Sweetheartisms & Sh*t I Say to My Boyfriend

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After many raised eyebrows, it's occurred to me that Sweetheart and I apparently have a very quotable relationship.  These are the kinds of sweet nothings we say to each other:

Sweetheartisms
-Is that Orgasm all over your face or are you just happy to see me?

The Best Push Presents

This can be mine if I don't mind having, as Borat would say, wizard's sleeve lady parts.

A while ago, I received this photo from Sweetheart when he was at the Toronto Auto Show, followed by a text saying it’ll be mine once I bear his 7th child. Setting aside the fact that I am not a sow (and therefore refuse to produce that many offspring) –

The Ex Files

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Four years.  It’s been just over four years since my first love totally turned my life upside down, and I’ve never had any closure.  But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. 
I was recently lurking on Facebook when a mutual friend who never pops up on my feed made an appearance and mentioned him in a post.  I hadn’t been on his profile in over two years and, curious, I clicked on his name to have a look.  I feel…really complicated, and I just want to get this down in writing.

A little background info:

30DC29: My Favourite Plant

I briefly contemplated putting something deliciously edible here, like potatoes or cherries, or something that's multipurpose (and can make me pretty!), like aloe vera.  But, alas, I'm just a simple girl.  I love flowers.

I've received roses, tulips, tiger lilies, gerbera daisies, etc. and I love them ALL.  I'm really disappointed that somewhere down the line, the whole thing of giving flowers has been ruined.  I think there are two reasons for this:

30DC24: Ways to Win My Heart

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I think these things are pretty universal:

30DC14: My Most Recent Kiss

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It happened today. It’s the same one that takes place pretty much every weekend. Sweetheart and I are not big into PDA so we don’t put on a show for strangers, but we’re good at packing a lot of punch in a single kiss. In one brief moment, a lot of messages are exchanged by this simple gesture:

Things I've Learned from Sweetheart

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I thought I'd pick out a few highlights:

1.) Athletic ability and academic ability are not mutually exclusive. 
Inconveniently, this refutes my often-used excuse for explaining why I’ve always been hopelessly terrible at sports. But apparently some people are so gifted.

2.) “Mutually exclusive” is an engineering term. 

3.) Boys will...

I Don't Know How to Play

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It was back in university when Cute Guy was sitting across from me in an Irish pub

The Oversharing Daughter

Petite. Both vertically and horizontally. (Is this a pattern?) A total weirdo packaged in a very normal-seeming exterior.

Within the first 15 minutes of meeting her she seems just like anyone else…but then we learn that

NaBloPoMo Day 5: My Partner, My Boyfriend, My Lover

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I don’t understand the term “my partner,” particularly in the context of heterosexual relationships. It makes me imagine both “partners” linking arms and skipping around in a folk dance routine. My mind automatically defaults to thinking,

Happy Birthday, Stacey!

My stylish lawyer-to-be!

A HUGE Happy Birthday to one of my favourites, to my lovely and brainy and supersweet friend/confidante, my dearest, darlingest Stacey!  Here's to another year of adventures and learning and laughter and love and happiness and good health and good grades!  23 was so jam-packed; 24 will be even better.  I'm so proud of you for all your accomplishments, and for rocking out in law school, and being a leader!

Us livin' it up in Monaco :)

As always, I love and adore and miss you TONS but I love knowing you're always just an e-mail away.  I appreciate how you always make time for me, even when you're totally swamped, and I know that you're always on my side.  It makes me feel better when Superwoman is being nasty and crows, "Stacey's not going to (have time to) play with you anymore after she graduates, when she's a big, important attorney!" :P

Our travel pact is still on, right?  A food-centric trip as soon as we both can afford it?  Is it still Bologna or should we do Portugal?  I hear Lisbon and Porto are great places to eat.  In that case, can we make a pit stop in Seville? :D  Or should we do Tokyo?  Best place to eat EVER.  Or Taiwan? I guess we have time to decide. :P

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STACE!!! I MISS YOU!

XOXOXO

Stargazing & getting photographed at the Cannes Film Festival :D

The Holy Grail of Flirting?

What's your flirting style?  Do guys really have go-to lines?

I read this article today about "the Holy Grail of flirting" and the pillar of the art, of course, is giving compliments.  The article contains a summary of a study of what the most effective compliments are for women all over the world.  Apparently, Canadian and German sisters like to be complimented on their...

The Good Friend

We've known each other forever, pretty much.  Okay, we've known each other since we were four.  Well, I suppose that's not entirely true, either, because my mom actually enrolled me in kindergarten late so I technically started school in April (which was hard, since everyone already knew each other at that point - thanks, mom!) so I was technically already five.  But she was four, because her birthday's in June.

The Meaning of Wife

One of my new roommates - who looks about 17 but is actually 26 - is apparently married.  I'd had conversations with her before where she brought up her "pareja" (partner) - which led me to wonder if she was a lesbian or if she was just trying to be cool and not get married.

But married she is.  To a dude.  And her hubs is in Fontainebleau studying for an MBA or something.

"But that's impossible!" I exclaimed to my mother the other day over Skype, "She's such a slob!  How can someone so messy be a wife?!"

"Why can't slobs be wives?"

Happy Birthday, Superwoman!

On dating:

"Feel free to go out with a different boy every day of the week - but save Sunday, because Sunday is for the Lord! [big smile]"  

-->This precious piece of knowledge was bestowed upon her by Sister Xavier, one of the nuns that ran the Life Experience class for the non-religious kids in her school, while the religious kids had Bible study. :P

More after the jump...

This Is Why Some Girls Fall for the Creepers

I was having a nice dinner with a boy that I loved. It was really, really early into the relationship and we were still in the getting-to-know-you stage - in fact, we were so eager to find out anything and everything about each other that we were going through the pictures in each other's cell phones. He came across a photo of me where I was very heavily made up and bathed in flattering light, and my hair was professionally done. He asked me who it was and, surprised, I told him that it was me.

He looked totally flabbergasted, eyes wide open, and exclaimed (what would translate to), "No way! It can't be!"

I get that I look like two different people with and without makeup (see picture - but note that the one on the right wasn't the one we were disagreeing over), but really, was that necessary? I promised him that it really was me, and after a few back-and-forth denials and assurances, which eventually turned to vehement insistence on my part, he looked at my picture really closely and handed my phone back to me with his eyebrows still up in his hairline and told me, in his dreamy, exotic lilt, "Very beautyful."

Um, wasn't I very beautiful to him bare-faced, which was how he saw me most of the time? Sexy accent aside (I'm a sucker for those), I should have been annoyed with him. And I would have been, except I was TOTALLY besotted with him at the time and I was still gaga over a picture I found on his phone. It was a shot of his breastpocket, on the long, white jacket that he wears to work every day, with the words "Dr." and his surname embroidered across it. (Intelligence is the most potent aphrodisiac.)

Now, he was actually a really great guy and he made me feel a lot more beautiful than I ever thought I'd get to feel, but this is how guys seem to treat girls they don't think they need to impress anymore because they know they like them for sure. This is how they act when they feel like they don't have to always be on their best behaviour anymore.

Today, some rando just tried to add me on Facebook. I didn't recognize his name, but his photo didn't look totally unfortunate. He wrote:

"so after lookin at ur display pic ive decided u are drop dead gorgeous and even if u dont add me back i just had to let u know that you have a new # 1 fan and its me so keep on smilin babe"

Then I saw the groups he belonged to and was so disgusted I couldn't even look at his face anymore.

But disgustingness and poor punctuation aside, isn't it nice to be told out of the blue that you're drop dead gorgeous? Too bad random creepers tend to do it a lot more than boys I actually like. If only the boys I date would take a hint...

Bad Form

I've witnessed too many examples of bad form lately, so I thought I'd share.

*hitting on a girl you're old enough to father in a university eatery and bombarding her with texts full of improperly used big words while she's in class
Bad Form because: If you come off as a creepy, old man, you're not getting any girls. Even if you offer to ply her and her friends with alcohol. We're not prostitutes, and we were in between classes - hello?! And for the record, the phone number was very carefully wrested and not given voluntarily.
--> Side Note: Unless he's exceptionally good-looking, rich, famous, charismatic, successful, lucky, or any combination of the above, no man really has any business trying to snag a girl half his age or younger. Save it, old man.

*trying to get a girl to dance with you by shoving your butt in her personal space in the club FOUR TIMES
Bad Form because: If it didn't work the first three times, it probably won't again. And the thing was, he was kind of cute, even though he was drunk off his tree. If he just introduced himself and at least pretended to try to make conversation, I totally would've given him some time.

*trying to impress a girl with your conspiracy theories
Bad Form because: That's just like having "WEIRDO" printed on your forehead.

*just gripping a girl's hips on the dance floor to try to get her to dance with you
Bad Form because: That's just rude. It's an invasion of personal space. And unless a girl's very young or very insecure, it just won't fly.

*sending love letters to confess your feelings that goes something like: "I have nothing. I'm not good-looking, I'm not rich, I probably will never get rich, I have many character flaws, including laziness, impatience, a short fuse, etc. I'm not a genius. But I genuinely like you; all I have is my love for you. Be my girlfriend."
Bad Form because: If you're going to stomp yourself into the ground, why should anyone like you? What right do you have to ask for anyone's affection and love if you have absolutely nothing to offer? Go easy on the self-deprecation - it's not endearing.

Have you witnessed any other examples of bad form lately?

***Housekeeping message: I've been having my butt handed to me on a regular basis for the last while now, with school and other things going on. So instead of posting essay-length entries every time, I'm going to post more often, with shorter entries. Sometimes it'll be a few pictures with some captions, sometimes it'll be an anecdote...come check out often what I've been up to!

Yellow Fever cont'd

So my last post started a lot of discourse. I love discourse! Who knew so many people had so much to say about Yellow Fever? (By the way, this post won't make much sense if you haven't read the post previous to this one, so scroll down if you need to!) I got a lot of great comments and stories, so I thought I’d address some of them:

What? Who wouldn't want to talk about anime? lol, j/k But I don't think all expats go because they have yellow fever and it could be nice that they have experienced your culture and might have a better understanding of you in some ways? I don't know... Obviously no one's ever come up to me and claimed to be super into me because of my ambiguous Western European origin, but I support that these people are missing out on getting to know a person by reducing them to a stereotype

True, not all expats have Yellow Fever. Some people are just really high up in their organizations and get sent places all over the world. Some have an honest interest in other cultures. My grandpa’s a romantic. :) The person who wrote this particular comment is my really good friend Sabrina, who’s teaching in Korea this year. Actually, girl, now that you’re living where you’re a minority, you might get one of these experiences – not that I wish it for you! But I know definitely that in Japan, a lot of people love your kind of look, so maybe in a nearby country...? Hee. Just teasing!

So I noticed you had a blog. I just read your Yellow Fever post. Really interesting. Although I'm obviously not Asian, I have definitely noticed this. When I went to China to teach English a good number (not all) of the *MALE* volunteers seemed to fetishize Chinese women. They would then degrade white women as being bad for relationships. We were rude and shallow, etc while Chinese women are cute and so soft-spoken and so on. They didn't seem to get that they were being just as offensive to the Chinese women as they were to the white women.

I have never thought that foreign teaching gigs can be breeding grounds for Yellow Fever Creepers! Ew, ew, ew. The guys you worked with are asswipes and don’t ever deserve to get laid.

I got another comment from a Chinese friend defending guys who exclusively date Asians saying that it’s because white girls are rude to them, that they cruelly reject them...but I think that’s an unfair stereotype, too. I get it that some people are once burned and twice shy, but they might be totally setting themselves up if they go for Asian girls strictly because they’re supposedly “gentler.” I’m Chinese, and trust me, I can cut a jerk down just as scathingly as a girl of any other colour can – and I’m not unique in this respect. :P

As for the yellow fever thing.. hmm i looked at it from a different perspective. Naturally raised on the outskirts of scarborough I was immersed in a culture that was not my own. Growing up,interacting, and socializing in an east asian community has created this comfort level. I mean Id rather eat at pho's than go to montanas. So maybe these ... Read moreindividuals you run into may be products of diaspora? Familiarity with a culture shouldn't be mistaken for obsessive creepers.. which is why its hard separating the diasporic individuals from the other kind; however when people fail to justify their connection/intrigue (and booty aint justification!) they're usually the ones to avoid. You will always find these pretenders in every cultural/religious aspect of society. Ignore them and burn any connective bridge they establish..In the end you are an multi-layered individual and that will probably shatter the "yellow fever individuals" 2 dimensional take on a culture and its people.

I totally agree; familiarity with a culture shouldn’t be mistaken for obsessive creepiness. But there’s preferring pho over Montana’s...and then there’s going up to random women with golden skin and dark eyes and saying the few words you know in “their language.” And shopping nearly exclusively in Asian supermarkets in the hopes of picking up. And getting Chinese or Japanese tattoos so that you have a conversation-starter with hot girls that you assume can read it...but I digress.

I think you hit the nail squarely on the head, my friend. The main issue I have with Yellow Fever is that we get stereotyped and clumped into a group instead of being valued as individuals. It’s just unfair and gross and wrong.

The other issue I have with this is that we’re stripped of our cultural identities. We’re all shoved under the umbrella of “Asians,” whereas usually, people from other parts of the world get their own identity – French, British, Italian, Greek, etc., instead of just “Occidental” or “Caucasian.” Every country has its own unique identity, but it doesn’t apply to us because we’re all Asian so we’re all supposedly the same, and we all supposedly look the same too, and have no personalities because we’re all a certain way. So wrong.


Now! I want to hear your Yellow Fever stories! I got sent some really fun ones, and I’m compiling them into a post sometime next week for your enjoyment. My life has been endless rounds of homework and projects and studying for the past month – do a girl a favour? It can have happened to you or you could’ve just been a witness, but it has to be real.

As always, I'm always here for you 24/7 at thesoapheiress(at)gmail.com

Get’em in! :D

For my initial post on Yellow Fever, click here

The Yellow Fever Debate

Sh!t, I thought to myself, another Yellow Fever Creeper. I totally asked for it.

Class was out for the day, and I asked a classmate if I could see his tattoo, which was just peeking out from under his t-shirt sleeve; my curiosity had been grating at me for a while now. He bared his shoulder to me and proudly proclaimed that it was a dragon, although it's not done yet.

I asked why he got a dragon on his shoulder and what his tattoo means to him, and his first response was a rather curt, "Just personal reasons." Then after maybe a second, he seemed to be a little sheepish, and he added, "I've just always been really interested in Asian culture and stuff. You Japanese?"

Ugh. I got asked "Êtes-vous japonaise ou chinoise?" (Are you Japanese or Chinese?) nearly daily in France by the ickiest of guys, who were even creepier than their North American counterparts, and I was always tempted to snap, "Connard! Chuis cambodgienne!" (Idiot! I'm Cambodian!) to mess with them a little.

I'd never get a tattoo myself because I'm too chicken sh!t (why subject yourself to unnecessary pain?) and I don't think they're very classy, which is also why I've threatened to beat my best friend if she really gets one (she wants a snowflake for Snow Patrol and supposedly because winter is her favourite weather). However, I always like to ask people about their body art because it says a lot about them, there's often a very interesting story involved and also because I'm nosy like that.

In my experience, people's tatts either are very personal and mean something profound...or they just got it for some silly reason (like it looks cool or they were going to the parlour to accompany a friend, etc.) so when someone nosy like me asks such a question, they scrabble to find an excuse. As it turned out, my classmate wasn't really a Yellow Fever Creeper, but just another boy who got a tattoo for reasons he had to make up to me on the spot. Phew!

Those of you who know me know that I have a lot to say about Yellow Fever. I think it's gross and weird and actually, it's a form of racism. Getting fetishized and harrassed and disturbed by awkward, strange men is almost as bad as getting beaten up or discriminated against in more conventional ways by bigots. The effects of obsessive adulation and hatred are both bad. Sure, there are women out there who exploit Yellow Fever to their advantage (see Bai Ling, Tila Tequila and Zhang Ziyi) but I'd much rather have to work to make my own living than to work on a man to support me.

So imagine my surprise when one day, my grandpa said to me, "Yan, if you want to marry a white man, you should find a husband in Asia - an expat. That way, you can be sure that he truly appreciates and loves your culture!"

First of all, I don't necessarily, as my boy Ramir puts it, prefer "white meat." Hotties come in every colour; why limit yourself? Secondly, that pretty much means that my grandpa thinks I should marry the big granddaddies of Yellow Fever Creepers! Guys who are so obsessed that they physically move themselves to a whole different continent to be surrounded by little lotus flowers! Ew, ew, ew.

Then my mom promptly told me that I'm a jerk. What's wrong with a guy who appreciates my culture? Some people prefer blondes over brunettes, tans over pastiness; what's wrong with having a preference for golden skin and dark eyes?

Cosmos help me, but I couldn't think of a retort. I couldn't think of a reasonable argument. But to even consider dating people who "Konichiwa/Ni hau!" me on the streets, who follow me around parties telling me how much they love dim sum, who change into red shirts when they hear I'm Chinese because "Chinese people LOVE red, right?", who want to talk to me about anime and manga and want to take me to Cosplay parties, who want to drink sake and smoke opium in my pagoda...

...I just...I just can't!

For my follow up post on Yellow Fever, click here

Single Parenthood & Procreating with My Main Gay

Remember the deafening thud heard around the world nearly a year ago, while a violent storm raged globally? It was pathetic fallacy - the heavens crying in sympathy of broken-hearted Claymates, as they collectively collapsed into grief-stricken heaps after Clay Aiken came out via People Magazine, because he just had a child and "cannot raise a child to lie or hide things."

Obviously, no one was surprised except for a vast number of Minivan Majority Housewives, those whose ovaries he shook, but the one thing that really struck me about the whole event was his baby mama’s choice to have kids with her main gay.

To quote Lainey at LaineyGossip.com: Je suis fag hag long time. I have a group of gay boy friends who I absolutely adore and have known for a long time now. But as much as I love them, I can't see myself having kids with them, because honestly, I would be so, so sad if I couldn't manage to find someone who was sexually interested enough in me and loved me enough as a person to want to have and raise kids with me within my baby-makeable years.

I once read an interview of Marcia Cross where she said that she was so elated to be suddenly married and pregnant because she'd thought that life had passed her by, at...44, I think? I can relate because I'd feel the same way. In fact, I'd be pretty bummed if I didn't find someone who wanted to be in a committed relationship and raise a family with me by the time I'm 35, and I'd probably be downright depressed if there were no takers at 38 - *knock on wood!*

I know - how ridiculous, right? What happened to girl power? What happened to being an independent woman?

I believe that these things aren't mutually exclusive. Getting married isn't my Holy Grail of happiness, but having kids is something I definitely want to do, and I want to be sharing the adventure with someone I'd be in love with (and who could do all the heavy-lifting and bug-squashing in the house).

Jaymes Foster, Clay's baby mama, brought to my attention a group of very forward-thinking women who are creating their own trend of getting themselves pregnant and starting a family without a partner because they are getting to a certain age and a suitable person hasn't shown up. In this case, Foster made the decision with her main gay, and in some others, women have employed the help of anonymous donors, exes, friends, surrogates...

I wouldn't be able to do this because I'd be resigning myself to single parenthood and my child(ren) to growing up in a single-parent family. Don't get me wrong; my mom did a great job and I'm always thankful that I grew up in my situation instead of in a family where there should have been a divorce. But I witnessed firsthand all the hardships my mom had to face with no partner, and I will always have a Daddy Void in my life. Maybe this wouldn't have been the case if the two-parent status quo were different when I was growing up, but while I do think that it's changing, I don't think it will be drastically different by the time I have to decide whether or not to have kids.

So Ramir, honey? Your little soldiers are safe from me. ;P

By the way, did you know that I'm on Facebook? Because I'm on Facebook! Was going to start a page for this blog, but it felt a little unsettling to have people join it as "Fans" - so I made an old-fashioned group instead. Please join; it would make my month! Also, will be holding a giveaway soon exclusively for group members, so make sure you check that out!