China - An Amazing Journey

"What Happened?"

"She got her leg caught in a wall trench by the stairs and it looks bad."

"At her shin? Is her leg broken?"

"I don't know but she was crying and the medical team was working on her. They're borrowing Kathy's wheelchair."

"It's so sad that she came all the way here and then won't be running the marathon."

We're all sweating and hanging out by the bus. We've just spent the morning & afternoon walking the 5K leg of The Great Wall Marathon. The pre-event event is to let the runners know what they're in for. Those who were making snide comments about this pre-event before we began walking the leg of the wall are now panting and subdued. No longer snide, but humbled. We're all humbled.

In creating the Great Wall of China the Chinese knew what they were doing. To prevent enemies from being able to maneuver the wall the architects created stairs that were not of even height. Some go to your hip. Some are super shallow. And they change randomly. Then every once in awhile when you expect a stair you get a trench that goes across the wall like a cattle ha-ha only without any sort of grill or slope and it's knee deep. Just the trench. In the dark of night or, in the bright of day when you're not looking where you're going, it can put you in a wheelchair.

"So how was your trip?"

"Fine, I'm really jet lagged."

My answer, though honest, is deflective. When asked, and I don't know why, I'm not ready to answer the question.

In the month passing, it's become clearer and I can reflect upon my feelings about the trip. China is a conundrum. Super modern on some levels there is the underlying time worn belief system. No longer fully Communist, Capitalism thrives. But it thrives without regulation. Like the child who was raised in an overly strict household who finds him/herself in college with total freedom and little experience with self imposed self-discipline.

The sun shines down through the trees and at least 20 toddlers run around with their elderly grandparents looking on. It's a beautiful day and the tour group has dropped us at a local park to take photos and hang out. It's not a usual tour spot. It's to give us a flavor of the local life.

"Did you notice?" said the woman next to me.

"Huh?" I respond.

"Did you notice? The kids."

I turn and look again. Without my glasses I can't see the details but I do notice. Without fail...boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy...and it goes on. One girl. She's about 7 years old.

"Where are all the girls?" I ask.

"In the orphanage South of the city," responds a man who has been here a few times before.

I look around again and remember someone mentioning that the one child rule still applied in China.

"What happens when all these boys grow up?" I ask.

The other tourists shake their heads and we move on.

China is a set of contradictions. Both beautiful and super shiny clean, Beijing also has air pollution from nearby coal power plants. The Westernized parts show modern architecture to rival any city. Go a few blocks into the hidden neighborhoods that are off in alleyways away from the major streets and you find people living in poor conditions. Shanty housing. And you realize there is another side to this city. One that remains uncovered to the average tourist.

My sister and I, after spending time in rural Taiwan and various 2nd and 3rd world countries, knew that these parts existed. We recognized them as we went past.

My conflict runs deep. My ancestors, if you go back far enough, come from China. The culture is recognizable in patches from my childhood living with my immigrant parents. A part of me loves it. Identifies with it. A part of me doesn't recognize it at all and mourns for the people. Rooting for the people as they transition through these changes.

It was only within the last few years that China made a law to protect personal property. Until then, all property belonged to the government. For the first time people could buy homes and cars and it would belong to them. It's a big change. A shift in thought. A shift in life change that causes people to now look for ways to survive in a Capitalist society with no practice or training in how to do it. The people who know how -- become richer. Those who don't struggle.

My sister said it best. After spending some time in Pennsylvania Amish Country she said that the Amish choose their lot. They choose to live a certain way and they still have the benefit of a 1st world country. Medical help. Air conditioning. (Yes, she saw air conditioning used in an Amish home.)

But the people in China who live that life don't have a choice. They live the life of struggle because they have no other choice and they are just trying to survive. They don't have the luxury of being able to afford to purchase air conditioning. Sometimes they don't have the luxury of modern medicine nearby. It's a hard life.

"Marathoner coming through!" The lead Marathoner, a man running from China, comes flying through. We part like the Red Sea, cheering him on as we maneuver our own route, until he slips down the dirt and graveled path and grabs his leg. He's cramping and makes his way to the Wall to work out his leg. We all go silent until he works it out and says he's okay and continues on.

Not unlike China itself, the Great Wall was steep and at some points treacherous and at other points beautiful. At some parts a person has to focus and watch their footing. At others it's safe to marvel at the scenery without concern and take a breath.

At the awards dinner the woman next to me says that she's never seen healthy men, who have run marathons before, just go up 2 stairs and turn around and sit down out of need to rest. And other grown men cry. She saw one woman going up the stairs backwards on her butt slowly while others crawled. Literally.

It's late afternoon and I can hear the crowd in the Yin Yang Square cheering. The finish line looms. I see the leader from my tour group and one other member yelling my name. I'm sweating, my legs are trembling and I'm thrilled. Would I do this again? I'll have to think about it. But it's been an amazing journey.

The Search for Savings

"Hello, I was just wondering how much it would cost to get one spare car key cut?"

After my trip to Las Vegas where I'd lost my car key briefly right before the magic show performance (with all the magic equipment and the doves in my car) I've decided to cut 2 spare keys for myself. Locking my keys in the car is not the issue. Not being able to drive my car is the issue.

After answering a bunch of questions and adding up all the costs including $110 per key to program the little chip inside the total was $256 per key.

"Wow. Okay. Thank you." and I hang up.

Since this was the dealership I knew there had to be a cheaper way. So I go online. I find a site where I can order the key with a chip without all the fancy buttons. Just perfect for a spare key. Also, it includes the instructions of how to program them. Yippee!!! I double check the comments and reviews and it looks legit. How much for 2 keys? $14. Great, if it doesn't work I won't be too disappointed.

Two days later I have the blank keys in my hand along with the programming instructions. It looks easy enough. Now to find a place that can cut them.

I search online for places that specialize in cutting car keys with chips in them. I see everything from $50 per key to $11. On a whim I call up the Ford dealership nearby.

I get to the Parts Department.

"Hello?"

"Hi, I was just calling to get a quote of how much it would cost to get my spare keys cut? I have the blank keys already and I don't need them programmed because I'll program them myself."

"You already have the keys?"

"Yes, and I know how to program them. I just need them cut."

"Well, if you just need them cut we'll probably do it for free. Just bring them in."

"Thank you."

I hang up and do a little dance. I'm a little worried that it's too good to be true but free is awesome and I can't pass up the possibility.

The next day I drive to the dealership and walk into the Parts department. It's quiet and I tell the guy that I'd called yesterday and the person on the phone said that they'd probably cut the key for free since I had the blanks and I didn't need them programmed.

The guy checks with his Manager and is given the okay. I'm super duper grateful since I'm on a tight budget.

As he hands me the keys back he reminds me they're not programmed yet so they won't work. I say, thank you and head home to program the keys.

After programming the keys I do a double check and stick the keys in and start the car and back it up and drive back into my parking spot. Yippee!!!

2 keys. $14 total. Let's see...$256 times 2 is $512. That means I saved myself $498 dollars. And even more important, I'm saving myself an hour of panic looking for a missing key. Not bad for an hour on the internet.

We have to believe we are magic

"How'd he do that?"

Laughter peals from my left, outside my frame of vision.

"Wait! Wait! Do that again!"

I'm in Las Vegas walking through a food court area with a friend who is an excellent magician. He'd been doing a card trick for these guys at the bar but it's the bartender's astonished face and request to repeat the trick that makes me smile.

R.J. has asked me to assist him with his show that he'll be putting on in the evening. We've been going since our rehearsal at 11:30 AM the day before in L.A.. I'm exhausted but enjoying the experience.

Magic has always been, well.....magical for me since childhood. My Dad's friend used to pull quarters out from my mouth or from behind my ear and I'd look on in wonder.

When R.J. asked me to assist him I was a little worried that I'd lose the wonder in finding out how things worked. But it's actually the opposite. I'm actually much more amazed at the skill it takes to do it all well.

I will watch, knowing how a trick is done, eyes peeled out for the moves i know are there and I still see nothing. His hands move so quickly. Really, it's taken years of hard work to manipulate so smoothly.

It's midnight at the Beauty Bar. The music is rockin' and loud. The flashing lights are spinning. There's a crowd of people dancing on the stage next to our setup.

Looking around I realize that this place matches R.J.'s style of magic. The walls are vibrant red and black and the bartender's hair is teased up into a beehive. R.J. is a naturally hip and cool guy without being pretentious. Charisma. And his magic is edgy, fun, and entertaining.

As we stand on the side of the stage I'm running through the show in my head. The first trick is tricky and we had some problems during our first rehearsal. The energy from R.J. is nervous and excited. As we talk/shout I remind R.J.(and myself) that everything will work out in the end and we should just have fun. He calms down a little and soon we're on.

After the show my mind races back through the evening. And I realize that no matter how skeptical we are as humans there is still a part of us that wants to be amazed.

We that the magic isn't real. Yet we experience this confusion because the brain cannot understand that what it sees. There is a contradiction between the brain is being told intellectually and the visual experience. It's in that moment. That astonishment--where the magic really happens. Where I can look at a person's face and smile because I see that we're wired for hope. For amazement. For magic.

And it leaves me feeling encouraged and satisfied in a way I can't really put into words.

The Other Life

Sometimes I wish I was someone else. As an Asian child growing up in Wisconsin in the 70's and 80's there weren't a lot of other people who looked like me. And truth be told, in the community, although people were polite, I was never really treated as well as my friends who were not Asian--these other people around me who had brown, red, and blond hair.

I was treated like a second class citizen. And I learned to believe it. So growing up in my tweens and teens I used to daydream that I had blond hair and green eyes. That I was someone else.

Now I live in California. Asians are plentiful and actually very much the norm. At this turn of the century we see Asians in television who don't have foreign accents. There are Asian children on billboards and in commercials. Things we take for granted now. Things I never grew up with but am so glad to see presented in this modern world. We can still do better--but that is a subject for a different blog entry.

Before I get too far ahead of myself let me explain one thing. In the tutoring world we have a term for parents who are so in charge of their children's lives that they don't allow the children to do anything for themselves.

They've given up their lives for their child and live through them by scheduling their appointments even when the child is a teenager capable of doing it him or herself. They speak for the child. They are there asking questions every 15 minutes to make sure everything is okay. They want to know what their child is thinking and feeling and breathing.

We called them "helicopter parents." Because like a helicopter, they hover.

In the past 5 to 7 years with experience, age, and living life in general--the ability to own who I was, who I am, and who I will become has developed itself. An appreciation of culture, of differences, and of what is learned from poor choices and mistakes has taken the place of certain insecurities and doubts.

But every once in awhile when I least expect it thoughts of a different life flit through my mind. The desires I'd had from childhood to have a different life and be a different person creep in on stealthy legs and are blindsiding. It's a universal and human thing. I just don't know what to do with it when it happens.

There are a few options. A person could analyze it to death. They could say, "Ah well, nothing is to be done just focus on what can be done in life now." Or, they could just wait until it passes.

It's the other life. The other lives. The other...everything. It's what we dream about when we can't control what our lives are like now. When we need to let go but don't know how to or want to or are afraid to.

Like helicopter parents we "hover" in our own lives and don't let it breathe. To have space to grow. To stand on its own. We have good intentions. But then what is the saying? "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." And we create our own hell by dwelling, if only for a few moments, in a life that doesn't belong to us.

We learn a lot between childhood and adulthood. How to be an adult. How to live our lives. How to be who we are. Too bad it takes so long. As Herbert Henry Asquith said, "Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life." How true. How very true.

A Drop in the Pond

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. Not the near future so much as the far future. In human terms of course it's only a drop in the pond. It's not defined in eons like the universe and the earth may be defined but instead is defined only in years.

If we have the privilege to live our lives out, to get old, to remember and then not to remember; what is the culmination of it all? The question brought me back to my family trip to Hawaii.

One of the survivors of Pearl Harbor was visiting the memorial since it was the day before the anniversary. He and his loved one were honoring the memories of those that were lost. To him, the names weren't just words on a wall. They were people. With full and colorful lives and personalities.

Looking at them in the picture as she points at the wall, I realize these people were survivors. Not in the physical sense, of course, but they survived on in the memories that were carried on.

A September 11th survivor was once quoted as saying that the life changing event made him realize that it was important to create memories for others and not himself.

The future and the past aren't so different. Both are a drop in the pond.

One hangs there with potential to create great change, to do great things, to fulfill wondrous dreams; or to change nothing, to be ordinary, to do nothing but create a splash for the moment and then be enfolded into largess.

The other, shows patterns. Some have great ripples that continue on even today. Some, caught up in another's pattern, become nullified.

And then, I remember one of my favorite books of all time. The Precious Present by Spencer Johnson. And it reminds me to just enjoy riding the ripple or wave I'm in the midst of making. No matter how big or small. Because after all, in the end, it's all a drop in the pond.

Shy Away

"Huh?"

"What just happened?"

"He did?"

"Does that mean anything?"

"Why are guys so confusing?"

My brain slow to work from fatigue churns out the questions after about a minute. One of the things I never learned very well growing up as an Asian in Wisconsin is how to flirt.

From watching friends' babies and my nephew it is my believe that flirting is inherent. We know how from birth.

So, what happened in-between then and now? And why, as an adult, have I been horrible at knowing when a male is flirting and when they're just being friendly? We were never allowed to date in High School. Could that be it?

It's the University of Minnesota and I'm standing outside the dorm cafeteria. Two guys come up behind me and talk at me but not to me. What they say, I can't even remember. I was so shy I just stared at the poster on the wall with some glances their way and they eventually just got disgusted that I didn't say anything and took off.

Life has a way of flipping things around on you and now I'm an actor and I've overcome a lot of that shyness standing in front of strangers doing and saying things I never would in real life. But one thing I still have trouble with, despite having had long term relationships, is understanding when men are flirting to be friendly or flirting because they're interested.

My tendency to to assume the first and not the second. I figure, if they're really interested they'll just ask for a number or a date or say something. Right? And at least now, I'll say something back.

You've got company

uch!"

"Oouuuccch"

"Okay, Ow"

*sigh*

"Do I really have to?"

and the answer, like good improv, is always "Yes, and"

These are the voices in my head as I keep on smacking into and slowly knocking down the walls that mark my boundaries of comfort. A lot has been going on lately in a bunch of different parts of my life. All at the same time. I feel a little bruised and worse for wear but the things that I'm learning and all the leaps and little steps forward are worth it.

I'm a big believer in "only do one hard thing at time" but sometimes what you believe and what you do (because of what life throws at you) don't exactly match.

Here are some of the things I've learned:

1. It takes a lot of energy. Energy to keep calm, to keep moving forward and not go running, screaming in the other direction pulling your hair out in panic and fear.

2. Thinking isn't always a good thing. Sometimes thinking makes you neurotic or it makes you into an insomniac. Doing is much better.

3. Courage is only the state of being so afraid of fear and it's effects that you move to do the opposite of that fear. Let me re-word that. It's being more afraid of what fear will make you into or what will happen if you let the fear take hold than of what you're fearing.

4. When your comfort zone is being ...let's say stretched...it's easy to get overwhelmed by things that normally be a challenge but you could handle.

Here are some other practical things that I've learned:

1. If you're lactose intolerant, you're only lactose intolerant to pasteurized milk. Raw milk has all the stuff in it that helps you digest.

2. There's such a thing as skim and fat free raw milk.

3. Raw milk is regulated in the State of California and safe for ingesting and good for the digestion.

4. Nuts and seeds need to be processed at low temperatures if or they lose a lot of their original nutrients. Kinda like pasteurized milk.

5. Olive oil has a low smoke point.

6. Olive oil is why I set fire to my food all the time and why I had to get renters insurance in college because I always set off the smoke alarm and the reason why I always have baking soda nearby when I cook and why everything burns. (Okay, maybe this was not so practical but I threw it in anyway.)

7. Coconut oil and Ghee (clarified butter) have high smoke points and make my place smell like coconuts when I cook. :)

8. Not all vitamins are equal.

9. It's better to eat the whole egg. Eating egg whites alone actually isn't as healthy as eating the yellow and the white because the yellow has in it the necessary stuff to digest the white part properly.

10. F*** your fear and follow your foot.

11. There are a lot of weird characters on MySpace.

12. Sometimes 1 minute isn't as long as you think it is.

13. Working for what you want is hard work even when you like it and it's even more work when it's not your fault.

14. Always go inside to the cashier to pay for gas. Never pay at the pump if you don't want your credit card to be used to buy over $300 worth of clothes in the Middle East and another 300 dollars worth of purchases for telecommunications stuff online in the Middle East.

Fraud Alerts on TransUnion, Experian, and the other credit check place can prevent people from trying to open up even more credit cards with the information they stole from your original credit card that you used at the gas pump.

15. Learning to use cash only when you've grown up using credit cards and when money is tight is a balancing act.

16. Sometimes rejection is a good thing. It could be a blessing in disguise.

17. Make sure you have good neighbors. It keeps you from a future of headaches.

In pushing boundaries on more than one side at the same time it's easy to find oneself focusing so intensely on the one thing you're doing at the moment that the world around becomes background noise.

I don't notice as much about the people around me and I'm not as perceptive. I hate that. Because when you're struggling to get to the surface for a breath of air it's good to know if you find yourself next to a shark or next to a lifeboat.

Optimistically? If you find yourself next to a shark at least you've got company.