Tuesday, 14 April 2009

• Fucking PDA Bullshit Motherfucker Fuck You

  ---

  It’s 7:45am.  No sleep last night.  Why am I still awake?  Because I’ve been trying to get my piece of shit palm pilot working for the last five hours.  I’ve reinstalled all the crappy software, reset the memory, and even tried reformatting my computer.  Nothing.  This sort of ass-goblinry is so unacceptable when I have three more weeks of medical school left.  So unacceptable.

   

  

   

  Speaking of school, I’ve been hearing rumors about a few of my classmates landing impressive residency matches.  These students have clearly proven, assuming that the rumors are true, that they were able to live up to their aptitude, and I am very happy for them and actually somewhat proud of my school…somewhat, as the little pride I do have for the top one percent of the class is vastly outweighed by the staggering number of duds who ker-plunked the match, or, even worse, scrambled into something that may very well be career suicide for them. 

   

  When one’s stats are low, one should aim low.  There are some real geniuses in my class who barely scraped by on their boards and applied to nothing but the top hotshot Derm spots in the country and then wondered why no one wanted to offer them an interview.  One cannot blame this solely on the school’s lack of career guidance, as someone who can manage to pass the boards should be expected to have some capacity for independent thought and, at some point, figure out that, perhaps, pediatric neurological radiation oncology may be a bit of a reach for them.  Whether it be poor decision making, laziness, or a global lack of intellectual capacity, I’m willing to bet these fifty-some-odd winners, who ended up scrambling, are the same fifty morons who thought it would be a good idea to go to Las Vegas for a week right before a big exam during our second year. 

   

  You wet your own beds, now enjoy your residencies, bitches.

   

  Anyways, my mother, in one of her many futile attempts to control my life (yes, but I do love da momz very much), is trying to set me up with a fresh-outta-Shanghai Chinese girl, and we have a traditional-style double family get-together on Thursday.  My mother has become increasingly irritated at my choices in women as of late, and is now taking a more desperate and passive-aggressive approach rather than forcibly confronting me about it.  I tried to appease her a bit by asking a Chinese female friend to drop by the house and hang out for a while, but unfortunately, that stunt doesn’t seem to fool da momz any more (I won't even mention the disaster that happened when I tried to pass off a Korean girl I was dating as Chinese).  The woman is on a mission.   

   

  But, perhaps da momz has a point.  Perhaps I should pay some heed to the role I play in my own family’s dynamics.  I am, for all intensive purposes, the last of the line, and the tradition lives on, or dies, with my choices.  To marry an authentic Chinese woman, one unpoisoned by American culture, would mean a chance to maintain some of that identity, rather than to lose it completely.  Also, I hear this woman’s a real looker.  Apparently, she was some sort of a soap opera actress in Shanghai.  (That’s the real reason I’ve agreed to this meeting.)

   

  Then again, no one said those traditional Chinese values are all that wonderful to begin with.  I am rather ambivalent about them.  The empirical social unit in Chinese society is the extended family, rather than the individual, and to be Chinese partially means an utter lack of freedom and privacy and that your relatives will always be clumping together on you like a ball of sticky rice.  Everything you say or do is a reflection of your family.  If you succeed, they ride on your accomplishments.  If you disgrace yourself, they scramble to minimize the loss in social value.  However, in a functional Chinese family, one never gets the sense that there is no one there for him.  The family will allocate all of it’s resources to it’s children to ensure that they live well and receive the best possible education, even if it is at the expense of everyone else.  I would not be where I am today without my parents, and da momz constantly reminds me of it.

   

  Well, I’m the type of person who works very well in groups, but only as the leader (I also grunt when I get my swell on at the gym).  I am a spoiled brat, and I totally run the house.  I enjoy making plans, allocating tasks, and bossing people around.  But I’ve also grown up and am bothered by a sense of duty towards myself and my family…you know, the element of leadership that includes sacrifice and responsibility towards others.

   

  The social challenge that I face with this meeting is staggering.  I’ve changed significantly in the past two years, forcing myself beyond my comfort zones, beyond what I thought was reasonable, and beyond what I imagined was possible, on a personal journey to become an amphibious introvert.  Whereas I was too inhibited to even introduce myself to a stranger two years ago, I can now walk into a busy social setting full of people I hadn’t met before, get their attention, gain popularity, tell stories, and walk out with five new friends and a girl on my arm.  It was a one of the most painful and difficult changes I had ever made (I believe it took me two months just to develop an appropriate social smile and about 100 conversations with strangers to get the courage to start a conversation without looking like a nervous wreck), but I could not be happier for having made it.  Still, as much as I’ve built a strong social façade, I have yet to apply anything I’ve learned to a social setting involving my parents.  

   

  With them around, I cannot but clam up and sit quietly in the corner observing the situation the same way I had always done.  My parent’s continuously remind me to not embarrass them at this meeting by acting like an aloof and dismissive social turtle.  This is why it is so important that I put on the most amazing performance now, as I have a lot to prove.  I cannot, and will not, fail.  I will throw down every thing I’ve got: knowledge, wit, charm, humor, confidence, warmth, sincerity, everything, at these people who want to marry off their daughter to me.  I will raise my social value to astronomical heights.  I will apply everything I’ve learned about women in the last two years to demonstrating the correct values, which turn on her attraction switches.  And then I will choose, cordially and on my own volition, whether or not I want to see her again. 

   

  The truth is, I want deeply my parents to see that I have surpassed them, not by education, but by the very fiber of my being.  I want to show them to value of individualism, self-reliance, and independence, the part of me that is not Chinese.

  • 7:49 AM
  • 18 Views
  • 2 eProps
  • 1 Comment