Category: Life

I generally like seeing live shows. They tend to be fun, funny, and/or engaging. This past Wednesday, however, we saw Sweeney Todd, and both my wife and I were thoroughly bored. It was a huge waste of talent. The set, the costumes, the actors-singers-musicians were all impressive, but the musical just went at such a… Continue reading I Hated Sweeney Todd

When I was in high school, I never understood how my parents could see friends of theirs after thirty-some years and act as if not a day had passed. After all, I hadn’t even been alive for thirty years and the idea of not seeing my friends for even longer than two weeks was frightening… Continue reading Losing Touch with Friends

When I was growing up, my family attended a rather conservative church (I fondly refer to it as The Chinese Republican Church), and we were taught it’s un-Christian to swear (i.e., cuss or curse). Of course, there’s no biblical support for such a teaching. The closest anyone can come up with is a passage in… Continue reading Swearing: it’s all in the timing

When I was a child, I thought everyone (except those with an obvious physical handicap or health condition) was “normal.” Now that I’m older, I realize that almost everyone has something wrong with her physically, and the only norm is having some form of physical “abnormality.” I look at my friends (in their mid-twenties to… Continue reading Physiological Normalcy?

My college’s Christian fellowship was quite diverse (in religious traditions, geographical origins, and race, among other aspects). We had a number of people who spoke various non-English languages, and no one seemed to sweat it except for this one guy who would always get really upset anytime anyone said anything in a non-English language. I… Continue reading Listening in the dark

My wife and I ate out dinner tonight and an odd thing happened: the waitress tipped herself. That’s right. She filled out the credit card receipt herself. It’s just the two of us, mind you—we’re not a party of eight or more. And the weird thing is that she undertipped herself. The receipt was one… Continue reading New trend: self-undertipping?

Ever since I was very young, I’ve been called stubborn by people I’ve argued with. I don’t really understand why. Stubborn to me means unwilling to change your mind even when you are rationally convinced of something. Otherwise, you just believe what you believe. And if these people calling me stubborn aren’t stubborn, why are… Continue reading It takes one black kettle and one black pot to tango

You know how Best Buy has these “service plans” that are some percentage of the actual price of the product? I guess if you buy these, they’ll replace your purchase in case anything goes wrong, and you get some kind of guarantee beyond the manufacturer’s warranty. Well, after my wife and I naively purchased a… Continue reading Best Buy Service Scams

I get annoyed by people who are passive-aggressive. If you have a problem, deal with it explicitly or suck it up. I’ve given a little thought as to where passive-aggressiveness comes from, though, which makes me wonder: Is passive-aggressiveness ever okay? Why are people passive-aggressive to begin with? Why can’t they just say what their… Continue reading Is passive-aggressiveness ever okay?