fine with that–on a theoretical level. Meaning, I’m fine with being a weirdo, but I’m not so sure I’m fine with being viewed as a weirdo. Or rather, I don’t want to stick out all the time. I was talking with A about color. She likes to wear bright pastels; I like to wear black. All black, all the time. Right before the pandemic hit, I decided I wanted to branch out a bit. I bought a deep red tunic top with flowers on it, and I planned on buying more colorful clothes. Then the pandemic hit, and I lost all interest in buying clothes. Plus, black goes with everything. There is no matching needed, really.

I would like to try again, I think. There are other colors I like. Deep red; burnt orange; earth brown; racing car green. Deep earth tones, in other words. When I was talking to A about it, I said that I was hiding in the background and wearing color would make me noticed. She said, “Is it always bad to be noticed?” I thought about it, and she was right. It’s not, but I have spent so much of my life trying to hide and not be noticed. I was so used to being not seen even when I was seen tha I didn’t want to be seen–if that makes sense.


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I’m weird–and damn proud of it

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We have to talk about this weird thing. Or rather, I have to talk about it because it’s still bugging me. I get why the Dems have used it as a pejorative for Trump and Vance, but they are more creepy (and infuriating) than weird. At least the weird that was tossed at me consistently throughout my life.

Being Taiwanese in a white-ass suburb of Minnesota in the 80s? Weird.

Being a woman at all in the early 90s? Weird.

Being a woman who did not like ‘womanly’ things in the 90s? VERY weird.

Being bisexual in the early 90s? Weird.

Getting a tattoo in the early 90s? Weird.

Those were all when I was in my early twenties. Add to that not wanting to have children (BIG WEIRD) and not wanting to get married (also weird), then also not wanting to be in a monogamous long-term relationship.

Even the one area in which I’m in a ‘positive’ minority (money), I would be considered weird if anyone knew. I just don’t talk about it, and no one knows that my family has money.

When Harris and Walz started calling Trump and Vance weird, I was into it because it made the latter so unhappy and angry. It really bugged them because they, like most Republicans, like to trumpet loudly about how normal (and manly manly) they are, unlike the effete limosuine liberals from San Francisco who sip their lattes with their pinkies up and drink their milkshakes through a straw.

Granted, it’s hard to do that to Walz because he’s about as Midwestern dad as they come. I saw a clip about how his brother, whom he hasn’t spoken to in decades, ominously said, “Oh the stories I could tell about this guy. He’s not what he seems.” The deep dark secret turned out to be that no one wanted to sit next to him when they were kids in the car on a long ride because he got carsick and would throw up. When he was prodded on it, he said that was it. He added, “I don’t know why pyeople think there’s anything deeper.” Because you were pushing it hard that there were some deep dark secrets, dude!


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Living my life as best I can

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Labels. It’s not the main thing I want to talk about, but it’s important. Why? Because as much as I’d love to be free of labels, it’s not going to happen any time soon. More importantly, as long as we live in a society that thrives on slapping labels on people. We must know who is in and who is out, musn’t we?

(Which is my issue with the Democrats hammering on the ‘weird’ meme. I get it, but I’m still not happy about it.

In my last post, I mentioned that I had some empathy for my mother when she was younger beacuse she basically was a single parent of three children (the third being my father) in a foreign country when she was in her late twenties. She worked forty hours a week (taking the bus back and forth, which was half an hour to forty-five minutes each way, depending on traffic), then came home to cook for my brother and me. My father was never home before ten p.m. because of the affairs he was having. Yes, that was the reason, and my mother barely kept it from me.

In fact, as I have mentioned, she started using me as an emotional support person when I was eleven.

She did all the chores around the house, too. Except for mowing the lawn and a few other ‘manly’ chores (like taking out the garbage). I’m sure she helped with shoveling the snow, though, because we lived in Minnesota. We got a LOT of snow.

It really wasn’t fair.

My mother worked forty-plus hours a week (plus commute), then had to do the cooking, the cleaning, the sewing, and anything else around the house. Plus, my father had all these unspoken rules that my mother (and my brother and I) had to follow. the biggest one was that no one other than my father was allowed to show any negative emotions. If I got upset, angry, or scared at all, I got yelled at.

I distintcly remember when I was a teenager, my father and I had a huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was loud and angry. On both sides. I ran to my room and slammed the door. A minute later, my father flung open the door and screamed about how I was not allowed to do that in his house.

That was the day I knew that I could never ever have an honest moment with my father. Should I have yelled at him? No. Should I have slammed the door to my room? Also, no. But I was a teenager. Acting out is a very teenaged thing to do. What he should have done, I don’t know. but acting like a more out-of-control teenager in return was not it.


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What’s in a name?

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Today, two of the letter I’ve read have had to do with names. Or rather, one was an update on Ask A Manager about noames while the other was about something completely diffirent, but the Slate commenters made merciless fun of the names used.  And they weren’t even that odd. One was an unusual spelling of a common name and the other was more of a last name, but it still wasn’t that strange.

There were so many comments about the names. So. Many. It really annoyed me. I will admit that I’m sensitive to names because mine is weird and has been mispronounced so many times. I have to give a friendly mnemonic for it, “Minna as in Minnesota” which really helps. It’s funny, though. My name is strange, yes, but it’s not that weird if you look at it logically. Words like dinner and winnow get the ‘inn’ part just fine. Throw an ‘M’ in the front and an ‘ah’ at the end like any other name that ends with ‘a’, and you’re good.

If you’re Taiwanese, then it’s pronounced ‘Mee-NAH’, said very rapidly. My parents call me that, so any white people who have heard them say it that way call me that, but with no tonal accents to it–which is really weird! I barely recognize it as my name.

South Asian people pronounce it more like Meh-na with no accent. Then, there are the people who for some unfathomable reason think it’s Myna, like the bird. WHich, WHAT??? That is not on. At all.

Back in the day, I would correct people. I did not want Westerners calling me anything but the first one. It was my American name, and I wanted people to learn it. It’s not really that hard though it’s not a name you hear often. Or ever. I never could find anything with my name on it. No little license plates or key rings or anytihng else. I hated my name when I was a kid because it was so weird. Other kids made fun of it and nobody could pronounce it correctly.

I got an endless string of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minnetonka, and every other iteration. And my favorite–Minnesota Fats. By favorite, I mean, fuck you very much. I had a teacher I adored who made a joke about ‘Winna with Minna’. It was supposed to be a positive tihng, but of course, it kicked off the kids making other rhymes with my name that weren’t as positive.

The year before this, I tried to go by a shortened version of my middle name. Not even the most popular nickname for my common middle name, but a rarely-used one. My teacher that year was great as well. He used the name I requested he call me, but I never responded because I was not used to it. I went back to my given name soon after, and I was resigned to being made fun of for the rest of my life.

Then, I went to college at St. Olaf, where every other person had a name that was some version of Kris. Chris. Kristin, Kirsten, Christian, Krissie, Kristine, Christine, and every other permutation.

I love my name now. It’s strong, distinctive, and it works well in both cultures. It is a tribute to the state in which I was born, and it’s beautiful in both languages. I don’t care so much about how it’s pronounced these days. I know who I am, so whatever. Again, it’s not MYNA like the bird, but anything else is close enough.


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Positively contrary

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Yesterday, I was writing about how I’m a contrarian, but I couldn’t decide if it was organic or a reaction to societal norms. I wandered all over the place as is my wont. The reason I am thinking about this is because I am considering doing video. I have looked at a bunch of different videos in different genres over the year, and it’s pretty clear to me that there are a few general rules to follow if you want to be at all successful.

One, you have to pick a category and stick to it. Start with a broad category such as makeup. Then, pick a sub-category within that category/a niche. So, in makeup it would be–oh hell. let me switch to games, which I know better.

You want to  do videos on games. Great. do you want to actually play games? Or do you want to talk about games? If it’s the former, then you have to decide if you want to stream or to just put up videos. Or both! And if it’s the latter, then are you going to edit or just put up the raw footage?

You also have to decide what kind of game do you want to play. Roguelike-like in which every run is roughly half an hour to an hour? That’s what Northerlion did in the beginning. Or rather, what he got famous for. He did four runs of Binding of Isaac: Rebirth a day with light editing. He did this every day for years before slowly starting to branch out. He did a live show, too, and that expanded as well.

I just looked at his channel and scrolled back. There is no obvious BOI content in the last three months. I would bet he hasn’t played it on the daily since Repentance came out. I would not blame him if he never played the game again. He also was responsible for boosting Cook, Serve, Delicious! (David Galindo) when it first came out, which was how I heard of the game.

Now, he’s more of a variety show, just playing whatever he wants. He also streams quite a bit–I know he did Elden Ring (FromSoft). He spent several years, though, building up his brand–and he did it by being consistent and insanely productive.

The thing is, you want people to think of you instantly when something in your wheelhouse comes out. That’s branding, and it’s very important. Here’s a silly example. I had a thing for Alan Rickman. I was passionate about him, and I could not stop blathering about him. I would go on and on on my socials, and it got to the point that when anytthing new concerning him came out, people would send me tweets asking me if I had seen it or post it on my FB.

For example. There was a video of him making tea. That doesn’t sound like anything, but it was shot very dramatically. Slo-mo and everything. At the end, he throws the cup of tea he had just made and then upends the table. It’s  a little over seven minutes and I’ve included it below. There is also an orchestra backing him.  It’s just incredible.


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Private and personal

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I was reading some old Ask A Manager posts and came across one that was from a manager who was curious about their report, Adam. The letter writer (LW) said that Adam never volunteered anything about his personal life despite having worked on the team for six years. Two months before the LW wrote in, they noticed a ring on Adam’s left third finger and wondered if he had gotten married. In the past, whenever he put in for time off, LW would casually ask if he was going on vacation and he would say yes. Nothing more.

The LW, while emphasizing several times that it was fine that Adam was private, really, really wanted Alison to give them a way to pry. No matter how many times they said it was fine that Adam didn’t want to talk, the undercurrent was that it was very much not fine. Not in a ‘it’s bad for the tieam’ way, but in a ‘I really, really want to know’ way.

Which, I get. If you’re around someone eight hours a day, then it’s natural that you want to know something about them. But, I’m on the other side because I’m the freak. If I were in an office, I would have nothing to talk about. I don’t hate the snow–I love it. I hate the summer and the heat. I don’t watch movies or TV shows. I haven’t read a book in quite some time. I really need to start that up again, bu even that would be me just reading Asian women writers. Which, I can tell you, is not ‘normal’ at all.

I’m not partnered and have no kids. I don’t take vacations. There was a weekend thread asking for small talk questions. The ones people were suggesting were right out for me as well, such as food. What’s your favorite food? What my favorite food is and what I can actually eat are two very different things.

I am not religious. I do not want to talk about religion. At all.I am agender, not into monogamy, marriage, or anything like that. Someone in the commentariat said that they would be more inclined to go the extra mile for someone they knew something about. People argued, but I got what she was saying (I don’t like her in general). I don’t necessarily agree with her because you can have a warm relationship with someone without it being personal (so many people think I’m their best friend when I tolerate them at best), and a big part of it is listening. Most people want to talk about themselves so it’s a good way to seem engaged. Asking a few well-timed questions can aid this process.

In addition, my hobbies are writing (currently struggling with a memoir about dying twice), FromSoft games (video games in general, From in particular), and Taiji weapons. The first in general is a suitable topic, but then I have to explain the background if I want to talk about why I’m writing about it. Which I would not want to bring up in a workplace.

K likes to remind me that my dying (twice!) is a big part of my life story and that I should be ok with talking about it. Which, yeah, but in a work setting, it’s way too heavy. I guess if it’s one I’d been in for years, they would know what happened to me. At least the basics. It’s weird, though. I was up and walking in less than two weeks of the initial incidences. So in theory, I could have been back at work within two weeks. I would have been a hot mess and could not do anything for more than five minutes, but I could have been there. In a month, I would have been back to ‘normal’.

Side note: I’ve realized more and more how the stroke has affected me in small ways. My short-term memory is dodgy. I can take in some information, store it away, and then promptly forget it. It happened in my last private Taiji lesson. I wanted to learn some Bagua (a different internal martial art), so we’re walking the circle. I already knew how to do it with the DeerHorn Knives, but she’s teaching me the basics.

There is the Single Palm Change and the Double Palm Change. I’ve done the former and assumed the latter was, well, changing the palms twice. It’s not. It’s hard to explain, but single and double palm changes are called that because they have the palms doing one thing and two things respectively. One turns to the inside and one to the outside.


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Knowing what I know

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I’ve been musing for some time about being a weirdo in a word full of normies. Of course, we can debate normal for days, but there are societal norms such as getting (het) married and having children.

I realized when I was 22 that I neither wanted children nor had to have them. It was such a relief and quite the revelation. I grew up in two cultures that mandated a woman had to have children. It did not matter if I wanted them or not (most emphatically did not), but I was expected to have them.

I have documented time and time again that the realization that I did not have to have children was formative for me. Until that point, I just assumed I had to have them and oh my god. I am so glad I realized that wasn’t true before I actually, you know, had a child.

That was the first time in my life that I realized that I could actually go against the grain and not do what I was supposed to do. And I got a lot of shit for it, especially from my mother. As an AFAB person, I was expected to have children, no questions asked. My mother guilted me over and over again, crying about the bond between mother and daughter when the daughter has children. She pressured me for 15 years to have children, and it was only when I turned 40 that she gave up. Then, she started bothering me about getting married to a man so he could take care of me when we got old.

Which was rich coming from her. Given her marriage, she was the last person who should have been pushing nuptials, especially for that reason.

Being who I am and realizing these things about myself over the years plus my natural ability to read people enhanced by decades of having to be my mother’s emotional support person makes me have a unique perspective on life. It’s one that makes me question myself more often than not, but it’s also helps me see many different points of view. Which can lead me to being contrarian at times. Sometimes, I have to bite my tongue because I don’t need to voice every thought in my head.

It’s hard, though. There’s someone in the RKG Discord that many producers (second-to-top-tier level) loathe. He is not a producer, so he can’t comment in the producer forums. He says a lot of ignorant things, but he also just states opinions that are not popular. I only know this because then a handful of producers will go in a producer forum and bitch about him. The first time I saw this happening, I hunted him down to see what he had said that was so terrible. And, I have to say, it wasn’t that bad.

Let me be clear. He’s ignorant and apt to spout off bullshit that doesn’t hold up. And one time, he said something that was eye-rollingly thickheaded. And sexist, but in an every day sexism sort of way. But, here’s the thing. It’s extremely mild in terms of the internet and he is entitled to his own opinions.

Every few days, someone will complain about him in the producer forum, and I don’t think they realize how it comes across to those of us who are not as invested in him being the Discord villain. There is one woman who has him on mute, but will unmute him when anybody gripes about him so she can join in.


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Unique, but not weird

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I read a bunch of advice columns, or rather, I did. I’m getting bored/unsatisfied with most of them, but the one that is still decent is Ask A Manager. It also has a good commentariat, who are, for the most art, able to see things from many points of view. They have their weird spots, too, though, and one of them is business attire.

There was a post about the 100-day dress challenge. The basic premise is that you wear this one specific dress for a hundred days in a row for reasons. Supposedly, it’s about sustainability, but that’s not really what’s happening. It’s basically a marketing ploy, but that’s not my focus. It’s on the amount of people who said don’t do it because you would stand out in a bad way. Oh, it’s unfortunate and they personally didn’t feel that way, mind, but you know, society.

One person went so far as to say don’t be weird. It’s ok to be eccentric, but not weird. I had such a visceral reaction to their comment for several reasons. One, what’s to differentiate weird and eccentric? Two, to me, eccentric is further outside the norm than is weird. Three, it’s such an arbitrary distinction, which is which or if something is weird or eccentric in the first place. four, as noted in response to the comment, it’s so juvenile. “Don’t be weird!” Why not? If it’s not actually harming someone (like wearing the same dress every day), who the fuck cares?


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What it’s like to be normal

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Most of the time, I don’t care about being a freak. In fact, dare I say it, I revel in it and don’t mind rubbing it in others’ faces from time to time. Not often, but once in a while, just pointing out that not everybody walks down the well-trodden path is not a bad thing.

However, once in a very long while, I get a hankering to be normal. Or rather, more mainstream. It can be frustrating not to be able to talk about anything while in the company of normies. Or talking about normal things without any real knowledge of said subjects (I am very good at mimicking others).

I dream of being married with 2 kids, a dog, and a house in the ‘burbs (got the last one at least). Going to church on Sundays and then going to a fast food restaurant afterwards. Honestly, that was my favorite part of gong to church as a kid especially as we were not allowed to have fast food at any other time.

Side note: I didn’t realize until  I was out of the house that my mother did not like to cook. She made us dinner, but it was very basic. I remember cow tongue once, but her staples were Indian curry and potato, rice and veggies, and other simple Taiwanese foods. They were filling, but not memorable in any way. I’m not being critical, by the way. I don’t like to cook, either, and I feel for her that she had to cook even though she didn’t enjoy it. As a kid, I was unhappy by her cooking, but later I realized what a chore it was for her and felt some empathy.

She was raised with the idea that a woman was less than a man, and that a woman’s worth was in being a wife and a mother. This despite the fact that her own mother was a highly-accomplished woman–who also pooh-poohed the lives of women. She was the first woman to attend a certain college in Japan, and she was the first woman to be a senator in the prefecture in Taiwan in which she lived. She was a powerful personality, but she also gave lip service to how much better men were than women (and left all her money to her four sons and none to her four daughters).

When my mother wanted to go on a date, her mother said she had to be engaged before she went on the date. So she got engaged to a young man before even dating him. Then, she came to America and was swept off her feet by my father and dumped her fiance through a letter. I don’t even know if she kissed him before dumping him (so were they really engaged? I guess?), but that was just the way it was back then.


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I’m weird and I know it

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When I w as a kid, I had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t. No, that’s not right. I knew that my family was not like others, but I didn’t know why. It’s easy to see in retrospect that it’s cultural, but how was I to know that at the time? When you’re a kid, the only thing you know is your own family. That is the basis for normal. Which is fine if you have a healthy family. However, if your family is deeply dysfunctional as mine is, then it’s hell.

I was being shaped without knowing it. I was taught that my perfectly normal body was gross and disgusting. My brain was the only thing that mattered, but at the same time, I was supposed to make sure that at some point in time, I was attractive enough to secure a (male) mate with whom I would breed. I had to play an instrument and a sport, and there wasn’t any question of whether I could quit or not. Until I got deeply depressed and thought life meant nothing, but I’ll get to that later.

I started dancing when I was two and took lessons until I was twelve. I played the cello from eight to eighteen. I also had piano lessons; played ping-pong, tennis, and softball; and took enrichment classes during the summer at the Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth. (TCITY). I took Latin, drama, and writing during those summers. There was no such thing as downtime; my brother and I had to be doing something every minute of the day.

When I was in high school, I was deeply depressed. I thought about killing myself every day. My brother had trouble with school so my mother was focused on him, not me. I was (and am) good at school, so she just took it for granted that I would continue to excel. She paid my brother for his good grades, but I got scolded when I brought home an A-.

I decided to give up my junior or senior year. I stopped trying and my grades plummeted. Probably junior year. I remember once in class, the teacher wasn’t there and we were all just hanging out doing our thing. I wrote suicidal poems on the blackboard and was outraged when someone else erased them. In retrospect, it was a good call, but at the time, I felt as if I was being erased.


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