Mentoring

This afternoon, I met my mentee for chai to catch up, as I realize that I hadn’t even seen her since the end of last year. In between getting sick twice (which is so embarrassing) in two months and my work travel, I just haven’t been able to make it happen.

After we caught up for an hour and she left to go to her therapy appointment, I sat a bit at the cafe and reflected on my own experience as a teen. I never had someone I could officially call a mentor, but I had two former teachers who in retrospect, I realize I did see as mentors. They were the people in my life who were always so positive, asking me questions about my life and where I was headed, and never in a judgmental way. Their positivity was like a model to me about how I wanted to view my own life and growth. Aside from both being very positive despite frustrating circumstances in their own personal and professional lives, the other thing they both had in common was that they were both constantly learning and seeking new knowledge, always seeking intellectual stimulation.

I think about this every time after I meet with my mentee. I’m not always sure what value I am providing, and I am constantly second guessing whether I am truly helping her. But what I strive to do every time I meet her is to validate her feelings, make her feel heard, and help her see the hope and possibilities of the future. I encourage her to seek new knowledge, to read and be aware of current events and politics, to contribute to society. It’s not always easy for her to do those things, but I can see that she is trying.

One thing I finally got her to do was to wake up at a regular time every single day. She used to sleep until 1 or 2 and essentially waste half her daylight hours. She’d even skip class. But now, she’s consistently waking up between 8-8:30 each morning. It’s small steps that ultimately become big ones. She is definitely going somewhere.

Scrapbooking costs

After a long hiatus from scrapbooking, I’ve recommenced the project of documenting our life and travels. I realized I had run out of 12×12 scrapbooking pages, scrapbook page protectors, and even a large enough scrapbook binder to hold everything in, so I had to order more supplies to start the project again. Without even really trying, I’d already added over $50 worth of all of the above into my Amazon cart.

“All of this?” Chris exclaimed. “Why is this stuff so expensive?”

“Scrapbooking is a billion-dollar industry, remember?” I responded. “This hobby isn’t a cheap one.”

Really, no arts and crafts projects are cheap. A single stamp at Paper Source can cost $15. A small sheet of stickers could cost $8. It sounds a little insane, and sometimes it is painful to purchase these things, but then I remember the Marie Kondo question of “Does this spark joy?” and yes, these objects do spark joy for me, so I still end up completing my purchases. In the end, it’s worth it to me to be able to have a physical way of documenting all of our travels and experiences. It always feels rewarding to look at it all, even if I don’t look at them that often.

Awards dinner

Last year, the awards dinner we had on the second night of kickoff was so sales-focused that everyone who was not in sales focused on the food and little else. So at the end of last year’s kickoff, many of us gave a lot of feedback, insisting that the sessions be run differently and more interactively, that the awards dinner recognize people across the go-to-market team, not just sales people, among other things. It looks like they really took our feedback seriously and have iterated differently this time around. I was surprised when the awards dinner was announced when our CEO announced that they would go team by team, starting with Services, then going to the Sales Engineers, then Customer Success Managers (or CSMs, that’s my team), then finally Sales (because of course… it’s sales focused…), and direct sales support (legal, operations, etc.). In my head, I was wondering if I was going to have my name announced given that I knew I did pretty well last quarter, and my manager had recently told me that I was getting recognized by the leadership team as being the most consistent person on my team in hitting targets repeatedly quarter after quarter last year.

They started discussing President’s Club on stage. In the past, they always announced President Club winners only if you were on the sales team, never if you were on any other team. So I kind of zoned out… until our CEO said he was going to announce CSMs  who “made club,” too. They announced three names of people on my team, and then our COO says he’s announcing one final CSM… and…. well,  it ended up being me. I couldn’t believe how many people were clapping and screaming and standing up for me. It was all a bit of a blur. I had people hugging me, giving me high-fives, and I barely remember what was said when I went on stage to be recognized and they gave a blurb about my accomplishments and my numbers for the last year. I took my gift, which was a Tiffany crystal with our logo and “president’s club 2018” on it, and later had to give it back so they could send it in for engraving. This year’s president’s club event is going to be at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, which is funny to think about because Chris and I went to visit the resort in 2015 as a potential wedding venue. We ended up choosing something far more intimate (and less expensive), but I remember really loving the visit and thinking it was a gorgeous property with stunning views of the ocean.

The order in which they announced our names was from the lowest to the highest, which means that I was the top performing CSM based on last year’s targets. I didn’t even realize this until my colleague told me afterwards because he thought I was brushing it off as not a big deal. “This is a big deal — you’re the top CSM globally!” my colleague yelled over the commotion in the room. “Everyone knows you now!” Again, public recognition is so odd to me. I rarely get complimented in front of a lot of people, much less the entire go-to-market organization hearing about my accomplishments. I had so many people from everywhere coming at me to hug and congratulate me. It made me feel happy but also a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable at the same time with all this newfound attention. And it even culminated in our CEO having a 30-minute conversation with me one-on-one, which I was not expecting at all. But it was actually a really good and deep conversation that went beyond work and even touched topics like my fundraiser and my brother. It’s odd, but I actually felt like we connected, and it was a good feeling to see another side of our CEO that I don’t often get to see when he’s trying to get us all to hustle.

It was a fun and exhausting night. I didn’t even get to sleep until past 2:30am because of all the conversations and partying tonight. But it does feel good to be publicly recognized for all the work I’ve done during my time here… even if it can be embarrassing for me personally. It’s like this is all finally paying off.

 

When you become the same age as your dead brother

I think I’ve had group birthday dinners or events for the last four years. But this year, I didn’t really feel up to it. Part of the lack of desire was due to friends who I’d normally invite and consider close who have moved away. But I think a bigger part of it is because the age of 33 is weird for me. It’s weird because that’s the last year that Ed got to see before he passed. He was about three weeks away from turning 34 when he ended his life. So to think that I was 27 at that time, and now, nearly 5.5 years have passed since then, and I am now at the age that he was is so jarring to me. It doesn’t feel right. How can you be the same age as your older brother? Your older brother… is supposed to be older, right? So this doesn’t make sense to me.

From a purely rational perspective, it does make sense because he effectively is either gone forever and no longer has an age (depending on your perspective), or, he stays 33 forever. Even though we celebrate his birthday every year, in my mind and heart, he will be 33 forever to me. He will barely know what it is like to experience real wrinkles beyond the tiny fine lines on his forehead. He won’t know what it’s like to go grey and even white. He won’t experience dental issues with age because he’s never going to age even a minute again.

That just makes me sad and feel hurt. I don’t want to be his age. I want him to be older the way he is supposed to be. What am I going to do with this year and the next and the year after that that will be worthy of him?

 

 

Last day of summer for now

We came back to Melbourne this morning after transiting in Kuala Lumpur again. I felt tired and like I just wanted to sleep, even though I knew it would be bad for me body-clock wise. As we’re packing our last bags after doing two loads of laundry, Chris asked if I wanted to go to the beach. But then, I thought, I’d have to go through the trouble of putting on sunblock, and I really did not want to do that.

“Well, it’s your last time to go to the beach and have this kind of weather for a long time…. we’re going back to the misery of New York winter very soon… So, it’s up to you,” he said.

Ugh.

“Fine. I’ll go get the sunscreen,” I mumbled.

And so we soaked in the last bits of a Southern Hemisphere summer in what we know as winter. I tried looking for abalone shells at Brighton Beach, but was dismayed to find not even one. I recalled the time in 2012 when I first came to Australia and roamed that beach by myself. To my total surprise and delight, that entire beach was covered in rainbow-colored gleaming abalone shells. I took only five of them then to not be so greedy. Yet in all the years since, I haven’t seen even one. Not to mention, this year, I noticed a sign I didn’t recognize that stated that visitors are not to remove any shells from the beach…. which likely means someone has been taking all of them.

 

Bai Tu Long Bay

I spent a good four weeks researching which mini cruise company to go with for our Ha Long Bay (the famous UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Vietnam that translates as “descending dragon”) excursion. I knew I wanted us to do an overnight boat given that the distance is quite far between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay (about four hours by car). But there were so many options — so many tour groups with high ratings, so many inclusions/exclusions, four different routes (two main Ha Long Bay routes, plus two slightly off-the-beaten path routes, and different sights to see on different routes. I ultimately decided on a cruise that would take us through Bai Tu Long Bay (it translates to “the dragon parts from the offspring”), a route that is a bit further out that, because it’s a newer approved route by the Vietnamese government, is far less touched and is known for stiller waters. The limestone island and rock formations are still the same, but it given it’s less touched, will be far less polluted and be more scenic. I read a few too many reviews saying the first two approved main boat routes had a lot of trash and oil in the waters, and I didn’t really want to pay money to see that. I was forgoing the opportunity on one of these routes to climb one of the mountains on the island to get a near-aerial view of Ha Long Bay, which I really wanted to see and do, but meh. The same route probably got the most reviewers discussing how filled with rubbish that island and its surrounding waters it was. I will see what I see, and I know what I will see. I don’t need a photo of the top view to remember this.

And as soon as we arrived at the dock, it already looked stunning. Lots of haters on travel sites like TripAdvisor shat all over Ha Long Bay, saying it’s gross, polluted, not anything like the photos you see online or in travel magazines. But along the route we took in Bai Tu Long Bay, even on a crisp 50s F day with a light wind, it was spectacular to see endless little limestone islands in all their various colors, with different types of trees and shrubbery adorning them. Caves that came about naturally live on some of these islands, and kayaking through it all today seemed quite surreal. The farther we sailed, the more we saw of these endless limestone islands. They just kept coming and coming; it’s as though there was no end to them.

As we sailed and kayaked this afternoon, I thought about my mom and Ed. My mom, more or less, has had a slight desire to travel, but it’s been pretty much squashed by my dad, who would far prefer to see anything via YouTube than actually travel and go see it himself in real life. But one area of the world she has absolutely zero desire to see again, sadly, is Vietnam, her home country. Too many bad memories of the war, the pain of losing her mother and never seeing her before she died in 1984, and the constant nagging of relatives still there for more money, have scarred her. She feels like she’s failed her family there in some ways (“no amount of money is enough”), and she doesn’t want to deal with them again. She could never go to Vietnam and not go see them the way I have. But Bai Tu Long Bay’s beauty would most certainly be appreciated by my mother. I wish she could see this for herself, but only photos will suffice.

Ed had no desire to come to Vietnam in 2008. When asked and asked again, he insisted he did not want to come. In confidence to me, he said, “I don’t want to see that disgusting country. That country messed up our mother. I don’t know what they did to her, but they screwed her up. Whatever is there is probably awful and I don’t want to see what ruined her.” I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing in response, and said I’d show him photos when I got back. But after seeing Saigon again, and now Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, I also think my brother would be able to appreciate this country, if not just for its food, but also for the promise it has for a brighter future with its strides in development and in education. Going through the islands today made me think about him and all the things I’ve seen and will continue to see that he will never have the chance to. It just made me so sad and wistful. Maybe he didn’t have the desire to see Vietnam in 2008, but today, on the last day of 2018, I know for sure that he’d enjoy this.

My Vietnamese identity

I grew up in San Francisco, a cosmopolitan city with a high proportion of minorities. But when we actually examine the Asian breakout of the minorities there, a quick conclusion you’d reach is that the city’s Asian population is primarily Chinese. What does that pretty much mean for someone like Ed or me, mixed ethnicity who identify as both Chinese and Vietnamese? It means for the most part, we’ll have friends and relatives who are Chinese and relate to us in that way, and who know and are exposed less to Vietnamese culture and people. It means that our Vietnamese side gets looked down upon or even ignored. It resulted in people making disparaging comments about Vietnamese language and culture. Because when you are a minority, it is supposedly only natural to have the “survival of the fittest” mentality, that when you are oppressed, you have to find others who are lesser in numbers than your group that you can oppress and look down on even more. Oftentimes people like to associate racism with white people looking down on every non-white person, that white people are the real oppressors, but in truth, and as I have experienced myself, a person of any background can be prejudiced towards anyone else. I had friends and even family say to me that Vietnamese sounds ugly (yes, because Mandarin, Cantonese, and Toisan are like music to the ear!), that Vietnamese women in San Jose were all slutty with their extremely tight-fitted clothing and platform heels that were too high, that Vietnamese men were all gross, gambling drunks. A Chinese ex-boyfriend once told me, “I favor your Chinese side.” What the fuck does that even mean? I asked him what he meant, and he merely responded, “It just means what I said.” I said nothing then, much to my regret now.

In my life, I’ve heard people say that Vietnamese people were the poorest Asian race in the U.S., that they leech off the government with their food stamps and welfare payments after having come over as refugees from the Vietnam War. Sometimes, when they were trying to excuse themselves or be “nice,” they’d end these insidious comments laced with racism with, “no offense.” I never knew how to respond to those comments, so generally, I shrugged them off and didn’t respond much. It also did not help that my dad’s mom was racist against anyone who was not Chinese and looked down on my mother simply because she was Vietnamese from Vietnam. She rejected my mother and didn’t respect her at all, treated her like garbage until she gave birth to my brother six years after coming to San Francisco from Vietnam. She used to scream at her and say she wanted to have her sent back to Vietnam.

The consequence of that racism within my own family resulted in my mother internalizing the bigotry against the Vietnamese, even believing it to some degree despite it being her own culture and identity. My mom also started making negative comments about Vietnamese people both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, saying they could not be trusted. My grandmother didn’t want Ed or me to learn Vietnamese, saying it would be a useless language. Chinese would be the other language we’d learn because there are plenty of Chinese people in San Francisco (granted, we learned Toisan at home because that was the only language my grandmother knew; let’s not bring up the fact that this dialect is not standard Chinese and would be a useless language by global standards to learn. And my mother agreed, sadly. “What use will this for them since they will grow up in America and speak English?” she rationalized to herself. So, we never learned. I didn’t even learn how to say “thank you” or “hello” in Vietnamese until I was in college. She didn’t teach that to me; my Vietnamese friend from Arkansas did. But given I was exposed to the sounds and intonations of the Vietnamese language occasionally hearing my mother speak to others on the phone or in person, I picked up the words and the correct tones fairly quickly.

As an adult, especially in college surrounded by Vietnamese classmates from around the country and even the world, I felt embarrassed telling people I was Vietnamese but could not speak the language at all, not even a basic hello or goodbye. Walking around Vietnam today, I recognize when people ask me if I am Vietnamese because they say I look like I am. What they reallywant to know is if I can speak the language, and they are dismayed when I shake my head or say no. At age 18 at Wellesley, I made my very first Vietnamese friend ever. So clearly, “cosmopolitan” San Francisco was severely lacking in many ethnic minorities. I understood some Cantonese, knew Toisan (actually a useless village dialect of Cantonese), and was learning Mandarin Chinese in college, to speak, read, and write. But I knew zero Vietnamese. At times with my Vietnamese friends, I felt like I wasn’t Vietnamese enough (probably because, well, I wasn’t). But the times when I did feel at home with them was when we talked about food and ate it. I knew most of the dishes, having spent a lot of time in San Jose and Orange County growing up, both areas of the state (and the world) heavily concentrated with Vietnamese populations, but my Vietnamese friends taught me that similar to Chinese culture when certain foods are eaten at certain times of the year, like Tet (Lunar New Year’s in Vietnamese culture) or Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, specific dishes are also considered sacred or special at different points of the year in the Vietnamese community. It was as though I was uncovering a part of my identity I had no idea about through my new Vietnamese friends. Food was the one part of Vietnamese culture that my mom passed onto me. And I literally ate it up one bite at a time. While my brother really only embraced mainstream Vietnamese dishes even non-Asians would be aware of, such as pho or banh mi, I embraced everything she presented on the dinner table growing up. Instead of having “kid” food pre-packed for me at Vietnamese restaurants in the Bay Area, at a very young age, I was given a small bowl with a portion of her pho with extra noodles and squeezes of lime. I loved the traditional braised shrimp and pork dish (thit kho tep) in a caramelized sauce she made, especially with the braising liquid, over rice. I gobbled up cute little banh beo, steamed rice cake medallions originating from Hue, topped with ground shrimp and drizzled with scallion oil as a snack. I got excited when she picked up different versions of che, or Vietnamese mung bean, coconut, and jelly-based sweets for dessert after dinner time. And as a teen when, for the very first time, I had banh xeo, the sizzling and fragrant turmeric, ground rice, and coconut crispy “crepe” that is currently becoming all the rage in hip Vietnamese restaurants around New York City, all I wanted was to eat that (okay, well, that actually isn’t much different from me today).

So, it’s true. I don’t know a ton about Vietnamese culture. I didn’t grow up surrounded by my Vietnamese relatives other than my mom, who felt restricted to not expose it to Ed and me much. I didn’t celebrate Tet or traditional holidays with Vietnamese customs. I know just a few phrases and can say a lot of its dishes properly with the right tone. But Vietnamese culture through its food stays with me. My mom gave that to me. Maybe it isn’t much, but it’s what I have. I love and embrace my Vietnamese culture through eating and cooking its food, not to mention evangelizing both the cuisine to others who have been unexposed to it, and this beautiful country to those who haven’t yet visited it. I’m still reading about it, though, and still eager to learn and see more. I’m still learning about my Vietnamese side because my existence isn’t static. I’d like to think I am constantly growing and learning more… because through travel and speaking with so many different people from various backgrounds, cultures, and birthplaces, I realize more and more how very little I know. But what I’m really trying to say is, I embrace my identity and my mother’s identity even if there are others who have tried to prevent me from doing so. Being Vietnamese is a part of who I am, and I embrace what I am.

As we grow old(er)

Today was Christmas Day, as well as Chris’s 37thbirthday. It’s strange to think how quickly time has gone by. He’s officially in his late 30s, and although I am in my early 30s, given I will be turning 33 in just a few weeks, I feel old, too. While much about us is the same as seven years ago when we first became a couple, much has certainly changed. I flipped through a few older photos of us seven years ago, and there are some differences that a nuanced eye could see: Chris’s hair is slightly thinning at the top, his sides are receding just a tad. My face has a bit more definition when I smile, with skin that isn’t as “tight” as it once was. They are not quite wrinkles as they are skin just getting a little looser with age. It doesn’t matter how much sun block I apply, what SPF I use, or however many hats I wear or sunglasses I put on; my age on my face is definitely showing over the years. Both our bellies are a little rounder, most likely from this time of year when food indulgences are at its peak, but also because it’s just simply fact that our metabolisms are slowing, slowly but surely. We’re getting older together.

It’s our seventh Christmas together, our seventh Southern Hemisphere Christmas together. And it’s always a beautiful and literally warming break from the cold and darkness that is New York City at this time of year. I wonder where we will be at this time next year at Christmas, or the Christmas after that, or the Christmas in 10 years’ time. I wonder if they will be just as happy, or what our lives will be like. I wonder what changes will come, for better or for worse, and how we will get through all of them. I do hope it is good. I hope it only gets better and fuller.

Becoming

A few days ago, I started listening to the Audible version of Michelle Obama’s book Becoming, which she narrates, and it’s even more amazing and down-to-earth than I ever could have imagined. For someone who is so accomplished from a working-class background in the South Side of Chicago, it is so hard to imagine the people who choose to criticize and hate her. The story of her childhood certainly is a working class one, no matter what anyone wants to twist and ask, “how can she be ‘working class’ if she went to Harvard and Princeton and is now a multi-millionaire”? Not everyone who is wealthy and successful today came from wealth the way President Dipshit did. If anyone bothered really listening or reading her story, they’d know for a fact that she had no privileged upbringing at all, unless you want to define “privilege” as living in an in-law of an apartment in a working-class neighborhood and having one parent working a city-job.  She barely left her city, much less her state, until she got to high school and had an opportunity to go to Paris for a school trip, and even that, she wanted to deprive herself of that because of the guilt around how much her parents would need to spend on this trip just for her to do what the other kids in her class did. That sounds like what I’ve done with my parents a few times… except in her case, her parents wanted her to go and paid for her to go. In my case, I didn’t go.

I’ve really come to the conclusion that people who choose to hate Michelle Obama do it simply because they a) hate women, b) hate black people, or really, any people of color, c) hate it when people from relatively humble backgrounds are able to rise through the ranks and become successful and wealthy, or even d) don’t want children (who are poor or of color) to be literate and educated, or want to prevent them from eating nutritious foods. There is little to nothing to dislike her for.

The portraits that the right-wing media paint of her being elitist or angry are rooted in racism and bigotry, designed to paint her as “other” simply because she is a black woman who has strived to achieve the same things that white men and women have always wanted, but because she is black, she is apparently undeserving of her success compared to them (Ted Cruz was Harvard educated, but why does no one ever accuse him of being “elitist”? Oh, it’s because he’s white and male. He just deserves that. Plus, Republicans swim in elitism but just leave out their education from their oppressive political rhetoric. Going to Harvard for Ted Cruz is not elitist — it makes him more qualified. Going to Harvard for Michelle Obama is elitist because she didn’t really deserve it). As a black woman, she has never had the same “status” in society as a white woman would, so it so unfair to accuse her of being “angry” or “entitled.” Why is she angry — because she isn’t shy about discussing and confronting racism and sexism, things that obviously still persist that so many people refuse to acknowledge or do anything about, which is why Trump is so popular and is now the leader of the U.S.? If that’s how you want to define angry, then anyone sane who wants progress for society should be called angry, including me.

Reading this book is really hard in many ways knowing who has succeeded Barack and Michelle in the White House. “Was America really ready for a black president?” Michelle asked in her book. It seemed they were for eight years, but after that, America grew angry and said, fuck this, we’re going to elect a racist, I’ve-inherited-my-wealth-but-refuse-to-admit-it to the White House to prove to the U.S. that we’re just as racist as we always were, but now, we’ll make it more acceptable with the example Dipshit is setting.

A little guidance can help

I left work a bit early today to meet my mentee, who has been having trouble recently attending class. When I say she’s been “having trouble,” I really mean she just hasn’t been going altogether for the last month. She’s already failed one of her classes and has decided to drop it, and when I asked her today why she hasn’t been attending, she said she felt “sleepy all the time and just wanted to sleep.” She’s been sleeping through classes and then staying in bed until she needs to use the bathroom or eat.

Well, I know what that means. Her depression is getting worse. I suggested that she start with baby steps to deal with how to battle her fatigue. She’s been going to sleep by 10 and waking up at 11am the next morning; that means she’s getting 13 hours of sleep every night, and oversleep can oftentimes make you feel even worse and less rested. So I suggested she start small by shaving off a few hours of sleep per night: maybe the first night, go to sleep by 10 or 11, then wake up by 8. No matter what time she goes to sleep, she has to give herself some semblance of routine by waking up at around the same time. Then, immediately haul ass, get out of bed, and do something active, like go to the gym, walk, do jumping jacks; anything to get her blood flowing. The biggest challenge of getting up in the morning is just getting out of bed. That really goes for all of us.

“How am I going to know that you are really committing to waking up at 8am?” I asked her. “I’m going to text you for the next few days at 8am and make sure you’re really awake, and you better not be lying to me and say you are awake but just going back under the covers. We can reevaluate in a week or two whether this is doable.”

She promised she wouldn’t lie and would commit to this for at minimum two weeks before seeing if the time/routine needed to be adjusted.

I left her this evening feeling a bit relieved that we had this conversation in person, but sad at the same time. I’m happy to help her, to give suggestions when she is struggling, but it makes me sad to think that maybe if Ed had someone extra in his life who he could look up to that he could have had similar guidance and encouragement…. Something as simple as someone caring and unjudgmental to say to him, “Hey! You are sleeping more than usual. Why do you think that is? How can we get you into a more regular routine?” No shaming. No anger. No finger pointing. No blaming. No guilting. Just observations, suggestions to make for an easier life. Everyone needs a little extra pushing at some points of their life, and Ed seemed like he never had it at all from anyone.