Braintree on the Red Line

Okay, it hasn't been THAT long since I've updated. *guilty face* Ever since I was a child, I was that strong willed curious one who walks long and far, and by the time I remember to look back, I don't know where I am. No one is around anymore, because I forgot to ask anyone to walk with me - the landscape is just so breathtaking.

Well, Happy New Year. Since it's been about half a year, of course the world has changed into unrecognizable proportions again. While I haven't had the resources to travel to any new destinations, life has thrown a few waves for me to surf over, and I'm still riding, uncertain of when I would crash. What animal year is it according to the Chinese zodiac? Ah yea, Year of the Horse.

About a month before my contract with Americorps and Phoenix Charter Academy is over, I had quit. I still have a small window into some students' lives through social media. A temp agency had snapped up my resume from the internet wilderness and presented me with Broadband Repair Analyst at Granite Telecommunications. I just received my quarterly review. I'm happy so far.

Despite how perilous financially it is, I've moved out from living with my mom and Annie, and now I live in Cambridge. The art scene is strong here, and I'm surrounded by people around my age, which is nice. Not that I really interact with any of them, but I appreciate their presence. I live in a studio apartment, with my cat. I bought and built all my furniture myself, excluding the two folding chairs that mom gave me. Two pieces of furniture belong to the cat. There are 3 closets. The dining table folds into the wall. Laundry is in the same building. I haven't done much decorating, because I wanted to think it through and take it slow.

Mom and Annie want to take a cruise to Alaska in June. I'm planning for this as well. Meanwhile, I'm kicking myself in the butt at work. The only thing this has to do with an English degree is the attention to detail and the detailed notes we take for each case. I'm not close to anyone yet, but I have found people to hang out with at work during the breaks. There are people to talk to around me when a telephone company puts me on hold for too long. My supervisor is good to our team, the guy I'm dating lives three blocks down from me, and, for the first time in my life, I am happy and continuing to strive.

Ford and I are also planning a trip to some rave music event named Mysteryland. This will be the end of May, in Bethelwood, NY. I had gone to Brooklyn, NY, to play some board games. I had gone to Connecticut to visit with Jared and Angela, and wrote them a thank-you letter afterward, but it's still in my purse, because I'm apparently too absentminded to mail objects. Boyfriend speaks admiringly of Colorado because there are awesome ski slopes there. I plan to keep traveling, but can't foresee a point beyond these plans when I would have enough money. I've become too interested in computers to become a travel writer anymore, but this is not a failure - just a shift in perspective.

Maybe the world will change over a few times more in the next half year again. Hopefully it will be for the better, though I'm plenty happy now.

Austin Plus News

The trip to Austin had been Ford's idea. He wanted to visit UT Dallas to see the campus, seeing as he was applying there for graduate school. (He got in.) While he toured that campus with his quiet brother and parents, Joey and I were driving around Austin, sampling different parts of its cuisine.

There were food trucks. In fact, more than half of the food industry was made of food trucks arranged in various lots. We tried out donuts, subs, cupcakes, but occasionally, we did hit an actual restaurant for their delicious steak, some big sandwiches and alcoholic drinks. Everything was plus sized and spiced much more richly than New England could ever bear. Also, MA was still cold at this time, and TX was up in the 70s-80s. Perfect early spring trip.

We also visited some odd museums at my insistence, because I can't just keep eating. There was an arts museum downtown that had two floors but some pretty but simple modern art. There was the Museum of the Weird which was very entertaining, even though I'm pretty sure most of it were hoaxes. Believing in it was more fun, but the skeptic in me grows stronger nowadays.

For the last night of the trip, Ford, Joey, his brother Jack and I went through the Austin strip of clubs and bars. Ford wanted techno and house music, whereas Joey wanted only hard rock. We even tried to dance. We're so terribly inept... But we had so much fun.

Now, the news. I had gotten a new job that will start in twelve days. It's temp to hire, so I don't know how long I'll be there. It's a call center in Quincy servicing Fortune 500 companies' internet and broadband. They do more, but the department that I'll be in will be doing that. After my less than a year stint at Phoenix Charter Academy, this came as a welcome surprise. More to come.

For the Children

Hi! Three months later. While the days have become a little bit of a routine at Phoenix Charter Academy, today was different, because it was the 2013 Benefit Gala. Since PCA is a nonprofit organization, an event like this makes perfect sense. We raised a lot of money - I would guess maybe around $20,000 plus? - though I could never give you an exact amount. Someone else was keeping track; that was not my job.

My job was A/V for the show. Now, I wasn't really in the background so much as tucked into a corner of the stage and running back and forth between there and the projector room, which was past a hallway and tucked into another smaller room. All the materials were prepared for me: Powerpoint slides, music, and even a short film. My main duties were to make sure everyone can see everything in a pretty fashion in the right order, and that the sound was going at the right volume.

That sounds simple, except that the game plan keeps changing because one of the two MCs like to improvise quite a bit. I didn't mind, it kept the show lively. So did the hanging projector which didn't seem to like staying in one set space, so I had to readjust it a few times. So there were about 200 to 300ish people put into this small to moderately sized space with a stage. There were some cocktail tables in front with dainty chairs, but most of the people were standing. Food trays with deliciousness were scattered all around the space, with drinks, tshirts, raffles and other paraphernalia at the edges.

There was dancing, a silent auction and a live auction and some speeches. The speeches were the most moving parts for me. Here we were, in a recovering economy, with so much pessimism going on everywhere, but there are still people out there willing to invest in underprivileged teenagers on the off chance that most of them will turn out okay (despite horror stories like juvey time and drugs). It also reminded us that the day to day work that we do - for me, fixing computers, but for the teachers and tutors, urging young adults to go back to class - has a deep impact, and we are actually making life and circumstances much better for a lot of people.

While the planning was a collaboration between 3 women and took months, the actual implementation only took a few hours, and the modest school building was transformed into a place to entertain and to be entertained. The raffle prizes were impressive, too. Red Sox tickets, Celtics tickets and the signed basketball, cooking classes, trips to different states, and even a band playing live at your house for an hour and a half. The school staff with maybe a handful of students and interns, about less than 150 people, put all of this together - after teaching 5 hrs of classes - within 4 hrs. It amazes me how efficiently people can work and the amount of things they can accomplish when they agree on something.

For me, there was even a short personal span during the day when I accompanied my supervisor and 3 female students to a CVS to shop for pantyhose. The 3 girls were friends, and 2 of them were a lesbian couple, my supervisor did the driving, and then there's me riding shotgun. They were talking about teenaged girl things: gossip, boys, condoms, the tiny variations of colors in different products. This work place is truly like no other, and I can see why the people who can endure the long hours and emotionally demanding workload retrieve so much satisfaction from it. They defy statistics and normal logic in the most steadfast and optimistic ways possible. It's hard not to grow to at least like them a lot.

Not Sex and the City

Merry Christmas! And a Happy New Year! Did you catch one of those sales and get a great deal? I know I did. I bought this pink croquet-ed Arden B. dress (originally a $59.99 value!) for $23.59. For my facebook friends and all of two followers, I realize that I haven't written for three months. There's plenty to catch up on!

My battles with organizational culture are largely over - I tend to just do what I believe is my job and ignore the rest nowadays. I managed to stay with this fourth supervisor - thank goodness! Tasks are being taken care of, despite everyone's misgivings over who does what, how to say so-and-so, and territorial boundaries. I organized the student database, monitor (and troubleshoot, when devil magic happens) the school's one hundred and eighty computers, and fulfill the legal technology requirements for this charter school.

On the first day that I arrived at Phoenix Charter Academy, the internet was down. I hadn't gotten a chance to know every face and the building, much less the school's network yet, but the pressure was on already. "Fix the internet," someone suggested to me. Such a warm welcome.

When the internet was finally okay after three long days, then the next big project was to fix the phones. Having called Comcast and CBE, I suddenly got a crash course on IT phone networking, and the way that it is not on the same network as the internet. Each phone is connected to an ethernet wall jack, which is connected to a large switch box (like a router but for phones) and there were more phones than there were empty switch holes, so I had to change around the wires to fit everything.

While these two projects were going on, there are consistently staff members who use other people's laptops to send emails to me to complain about how sometimes they can't get internet, or the laptops don't start, or the screen is black. This happens especially often when one of the members of the "data team" has me administer online surveys to the students about their feelings while in school.

I am this school's current IT department. I'm making up the rules as I go.

Oh yea, how about that hurricane Sandy? She knocked out five of our servers, so that when the school opened up again, none of the teachers can print anything, and it was four hours of panic, and then a huge meeting about preparedness at the end of the week. I had to find those programs - all virtual operating systems, by the way - and put them back online, because Sandy created a momentary blackout.

Or two weeks ago, right before Christmas, when three teachers spilled drinks on their laptops when they were lesson planning at home. As Britney Spears once sang, "Are you kidding me?" I had to disassemble them to wipe the insides up and then spray them with pressurized hydrogen or something to clean it all up. Not everything was saved, but I did my best. Taking apart computers was my idea, but Phoenix Charter Academy isn't training me. My asking the right questions to three or four IT staff members from other organizations is.

I'm really enjoying this vacation, though. Hanging out with people almost every day, learning about the better eats and places of Boston with a group of people I've recently begun to get closer to. There's a chocolate restaurant, did you know that? There are also two really good art museums. A pretty man showed me that there's such an item as Christmas rap. That's right, not wrap - rap.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Being a Good (Conflicted) American Citizen

Forty eight days back and three interviews later, I am an Americorps IT VISTA for the Phoenix Charter Academy in Chelsea (Boston), Massachusetts. This wouldn't be nearly as interesting if I stuck to the rules regarding no blogging about work, and just didn't mention any of this. However, I will be discreet enough to use only initials and no physical descriptions of people at all.

Also, this still does fit into the mission statement of this blog, because America is very clearly a part of the international community. Just because I grew up here doesn't necessarily mean there are no new things to see; these places are local to me - but maybe not to many people who come here to see what's up with Lily.

Americorps is a program run by state governments to give qualified citizens two year-long contract jobs in their lives, in service to grassroots organizations, local communities and the state. I imagine that rules differ according to state. In return, I get experience in my chosen field and a medium sized stipend; it's a good amount of money that's not enough to live off of. VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America.

Chelsea is reachable through some bus lines running from the Orange Line Haymarket Station. I take bus 111 everyday. The Phoenix Charter Academy is a semi-privately funded, publicly run school for students who, for some reason, don't fit into the normal public high school system. Sample scenarios are that they are English Language Learners, were truant at other schools, or need some help with teen pregnancy or small children. Our current recruiter, JC, goes around recommending the school to kids in churches, on street corners, in rehab centers, counseling centers, hospitals, and other places (wherever people may need a good education to get their lives together, but don't know where to look).

We have our own team of counselors. The teachers are especially trained to discipline and educate inner city kids. There is a daycare center, complete with training for new parents, available on campus. The rules are strict. The curriculum is intense and aided by technology. There is a government subsidized meals program. Grassroots organizations like this really, really give me hope.

My role in this organization is less than clearly defined. While it means that I am generally a government funded volunteer for the Academy who works with information technology, my supervisor LS can lend me out to whoever needs a spare hand. Because of the special student population, I am also a part of the training that Fellows (think teacher assistants), teachers and administrators go through, which means that I function as half a teacher and am expected to enforce all the rules and enable this life-turnaround politically correct culture. There is a whole sociological approach and positive language (all in English, ha ha) that go along with this.

It sounds very philanthropic and awesome, right? Of course. Then why am I conflicted?

Despite having been a teacher in a foreign country, and maybe wanting to continue in the educational field, I wonder if I am actually capable enough to reach out to these children, when sometimes I can't completely break my own mental barriers regarding the way I think another person is when he starts describing himself with a label. I am also unsure of the meanings behind my own labels - Chinese, American, female, educated, writer. It must be only human to think about and redefine oneself daily.

I believe I have to take care of myself (I need to stop taking mid evening naps, for starters) to have enough energy and reevaluate what assumptions I hold about other people, and let these assumptions go. It's hard to know exactly how to do this. I could very well have been one of these at-risk kids. Whenever I don't yet know what to do, it may be best just to be quiet for a while and listen.

Hit the Ground Running

Hi, folks. Last we heard from me, I had left South Korea. Even though I'm back home now in Boston, MA, in the U.S. of A, my personal story is far from over - being at the prime of my life and all. ;-) I've been home for 26 days so far. So, reverse culture shock exists.

When I heard about it from other people, it struck me as kind of a myth. How hard can it be to readjust to the life that one has always had? Well, for me ... Not that hard. There are many disorienting mini-events to make me realize I've changed as a person, and my sleeping schedule is still trying to fix itself after about three weeks, but everything else is pretty okay.

During the first week, when two of my friends (who are married to each other) visit, I realize when trying to give them a tour that I had forgotten how to use the MBTA. The prices had increased again. It might just be that I had been in and out of airports for about forty something hours, but my legs felt a bit atrophied and I thought that Cheongju is not nearly as much of a walking city as Boston is.

My skin became very dry again, without the famous South Korean summer humidity. The water here is more metallic. Even though my mother mainly cooks only vegetables, the American diet feels a lot more fatty than Korean food, and a lot less salty as well. Cheongju's air quality is definitely much better than Boston's, despite our proximity to the ocean. My room is so much smaller and more cramped in comparison to my apartment in either Cheongju or on Daebudo. I miss having a lot less stuff. I miss waking up to complete silence, because I lived alone.

I love my sister, though. She thinks my cat and I are both beautiful. She'd say so to the cat when she thinks I'm not around.

My cat pretty much acclimated just fine. Eugene is grateful for my mother and sister's presences when I'm focused on something else and not paying attention to him. There is far more furniture to climb, and more small dark places to hide and sleep in. I groom his fur about every three days, and his appetite is similar - not that I would know the difference between Korean and American cat food.

I did make some changes for my own comfort. I bought a smart phone. I created a wireless network in the apartment, so I can use internet anywhere in the house. I spend a lot of time at the library, because it's much more quiet there since TV's are not allowed. My days are occupied by job searching, hanging out with friends, video games and a rapidly growing list of books on my Kindle Touch. When I play the MMORPG Maplestory, the subtle cultural influences from the game's having been developed by Koreans are far more obvious to me now. I bought classes in Mandarin that will start next month. I bought a YMCA membership so I can indulge in spiking my adrenaline when I get restless.

I get interviews, and I wait for the results. Let nothing curb the ambitions of this young woman.

Tale of Two Countries

While we were all going about our normal business during the first week of the private academy semester, Kim Jong Il went kaput in his slew of age and heart related health problems. The hapless North Koreans put their Dear Leader in a glass box for mourning like Snow White, but I'm guessing he'll soon be six feet under. Before taking his last breath, he appointed his second son Kim Jong Un as heir, who expressed potentially hostile intent towards South Korea.

This conflict has been around for about sixty years. To pick a random point to begin, Japan defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War and then decided to occupy Korea like squatters to better watch its interests in China. After the Chinese were defeated, they went back to civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists. The Koreans took the side of the Communists, in return for help in uprooting the Japanese from their country.

As the Koreans and the Chinese worked together to get rid of the Japanese, the Japanese were trying to expand their territory further into China. The European countries had all divided China into their little spheres of influence, and were basically like, who invited you to the party? However, Europe was having its own problems as well, what with Germany having allied itself with Soviet Russia and then going to invade Poland. Then Britain, France and the rest of the Commonwealth decided that was not okay and went to war against Germany and Soviet Russia. The U.S. allied itself with Britain, France and the Commonwealth, and there you have it, World War 2.

After defeating the Japanese and taking away its military, the U.S. and Russia split Korea in half along the 38th parallel. The two bigger countries were supposed to help Korea establish its own government, but the Russians never let North Korea hold free elections and it became a communist dictatorship, first under Kim Il Sung, then Kim Jong Il. Meanwhile, South Korea has a democracy heavily influenced by corporations and reliant on American military despite the existence of its own draft army.

In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. They got to Busan and were trying to establish a new capital, before the U.S. pushed them back almost to the Yalu River. Then the Chinese entered on North Korea's side and pushed again south to the 38th parallel. Such was the Korean War. Ever since then, there have been miniature conflicts: a ship destroyed here, the North Koreans digging tunnels and the South Koreans having to play whack-a-mole there.

Now Kim Jong Il died. Enter Kim Jong Un, age 29, who was educated in Switzerland under a fake name.

My kids tell me they are afraid of war. Some adults are concerned, but others say, they have been threatening war for years. They don't have the guts. There's also the fact that the U.S. military is still active in this country, and are living in army bases in several major cities. That's the South Korean viewpoint. I've heard a secondhand North Korean perspective where they believe the South Koreans are not being true to their roots, are greedy for shiny things and controlled by American culture.

I personally am not too worried myself, and don't think anything will happen in the next ten months. If anything does happen though, I'll probably take a rest stop in China then make my merry way home. The U.S. should be rallying its resources to fix its economy, take care of the problems behind Occupy Wall Street and shaking down the uber-rich (people with $600,000+ incomes per year) for resources anyway. While I support our troops, this is like trying to save a friend from a bully while trying to fend off asthma.

Occupying Seoul (Yeoido)

America always has a lot of media attention from every country in the world, mostly because our international policy is to stick our nose in for what we think is right and sway the other members of the United Nations on various issues and movements whenever possible. This is old news. So it's no surprise that the entire world also has an eye on our economic and financial troubles; everyone knows that the American unemployment rate is at an all time high.

As per the power of the internet, I had first heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement through a lot of pictorial jokes on Facebook, which probably came from some graphic designers and people on 4chan. I knew that many people have been angry with Wall Street and Obama since the U.S. government organized the bank bail-out, but it wasn't until one of my Facebook friends posted a link on my wall about the movement that I connected the two and really started looking into it. I didn't understand it, because that particular link didn't give a very good representation of why people were protesting, and that the speaker sounded like he might have been high on weed didn't help either.

This link, however, clarifies the picture quite a bit and was far more persuasive, but I only saw this article after I went to the Occupy Seoul (at Yeoido) protest to do a little on-the-spot journalism to see what it was about. For a disclaimer, I will say that this is the first time I've ever been to a protest. I was a little nervous about participating because I realized this was a controversial topic. I also wasn't sure what the entire ramifications were for a Chinese American foreigner like me to contribute to this cause in this country, even though I agree with the core gist of the message, which was that financial inequality is everywhere so we as a citizenry rely on our governments to regulate giant banks and CEOs and stem the corruption.

In addition, I am aware of the counterarguments against protesting against financial institutions and the entire Occupy Wall Street movement as a whole. Here is one example. This argument states that everyone should take personal responsibility for their money; the American economy is so terrible right now because the majority of people go into debt from overspending and neglecting their bookkeeping. My friend Amy also has another perspective here.

My opinion is that, while this is true, it is nearly impossible to do if you didn't start out healthy (like if you had some genetic disease or disability) or have a family, in which case spontaneous events may keep you from saving money. I am lucky enough myself to have been born healthy, and I worked since the age of fifteen and went to a state university, so I had saved up enough money to become debt free roughly a year after graduation. Second disclaimer: I had a lot of help from my immediate family and one of my ex-boyfriends. (We're still good friends, but that's a whole other story.)

I went with my friend Mary Garcia (not her real name) and she had this green paper sign that said, "American Citizen + American Education + American Student Loans + A Lack of American Jobs = Sad American". She also participated in a handful of interviews. I refused to say anything in an interview to any of the reporters because I am not protesting any Korean financial institutions, and as I've said before, I am not sure what the full ramifications for a Chinese American to be protesting on foreign soil are. I went to the protest because I agree with the core message of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, want to support those people back home (as is true with my friend Mary Garcia) and wanted to see how this event would happen, because I'm pretty sure this will be a memorable moment in history. Citizens in a handful of different countries banding together to protest the same thing is something that I haven't heard or read about before.

 It was drizzling, but a large crowd of Korean people were there. They were chanting "We are the 99%! Occupy Yeoido!" both in Korean and then in English. Many people had signs. Though a majority of them were in Korean, a few were in English. Some even had on Scream or Vendetta masks, to protect their identities. At times, there was a man rapping in Korean. A woman's voice was leading the protesters, and a bunch of old Korean women were kneeling under the cover of the entrance to a building. Between these women and the doors of the building were a line of riot control Korean police - just in case, I guess. There were some other foreigners there too, mostly Americans and a few from other different parts of the world. Reporters from several different news stations were going around interviewing people. There were more foreigners interviewed than Korean people, so I was all the more suspicious about what the Korean press was going to say about this event and movement.

One reporter, after interviewing Mary, asked for my phone number so she can follow up on the interview, since my friend lied and told her that she had no phone. I gave her my phone number with an "Don't make me lose my job now..." but asked to be anonymous and refused an interview myself on the basis that I don't know what my employers would think. There was also one man who pointed a video camera at me without asking first, so I very warily said hi and then basically waved him away. I assumed he only got the end of what I was saying when I explained to another man - who was a reporter, but wasn't taking notes - that I agree with this movement because there is classism all over the world, and government regulation may help every country's economy a little bit.

We didn't stay for the entire time but I'm sure many Koreans are still there. When we were eating dinner back in Daejeon at a fusion Japanese noodle place, we saw on tv that the protest at Seoul Station was much larger, and it is still going on. I have my photos from the Yeoido portion of the event, which I uploaded to Facebook and may upload to my DeviantArt as well. This was Lily, reporting not-live on her blog at a friend's apartment in Daejeon, South Korea.