Musings of a Multi-Cultural Mind

In general, I tend to avoid politics and religion.  That doesn't mean that I'm completely in the dark, don't have any opinions, or don't care though.  I just have a sense of...hopelessness of sorts.  Cynical much?  Yup, pretty much.  When you watch the news these days, it's hard not to be a cynic.  There are so many countries involved now in the conflicts in the Middle East, and it seems like every time 1 step forward is made, something happens to set everything 3 steps back. So Wednesday's attacks in San Bernardino came as a shock since they hit so closely to home.  The reports have said there have now been more mass shootings in the US this year than there have been days in the year so far.  When the initial reports started rolling out throughout the day, without any identified suspects, I just thought "oh, probably just another disgruntled, crazy, gun-toting redneck!" After all, most of the recent mass shootings were of that nature, right?  Africa

Yesterday Stephen and I finally got around to taking engagement photos, so I've done some reflecting on our relationship and figured now would be a good time to write about how we met and how our relationship represents the diversity I love. In 2012-2013, I had tried a variety of online dating websites - even some with paid memberships.  Nothing ever came out of it though; there were a few guys I went on multiple dates with but nothing ever really progressed.  I gained so much confidence during this time though, because I really learned what I valued in a relationship and what types of personality traits I could mesh with or not.  I could really weed out what I liked or didn't pretty quickly, and had the cajones to speak up about it and not waste anyone's time if things didn't feel right.  Sometimes it felt almost business like - thank you for your time, but I don't think we'll be moving forward with your application; we have a different skill set in mind... T

Sorry I've been slacking on this blog a bit, but we've had a lot going on.  We finally got Stephen moved out of his condo and settled (mostly) into mine, and in the course of having his condo on the market for just a couple weeks, we just closed escrow and made a nice chunk of change to save towards a new house. First thing's first though - yesterday I celebrated my 37th birthday :) We started our day with a quick breakfast at Sunny Side Kitchen, this great little ma & pa shop in Escondido that has a simple breakfast & lunch menu of various paninis.  Their works breakfast panini (half sandwich with side of fruit) includes egg, cheese, bacon & avocado on seasoned sourdough bread (or you can ask for gluten free bread) for only $5, and they always have fresh cold brew coffee and house made lemonade, along with an assortment of mini muffins and cookies.  They usually have a daily soup and a quiche as well, and a few salads to go along with the full size lunch

That was one of the complaints I had in my last job - my manner of speech was not definitive.  Instead of saying "I will complete the project by 4pm," I often softened my message to "I would like to complete everything by 4pm."  One of the owners of the company would scold me and knit pick at my speech and my character when I spoke like this.  I do get it - American business people especially like strong, definitive speech with firm promises.  They want to feel that confidence in you that you can deliver specifically what they need.  But what's definitive really anyways?  Most of the time nobody is able to really keep those promises, so it all becomes a load of bullshit in the end. I grew up in a house where I was seldom ever given a so-called definitive answer.  Yes/No questions were usually met with a "maybe" or "we'll see." I learned to become complacent with seeing how things would turn out, what was meant to be or not.  In this way

I'll be honest - I've put off working on this entry for the past few days because frankly, I haven't been coping too well myself.  The stress of losing my job, planning my wedding, moving my fiance into my condo and working on getting his place sold has been pretty overwhelming - contributing to a major Fibro flare.  But life has to go on right? So how does one cope with a flare and just the general, every day pain, fatigue, & foggy brain? Many of the sufferers out there are still working full time and have families they need to take care of. We pretty much smile through the pain and get on with our lives, but there are a few things that help. I'd say having an understanding support system is a huge help, for me in particular.  I am so lucky that while I was working, my fiance Stephen was and is super supportive about helping out around the house and doing a lot of the cooking.  My dear cousin, who lived with me for a time, also took a lot of the pressure off

Besides my musings on cultural stuff, I want to talk a little bit about health on this blog as well.  Especially women's health.  A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia .  This Syndrome affects 7-9 times as many women than men, and there are estimates that it affects around 8% of the population.  What is it?  Surprisingly there isn't even that much research on it and an exact cause for it hasn't been pinpointed.  But basically its widespread pain and fatigue - all the time .   Like if you had a bad case of the flu.  Or some reports I've read have said it would take a normal person 3 days of being completely sleep deprived to feel some of the effects of what Fibromyalgia feels like.  It sucks.  It sucks big fat donkey balls. In my case, I suspect it actually started around 5 years ago.  For several years before that, I had a pretty aggressive career, and on top of that, a bi-polar boss who was boinking one of my coworkers who became jealous of my s

From a young age I always knew I was different.  Growing up with my mom's side of the family, there were 12 of us grand kids, and 9 were half Mexican, 2 were half white, and then there was me -- the lone Persian.  Most my aunts and uncles went through divorces and were on second marriages, but at least most of my cousins got to spend time with both of their parents.  The fact that I didn't even have a dad didn't occur to me until I was around 3-4 years old.  I remember one day seeing my eldest cousin doing some work around my grandma's house, and I asked him what he was doing.  He explained he was helping his dad do some repairs and it just dawned on me -- "Oh, I don't have a dad."  My older male cousins and uncles all watched out for me from then on. But I was never like anyone else in my family.  I was told they'd find me sitting in my crib just whistling to myself as a 1 year old, and by 3 I was already picking out tunes on my family's electri

Yes, this is actually something I listed as a requirement on my online dating profiles.  Don't underestimate the importance of culinary compatibility! See, dating in my lifetime was mostly a product of environment.  I grew up in an area of San Diego called Mira Mesa, which was jokingly called "Manila Mesa" because of the large Filipino population. So naturally the guys I dated in highschool and college were mostly Filipino, with a couple of Vietnamese guys thrown in there too.  After college, after I had perfected my Japanese language skills, I started to hang out with a lot of Japanese people, which lead to dating Japanese guys (and even a brief engagement to a Japanese guy when I was 20.)  Filipinos were cool because the culture was similar enough to the warm Hawaiian culture I grew up with, but things never really got serious.  It was fun dating Japanese guys too and this helped me really learn about the culture and improve my speaking, but unfortunately most of thos

My grandma's home where I grew up was the nucleus of the family, and my mom was the head chef.  And she cooked army sized portions.  Family dinners were a near daily occurrence; in our house lived my grandmother, myself, my mom, and my mom's younger brother, but my mom's two older sisters didn't live that far away so they were over all the time with their kids as well and we always had enough food for random visitors to pop by. So what kind of food did we eat? Well it was mainly an eclectic blend of Hawaiian fusion dishes, American, Italian, & Mexican cuisine, prominent emphasis on Hawaiian.  Though my grandma was Italian, she was married at the age of 14 (!! yes, I know, it was a different time then), so she learned a lot of her cooking skills from her Hawaiian mother-in-law, as did my mom and aunts.  The flavors of soy sauce and ginger were highly prominent in our kitchen, and all the girls would often form an assembly line to fold hundreds of wontons to go with