NOTD - LH China Glaze Orange Marmalade, RH China Glaze Strawberry Fields

ChG Orange Marmalade. I <3 this color. Apparently OM and SF (below) and all the other polishes in the Summer Days collex are "glass-flecked." I don't know how people know. I just know that glass-flecked polishes are shimmery, "like crushed diamonds are in it." Huh.



ChG Strawberry Fields. I don't know if I like this color. It's pretty, but a tad too cool for me. But it has gold shimmer. I'm so confused. I think I'll keep it for now, pack rat that I am.



I'm impressed with the staying power of these. This is the second time in my life I've ever worn China Glaze, and I must say they are holding up very very well (this is the third day). Like Zoyas, which are my first love, but a little $$ without discount, they wear like iron on me (base coats: LH has Essie Fill the Gap!, RH has Barielle Nail Camouflage). I frickin played guitar with them and they didn't even chip, only a bit of tipwear. And I use my nails as a guitar pick, because I suck at using a real pick. These babies didn't even have topcoat. I thought topcoat was overrated, and I was half right. I don't seem to need it to prevent chipping (at least for these), but I was rushing to chem after I did my nails and dinged three of them. Yay for quick-dry topcoat...



And, please excuse the grody eczema-ed ring finger. The shininess comes from Neosporin. That's why I keep a blog, right, for posterity?



As you can see, I have not mastered the art of taking color-accurate photos. (I look like a white person! or dead! or, no, wait for it, like Edward Cullen! Just in the first pic, though. And not really, even.) Nor have I mastered the art of remembering to wash your hands and clean your nails before taking a picture of said nails. My apologies.

"Racial Covering," by Kenji Yoshino; or, my life as a Taiwanese-American kid

I'm reading this story for my PWR class (The Rhetoric of Multicultural Experience), and it is fascinating. It's about a Japanese-American boy whose parents bring him back to Japan each summer so he can relearn Japanese culture. He totally fails because he is basically American on the inside, and all the other "pure" Japanese kids laugh at him and it is all very sad. At least, that's how far I've gotten.

I wonder what I would be like if my mom and dad never left Taiwan, assuming that they did meet and marry and have me. We wouldn't be a minority, of course; I think my mom's family has lived in Taiwan for like two hundred years, and my dad's family is similar (like, they didn't emigrate from China). I would actually know all of my Taiwanese relatives. And I would be a ton better at the target language, just like tenth-generation American kids here who have been surrounded by English and American ways since birth. I would have good genes, because my parents both tested into the best university in Taiwan. (Well. Okay. I still have those genes. But still.) Would I be more diligent and persevering? If I wasn't, I would probably fall to the wayside early on, what with all the cutthroat competition and cram schools and whatnot. I could be sure that my parents would know what I was going through, schoolwise, because they'd been through the same type of school system (albeit with more corporal punishment). And there would be none of this Chinglish, "you speak Chinese and I speak English" business. We would both speak Chinese and we would both understand each other perfectly (language-wise). Me and daddy would probably not have so many misunderstood conversations. I wouldn't have had to go to speech therapy in second grade because I couldn't pronounce the "s" sound. Wait no, I still would have because I just realized the "s" sound does actually occur in Mandarin (duh). I would speak and think in Chinese, I would know tons of poems and cheng yu's by heart, and maybe I would even think faster because I wouldn't have spent a large portion of my childhood translating things from English to Chinese or vice versa. ("What's your mommy's phone number at work, Tammy?" "Uhhh...five...seven seven...*counts on fingers in Chinese and then English*...") Man, I totally don't know how I did it back then; I don't think I could do it as well now. I think kid's brains are just super pliable. Or maybe I did it well because I had to do it, so I had to do it well; if I was forced to do it now (like study abroad), I could kinda do it. Probably both reasons, but more of the former. Kids' brains are amazing.

I wonder what I would look like. Would I be totally anorexic or self-conscious about my weight, since everyone else is thin in Taiwan? Or maybe I would just be thinner without all that fatty American food. Chinese food is pretty oily though, because everything is fried or stir-fried. Plus the milk isn't as good in Taiwan as it is here - even whatserface, Xu Zhe Zhao's daughter, said so. I wonder how I'd dress and how my hair would be cut. I can totally see myself with a fob haircut and glasses - no I lied, I can't imagine that. Maybe a little. (Btw, I'm not trying to use fob in a derogatory sense; but I could just call them Asian, because they would be in Taiwan. They're not fresh off the boat, they never even got on the boat.)

But while we're on the subject of "what would have happened if yadda yadda yadda," it's quite unlikely that the specific egg and sperm that created me would also have met and created me in this alternate world. My genes would be all different anyways.

Crikey, that was a long brain dump. And I haven't even finished reading this story for PWR.

STATS 60

So today I was sitting in stats class when it struck me. I'M TAKING A FRICKIN STATS CLASS. It's supposedly for my psych major, or premed if I decide to do premed. But, Physics 41 is vastly more palatable and also required for med school and my chem major. However, I can use my AP credit to get out of physics for chem, but I can't use AP credit to get out of stats (or general psych for that matter).

ERG STATS. Not only is it mathematically easy, it's a huuuge class AND it's at 9 am every day. The only good part is that the professor is interesting and we don't have homework or midterms or a final, we just have weekly quizzes.

Recipe - Hot Chocolate I

Ingredients:
1 packet hot chocolate mix
1 Jet-Puffed Marshmallow
1 dash cinnamon
Hot water
Milk or Starbucks Vanilla/Coffee/Mocha Frappucino, or all of the above

Directions:
Dump hot chocolate mix and cinnamon into a mug. Fill 3/4 the way up with hot water. Stir madly. Drop in marshmallow. Move it around until half-melted. Top off cup with milk. Stir. Sip. Smile.

NOTD - China Glaze Fortune Teller

I only put one coat of Poshe so it's a little bumpy.

OMGOMGOMG!!

I was at my local Peninsula Beauty Supply and they had the new OPI Alice in Wonderland collection. Absolutely Alice is the most absolutely gorgeous polish ever. EVER.

Pictures do not do it justice.
I did not buy it, because it was full price and I was cheap. But I might just have to suck it up and get it. However, the swatch on the plastic nail did not wow me; maybe they didn't put enough coats on.

Happy New Year! And New Decade!

My New Year's Resolutions:
1) Exercise more - preferably run four miles (1 hour - yeah, I'm slow) every day. Learn how to use a treadmill.
2) No more B's on my transcript. Two is enough. But, with PWR and IHUM, that could be tough...
3) Revise my resume, which I should be doing now. Get a nice summer internship or research job.
4) Use fewer parentheses. They are a lazy way to organize thoughts.
5) Cut down on my shopping, but shop more for things I will use for a long time.
6) Don't be glued to my computer. Socialize more.
7) Find a healthful shampoo/conditioner/moisturizer/etc. Sulfate-, paraben-, maybe silicone-free. Cut down on dangerous chemicals.
8) Drink more water. Eat healthier and don't get so excited about dessert.
9) Try to be more normal and less emo. Be more happy.
10) Don't take up another hobby/obsession, for chrissakes. Also, How I Met Your Mother is the last show I will accept onto my short-list of followed TV shows.

Loveleh. Now, onto my recent hauls...

This is the pair of jeans I was looking for in the mall, but I waited to buy it and both pairs of it in my size were sold out the next day! Granted, it was Boxing Day, but still. AE has had free shipping for the last three or more major holidays - New Years, Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, and maybe even Labor Day (I forget). I was banking on this New Years free shipping offer, but it did not come with a percentage off my order total, like the last two holidays (25% off and 20% off). Anyways, here it is:
From ae.com - AE Slim Boot Jean in Deep Indigo ($30)

Then I needed to add something worth at least five cents to my order to qualify for my $10 off $30 spent money card, so I added the cheapest thing I could find: a pair of underwear.
From ae.com - Aerie Ultimate Tanga in Pale Pink ($4)

Ooh, lacy.

This is the order I'm waiting for in the mail. It should arrive tomorrow (eeee!)
From ae.com - AE Lurex Stripe Cardigan in Storm Cloud Heather ($30, but got it for $24)


I also recently got a new phone, because I needed to change cell phone providers. I really wanted the Samsung Flight...

...but it was not free. So, I got the Samsung Magnet:

Yay for free phones! I hope it's a good one.

And then just a few hours ago, I ordered flip-flops, which I've been needing for the last three or four months:
From oldnavy.com - Women's New Metallic Flip-Flops in Pearl ($5)

Hmm, Bronze and Silver look nice too. That's ok. Pearl is priddy. A nice change from my usual boring basic black flip-flops. Mmmm, they look delish. *happy squirm*

OK. I'm done shopping now. DONE, I say. DONE.

Oh, and one other thing. I cut my mom's hair today, on her request. It actually did not turn out *too* horrible, considering that she has short layered hair, and she wanted shorter layered hair. It was at least generally even, and I learned how to cut layers! You take a thinnish vertical swatch of hair and pull it away from the head at an angle, and then you cut the ends off evenly. The higher angle you pull the hair, the more the hair will be layered. I also learned how my mom's bangs were cut - they're triangular and blunt. I rather want to get bangs myself (probably side-swept), but I'm too scared that I don't have enough hairs, or that they will be flat and paste themselves to my forehead, or they will make my forehead itchy, or that they will look wonky.