BIO
nyc born+raised. LPhiE. Chinese-American. Foul-mouthed driver. Part-time superhero. Full-time ninja turtle. half Gladiator, half Guru. Starving wilderness-survival artist. Serial video-games cheater. RSS feed glutton.
LIKES
cool gadgets+gear. addictive TV. kickass graphic novels. Movies with a Twist. beach+indoor volleyball (w/o scrubs please).
camping-hiking-swimming. Seedless watermelon and/or grapes. Leadership theory. extraordinary prose painting ordinary life. Aggressive driving. bookstore squatting.
NOW
Business+intl studies major
@Philadelphia, PA
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Probably my favorite book from childhood. It accomplishes what every children's book should, yet rarely does: delight the senses and accelerate the imagination, create the suspension of disbelief without patronizingly mistaking it for naivete, and finally... create a new alphabet.
Such an awesome book -- a summation of my love affair with dinosaurs.
Tell me about my grandfather.
No. That isn’t yours to bear. He doesn’t understand your silence.
Tell me, please.
You feel something tear inside you with those three words — because what he asks, what he desperately wants, is really: tell me about you. Tell me about my father who sits and lives here. Who are you?
Enough. He flinches slightly at the sound of your voice, then recovers like a grown man, by staring at the wall behind you, emotionless. There is pride, but mostly a profound sadness, in seeing him that way. You lift the newspaper back up to your face until he exits the room. The ink mixes with the sweat of your fingers, smudging lines of Chinese characters beyond legibility.
Someday he’ll realize he’s understood all along and, with his tall American frame, he’ll bear it well, the heavy wordless burden.
But a hidden part of you hopes never.
It was on the morning of his thirty-seventh birthday that Vincent Van Ngo single-handedly overturned every historical precedent regarding man’s progression through middle age and made the most significant discovery of his life. At 5:41 AM, he suddenly became aware of his seat at the kitchen table. How long had he been sitting there? He could not recall if he had fallen asleep in the wicker chair the night before or if, in the throes of yet another somnambulistic fit, he had eventually gotten lodged there, like a leaf blown haphazardly into a storm gutter. Nevertheless, having finally settled on his location, his other senses began to unfold, gradually assembling the details of his immediate surroundings. At 6:01, he deduced from the burning sensation of something resembling coffee on his tongue and from the presence of an aproned woman in his kitchen, whom he initially mistook to be his wife and then, upon closer inspection, realized was, in fact, his wife, that it was a Monday.
It’s clear within the first few moments of your premature existence – you are a breathtakingly ugly baby. One for the records, the doctor thinks to himself as he enters your information into the system. The birth certificate reads, Albert Einstein Liao, and the world laughs, first of many at your expense. It’s a good chuckle all around, and even you giggle along, stupid ugly baby that you are, with everyone but the young black nurse named Winifred Oprah Johnston, who is here for the night shift, so go home and rest easy, ma’am.
She checks the colored tubes flowing in and out of your arms, and re-positions the oxygen mask. Her breath, soft and moist, smelling of cigarettes and tuna-fish casserole, skips over your face with gentle, constant rhythm, slowly ebbing, diminishing though filled with longing. She permits her fingers to glide, barely touching, through your sparse, dark hairs, calling to surface memories of her own, of another baby, so beautiful, so distant and perfect and brief. Two weeks later, cleared for discharge, weighing 7 ¾ pounds, you leave the hospital behind, grasping the knowledge that you are forever, abomination and beauty, young, stupid, alive… that dreams are not created equal.
Yesterday I spoke to my dentist for the first time in the six years that I’ve known him and we got to talking about my major. “Politics and business — you know what that means!” he laughed from behind the plastic mask and drew a dollar sign in the air, as though we were privy to some secret known only by certain people who believe they, and only they, understand how the world really works and everyone else, fools and dreamers. Like two guys who just found out they were members of the same elite country club, we exchanged the verbal equivalent of fist-pounds. A couple of buddy-buddy motherfuckers.
After he finished inspecting my teeth and declared me cavity-free, I bolted out of the dentist’s chair and for the exit. As the door closed, he waved and looked at me with a new respect… except I knew it wasn’t for me. It was for future-me, me with a dollar sign followed by a decimal point and zeroes, the me that made the Right Choices and could afford Nice Things. By the time I got home, my teeth still felt raw and sensitive, but even so, I brushed and flossed and gurgled mouthwash, to no avail. I thought about calling the dentist again, but decided it wasn’t worth it. What the hell was I going to say? “Doctor, I can feel something rotting back there. I think you may have missed something.” … no, that wouldn’t fly at all.
