Posts

My Favorite Dog

When I was little, I used to collect bugs because I desperately wanted a pet. I even ended up caring for an assassin bug (or wheel bug), which my mom was not very happy about. Finally (sometime in middle school), after YEARS of begging, I convinced my parents that we needed a puppy. My mom wanted to get one from a breeder since we are both slightly allergic to dogs and she’s a little bit scared of some of them. We settled on a golden retriever because she said it would be the nicest one. We had to drive out to the breeder’s farm ever couple weeks to see the puppies and pick one out while she told us how to take care of them. Of course, I picked out the most troublesome puppy in the litter. He was always somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. One time they found him roaming around in the farm’s cornfield. Another time he was playing with their pony in its pen. While we were taking him home for the first time, he threw up on my lap. It was really gross and I had to sit like that for a solid
9 comments
Read more

Hayley Kiyoko

Someone that I’m really thankful for is Hayley Kiyoko (I made the tough decision of not writing a Christina Wu appreciation post part 2 electric boogaloo). To be honest, I think writing this blog post is pretty scary for me. I feel like most people know that I’m not straight, but I’ve never said this to anyone in my family. I also just have a constant fear that people will treat me differently or think I’m weird or something if they know. Aka this post took me a long time to write and edit since it gave me major anxiety. One day a couple years ago, I was aimlessly browsing through YouTube. Not gonna lie, I wasn’t very happy in middle school because I felt like other people didn’t really like me (except for a couple of my close friends). Anyway, I stumbled across the Girls Like Girls music video. Being bored and kinda sad, I decided to watch it to fill up 5 minutes of my time. Even though it’s definitely not my favorite song of Hayley Kiyoko’s, it ended up h
Post a Comment
Read more

Road Trip to Japan

(Title inspired by "We should have a road trip to Japan" - Phong) I think my most memorable (and probably most recent) family vacation was our trip to Japan in the summer of 2015. It was super exciting for me since I had never been out of the country before. I was also looking forward to seeing some of my Japansese relatives. Honestly, it was probably only a vacation for my me and my dad since my grandma and mom were going to take care of some banking business.  My excitement quickly faded as the flight neared 13 hours. Once we landed I was exhausted and starving. We checked into our hotel and immediately started roaming the streets of Kichijoji to look for food. For some reason, I really wanted KFC? In Japan? So we stopped there for our first dinner. Thankfully, my mom and I could read some characters and narrowly avoided ordering fried fish. Since it was so long ago, I don’t particularly remember everything chronologically. For the first part of our trip we st
Post a Comment
Read more

Wuuuuu!

Even though I may sometimes deny it, there are actually a bunch of things that make me happy: programming, video games, Hayley Kiyoko, etc. However, I think the person that makes me the happiest is Christina <3. Now, I could probably write a whole book about her because we’ve been best friends for most of our lives, but I’ll try to condense it a little bit. Our friendship started way back in 1st grade at Countryside. But alas, we were only together for a year since my mom shipped me off to Dr. Howard for elementary school (she knew some of the teachers and really wanted me to be in their classes). That didn’t mean that Christina and I were separated though. Because my mom wanted me to continue learning Chinese, which I started at Countryside, Christina and I ended up going to the same Sunday language classes at the U of I (but in different sections because I was not a native speaker). Finally, after 5 long years, I returned to Countryside for 6th grade. I got to reconnect with
5 comments
Read more

Climate Strike

As we made our first loop around the main quad, there were people on the side who joined in with our shouting and slowly merged in with us. More people funneled in from different directions, growing the stream of bodies. I remember looking across the main quad and seeing the front end of our snake of protesters beginning to make its next loop while so many were still trailing behind me.  The sound of our voices all chanting in unison created a loudness that was impossible to ignore. We made our points clear with rhyming phrases that were easy to remember. Generally I’m a quiet person, but the energy of the crowd and the urgency of the issue led me to shouting louder than I ever have before. A couple of times, I remember thinking to myself “aren’t we bothering people?” and “I hope I'm not inconveniencing anybody.” I had to remind myself over and over that being annoying is the point. People won’t pay attention unless we make them. If no one listens, then nothing will change. Of
1 comment
Read more

Free

Image
Many people don’t know that I have an older brother because he’s 29 and doesn’t live at home or visit much. Well, here he is. Where are we? A prairie? A hiking trail? Believe it or not, but we’re actually hundreds of feet above the ground in the rooftop gardens of Facebook’s Menlo Park offices. It took us about half an hour to hike from one end of the long strip of buildings to the other. While this trip was super fun because I got to tour his office, eat amazing food, and see the ocean and mountains in California, it was also really stressful. I had never traveled completely by myself before. I think my heart rate was around 170 before boarding the plane. TSA also didn’t help with my anxiety since they gave my dad a full pat down (he came to the gate with me because my mom wanted to make sure I didn’t get stranded in Chicago if something happened to my flight). Even though I remained a nervous wreck on the plane, I was still excited. Being away from home for a week let me escape t
4 comments
Read more