About time!

Today marks a very important time in my existence. It heralds a dawning of a new time in my life. My outlook on life is different, more mature, more rational, more careful. I haven’t drank or taken drugs or failed an exam but I have finally tick that box in the list of ‘Teenage Actions’  as I have officially scratched my parents’ car.

It wasn’t that bad I mean, it’s not as if there’s a massive dent on the side of the car. It’s a little scratch that occured when I misjudged the distance between my car and the pole (no ‘typical female/Asian/young people’ comments here please). And frankly, I’m surprised that this didn’t happen sooner as it’s been a year since I’ve taken up my L’s/.

My dad was ok with it, he merely chastised me for not being able to measure distances while turning the wheel. My mum on the other hand told me that I should have been more careful and that I’m inexperienced with driving.

I have to say, I found that comment kind of offenseive considering it came from a woman who accidentally reversed the car into our new garage and doesn’t believe it’s important to adjust the side mirrors so she can measure her position on the road correctly. It’s true.

Political Perving.

I’m not too sure how to react to this new piece of information.

It’s sad that Obama can’t enjoy a private family holiday with his children but then again, he does look kind of hot.

Oddly enough, the same incident occured when pictures of a shirtless Vladimir Putin was released by the Russian government in an attempt to improve Putin’s PR with his female voters. It worked. Furthermore, a side effect of this picture being released has meant that Putin is now an unwilling gay icon.

Now, in Obama’s case, it’s quite clear that it’s not a publicity stunt given the fairly grainy quality of the photo. But concerning Putin, there are a number of evidences that make it clear that Putin was posing for the camera as discussed in various sites (i.e. Putin holding the rod at a funny angle, being shirtless in Siberia etc) but I really couldn’t care less. What I want to know is, how did political leaders being sex icons, when did they become sex icons and why did I miss it?

Screw Antoinette! I want my cake and to eat it!

I love my parents and those who are friends with me will know this. They’ll hear the little anecdotes about my parents’ oddities and the enormous contrast in parenting abilities (e.g. my dad’s and mum’s treatment of money but more on that in another post) but very rarely do they hear actual complaints (although I am a teenager so I have the right to an occasional bitch about my parents).

So apart from the occasional hormone-fueled temper tantrum, the relationship I’ve had with my parents through my teenage years have been fairly stable because they’re reasonable of my deplorable Western quirks and I’m tolerant of their old-fashioned Asian outlook. They were pretty ok with my refusal to study science in Yr 11 and 12 as long as I was sure I wouldn’t have a sudden change in heart (and for an Asian this is a big step) and they didn’t really mind my stubborn decision to not go to USYD (and once again, please take into account the fact that I’m in an Asian family).

However, despite the blinding differences in my parents behaviour, what they do have in common is that they’re both very protective of me, I mean, the cotton wool I’m wrapped in gets the royal treatment. This normally leads to frustrating blocks on my social life but because I can see from where they’re coming from we can usually negotiate or I just accept it (and the contrasting parenting means that usually, one of them will side with me which means all I have to do is persuade the other parent).

But sometimes, this over-protectiveness is really frustrating and even when they let me have my way, the overwhelming guilt I suffer from means that I end up feeling like I’ve just sold my soul even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong because I’ve made the right decision and that my parents’ wishes are based on irrational fear of what would happen to me if I experienced the outside world.

Now this isn’t conclusion isn’t based on somehing like ‘my parents wouldn’t let me stay overnight at a friends place so I’m going to go cut myself’; it’s actually a lot more serious than that, even beyond the standards of what the typical teenage girl classifies as ’serious’. For example, my parents were using every guilt tactic that they could think of so that I wouldn’t be inclined take any scholarship that ‘forced’ me to do an internship (like Co-Op and BAcc) because they felt I couldn’t handle the pressures of studying and working as I’m too delicate and sickly and used to the good life my parents have provided for me.

Admittedly, they have a point; I can count on my hand the number of times I’ve actually done anything housework-related (and I’m not using that phrase just to exaggerate my princess treatment – it’s true!!) and I haven’t actually had any real exposure to society (i.e. working) as I’ve lived my entire life by proxy. But I feel that the internship is something that I can handle or at least will learn to handle and that my parents should just be happy that I was offered a scholarship that would almost guarantee me a job before I left university and expose me to some of the most brightest people in the state!

Mum, Dad, I’m glad that you’ve never pressured me to do anything that I didn’t want to do just because you felt it was the ‘correct path in life’. I’m really appreciative of that fact that your alway proud of what I’ve achieved and that you’ve never set the bar up too high; I’ve heard too many horror stories from my friends about how their parents reacted to a minor change in values or goals. But seriously, please please please! be happy that I have this scholarship and stop acting as if I’ve just signed my own death sentence. I’m nervous enough as it is.

Why can’t you be like normal parents?!

Everyone’s going to do this…

Ah the obligatory HSC post. What would we do without you? I’ve yet to read any other HSC-related posts but I’m assuming it’ll be a rollercoaster of emotions of disappointments/happiness and the possible listing of subject marks if they are actually good enough to be brag-worthy. And by brag-worthy, I mean good enough by Selective school standards and not just good enough by your own standards because these marks are not meant to make you feel better, they’re meant to make others feel crap.

Overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my marks and I think my parents were too. The comments of ‘can’t you lower your standards down to 80 uai’ is still to close to home to ensure that I’m not going to refrain from inducing smug-like behabiour onto my parents. But I love them anyway – they have been the rock throughout the rocky times of my 13 years of education and because they have been more or less incredibly supportive of my academic ability, this has meant my achievements have been celebrated and my failures have been comforted, not punished.

I’m fairly confident that I can get the course I want judging from my marks and the UAI calculator (which has been gospel to so many desperate Asian students not wanting to disappoint their parents with a measley 97.8 uai) so that in itself has made my day. I am kind of hoping I can get the scholarship but because I’ve been shortlisted, this would require a lot of wishing that OTHER people do miserably and I don’t want my success to be built on the opportunities of other’s failures but rather my own achievements if that makes any sense at all.

Despite my results, I’m kind of dreading the whole ‘comparison of results’ behaviour which is going to be all I’m going to hear for the next two months. Not that I feel that my results are not up to par but just that after 13 years of petty competition, I really want it to stop. I don’t want comparisons or mock sympathy that has stemmed from a tone of ‘well I suppose if you’re happy with that mark that’s good enough but I’ll never set my standards that low’. Or even worse, the suppressed glee that results from a peer performing worse than you do. By all means feel proud of what you have achieved but not at the expense of others.

Furthermore, these conversations tend to act as a springboard for others to go on and on about how they didn’t study as much and how they really were so lucky that they were able to get such a mark and omg i can’t believe my good fortune and your mark was pretty good to but i cant believe i was able to get this mark…

However, before I am seen as bitter (or worse, hypocritical) I do want to genuinely congratulate those who were able to get what they want or better and share my sincere comfort to those unable to do so. Tomorrow, when we get our UAI results, it will be the last moments of our High School lives and I think it would be best if it was finished off with happiness or a renewed determination to improve on what we have as opposed to extreme disappointment.

Does it feel like Christmas to you?

I have to say, the xmas trees and the decorations in the stores and on my neighbours’ houses mean nothing to me this year. My eyes glaze over the Christmas sales and even the obnoxious xmas music of ‘Deck-the-bloody-halls’ goes through one ear and out other. It’s only when someone explicitly mentions xmas-related subjects i.e. wishing me a merry xmas, asking me about me about my shopping, etc that I then go ‘Oh that’s right, it’s Christmas’.

And don’t worry, I haven’t been infested by ‘the Grinch’ Syndrome; I’m all for Christmas cheer but to me, this year didn’t have that bang to it the Christmas holidays normally bring into our lives. When Christmas comes along, I’m normally suppose to get excited because it presents yet another opportunity to demand more books, DVDs and other miscellaneous items (I want long socks and brightly coloured stockings this year) off my parents; things I can’t normally get without being reprimanded of my wasteful, Caucasian-influenced spending habits because no actual Asian spends like I do.

Maybe it’s the whole US subprime market crisis thing that has caused my inner Asian to explode out of its shell and induce never before seen stingy spending habits and immense worry for the financial conditions of my parents and thus make me care a great deal less about Christmas, especially the more materialistic side of it.

Or maybe it’s because I’m not religious and I really don’t care that the 25^th of Dec welcomed our saviour, Jesus Christ into our mundane lives (or as a friend’s brother-in-law pointed out, the 25^th of Dec welcomed the greatest conman in existence into our mundane lives).

And the hyped-up ‘chance to spend time with your family’ just irritates me slightly because if you have to wait for this one day of the year to spend time with your family, clearly they meant very little to you in the first place (unless there are long distances between your loved ones and in that case, please make use of this time).

Is anybody else feeling like this or is it just me?

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

I’d just like to point out that whoever can guess the movie that the title came from gets the obligatory virtual cookie.

Well I had planned to begin this new post with a witty reference to the abundance of posts a new blogger (AKA Sean and I) posts as opposed to an old blogger (i.e, Tim Sun, Maggie, everyone else) largely due to the novelty factor of actually having a blog but since it’s been ages since I’ve posted, the multiple references I could have made, have been made redundant. But never fear, I am filled with many blog post ideas and even plan to have a go at submitting stuff into Heckler.

Not much has actually happened since my last post except that I was able to be shortlisted for the Co-Op Scholarship in UNSW, that is, I was placed on the Reserve List. However, as pleased as I am with this, it does mean that I have been placed on the Reserve List again; I’ve been made a Reserve for most of my life for pretty much every occasion as my mum was very quick to point out - ”Well, you’re smart, Vivien but not smart-smart and if you’re ever compared with the really smart, then you’re not smart, do you get it?”.

For example, when I tried to get into an OC class, I was placed on the Reserve List to get into St Johns Park Primary School, and even then, the fact that I eventually got in didn’t necessarily represent the fact that I was actually intelligent or gifted. The OC class in that school only had 29 students but in that year, the teacher complained that it was difficult to pair students up and so the principal allowed him to take in the next student on the Reserve List, which was me

Surprisingly, I wasn’t placed onto a Reserve List for Selective but I think this was due to the almost military precision my parents placed my Selective School Preferences in order to make sure I actually got a spot as opposed to repeating the OC incident. Now that I think about it though, it would kind of make sense for my parents to stress more about the Selective Test than the OC mainly because the 11th Commandment states that ‘Thou shall get into Selective if thou is in an OC Class or go straight to Asian Hell’.

And then, when I applied for BAcc at UTS, I was placed on the Reserve List to get into the 2nd round but luckily, it was because I genuinely missed out on a spot, meaning that the Reserve List was not the equivalent to a Pity List in which every reject got put on in order to not cause low self-esteem issues.

“But”, says my mum, after I reminded her what Co-Op actually was, “it doesn’t matter ’cause in all the times you’ve been made a Reserve, you still managed to get an actual offer in the end because you’re still somewhere at the top when compared with smart people overall.” She then proceeded to complain about the inability of UTS to recognise talent when UNSW clearly could which meant that UNSW was the more superior school anyway and how dare UTS not offer you a spot who they hell do they think they are I don’t like that school anymore…

Presents for everyone!

Today I went back to HAHS to give thank-you/xmas presents to my old teachers and went to do some shopping, meaning today has been a largely pleasant, relaxing day.

It was nice to have teachers look at me with genuine happy faces as opposed to their usual ‘Why are you here and haven’t I answered your million and one questions yet?’ (more specifically Dillon and ex-maths teachers). I was also very close to reducing Ms Vercoe to tears after I bought her a DVD player after I realised that it would be incredibly unlikely that the school would actually purchase her a new one. Hers broke down and so only the VCR part works.

My mum and I had originally bought this cute small DVD but when we brought it home, my dad pointed out that it was illegal and not meant to be in the country for safety reasons. And no we didn’t buy it from a dodgy Asian store, it was actually from a franchise which I’m not going to name for legal reasons.

My teachers all seemed genuinely surprised to get presents because I assumed that by now, they would be prepared to recieve some thank you presents every year but I suppose that being on a teacher’s salary meant that presents are like a luxury.

Afterwards, I went shopping and bought a pair of 3/4 shorts, short-shorts and Morgan’s bday present. A lot of people will be surprised to hear this, but I actually only own one pair of shorts and those were 3/4’s anyway. I had previously assumed that as I didn’t like mini-skirts, I wouldn’t like short-shorts however, the media promises that this year’s summer will be hotter than ever and I don’t particularly fancy sweating myself into dehydration from long black pants. I need more short-shorts.

On an off note though, I was not able to get the BAcc scholarship at UTS so that was kind of disappointing but I will get over it because a strong characteristic of my personality is that I am rarely hampered by dissapointment and am able to look over the situation and move on, understanding that it has been a good experience for me.

On a random note, the sky tonight will smile upon everybody and the dancing guy on the VISA ad contains the actual guy from ‘Where the hell is Matt?’

Disney.

I wasn’t too sure what I was going to write about in my second post but since I was listening to songs from Dreamworks’ ‘The Road to El Dorado’, I thought it’d be best to stick with a similar topic.

I don’t think many people have actually heard of ‘El Dorado’ or much less watched it since it’s blantantly obvious homosexual subplot has meant that it’s not the best family movie around but it is a really good movie. I enjoyed it very much despite the rapings to Aztec history that the movie committed. The songs also weren’t bad either although they weren’t Elton John’s best songs. I think ‘El Dorado’ was Elton John’s way of doing a Phil Collins to children’s animated films (i.e. Tarzan, Brother Bear), no pun intended.

And there is no shame in liking Disney movies if they’re from the Golden Era of Disney, that is, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan, Lion King. I think Hercules was the last of them but I’m not too sure because it could have been Brother Bear but since I haven’t watched it yet so I don’t know if it can qualify as a ‘Golden Disney Movie’. I know people who have the words memorised (including the dialogue) and listen to the songs in their spare time for enjoyment.

But a problem starts when people enjoy crap like High School Musical and Camp Rock. They’re not even good movies, they just play on stereotypes of the nerdy kid and the jock and old teenage plot movies of ‘the not so pretty girl suddenly becomes popular and gets the hot guy’. At least with the Golden Disney movies, they were made during a time when you expected a Damsel-in-Distress and so, repetitive plots can be forgiven.

Walt Disney, be glad you’re dead, you don’t want to know what they’ve done to your empire.

Bandwagon.

I guess from the title, you, the reader, is right in assuming that I am a late-comer to the whole blogging scene and am making a simple reference to this in order to ensure that future taunts of ‘jumping the bandwagon’ can be laughed off because I mentioned it first and that means I have a sense of humour so there!

And it’s not too bad joining the queue towards the end as you get to watch how other people react and behave as opposed to being part of the experimental bunch. I’m sure the first group of soldiers being sent off to die in WW1 didn’t appreciate being the ‘experimental bunch’ during the chivalrous phase of the Allied and German Officers.

Like my domain name for instance. Do I do something witty like Sean’s “In related news” or Karen’s irrelevant but nevertheless cool-sounding “Ride the Milkyway”? But if I go along the Karen path, it’s very easy to end up like a moron (not that Karen’s domain name is moronic). And the domain “Questionable content”, although slightly clever, would be a complete rip-off from a web-comic. What about a reference to a nickname that I have that is a play on my name, “Maggiesnail” and “Kenfucius” are socially acceptable? But I refuse to have a domain name that immortalises ‘Viv-meister’ so that went out the window pretty quickly.

So I just went with “Vivientran”. I’m sure “Timsun” will be proud of me.

Further problems arose concerning my first blog post. Gliding over the issue of a computer-illiterate Asian (an oxymoron) attempting to discover where to click in order to edit that ’Hello World’ post, I chose to start a blog after all the ‘hectic events’ in my life were over, in an attempt to minimise on distractions, events that included my HSC and interviews for scholarships and jobs. This means I have acutally nothing to talk about so congratulations to myself. Nevertheless, I might talk about these events in later posts so stay tuned for those.

Lastly, the writing style also posed a problem because I have a nasty tendency to switch writing styles subconsciously, depending on my mood at the time. In the end, I chose just to write however I felt like but this led to a post being written in a style that I would write for a HSC essay.

Hurrah for me.