Sixteen Candles + Happy Holidays

As you may or may not have gathered from the title, I turned 16 about a week ago. I can’t fathom myself being a 16 year old because I feel like I haven’t even mastered being a proper teenager. The fact that I will soon be entering a new phase in life daunts me. In the past, growing older may have meant birthday parties and presents but growing older takes on a greater meaning now. Birthdays have become something to fear rather than something to look forward to because the thought of impending adulthood = panic.

Asides from my birthday, December also yields many other celebratory events like Christmas and New Years. Christmas has always been an important holiday for me because I was born in December and whenever Christmas drew near, it meant presents, parties and holiday cheer. As you grow older, the magic of the holidays begin to disappear but Christmas will always be the sole holiday I freakishly obsess about. So, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Here’s a Christmas card/graphic I made in order to commemorate the holidays.



We didn’t do anything particularly special for the holidays. On Christmas eve, we went to watch TRON: Legacy in 4D. It wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, mainly because the 3D glasses made everything so dark I could hardly make out the actor’s faces. The dimness made it difficult to feast on the movie’s visual extravagance.

After watching TRON, we went to a Christian church for a mass/concert. It was funny because no one in my family is Christian. We were invited by one of my mom’s friends so we ended up experiencing the more religious side to Christmas.

On Christmas day, we went shopping and had dinner with relatives. I even made gingerbread cookies, which ended up tasting kind of gross, no offense to myself.

Then on Boxing Day, we opened presents and had a Christmas movie marathon. Although the word ‘marathon’ would be an understatement considering how we only managed to get through 2 movies.

All in all, it was a pretty good Christmas so hope everyone had a great Christmas as well and enjoy the rest of your holidays!

Back from Planet Awesome

I’ve been neglecting this lately because I’ve been busy, you know, applying myself academically. I will be having exams soon and I feel obligated to work harder than usual. I didn’t exactly slack off in the past but I’m just putting in more effort than I normally would because I don’t want to fail at life.

Things have also been hectic around here these past few weeks because we just got a new domestic helper, and yes that’s a less fancy way of saying maid but it’s not the kind of maid that wears a maid uniform and struts around a mansion dusting stuff with a yellow duster. You don’t have to be Bill Gates or the Queen of England to hire a domestic helper. There are tons of households in Hong Kong that employ domestic helpers because it’s cheap and people here are too lazy to clean their own dishes.

My parents, who are total slave drivers when it comes to helpers, drive out every decent helper we’ve had. I remember when my dad discovered a single strand of hair on his bathroom floor. He was all like “HEY WHY IS THERE A SINGLE STRAND OF HAIR ON MY BATHROOM FLOOR? HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO PEE UNDER THESE CONDITIONS!!!” I think we’ve had over 10 helpers in the past 8 years. If they weren’t fired, they fled back to their home country because working for us is just freaky like that.

I’m still trying to adjust to the new helper because a new helper is like having a new member in your family. While helpers are helpful, it’s a total invasion of privacy. Like the other day, I was doing serious business in the bathroom when she just marched in and tried to shove a bunch of towels at me while going “Here is towels, take the towels. I just clean, they fresh from washing machine.” I’m just like, uhhhhh I’m kinda busy here so can you come back when I’m not sitting on the toilet?

But in all seriousness, I’ve been trying to deal with school and other melodrama in my life. Sometimes I feel like my life is an Asian soap opera, minus the part with the guy with the coma who wakes up and forgets everything. So if you find me disappearing, it’s not because I fell into a coma and forgot to tell the internet about it, but because I need to deal with stuff I have going on in real life. Hopefully, once everything’s sorted out, I’ll start blogging more frequently.

High Expectations Chinese Teacher

As you all know, my Chinese teacher is a bit of a raving dictator on steroids. On the first day of school, she started going on about how anything below an A- is unacceptable and if you get anything less, you will have to spend your lunchtimes with her. Everyone started freaking out because who wants to spend their lunch being berated by someone whose nostrils flare to the size of windpipes every time she shouts?

It was enough listening to her rant on and on about getting nothing less than an ‘A’ on our exams, but we had to sit there in the freezing cold while she was doing it. I don’t know if the Chinese teacher was raised by polar bears in the Antarctic or whatever because she’s always turning the air-con on to a temperature I’d like to call “So high you can’t feel your fingers and you think you’re going to get frost bite”.

One of the girls mustered up the courage to tell her that it was too cold and asked her whether she could turn the air-con off. Then the Chinese teacher shouted, “IT IS NOT TOO COLD, YOU GUYS ARE TALKING TOO MUCH IT IS MAKING ME HOT!”


I have no idea why our talking made her hot, it’s not like anyone said anything sensual. But nevertheless, she refused to turn the air-con off so we all had to sit there in the freezing cold for an hour while she kept yapping on about how we all “NEEDED TO GET AN A+ OR WE FAIL”.


What is up with Asian teachers and their high expectations?