My Wishlist + A Small Mercy

I envy doctorfabulous. Asian parents who actually want their kid to go to a state college? GASP GASP! Whodathunk that such a thing existed?

I may sound a bit spoiled, going against my mom on things that might be good for me to get into a good college, but to put things in perspective, the main reasons why I rant on and on about this are:

1) I don’t have freedom. At all. I mean, I don’t have a curfew, but I don’t need one because of my metaphorical house arrest. My mom takes joy in dragging me along the path in life that she wants me to take.

2) Take away the piano, please. It’s not going to make much of a difference on my college transcript, and I hate it anyway.

3) Oh, and while those miracle workers are at it, could they eradicate all the narrow-minded Asian parents? Wait, nevermind. That would pretty much wipe Asia off the face of the planet.

I probably am spoiled. But because of the verbal and slight physical abuse I take everyday, I consider myself to be a very depressed, spoiled brat.

… Depressed and spoiled work with each other, right?

My friends find my Chinese nickname, Zhao Zhao, to be very… ambiguous, I guess. Apurva, Jason, Sean, and Naveen (My afternoon carpool on Fridays) claimed that it can be incorporated into anything and everything, and to prove it, they’ve sung my name to that cat food commercial (the “meow meow meow” one), the Star Wars theme, the Mario theme, and even laughed with it.

HOW TO YOU LAUGH WITH “ZHAO ZHAO”? HOW DID THEY EVEN MAKE IT WORK?!

That’s not all they did, either. They spent the thirty minutes of driving time saying my Chinese nickname over and over, and practically made an entire language out of it. Imagine, a language with one syllable. If they ever make different dialects with it, my ears are going to shrivel up and die.

Oh well. It’s nice to hear my name used in a different tone than the “ZHAO ZHAAAAAOOOOO!!!!” that my mom yells everyday. Makes me feel a little happier about my cultural nickname.

Speaking of which, Jason also used my nickname in Beijing Opera. For those of you fortunate enough NOT to know, Beijing Opera is an extremely annoying style of Chinese singing in which there’s a nails-on-a-chalkboard instrument called the erhu, some annoying clackity clackers, and singers wearing ridiculously colored/coordinated robes and headpieces and sing in a nasally, shrilly tone that would drive anyone who isn’t used to hearing this daily INSANE. And to hear my name being used in such a way pretty much tore my insides apart, because he did such a good impression!

Still, I never thought I’d hear my name be used for thirty minutes straight in a positive way. Wahoo! Guys can be helpful/supportive (Jeez, I never thought I’d see that day)!

… I am going to stop talking about my mom. I swear.

 

I’M POSTING!!! YEAH!

Okay, I can’t make this too long, because not only do I have an online course to finish up and a whole lotta homework, the spacebar on this computer is busted and all I’m using right now is that tiny suction cup thingy anchored down with tape.

I’m not a very technical person. I don’t know what the heck the suction cup’s for.

I know I’ve neglected all my emails. But ever since I made a Facebook, all I’ve gotten is somewhere around twenty messages in my inbox, and people like Jess know that if I see a small army of email, I freak and log off immediately.

Which is probably why people try not to email me that often, thank goodness.

IB starts again. Boohoo. Mom’s giving me even more pressure to shapen up and get all set for Ivy League. I was Googling up people’s opinions on the Ivy colleges, wondering if it’s worth all my misery, and I came across an interesting section that said many Ivy League hopefuls/students (lucky ducks) didn’t have a plan beyond getting that big fat acceptance letter in the mail.

Which is TRUE TRUE SO VERY TRUE!!! I mean, I know I want to be a pediatrician or something (I gave up on the graphic design dream when my mom pressured me to stop wasting my time with street jobs like that), but I haven’t exactly planned out how to get there, besides show an office that I’m an Ivy League graduate and be handed my ticket to that prestigious career.

Which, turns out, won’t work because hospitals and offices don’t care if you went to Ivy League or not. The only field where you might get a golden ticket is if you go to Wall Street, and I’d probably escape to Antarctica if I do anything related to business.

See?! Why can’t my mom stop living in the 80’s and freakin’ see that Ivy Leagues aren’t all that jazz anymore?! I bet she doesn’t even know that the whole clique started not because of good education, but because of their ultra-amazing football teams.

Okay, fine, I didn’t even know that until I Wiki-ed Ivy League colleges yesterday, but at least I know NOW. My mom still insists on reading these stupid stories about how brilliant Asian kids make their way to the great colleges, not knowing that THOSE BRILLIANT ASIAN KIDS ALSO HAVE MISUNDERSTANDING PARENTS WHO WANT TO LIVE THEIR DREAM LIVES THROUGH THEIR POOR CHILDREN.

I mean, yesterday, my mom told me (and I quote, translated directly from her snippy Chinese), “I’m making you take piano lessons just so you can win an award and make it to a top college.“

She’s beyond blind. I’M NOT GOING TO WIN A PIANO AWARD BECAUSE I’M THROUGH WITH MY PIANO LESSONS. I want to be happy my whole damn life, woman. I could care less if I get into Cornell or Brown or whatever. I could care less if I make half a million dollars a year.

Ack. Okay, I’m ranting about mom again. Bad Zoey, you’ve spent enough blog space ranting about her.

So, the Olympics are over, Phelps finished his quest (Although with some debate over his win over Cavic), and Beijing is now going back to its hazy old habits with the jumbled traffic and mass construction. I hope Beijingers will realize that having less pollution is an awesome thing in life and push the government to keep things ‘Olympic-ized’.

I love how they named the main arena the Bird’s Nest. Teehee, and it looks like one, too. Wonder who’s the crazy architect who came up with that?

And now all the Asian American families here are rejoicing, because now they can return to their beloved families without worrying about being frisked, cuffed, and booted out at the airports or going to court over attempted Olympic sabotage (“All I did was order a Happy Meal! How was I suppose to know that the cashier was a Tibetan?”). Oh, and Beijingers are also rejoicing, because now they can open up their street shops again and chug out as much pollution they want on the streets. Wahoo! No more having to check if it’s odd or even license plate day!

Gaaah! Twelve-thirty already?! Must go do homework now!

 

I’m depressed because I got a 50 on my first world history quiz.

This is sad. If I’m depressed because of some silly history score that I can EASILY bring up because it’s only the first grade of the third grading quarter, I’m never going to make it past life.

Well, another part of the reason why I’m depressed is, despite my efforts to stay on top of things, I’m procrastinating on my world history homework, which I need to do not only to earn some more good grades but it’s also good practice for the test coming up on Friday.

But, then again, I have all of Sunday and Monday to do it (Monday’s Martin Luther King Day).

But I still have to start practicing some ballet and catch up on Chinese.

I’m so tired, though. I’ve had an average of about barely seven hours of sleep this entire week. And I really wish that Ms Barreto (My ballet teacher) would move my ballet classes back about an hour because I’m really tired of getting home at ten at night, the time when most of my friends (Asian and white) are already snoring in their beds.

And my mom should be happy! She really shouldn’t be complaining that my PSAT scores weren’t high (I got a 184/240, which is actually eighty-nine percent higher than the nation’s sophomore PSAT scores. Which is pretty sad, if a stressed-out freshman who took this in October can beat nearly ninety percent of all sophmores in this nation. But then again, this test is for high school juniors, so sophomores aren’t really worried about scoring high on the PSAT yet.) enough, when people like Alice made a C on her American Government midterm, and Jason cancelled all of his extracurricular so that he only has piano, when I’m balancing ballet, piano, art, and Chinese all at the same time.

I made all A’s on my midterms (to my great surprise) and all my quarter grades. In total last semester, I made twenty official A’s: Two overall A’s for each of my seven classes, and six A’s for my midterms (I exempted my Creative Writing exam because a) I could, b) I’d have to write a sonnet in class, and c) I didn’t want to come to school that day.).

My extracurricular teachers all say that I’m an exceptional student and talented, I’m beginning to recognize a lot more Chinese symbols than I originally thought I would, and I’m trying out for every single math competition in the Mu Alpha Thetha club I joined (Unlike some people).

So there, mom. See if you can find anyone to compare me to now. Hah.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course mom is going to find someone else to compare me to. In fact, she’ll probably import someone from China for the sole reason of giving me someone to compete with.

No, no. I think that’s just the 50-in-World-History depression kicking in again.

But in any case, even though I’m improving my math competition scores greatly, my parents still think that it isn’t enough, and now I’m doing an hour of math every week with my art buddy Anna Chang.

And my mom just dug out the Chinese math workbooks we bought oh so long ago during the summer of third grade, and now she’s teaching me even more math.

I don’t know why they’re doing this, though. I’m pretty sure I’ve expressed a clear disinterest in the math subject, even though I’ve won numerous math awards and am passing the Algebra 2 class without doing anything more than the classwork and homework.

But then again, all the Asian teens I know are reinforcing their math skills because their parents are buying them workbooks and making them do extra math everyday, so I shouldn’t be complaining.

Or should I?

After all, if I didn’t have so much stuff going on (Math club, Relay for Life, and the extracurricular) outside of school, I wouldn’t be this exasperated by extra math.

I’m probably going to end up with stomach ulcers and crap like that from stressing out too much.

But really, if I weren’t born Asian in the first place, none of this would be a problem.

I’m expecting to start working on the ORB, our school’s annual literary magazine, soon, because it’s due out at the end of April. Lorne and I went around to various classes, informing all of the students and the teachers about the ORB and encouraging people to submit their writings and art to be published in the magazine.

I wonder why none of the classes we went to were IB classes. It seems like the ORB is prejudice against gifted people, but I guess that in the past, most of the ORB submissions were sent in by IB people, and so they’re trying to get the traditional students to join in as well.

But besides that, and having to write a lot of random stuff under pressure, I’m having a lot of fun with the Creative Writing people. From last semester’s class, there’s Brandy, A.K.A. Music and anime girl, Eric, the science fiction and fantasy addict, Melissa, the dragon-lover (She wrote her entire NaNo story on dragons) and friend of my eigth grade best friend, Shaina (Who went to Wharton High School, so I can’t see her anymore), Lorne, and Chris, the quiet giant who also acts like he’s a violent, emo guy.

And there are a bunch of other students that I’ve never met before, but according to some of the senior Creative Writers, they’ve taken this class before, just in another year.

Yup. We’re quite the normal bunch.

I’m really, really tired.

 

My relationship with mom has gotten better. All I had to do was put more effort into Chinese, and help her out, like, the instant she calls for help. Oh, and snap at her less. Which is hard to do when you’re frustrated and all you want is to be left alone, but if you breathe correctly and use a lot of sheer mental will, you can be as calm as you want. Well, up to a certain point, of course…

DAY BLUE SEMESTER SUMMARY

BIOLOGY

I’m still struggling with trying to stay awake in class, but I’m doing better than before. We covered the fine details of photosynthesis and cells (All the stuff I remember touching in seventh grade, but more in-depth now that it’s high school, and the course is actually called Biology), listened to Mr. Ward’s stories about his farming childhood and how he was on an ace baseball team and got drunk once because he drank two-month old root beer (Which, of course, is impossible now because they took pretty much all of the potentially harmful alcohol out of root beer)…

But, unlike Ms Allen, he rambles on for only a little bit before returning to that day’s classwork, and the stuff that he talks about it actually RELAVANT to Biology. Like the root beer thing. It was totally appropriate to talk about that in class because we were studying alcoholic fermentation in cellular respiration.

Danielle and I both like Mr. Ward. She says he’s like a good ol’ grandfather-like person, which I completely agree with. The other reason why I like him (Besides the fact that he actually teaches us) is that he’s both intelligent AND fun at the same time, which isn’t uncommon for me, because I hang out with thirteen-year-old geniuses (*cough* Jason *cough*) all the time, but he’s a TEACHER. And he’s OLD. Well, he claims he’s thirty and extremely buff under his dress shirts and trousers, but that’s like, the worst, most obvious lie ever.

I somehow always break down physically during his class. On the first couple weeks of school, I had a cold and a cough. Mr. Ward told the class to be careful and not catch the “Zoey disease”. Then, my neck snapped and I had to go to the nurse because I couldn’t move it. Then my nose started bleeding for no particular reason (Mr. Ward said it was the dry weather that caused one of the veins in my nose to break) in the middle of the class. Oh, and there was the stye in the corner of my eye, which nobody noticed until MR. WARD POINTED IT OUT.

It doesn’t help that I have another stye now, on the top lid of my left eye. And guess what Wikipedia said?

“While a stye is technically a pimple and can be popped, doing so is not recommended without technical expertise[5] due to their proximity to the eye.”

I HAVE A FREAKIN’ HUGE PIMPLE OVER MY LEFT EYE?!

Oh well. At least it said that the bruising can be helped with a warm cloth (Like all pimples!), so I’ll try that later.

Anyway, Danielle even pointed out that I contract pretty much every minor physical condition during Biology. And no one else does.

INQUIRY SKILLS (IS)

Ms Smith hates me. There’s no other explanation for why I’m afraid of her and why she picks on me in class. Well, everyone’s afraid of her, but I’m one of the few that actually have a REASON to be fearful

The upper classmen say that IS can be like an extra study hall period, but I don’t get how anyone could sneak in a little homework here and there when Ms Smith is constantly watching our backs and barking at us all the time.

And after I mistakenly called Sven Alkalaj a Muslim when he was really a Jew (Stupid, STUPID me for not looking at my notes and seeing that his ancestors were all great members of Sephardic Jewry), she snapped at me during my oral presentation on Mr. Alkalaj and for the rest of class, plus during all of the next IS class. She called on me to answer about, oh, every other question, when I’m sure I made it pretty clear that I was doing what I was suppose to do by writing down a lot of notes on the presentations.

Surprisingly enough, she gave me a 9.5 out of 10 for my oral, with only .5 off for the not-knowing-that-Sven-was-a-Jew part. But combined with my essay, a horrible 8.5/10, I barely managed to scrape an A for that assignment. I didn’t think my essay deserved that low of a score, but eh, as long as I get an A on my semester transcript for IS, I’m happy.

We watched a great lot of disturbing videos on the Holocaust (Including the Academy award-winner “Genocide”, the segment of Oprah Winfrey’s show on her and Eli Wiesel taking a trip to Auschwitz, where Eli Wiesel was imprisoned during WW2, and the memories of this one woman who was forced to go on a death march, like thousands of other Holocaust prisoners), which I could’ve avoided because Ms Smith said the other option was to go to the library and work on another assignment, but when I finally realized just how sweet of an alternative that was… ’twas too late. I was scarred for life.

So, for the remainder of the semester, I put up with the rest of the video because, well, how much worse can it get when you’re already mentally scarred?

Then I heard from Apurva that we were watching more disturbing videos for the second semester, which will be about Model UN and Civil Rights. I didn’t see how that would be particularly disturbing… unless Ms Smith plans on launching into the whole Darfur thing as a sub-topic for Model UN.

I will run if we go into more genocide studies.

FRENCH

Everyone keeps saying how Mrs. Chestnut doesn’t teach us anything. What I think is that if they just stop TALKING to each other during class, maybe they’ll think differently. I rarely ever study French at home, and I’m acing most of my quizzes. Hmm. Why do you think I’m doing so well when I’ve never touched French before in my life? Oh! I know! Maybe, just maybe, (le gasp) Mrs. Chestnut is actually teaching? And I’m actually THINKING during class instead of babbling incessantly with my friends?

Of course, sometimes I can’t listen because Eric Li (Who, by the way, is in NO WAY related to me) keeps on stabbing me in the back with his pencils and gunning his feet on my chair, and I have to turn around to tell him to either stop or he’s going to find himself on the ground with a French textbook lying on his head.

Eric isn’t all that annoying, though. He can be nice when he wants to be. Even when he’s taking apart all of my mechanical pencils and pens behind my back and complaining that I should buy writing utensils that come in more than three pieces.

CREATIVE WRITING

Erm. The people in this class are… rather special. But all of them are cool. I mean, they all like good literature and writing (Some even like drawing! Yay!), and they’re all active participaters in the class (Well, except for this one kid, who I suspect got into this class because there was no other elective for him to join).

Plus, they’re funny. Especially the guys. This class reminded me of the good, funny times I had in eigth grade.

And now I miss middle school and all of its good times.

Besides writing a bunch of short stories about murder and bunnies, we participated in NaNoWriMo (I clocked in at 11:45 PM on November 30 with my 50,000 words), which half the class failed in because they couldn’t reach the 30,000 word goal that Mr. Stanton set for everyone.

And there was this one day where I came to class and discovered that we were left alone with no teacher or substitute. Elise immediately rushed up to Mr. Stanton’s chair and declared that she was the boss now because Mr. Stanton told her that whenever he’s not around, she would be in charge.

Elise and Mr. Stanton have a close bond because Elise is the reigning champion of our county’s annual Poetry Slam, and Mr. Stanton is always giving her booklets and tips on writing.

But anyway, Elise took the boss thing way too far, because when this one other girl (Whose name I keep forgetting) went to the classroom computer to put on some music for all of us, she thought that music girl was stabbing her in the back by trying to run everything in the class instead. They started arguing and BSing each other in front of everyone, and all us quiet students were watching in amusement, thinking how stupid and immature these two girls could be.

Although music girl was immature, there was no other description to describe the state that Elise was in, except that she was acting pretty much like a bossy five-year-old who was throwing a tantrum because she couldn’t get her way. Really, she even spewed out the, “I will not tolerate this bullshit because I’m just too respected, [Insert name of music girl].”

How immature could you get? Danielle said it was cowardly, which I sort of agree on, but I thought it was mostly child-like. Elise even pulled Lorne (Who she is so OBIVOUSLY crushing on, because she’s practically throwing herself onto Lorne) outside and barked at him about how the class was “disrespecting her” when most of us weren’t out of our seats for the entire class period.

It was pretty hilarious, though, because Aaron gave us the signal to settle down so we could hear what Elise was ranting about, and Elise was clearly throwing a tantrum towards Lorne, who was just respectfully abiding by the norms of the classroom and minding his own business. Even though we all wanted to hear more of their conversation, we couldn’t help but burst out laughing, because it was just too precious!

Elise apologized later, claiming that the crisis that was going on in her life were clearly affecting her actions. Music girl apologized, too, and the two of them reconciled.

Oh wait! Now I remember music girl’s name! It was Brandy!

SEMESTER EXAMS

I aced the math exam with flying colors, and got A’s on everything except for IS and English, which I have no clue what my grades are because I haven’t received them yet. And I have to say, for someone who claims that they’re on top of things 24/7, not being able to grade an exam by Friday when we took the test on Tuesday is pretty sad, Ms Smith. Mrs. Allen has a reason not to tell us our grades because we took her exam on Friday, the last day of school.

But she said that she would call anyone if they made a D or lower on the exam.

I haven’t gotten a phone call, so I’m hoping that I scraped at least a B on the English exam. That would give me my A in English on my semester transcript.

 

This morning, mom went delirious.

LITERALLY.

I mean, just because I wouldn’t get out of bed when she asked she decided that that meant she needed to slap herself silly. And jump around like a leprechaun. And scream, “Curse me for wanting to be a mother! Curse me!” in Chinese.

I know that she’s trying to get a divorce set up, and I know it’s hard on her. But seriously, get ahold of yourself. Just because your fourteen-year-old teenager didn’t want to get out of bed because she couldn’t sleep doesn’t mean you should go insane.

She claims that it’s because I never listen to her. I NEVER listen to her? Psh, yeah right. Hello, the only reason why I’m studying Chinese and piano is because SHE wants me to. So sue me for showing resistance to studying Chinese and practicing piano. Heck, it’s not like I WANT to. Does she really think that I’m going to willingly jump around, squealing, “I love studying all this extra stuff!”? Hell no! Just like any other NORMAL TEENAGER, I’ve got my own ambitions.

And she needs to learn that just because she isn’t in control, doesn’t mean she has no reason left to live. I don’t understand why Asian parents just won’t tolerate the fact that they won’t always have control over their children’s lives. Everyone else does it pretty well, and MOST of their kids turned out fine.

While mom was still screaming at me, I told her that she expected too much of me. She went, “Well, am I not right? Do I not have the right to have my children listen to me after all I’ve done for them?”

What she doesn’t realize is how much I DO listen to her. I help her all the time when she asks for help, I grudgingly continue my Chinese and piano studies even though I have no motivation whatsoever to, and I even do her little favors every now and then. Why can’t she acknowledge that? Why?

And okay, I admit, I’ve been pretty ignorant of her lately even though I’m suppose to sympathize with her because of the divorce thing and whatnot. But all I’m asking, is that for ONCE can she look past my bad qualities? I mean, I don’t completely ignore her, I help around with the family whenever I can (and when I’m allowed to) I manage to keep my things relatively clean and organized, I’m enthusiastic about taking care of Jerry, I’ve been getting good grades, and everyone always compliments me on my dancing, artistic, and even musical ability. Why, even she herself admitted that I’m good at drawing and dancing.

Besides, after all of the verbal abuse she’s thrown at me for all these years, does she really think that I’ll go back to obeying her like a good little puppy? She’s called me a pig, faceless, skinless, and coldhearted (Faceless and skinless are Chinese expressions, and they’re pretty harsh). She’s even told me to go die when I didn’t arrive to take my shower on time during the summer. I reasoned that it was the post-baby-birth hormones talking, but still, it hurt.

She has ALWAYS been comparing me to other people. “Oh, look, Jason plays the piano much better than you! Why can’t you be like him? And look at how many extracurriculars he’s taking! Why can’t you multi-task like that?” Well, for your information, he’s probably taking the classes, like, once a week each. I, on the other hand, am taking multiple ballet and art classes a week, and I’m still continuing piano.

“Oh, look at Alice! She’s washing the dishes and the toilets at her home, and she’s swimming about an hour and a half everyday! Why can’t you be like her?” Whenever I try to help you during school days, you always brush me off and tell me to study, because that comes first. So, lo and behold, I’m not doing the dishes or scrubbing the toilets? Gee, how did that happen? And plus, I would take ballet everyday if I could, but the ballet school is HALF AN HOUR AWAY, and even YOU admitted that there was no way I could handle that. Heck, I’d love to take art classes everyday, too, but one of my teachers is about forty-five minutes away, and even the one who comes to our house every Saturday lives at least half an hour away! Alice, on the other hand, only has to go to either the community pool or the YMCA, which is only about fifteen minutes away, max.

But now that she’ll be a single mother of two, she taught me how to make dumplings, vacuum, and wash the dishes today. Well, FINALLY. I wanted to learn how to cook ever since I was, what, eleven? But nooo, mom said she had no time to teach me (Even during non-school days) and to go back to my studies.

That doesn’t mean I felt bad for mom after she went insane and started slapping herself. Heck, I was scared that she would start banging her forehead on the wall any minute, or drive herself into some sharp object. And I felt so sorry for her that the first thing I did was finish my daily dose of Chinese and piano, then willingly obliged to clean up my room (Which was, like, SPOTLESS anyway compared to some people I know… wait, Zoey, stop acting like mom! Don’t compare yourself to other people!), learn all this, do all that, blah blah blah.

I just told Grandma about this, and she said that mom needed mental help because she seems insane.

It’s probably the housewife syndrome that’s making her go crazy. Locked up inside the house, taking care of the kids, feeling alone and invisible all the time… well, that got to her a long time ago.

But the thing is, she ISN’T invisible, nor is she alone. I admire her for being a somewhat strong woman. Jerry probably will, too. And she has all these friends who think about her and bring her food all the time. In fact, I think she’s pretty much friends with every Asian mom in our area. And she can always talk to any one of them when she feels like she’s about to implode.

Oi. I hope this situation doesn’t get any worse. A delirious mother and a path to divorce for Christmas. Oh, and about forty dollars worth of books, but that I got last month.

This is just great.