There can be many definitions of a word depending on the context. In one context, a word can be positive and in another, a word can be neutral or negative.

Today, a coworker asked me what I meant when I described someone as nice. I didn’t have a good response to describe what I meant besides saying “Nice” with a thumbs up 👍. In this scenario, I was being intentionally vague to allow them to use their imagination.

But I was thinking that with the right inflection, describing someone as “Nice” could mean that they are kind, attractive, or unsuitable, etc.

Part of participating in our society is being able to discern subtleties in language and behavior and acting accordingly.

Today I went to my brother’s wedding banquet. The official wedding ceremony occurred a few months ago and the wedding celebration my brother and his wife threw was a couple of weeks ago, but my parents wanted to throw a wedding banquet to celebrate their union as well. I think that this is relatively common in Chinese culture and it makes sense logistically – no reason for all these uncles and aunties that are not blood related to all be invited to the official wedding celebration where the seats are limited.

Anyways, my day started off with me waking up around 8:30 am. Then trying to fall back asleep and then giving up and not falling back asleep. Then I decided that I should write a short toast for my brother because that was one of my assigned tasks for today. Spent about an hour writing a 1 minute speech and I felt content. I wasn’t the main toaster, so I thought that it was sufficient. After that, read some manga since Shonen Jump comes out on Sunday. Watched some anime, as you may know, Spy x Family is out on Hulu on Sundays. I ate the usual cinnamon raisin bagel and cream cheese and made some pasta with tomato sauce for lunch. My roommate was awake so we chatted about some random topic and I got the call to get ready to leave. I got dressed in a dark button up shirt with some hearts, because it is a loving environment, and put on the suit jacket and the black shoes. The H&M dress pants felt a bit tighter than in 2017 for some reason.. weird. Left the condo building and saw a group of Asian girls. They looked at me and laughed. Not sure why since I was dressed for success, but you know, they were most likely not talking about me. Went to the metro, waited for the metro, and listened to Spotify.

Got off the metro after 30 minutes and went back to my brother’s place to help pack some alcohol and wedding favors. Greeted the bride and her sisters and waited to leave for the banquet. The banquet was about 50 minutes away and one of the sisters was nauseous in the car. I haven’t had too many interactions with my brother’s wife and her sister, but I would like to avoid a throw up situation in most scenarios. We got to the restaurant safely and I started helping set up where needed.

Another one of my tasks was to take pictures at the event. I dislike taking pictures, but If I am given a task, I’ll do it. So, I took a bunch of photos of people, of the wall, of the name of the restaurant, of people taking pictures of people. I also tried to fulfill my obligation to small talk so I was chatting and picture taking and it was great – high energy and shooting the shit. Everyone was standing around so I could easily say “Hi” and “How are you” and then get pulled away to take a picture without talking to them again. I hadn’t looked at the guest list, but I later realized that some childhood friends would be here. Great. I had not prepared any conversation topics to talk to them about and I am not very comfortable with talking to people my age especially in a larger group setting and when the people are female and when the people are dressed nice. So, I did not talk to them for very long.

Lots of photos of the bride and groom with the guests. Lots of my parents’ friends from church and their jobs. Lots of me nodding my head to greet people. Lots of hungry people.

Before the food was served, we had a few speeches. My dad was MC’ing and he kicked us off with introductions of the out of town visitors. My brother’s wife’s dad said a few words as well. Afterwards, my brother’s friend shared some stories about their antics near my parents’ home and in Australia. My brother’s wife’s sister shared some stories about her sister. Then it was my turn. I had a very short speech in comparison to them and I quickly went through it and sat down soon after. There were some laughs during the speech but I hadn’t put any jokes in there. After that, my brother and his wife gave impromptu speeches and my dad finished it off with another speech and we started a slideshow and started eating.

So much food. I think there were like 10 courses of food. A cold appetizer dish, shrimp crab balls, lobster, vegetables with abalone, chicken with fried skin, a whole flounder, a crab soup, fried rice, noodles, honey walnut shrimp, perhaps some more, and some desserts. Kinda nuts.

During the dinner, I was tasked to eat food, so that’s what I did. I got full and I didn’t want to go to other people’s table to socialize because then I would need to know what to talk about so I just kept going to the bathroom. The slide show was neat, lots of pictures of our family and friends and growing up. Eventually, we did some rounds of cheers-ing with champagne and more pictures.

The night died down, people said their farewells, and we started cleaning up. I did have some very brief small talk to the people my age and said farewell to them. I drove back to the apartment and started thinking about how to write this blog.

All in all, another new experience for me in the books. Multiple uncles and aunties asked if I have a significant other yet, and I said no and kept the pleasantries flowing. One of my dad’s friends even took out their phone to brag about his daughter and I was like “yeah, very pretty”, and “wow, nice apartment, oh and nice people too”. I also got compliments about my speech, and I was surprised because I literally wrote it this morning out of bed and I didn’t put any stories in it. Perhaps it’s less about the words and more about the feelings and delivery.

Well, if you want another internet toast for reference, here’s what I wrote down to say:

Hi, thank you for gathering here today to celebrate <groom> and <bride>’s marriage. I’d like to propose a toast to them. I’ve known <groom> for a long time and he’s been a good brother. He is mindful of my interests and makes an effort to ensure that I am well fed and content. Although there have been times where he teased me, I still value our relationship and am glad that he is in my life. It’s great that he’s been able to find love in his life. <Groom> and <bride> get along pretty well and seem to enjoy each others company. They share a lot of their responsibilities together and they also put in the effort to show appreciation for one another. I look forward to seeing them continue to grow with all the joys and sorrows that life throws at them. Please join me in a toast to thank them and to which them the best in their journey.

I went to the climbing gym for the first time in a long time. In the past, I’ve tried climbing with ropes, but this time I tried bouldering. I’d been invited by my friend Michael in the past, but I was not willing to give it a try. I gave excuses like “It is too popular with young professionals” or “It is too expensive” or “I’m not interested”, but this time I figured I should at least give it a try.

I went with a friend so I was able to try it using a guest pass and the experience was good. Was able to climb some of the beginner difficulty climbs. My forearms and fingers hurt a little, but it was rewarding to complete the climbs. Bouldering is quite tough, I didn’t realize that there were rules on how to climb and that the rocks we can be so slippery. Also, I didn’t realize how much body control was required to keep yourself on the wall without falling. Afterwards, I did some cardio in the workout area before stretching and heading out.

I don’t think that this sport is something I’m interested in regularly practicing, but it was fun.

I recently attended a bachelor’s party for the first time. The group had chatted about the plans for a few weeks now, so I had a general idea about what was going to happen. The plans sounded a lot different than plans that I’ve seen in TV shows and movies, so I wasn’t sure how it would play out.

I enjoyed the festivities for the whole day. There was a lot of drinking and games and food. We bounced around several bars / clubs and danced for a while.

This was the second time that I’ve really experienced the “nightlife” in DC. I still don’t think that this type of life is for me, but I can see why people enjoy socializing, dancing, drinking, waiting in line to the bathroom, riding in taxis / Lyfts, etc. At one of the clubs, they were playing Wonder Woman, so that was a nice distraction – I could move my body around to fit in and watch a nice feature film. I also observed people really going at it for grinding. It’s great to see that this type of dancing exists in real life – I think the last time I saw grinding like this was in high school. I think I stood out from the typical visitor of these establishments because someone came up to me and asked why I was here. I said that I was here for a bachelor’s party and then they nodded and went away.

From this experience, I think that it doesn’t really matter what you do for a bachelor’s party. As long as the attendees can let loose a bit and have an enjoyable time, it is probably going to be worthwhile.

I recently was asked by my manager to think about some goals for myself spanning 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months. I was able to think of some areas of improvement, but before I filled out my goals for my career, I was thinking about goals for my life in general. I still don’t have a clear picture about what I want to do with my life, but I was able to write down some aspects of a fulfilling life. Now, it’s a matter of working backwards. Fighting!

I recently had a coworker say an phrase that I thought was funny. So, I thought that I’d start a list of phrases that I thought are neat and keep adding to it as I go about my life.

1. Keep me honest
   • I thought that this was funny because of the alternative. Like “Nah, man. You’re a liar and I’ll never correct you!”
2. “What do you miss?” “I miss what I used to worry about”
   • I thought that this was a great line from the kdrama I started watching called Twenty Five Twenty One. I’m not even fully grown, but I do think that some of the troubles and worries that I had in the past were not much at all.
3. “Apparently, your real age is 0.8 times your actual age”
   • I saw this in another kdrama called 39, but I simply do not think this is true. Maybe in the show they meant the biological age vs actual age, but when I read the subtitles, I thought this was funny.
4. “A man so full of charm that his earlobes reached his shoulders”
   • I saw this in the book “Paper Menagerie and Other Stories”. I don’t really understand what this means, but I thought it was funny. Perhaps it means that the man was very old
5. “Money comes back, time doesn’t”
   • I thought that this was a wise saying. I don’t remember who I heard it from, but I think that it was in the kdrama “Hospital Playlist” Season 2.
6. “We’re all just ordinary men… faced with extraordinary choices. In those moments, sometimes heroic ideals demand that we become their avatars.”
   • This is from a short story in the book Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This line makes me think that life is not predetermined and is a matter of the many decisions we make
7. “Dogs know that they are cute”
   • I heard someone say this while walking down the street and I thought it was amusing. I totally believe it too.
8. “No one likes what they do” “Then why do we do it?” “Because we are driven”
   • This is from the movie Nocturnal Animals. Not sure why I like this interaction, but I thought it was funny. Like we are driven to do things we don’t like to do
9. “My feelings towards you are like unrequited love towards a cat”
   • This is from the kdrama Extraordinary Attorney Woo. I thought this was very funny and accurate
10. “As long as you don’t forget about someone you yearn to see, they will come to you as the rain or even as the wind”
    • This is from the kdrama Once Upon a Small Town. This was a pretty poetic phrase about loved ones passing
11. “Rainy days are for writing letters”
    • This is from a manga chapter that I read online. I thought it was pretty wholesome https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/z1h7et/art_this_manga_is_so_wholesome_sometimes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
12. “Love blossoms even in the middle of war”
    • I heard this in the second season of Singles Inferno. I think he was trying to say that love can happen at any time. In this phrase specifically, I think that it is possible that conflict can bring more opportunities for someone
13. “Isn’t that what love is? Two people going through everyday life together.”
    • From “The Interest of Love” kdrama. Pretty sweet line
14. “One should overcome their psychological trauma before 40 in order to mature”
    • Heard this in the kdrama “Crash Course in Romance” . I agree that would be great, but it is not always able to be done. What if the psychological trauma happened right before you turned 40?
15. “The fairest thing in the world is the sun. Regardless of the latitude, every place on Earth, throughout the year, receives equal spans of day and night.”
    • This was from the Taiwanese movie called “A Sun”. I took this quote a bit out of context, but it’s literally not true or at least the translation is not true. Places closer to the north and south pole do not receive the same amount of sunlight as the places closer to the equator on any particular day. Maybe over a span of a year, the amount of daylight may sum up to be equal, but it’s possible that that is not true. This kind of brought me out of the movie because I felt that it was simply false.
16. “History is not going to repeat itself, but it is going to rhyme”
    • I heard this in a YouTube video from ClearValue Tax. I thought it was a clever phrase since the usual phrase is that history is going to repeat itself. So, for this phrase, it means that history will be similar to before, but not exactly the same.
17. “figure out a way… without boiling the ocean”
18. “People who like pork don’t marry pigs, do they?”
    • This is from a kdrama called “My Demon”. This was too funny, but really rude to the girl.
19. “It is important to think about ‘weird’ things in order to feel happy”
    • My dad told me this when we were walking around in a park
20. “Being without you is like hell to me”
    • This was from My Demon. What a smooth line haha
21. “There’s no story to a poem. There are only emotions”
    • This is from the kdrama Welcome to Sandal-ri. I’m not sure if this generalization can be made for every poem, but I thought it was a interesting observation

Recently, I’ve been thinking that I may benefit from having a life coach or a career coach. It sounds a bit odd for me to want to ask a random person to help me to gain clarity about my goals and desires, but it definitely seems like I have not been doing enough for myself in these aspects.

One aspect that is blocking me is that I don’t really understand how these services would help. I don’t have a clear picture of where I want to go or who I want to be, so I’m not sure what the coach would have to go off of. I think these services probably work best when the person has a specific goal in mind and the coach is experienced in that area of expertise and is able to enumerate steps to get to achieve the goal. Also, coaching is relatively expensive and takes an extended period of time to reap results, so it’s hard for me to jump in without doubts.

Another aspect that is blocking me is my mental state or personality. Often times I can’t distinguish between the two, especially in the scenario of relationships. I could see how a therapist or a life coach could help in that aspect – like helping me think more positively about myself, helping me improve my self confidence, learning how to have more empathy and desire to care about random strangers that I may or may not ever interact with ever again. One example of this is my current thinking that it is ok that I’m not in a relationship with a significant other. One reason that it’s ok is because I feel that there are better options out there. I would be doing the other person a disservice by consuming their time and energy when they could be have a more fulfilled life with someone else. For this example, I can envision the argument where someone says that “Oh, Jeffrey is depressed or has low self esteem”, but at as certain point, I feel like I might just have a pessimistic personality. And do I want to change my personality? Perhaps, but what if this is part of who I am, my identity, I wouldn’t want to change that on a whim, right?