Battles In My Life

I still love this saying "Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." But once in every while, the sailor gets tired and frustrated when he feels that there is little chance to survive or constant rough sea just makes him physically tired.

All my life, I always have to fight hard to get something I want. I'm not sure if it's because I always want something that's a little out of my reach or I'm just always not so lucky to get something easily? I have had my parents in panic mood since I was born. The birth itself was very difficult. Then throughout my childhood, I was struggling with one illness or the other.

I was always in some kind of competition throughout my basic education schools. There were so many tough competitions. I did win so many prizes though - one of the top 3 students in class all the time ,won many essay competitions and passed my matriculation with top 30 in the whole country. I got into medical school but I did not want to become a doctor and wanted to come to U.S. against my family.

After going through a lot of pain, emotionally and intellectually, I got into one of the best liberal arts colleges with full-financial aid. Those two years trying to get into school here was one of the darkest and hardest times. People constantly were asking me what I was doing with my life instead of going to Med school. It was really hard to learn English. My family was not financially able to afford a good school in the U.S.

I was struggling a lot in College as well trying to be a decent college student. But still it was very hard to study in another language. My English was really bad and still not as good as I want it to be. I'm still trying to get it better. Well at least I did manage to survive college life and made a lot of great friends.

Now I'm in another phase again. I'm struggling again to find my way and have a promising career and the same time, I want to please my parents. My parents don't want the same thing I want. They want me to settle down and marry a Burmese man. For me, I still want to explore and live free and marry only when I find true love. I have been debating a lot with my father about this. It seems like one of us will never be happy or maybe even both of us will never be happy.

I come to understand more and more that life is always about making difficult choices. It could never be perfect. Even Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg must still have things they are missing they want. However, I still don't want to give up trying to make it better or make the best out of what I have.....Deep inside me, I still believe in good things and those good things happen to good people when you have strong will and don't stop trying.

Wonders of Human Mind

I’m often amazed by human mind - how it works and all its capacity. It’s just ashamed that we don‘t really exploit it much. I don’t either. According to 10% myth, most people only use 10% of their brain to coordinate mental actions. There is a mental laziness like “I don’t want to think about this”; “uh this problem is too hard to solve”. Intuitively, we know that sometimes things don’t make sense but give up easily before we reach to the point that it makes sense.
But sometimes, there are a lot of separate matters going in your mind all at once:

• trying to understand and make sense of things around you
• trying to make choices and decisions
• making judgments of what is right and what is wrong
• analyzing if you are still useful and important
• Imagining about near and far future about things you want/accomplish/need
• Reflecting about the past- moments of happiness, pain and endeavors, failures and achievements
  

Isn’t it so amazing? I guess what kind of other living things can have that much mental capacity? But the most amazing thing of all this is a strong will to survive.
Why do we want to live so much? Because we have experienced happiness and joy? But we have experienced pain and sufferings as well? There are people in other parts of the world who live under all kinds of adversities and tragedies but they still want to live. Are human being so optimistic and think that they can get better by living? Or do they still have joy we can’t see? or is a will to survive just a natural instinct?

I’m not making sense right? Well I won’t even try to make sense and will just let my mind go wild with all the thoughts.

Another Milestone reached thru diplomacy and honesty

One of my obsessions or motivations in life is seeing the progress and growth of various things I'm involved - anything from swimming 40 laps to my personal relationships with others. Each time I swim, I like to see myself adding additional laps. So is with friendship - I like to see it grow. This same obsession is also my weakness. When I don't see things progress or progression is very slow, I give up easily.

Human nature, as we all know, is not perfect. That's why there are always issues in dealing with other people. It gets worse when people get closer. It seems like the older I get, the more I see people being afraid of getting close to other people. They somehow keep the distance. Just before my ex committed a relationship with me, he said it feels really vulnerable to open up and be close to someone else. That's why it seems that relationships/friendships do not progress much as we grow older. Both sides are afraid of being vulnerable and getting hurt, and also hurting some other person.

As with everything else, I don't like any form of unreasonable restrictions. In human relations, truth telling is very liberating! However, raw honesty can ruin the relationships/friendships unless any one of the two doesn’t have enough trust in the friendship. The same time, I believe that honesty is very important if you really want to have any kind of relationship to progress. Hiding what you really think about others either because you are afraid that they won’t like you or afraid to ruin so called ‘friendly terms’. To me personally, I’d rather have true honest friendships instead of sugar-coated fake ones that I need to pretend or hold the truth, at least with those I care about.

Recently, I had pretty big fights/arguments with one of my best friends. There were some of the things that had been bothering me but I somehow held those because I wasn’t comfortable enough in telling those for several reasons. But when things got piled up inside me, I started throwing those. It was not nice at all in the beginning. Worst thing was still instead of telling the truth, we were just trying to hurt each other verbally. When it got ugly, she was the FIRST one who seek to reconcile by saying that ‘you are important to me so hope we can pass these issues.’ There I also realized that she’s important to me too and didn’t want to hurt her. We were not against each other side. So I told her the truth – things that had been bothering me. I tired to not be accusing her instead explained what things made me think of those assumptions I had. But still things I told her was very rough. I don’t think any one else could take it unless they really really trust in the friendship and me personally.

She not only took it well; she explained to me ‘point by point’ – topic by topic on those. I was so impressed. I could probably never handle something like that as I’m never really diplomatic when it comes to conflicts. Instead, I’m very confrontational and don’t try to understand the other side to make my arguments more effective. I learned a lot of things from this instance and from her – how I should approach conflicts by being mature and open enough to understand the other side and how I could improve myself on the things I’m still uncertain about.

Mostly importantly, I’m very grateful that I have got such a great friend who really trusts in our friendship and trusts in me.

Understanding the attraction

I really get frustrated when I ask someone why they like someone and the answer is ' I don't know- I just FEEL it." There is always a reason to make you feel it. I think most people don't seem to understand WHY they feel what they feel. I don't always either but I at least try to understand why I feel how I feel. It also often seems to be acceptable that feelings and reasons are independent things and there is no causal relation.

There are always external and internal factors that cause you sadness, happiness, pain, anger, jealousy etc. Understanding emotions even get more complicated when one or more people get involved. I think if people understand more about what kind of people they are attracted, they will know what exactly they want in their partners and consequently there will not be many failed relationships and divorces. Getting to know someone is a long process.

That I'm super busy and don't have time for anything serious doesn't stop me having crush on people here and there. Recently, I'm having a crush on someone I thought I would never be attractive. After observing some great things in him such as intelligence, humor, kindness/attentiveness, being social and zest for life, I started seeing him from a different light. I looked at him and found him very attractive and want to get to know him more.

You do not like someone for no reason. There are certain things that make you interested in someone. After being interested, there is still a long process of getting to know the person, opening up to each other till you fall in love.

Thoughts about V-day

So it's V-day....Personally and honestly, I really don't care about any particular days including my own birthday. It's really not the end of the world if someone doesn't remember my birthday because I don't remember a lot of people's birthday including my best friends.

But I still like to celebrate things occasionally :) Well the thing with V-day is too much fed up with all the commercials. It's pretty much a HUGE opportunity for business to make $$. Well they kind of CREATE that tradition to celebrate it.

Personally I think two lovers can celebrate the day that's meaningful for both of them like anniversary or something. It doesn't have to be 'V-day'. It seems like people are doing it because everyone is doing it! And there is a lot of pressure for guys. I think if you have to pressure someone to do something, it's just not fun anymore. I'm not saying all these because I'm single at the moment. I never made a big deal about it when I was in a relationship also.

But if two lovers really want to have fun and good times without any external pressure and expensive gifts, Happy Valentine's to all those :)

Sleepless in New York City

When I was little, my mom tried to get me to take a nap during the day or sleep during the night. She said I would be running around refusing to sleep and then when I ran out of energy, I just crashed at anywhere.

Once I got back NY, as usual, there have been so much going on!
1. my final semester began! ( had some hiccups and dramas in the first week.)
2. still have to get up every day at before 7 am to go to work
3. a lot of birthday parties and gatherings and catch-ups with my friends
4. restaurant week

Yes, as usual, I'm sleep deprived again. I always choose something else over sleep. I still have so many things I want to do and I just don't find myself enough time to do all those. I still got blamed by my best friend for not having enough time for her.

But what can I do? I really really am so happy with all those things I'm doing; school, work, my friends. I'm usually so stubborn so I'm not willing to give up any of those. I'm always up to do something fun with friends and sometimes I say yes too soon before I realize my schedule really allows me to do so....But what I really need now is to better manage my time....and also need some quality time just for myself alone...

Highlights of Festive December

Colorado College new President’s visit in NYC

Earlier in the month, the new president of CC came to see alumni and parents in NYC area. It was a pretty nice event at University Club on Fifth Ave. The event was catered with nice hors d'oeuvres and fine wines. I always love going to CC alumni events as it is always great to get connected with all those people who went through the similar experience as CC students. I met a lot of interesting people with interesting careers like entrepreneurs, journalists and all. It was really inspiring. The new president was really energetic and seemed very academic focused for CC to become a better institution. As always, I was the only very foreign looking alumna among all those mostly white Americans who come from middle and upper middle class families. They were all surprised how I ended up in CC. That’s why I pointed out to the president that CC should be more diverse as a liberal arts college. I was usually the only one international student/second language speaker in most of my classes in CC.

CC alumni holiday party

This year they did it again in Brooklyn Bowl. I love that place as they have live bands playing later in the night and it’s a pretty big facility compared to those bowling places in the city. It was also quite fun to socialize with fellow alumni in more casual and fun environment. I just wish I bowled better. I really want to learn how to bowl well. It’s a fun activity! After that, a few of us went to visit another alumnus, who is a friend of mine and lives in the neighborhood. He got a great view on top of his apt. We were all just hanging out chilling and enjoying a great view of Manhattan.

My Bday Party

I was reluctant to do my bday party as my finals were getting really close. But I still thought it’d be a great chance to get all my friends together. I have different groups of friends and they don’t know each other- Burmese, my schoolmates, co-workers and other group of mix. I grew up playing with my brother like a boy in my childhood. I was actually more of a wild child than my brother. He was always concerned with his safety and getting hurt. I, on the other hand, just wanted to do so many things without caring about getting hurt. I thought it’d be really fun to revive my childhood memory with my awesome friends. We didn’t play laser tag but we played with toy guns a lot. “Laser tag” idea came from “How I met your mother” as Berny has so much fun playing laser tag J

A lot of my friends came to the laser tag arena in Queens. It was really fun! We divided the groups as boys and girls. There were 7 guys and 7 girls! Yeah amazing how it was even! But I just wish that the facility was bigger and I knew physically when I get killed not just some words saying ‘….is killed by….” on your guy’s screen.

After laser tag, we went to a Polish restaurant and most of us had this polish traditional plates. Very delicious and meaty! Then we went to a bar ‘Von’ in Noho. Some more friends who didn’t come to laser tag came by. I had more drinks from my friends. I had a great time.

More birthday celebrations

My real bday fell on the day when I had my final exam for Advanced Accounting. I was just studying but nothing the whole weekend and was so exhausted from it. The exam was really tough as usual. But it was so nice that I got so many bday wishes from all my friends all over the different parts of the world- Europe, Asia, South America. Some were from friends I never expected to hear and they sent me messages with their updates and stuff. Especially those are guy friends and normally I never expect to hear from my guy friends because they don’t get in touch once they are out somewhere. I was really moved…

Then right after the last final exam, the professor took us all to a nearby bar- he’s a young professor and believes that networking is important for our career. I was exhausted so I didn’t have much energy to socialize as usual. I don’t really like networking – I just don’t like talking to people with some ‘purpose’ and agenda in mind. I just think it destroys the whole fun of meeting new people and getting to know them and their interesting stories.

The next day, my girlfriends including MM and YK wanted to celebrate more for my bday and get together to go dancing at this Taiwanese professional event. Normally, those events are held in one of those meatpacking lounges. I usually don’t like it because it’s mostly packed and people just dance with loud music and don’t socialize much at all. But that day a lot of my friends were going. We first met up at this place “City Crab” near union square. I like it because they have happy hour every day that includes half off for their delicious seafood appetizers! So I had a few drinks there.

I was quite in a pretty social mood and talked to everyone who talked to me J even some random guy on the bus who was pretty good looking and nice. Then when I went on a line to get into the event, one guy asked me if he could go along because it’s easier for him to get in with a girl. So I said why not. Yeah he kept talking to me but got the sense that he was feeling insecured around me. Anyways, I left him once I got in to the club.

I had lots of fun dancing with my girl friends. MM was really drunk and even tried to kiss me at one point. It was hilarious! Then we left there and joined this group of Asian guys and headed out to Beer Garden in Standard Hotel. So finally just MM and me were the only girls with three/four of those guys. One of them was really really hilarious and funny. He and I kept joking and flirting around like crazy. One point, he asked my name and I said “I’ll do anything if you can guess my name’’. I didn’t even give my name at all even when I left the group. It was such a FUN night!

The next night, I decided to join my friend AB, her brother and her mother in town. We had a really nice dinner at Apiary in East Village. She treated me saying because it was my bday. Three of us, she, her brother and I went to another gathering in an Irish bar. We hanged out there and chatted with some other ppl there. Then I took them to Drop Off Service, the bar I like a lot in EV which is right around the corner from my place. But that day, most places were dead and that bar had some NYU college kids which didn’t behave well when they were drunk…I had a good time hanging out with them though.

The next day, MM and I got together for dinner and she wanted to treat me again for my bday! We had really good SE Asian food at this place “Laut” AB recommended which I’ve been to also. Then another friend joined and we went to a movie at LES and saw this ‘Shame”. We didn’t like it. Then we did more lounge hopping in the neighborhood. But NYC was DEAD – every taxi was available and every bar/ lounge were almost empty. We first went to Beauty and Essex, very beautiful restaurant I love. We had a few delicious cocktails there. Then we went to the next lounge which was also empty. We just called off the night but it was still very nice to spend the evening with my wonderful friends.

Next day was the Xmas day. MM and her family doesn’t celebrate Xmas. So she and I decided to get together again in the evening at Bryant Park. It was so nice and festive there. Everyone looked so happy. All those nice Xmas songs were playing around the iceskating rink. We had yummy crepes and kettle popcorns, best I have ever had! Then we had normal girl chitchat about people and relationships….I love MM a lot! She’s also very energetic, happy and outgoing.

NYE

A friend from college was coming to NY to stay and go out with me for NYE. I started feeling pressure because all my friends were asking what I was going to do. I didn’t have a solid plan. Personally, I didn’t really care like where to go and what to do for NYE. I always ended up having fun either way so I didn’t want to make an EFFORT. It’s really more fun when you have no expectations anyways! But I did want my friends who wanted to come along with me to have fun. Anyways, when LL got in, we, AB, me and LL, got together at Westville and had a nice brunch there. Then we went to a small boutique shop near AB place. I bought two dresses! We then went to one of the house parties across the street from AB for the first stop. Those people were nice and we had some nice food and drinks there.

Then we headed out to Brooklyn, another friend’s friend house party. I didn’t have any agenda. I just wanted to enjoy and have fun. It turned out once I got in there- someone started talking to me. I met him briefly once at another friend’s bday party. Thought he was boring and didn’t talk to anyone back then. But that day, he was really friendly and talking to me almost the whole time. I was very tipsy and don’t remember everything we talked about. But his friends were talking up to me how great he is etc. My friends were telling me that his friends said he is pretty shy so I should make a move. It was all funny how they were all trying to match-make. But anyways, he eventually did make a move….it turned out such a FUN NYE that I didn’t expect J

I’m just so thankful for all wonderful friends that I have in New York for all the great times we all have together…..