Mother-Daughter Relationships (Amy Chua & Amy Tan)

In Amy Chua's "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," she compares and contrasts the different way Chinese parents raise and restrict their children from the way Western parents do.  

 I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years.(Chua).

To make sure that her daughter learned a piece for a piano recital, Chua threatened her daughter with no food, presents, or parties.  Her daughter wanted to give up on the piano piece and stomped off, but Chua still ordered and forced her to get back to the piano and practice the piece until it was perfect by the next day.  Her parenting technique was to threaten and order her daughter to do what she wanted her to do, or else there would be a consequence that the daughter would not want.  She uses words to make her daughter do things, rather than physical force.

In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, in the second section, "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates," she explores the topic of mother-daughter relationships, and the way they raise their daughters and things they often do to influence them.  In "Rules of the Game," written from Waverly Jong's perspective, her mother tells her family, 

"We not concerning this girl.  This girl not have concerning for us."

 after Waverly came home at night after running away from her mother because she was angry at her mother for always using her to show off.  Her mother understood it differently, and thought that she was embarrassed to be her mother.  When she got home, her family was sitting at the dinner table, with the remains of a fish on the table, and the mother spoke these words to make Waverly feel guilt through her words, and she chose her words to strike Waverly's emotions, to ensure that something similar wouldn't be likely to happen again.  Because Waverly's mother felt like Waverly didn't care for her family, she told her family to ignore her, since Waverly was so careless towards them, and did not care about them as she should.

On Appreciating Substitutes!

On Jackson's blog, I found a response he wrote to Luis's post on substitutes.

Subs want to help us and care about all of us. We need to in turn show our care for them too. If you don't appreciate your education, leave the classroom instead of wasting the sub's time. Teachers are extremely important figures in society and everyone should realize that; they care for our future, even subs.

Like Jackson mentioned earlier in his post, substitutes are also teachers, but they are temporary.  Even though they may not know all our names or the norms of the particular class, they still have valuable knowledge that they can share with us, but oftentimes, students tend to disrespect and take advantage of substitutes.

Many times, when a teacher sets a rule in the classroom, when the teacher is there, a vast majority of the time, we follow the rules to avoid getting into trouble.  When there's a sub though, we choose to ignore those rules, and just do things as we'd like.  We take advantage of the substitute's minimal knowledge of the rules at the school and in the class, and use electronics or eat, and often do not do the work assigned, but on rare occasions, we do.

It's true though, just because the substitute doesn't stay for a long time at the school, dedicated to teach students at the school everyday, it doesn't mean that they don't care about your education or want to teach students.  We should appreciate substitutes more often, we under-appreciate them and all the effort they put into teaching or at least just watching us at school.  ASTI subs are extremely generous in my opinion, for being willing to find our small campus, and to stay with a room full of teenagers for a day.  It doesn't sound like a very fun or easy job.

Just a little story I'd like to mention about a substitute in fifth grade:
I remember back in fifth grade, I had (what I thought was) the coolest teacher ever.  He was nice, our history lessons were super fun, he had awesome books, lots of free time, and I always enjoyed my time in his class.  One day he was absent though, so of course we had a sub.  The trouble-maker of the class and the girl he liked (who btw was a goody-two-shoes) both teamed up and set up a string in the front of the class, where'd she would walk by, a few inches away from the floor.

I remember seeing her tripping over it, falling, and all the students began to laugh at her.  She started to cry.  Yet, the ignorant elementary students we were. people continued to laugh.  I think I probably did too.  But still all these years later, whenever I remember that moment, I feel guilty.  She was a nice person, she didn't deserve it.  She didn't do anything, but come in to substitute for us, which the students decided to take an advantage of, and use it to their entertainment.

Please don't do anything like that to a sub. Ever. It's not nice. At all.

Just saying.~

Response to I Love, I Hate, I Move On.

In Susan's blog post, I Love, I Hate, I Move On, I found this quote particularly interesting.

Sometimes I think life couldn't get any better than this, that everything is perfect and the world just keeps throwing better and better moments in my direction. Other times I wonder why I should even bother. What reason is there to drag my ass out of bed every morning? To even try to keep up with the rush and flow of every day living?

Sometimes, I feel exactly the same way.  I love life, it seems perfect, and I'm perfectly content living the rest of my life the same way, but other times, I feel like life is a waste, and I see no reason at all for living on and trying to make a change, because of that constant reminder that "one person can make a difference," and sometimes, I want to be the one to be able to make that difference.  Still though, I constantly find myself sitting around, wasting time, and not wanting to be productive at all.  I lose the will to try to do anything, and I don't want to do anything other than sit there and read a book, unmoving, and not changing anything (other than my mom's temper).

I try to look toward the happier times in life when I feel that way sometimes.  I just think, if I keep on going, living through these days, someday, I'll find that happy place again, I'll find happiness, I might even find my reason for life, a purpose for living through each day, attempting to keep up with life, and fitting in with everyone around me, in an attempt to blend in and not be seen as weird as much as possible, but it's still hard to do that every day.

You're an amazing writer, Susan, and you've got so much potential.  There's always a reason for getting your ass out of bed every morning and to keep up with the dramas and action of everyday life.  Although it may seem corny, you have the ability to make a difference, just wait, and with time, you'll see the difference you can and have made.(:

Amazing Night at the Silent Auction

Kimchi, my grandmother in my strange family tree, wrote something in her blog post, Silent Auction SUCCESS/Response to Peter:

I'm pretty sure that throughout the night, the only thing running through everybody's mind, especially the sophomores was that we had HW due, and that included this post, a book post, 2 essays to work on, math hw, a study guide for science, and a STD brochure for science. On the weekend of the Silent Auction. How convenient.  I wanted to say my thanks...without any of you, we would not have raised OVER $2-3000.

 Last night was very hectic, with many volunteers, the PTSA board, and especially Ms. Harhen running around to make sure that everything was going well and in order, and that everyone had enough food, and that entertainment was good.  Luckily, there were no major problems, and things went well.  We fundraised so much money to go to ASTI, and many people left happily, from a nice night.


There is so much homework this week though.  The two blog posts for English, a group essay and short story for Writing, lots of "fun" math homework from the textbook, study guide questions and vocab for science, and   a "super fun" group science brochure on STDs to work on.  The group projects are particularly hard to work on, since it is difficult to get all the group members to work on the project, and sometimes, especially at the same time, and to communicate with one another.  My essay for writing was hard to write because half of my group didn't do much work *ahem, kimchi*.  The short story went a lot better though, since I had awesome group members, and we all managed to work on it at the same time, so we completed that fairly quickly.  The math homework I still have yet to finish, and same with the study guide questions and vocab.  I at least finished half of it though.  I spent most of my day working on the brochure, working on fitting all the information onto one page, and the formatting of the brochure constantly confused me, and was unwilling to cooperate with me.  


Thank you very much, all you people who helped contribute to the fabulous night yesterday at the ASTI Silent Auction.  The entertainment was stunning, despite the problems that Music Club ran into, trying to figure out how to perform with the microphone.  Let's hope next year's Silent Auction will be just as amazing or even better!~

The Stupid Question

Have you ever heard of the quote, "The only stupid question is the one you don't ask"?

I used to believe that too.  Until I was insulted by my teacher for asking a question. 

The logic of the quote makes perfect sense.  If you don’t understand something, then ask someone else about it and you can learn by asking the question, even if it sounds ridiculous.  Asking questions to try to understand things you don’t understand is the equivalent of opening new doors to new explorations and opportunities.

I learned from the past that if I don’t speak up and ask questions for myself, no one else will.  I need to do things on my own, and there won’t always be somebody standing there with me guiding me through the next step of my life.  If I don’t act, things will stay the same.  I finally realized that a year or so ago, but I was always still too shy to speak out and talk to others that I didn’t know very well.  I finally started to speak up for myself and to try to make my voice and opinions heard, to make some kind of influence on things.  Ever since, I’ve learned more about things, and I have gotten to know more people and things about them.  I started to ask questions in class like I never had, because I was to shy to talk to teachers.  By asking more questions, I started to finally understand the things that I didn’t understand before, and was able to use that new knowledge for other things that were influenced by it. 

I have begun to speak up around school, and am pursuing new opportunities, like PTSA.  If I have a question about something in class, I ask the teacher about it, instead of asking a friend to ask the question for me. 

This Tuesday, (I won’t mention what class for the sake of the teacher, but those who have that class with me and talk to me probably heard me talking about it for a while) I didn’t understand the question that the teacher gave us to work on.  I asked a clarifying question, just to make sure that the question was correct and that he/she didn’t write the question incorrectly.  He/she responded by saying to me “I don’t even know why you asked that question.”

It was seriously insulting to hear a teacher say that to me.  I was honestly confused and unsure about how to answer the question he/she put up.  I wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand it either.  I asked the classmates around me if they understood, and the people around me did not.  After I got that response from the teacher, I wrote in my notebook, “I’m only asking for those who did not want to ask, and because I don’t get it.  It’s not a crime to ask.  I’m not the only one who had that question.  I’m just the only one who was willing to ask.”

I don’t think I’m asking questions in that class again. 

A Miracle

I longed for the familiar touch on my skin, breath on my neck, the brush of our hands, and soothing voice that strengthened me.  I remembered those special nights we had, hugging each other close against the cold, and deep conversations we had, pouring our hearts out to each other.  We would talk about our fears, our hopes, our dreams.  It felt like when we were together, the stars were aligned, and all the wrong in the world became right.  Things seemed perfect; all those problems disappeared, stress relieved.  Those moments grew shorter and shorter each time.  Soon, our conversations began to die off, and arguments began to break out.  We would argue about our faults, and how it was never our fault, but always the others’ for anything that went wrong.  The phone conversations began to dwindle down to nothing, and pretty soon, we disappeared from each others lives.  We still saw each other, but pretended we didn’t.  Occasionally, I could feel those intense, familiar eyes tracing the outline of my face, but when I looked in its direction; its attention quickly fell on the board.  As we grew older, we went to different schools, but the thoughts of each other never left our minds.

I went to college, and eventually created my own life on my own.  Date after date, each one seemed longer than the next.  Their voices began to sound like monotone, and before long, I lost all interest in them.  They always had the same stories: same block order childhood, education, same stories of their life and jobs.  Life slowly became more difficult, and as I improved at work, so did my salary and stress level.  Eventually, my only getaway was music–its soothing notes and lyrics never failed to center me, and remind me of my life and tasks.  My iPod and I easily became one, and inseparable.  By chance though, on my weekly shopping trips, I ran into a familiar person, though the appearance was more refined, but I could never forget those piercing eyes or strong hands that once held me so strongly.  We shared a glance, then a smile, but someone else came along, and they shared a moment.  I walked away east, they, west, and I continued hoping, that some miracle would happen.  

Anything and Everything (one of those brain-dump moments)

(FYI,  I wrote this on paper at 8PM today, and I'm just typing it up now.)

I'm listening to Dynamite and thinking: "What can I write about?" Hmmm...

Staring out at the sky, the setting sun and near-empty park, I realize, I'm cold.  There are a few people playing volleyball, one practicing soccer (no, not Marco), and a father with his children and dog.  This place, the tall slide platform, will be my new place.  This is where I go when the rest of my family or my brother are at the school in a meeting.  I wish I could come here at night more often.

Today is the Chinese Moon Cake Festival or whatever it's called.  You know, that day when Chinese eat moon cakes to celebrate the full moon or something? Yeah, that.

Anyways, I've been reading this book.  If I say the title, I bet a ton of people will start judging me or something for the kind of book I'm reading, so the title will remain unknown (the people I talk to a lot probably know what book I'm talking about).  As a result of my strange book preferences and choices and curiosity, I've been wondering:
What is it like to burn (literally, with fire)?  What does breaking a bone feel like?  What about being stung by a bee? Or having chicken pox?  What does it feel like if you're drowning?  Starving? High???

Ack.  It's getting cold. I'm going to go finish inside...

What happens if you fall off a cliff (other than the obvious)? What happens if you get stuck in what seems like a hallway that stretches on to infinity?  Become immortal? Invincible? Get all your wishes and everything you ever wanted?  And fall in love?

*random sidenote* You know, there's a reason why I was outside.  There's no way I can do homework with all these boy scouts running and yelling.  Oh my gosh... they were playing Duck Duck Goose earlier... I haven't played that game in such a long time!!!

And if you actually do read this, no, I'm not crazy ;) Just curious.

:]

I <3 Tiffy Cow. :D