A woman stuck on Earth

Shiv and Aditi have been learning to fence (foil) for more than two years now. For the past year, they've been regularly participating in local and regional competitions. Their performance and results in these competitions fluctuate a lot, even though their techniques and skills don't fluctuate much. ​What we've observed and realized is that at this early stage, their results are largely dependent on their mood of the day, which is mostly a matter of confidence. If they believe they are better than their opponent and capable of winning, they will most likely win. If they somehow believe they are weaker, a loss is 100% certain. This is especially true for our son compared to our daughter. Most of his losses happen because he gives up before the match even begins. ​Since birth, parents nowadays always encourage their kids to "never give up." We did the same. But only when real situations happen do you see how much inner strength a child has, and you realize that all...

I came to the Bay Area Endoscopy Center for a procedure and found myself in the waiting room with three older Shanghainese women and two older Cantonese women. They spoke to each other in their respective dialects - Shanghainese and Cantonese. ​Earlier, my mom couldn't believe I would go through a deep-sedation endoscopy alone. She was so worried she almost forced herself into the car to come with me, breaking down in disbelief. I insisted on going by myself because my procedure was scheduled at the same time the kiddos would be getting out of school. My dad told me that in China, any anesthesia procedure requires the patient to be accompanied. And I noticed that from both groups of Chinese women, only one person was the actual patient. ​Then, two more women entered the room: a young Latina and a middle-aged black woman. The Latina girl was visibly distressed. The black woman held two bags and the young Latina's hand the entire time. She told the receptionist, "I am her Ly...

One day when I was about 23, I woke up in the college town of Lille in northern France and realized I had been severely brainwashed by the regime of my birth country, China. For the next two decades, I did little else but try to fix that problem. Now, 20-odd years later, as a 40-something woman living in California, my gut screams on good mornings that I am stuck on my birth planet, Earth, and can do nothing much to fix that problem. Stuck on what? you might ask. Hence this blog: an attempt to express the whole lot of this revelation. In a nutshell, I'm stuck on consumerism, materialism, and capitalism. I'm stuck on patriarchy, religious extremism, and the forever-ongoing aftermath of colonialism. I'm stuck on monogamy, sexual suppression, and the systemic repression of love and romanticism that exists beyond the confines of societal norms. I am stuck on social media, on the sudden manic race of AI that nobody can fathom the consequences of yet has blindly dived into, and o...