Category Archives: ooo this is late…sorry Shirley

Writing someone’s “about me” comes along with the implication that there are things you can learn about said person. So there are these descriptions that people lug around, but are new descriptions tacked on to their prized collections of adjectives, or can you smear away a fine layer of dust to discover that they’d been carrying this part of themselves all along?

My name is a mashup of my parents’ names: Joe and Ann, and for the longest time, I spent my time trying to run away from this association. They dedicated part of our house to a memorial of my paternal grandparents, as per Chinese tradition, and I rejected all forms of the typical second-generation Asian immigrant culture. They bowed thrice in front of two faded photographs of my grandparents and planted three incense sticks into the ashes in front of them, and I left my house to get to church on time. It was the morning of Chinese New Year. Their offers to drive me to wherever I needed to go became a great way to check up on everywhere I went, and I stayed out later and later. We never had cheese in the house.

I have my dad’s jaw, my mom’s eyes and her “huck-huck-huck” of a laugh, his incredible willingness and curiosity and her devotion and laziness. I have come to take pride in the small bursts of conversations in Chinese that I’m forced to partake in at work, and for all the fights I’ve gotten into with them over staying out too late with my church friends, I’ve grown to become a pretty straight-laced type of person. I am a steadfast friend and a klutz in time management. I am shy and adventurous at once. I am immensely pleased when people like the things I recommend. My temperament changes according to who I’m with; some would say that I am a people-pleaser. I don’t mind.

These two paragraphs are from my last blog because I have found that I haven’t changed too overwhelmingly in the last month or so. How do I see myself? I attached a picture of me (in Baruch’s computer lab, no less) trying to look all cutesy and whatnot because I couldn’t figure out just one aspect of my life that covered over everything else. Except maybe Christ’s blood. Yep, I’m that Christian but I don’t mind that either.

 (And if you didn’t catch on, Joe and Ann become Joanne in college student form)