does it always come down to race?

what exactly is race? is race a real thing? is it something we decide for ourselves (i.e. "i'm white."), or is it something that is decided for us (i.e. "i'm white." "no, no. you're actually not. you're mexican.").

what was your first experience with race?

and what, to you, is the difference between race and ethnicity?

i think growing up in hawaii, i was afforded the almost luxury of growing up, not being white, and not knowing i was supposedly "underprivileged" or "disadvantaged." whatever the heck that means today. native hawaiians, mixed race people, we're the dominant crowd in hawaii. and i'll be the first to admit that it's difficult to be a white person in hawaii. there is a certain amount of hostility there if you don't fit in with the "brown crowd".

so when i go home, my pidgin accent thickens and i see how i get much better service at a local food joint than the white guy in line after me. i notice that it's easier for me to comfortably ask people for directions because i know that, out of respect, i'll call that someone "aunty" or "uncle". i make myself fit in again because i realize the benefit of it.

but when i'm here, in the mainland, i'm all of a sudden mexican! i'm not mexican! then again, nor am i only native hawaiian. my first experience with race was probably kamehameha, which would explain why i identify more with being native hawaiian than i do with anything else. at kamehameha, you're taught not only to value being native hawaiian, but almost to value it to the extent of all else. so i'm native hawaiian first. then i'm filipino, portuguese, spanish, puerto rican, chinese, french.

but i'm always native hawaiian first.

so is this something i can choose? to be native hawaiian first? even though people outside of hawaii either consider me to be latina or white (fyi: i pass as white, more or less)? or am i those other things, because race is more an external label than an internal label?

i didn't just pull this conversation out of no where. i'm actually in my race and justice class right now and am pretty much transcribing the conversation verbatim.

i'd love your thoughts!

face first

WARNING: this post is a little descriptive and unpleasant.

call them what you will: fever blisters, cold sores, herpes... whatever they are, they SUCK.

i've had these things all my life. i can actually remember times when i was a kid and all the skin between my upper lip and my nose would be covered in scabs and blisters. i'd cry and cry (both out of embarrassment and pain), and my mother would inevitably feel so bad for her second born that she'd let me stay home from school until the outbreak passed.

i don't know who passed them down to me. all i know is that i hate them (and that my older sister has recently told me that my poor beautiful nephew gets them as well, to the extent that i do). i don't have outbreaks as often as i once did, but when they do show up they make themselves count.

case in point? i've been hiding out all weekend because i have this horrendous thing on the left side of my lip. it's big. it's scabby. it's not a very attractive color. it's uncomfortably pulling at part of my skin as it dries. and honestly? every time i get them a part of me feels like that kid who used to get teased about being deformed whenever my mom deemed the blisters small enough so that i could go back to school.

so yes, i feel slightly like a ten year old, but i'm embarrassed. and i've been feeling physically ugly for the passed five days.

that probably explains my mood and this outburst, doesn't it?

i've got nothing to wear!

(side note: originally, i was going to entitle this post, "closet whore" but thought better of it after a brief deliberation.)

this is going to be a different sort of post than usual. ever since i started on this whole "saving money" thing, i haven't been shopping once. not once. and unfortunately, not shopping doesn't getting rid of the wanting to shop.

but it has given me time to think. about my style in particular. are you one of those people who are comfortable with their style? do you dress exactly the way you would dress if you had unlimited funds and confidence? what i've noticed about my own dressing habits is that i tend to dress rather simply. that's not to say that i don't prefer simple things, because i do. but after some thought, i realized that i actually have a pretty eclectic taste in fashion. it's just i don't have the confidence to wear half of what i like, and i can't afford the other half.

here's some of what i like:

there are some times when i love katy perry's style. her make-up to be specific. although i'm kinda liking the jacket, shorts, and knee-highs at the end of the vid...

i love literally everything from anthropologie. it's one of those things where everything i own would come from that store alone...if it weren't so damn expensive. but the shoes? the jackets? the tops? the jeans? the bedding, for crying out loud? awesome.

so i'm currently in a very turbulent love affair with urban outfitters. i love love love their cardigans and skinny jeans (because like many girls, i'm also still in search of the perfect skinny jean) and bags, etc. these are not necessarily from uo, but they might as well be.




alright, this is weird, but for some random reason, i completely adored alexis bledel's wardrobe from sisterhood of the traveling pants 2. it was just really clean and elegant and simple. lots of whites and blues, and a few bright colors thrown in. it was also a lot of dresses, which i don't usually do. i really should wear more dresses... maybe that'll be my spring resolution?



here's some other randomness. i'm into lbd's (though i don't have one yet), vests, long necklaces, plaid, boots, knit hats (i luuurve knit hats), and i recently discovered that i'm not too old for everything in american eagle! yay!

and finally, here are some fashion blogs that friends have suggested and that i love to read when i'm in a clothing craving kind of mood:

The Ice Coffee Book Club (used to be My Vogue Handbook)
Uber Chic (check out the recent Uber Chick Awards)
Coco's Tea Party
Philosophy of a Fashionista (used to be Oh That's Chic)
What I Wore
Karla's Closet (she just got these AWESOME new tattoos...)
...love Meagan
The Personal Stylist
Mama was a Rolling Stone

some not so clear thoughts

so how do we feel about the idea of things being relative?

in one of my classes this week we've been discussing "oedipus rex" (doesn't that make me sound like i'm in undergrad all over again?), and today we focused on the very obvious theme of fate versus free will. it seems that with this play sophacles is trying to convey some absolute truths to his viewers/readers, namely that there are some things that are just flat out wrong. his examples of these absolute wrongs are, of course, killing your father, sleeping with your mother, and defying the gods. (this is not to say that sophacles wasn't trying to make his reader sympathetic to oedipus. that is, after all, the great conflict and tragedy of the story. but nevertheless, his choice of dilemma does say something about his own beliefs, i feel).

and this recognition of these supposed absolute truths spurred a discussion about whether or not these are in fact absolute truths. whether or not, for that matter, there are any such thing as an absolute truth.

now i, for one, have always generally held a belief that there are some things that are relative. i just can't help but think that we, as people who have different lives, minds and experiences, will view things differently and so those things are, therefore, not absolute. thus, what may be for me an absolute truth (i.e. capital punishment makes us too much like those we are trying to punish), certainly may not be an absolute truth for everyone else.

but today i was posed with the question of whether or not the belief in relativity is simply a cop-out. do we use the excuse of things being "relative" to avoid the uncomfortable situation where we have to firmly stand by and defend our beliefs? do we use it to mask the fact that our beliefs may have no greater foundation than the fact that they are ours? (but, to that extent, isn't something like belief/faith alone enough reason to find something to be an absolute truth?).

i find this happens most as a christian living in a not always christian-friendly area of the country. what i may hold as my absolute truths as a christian, i recognize is definitely not what many others hold to be remotely true (and you learn very quickly that expressing your belief in this absoluteness can get you labeled, many times, incorrectly). does that make truth relative? is there no absolute truths then, in the entire world? does a belief in absolute truths make us fundamentalists? is being a fundamentalist necessarily a bad thing?

i'm sorry, this is such a convoluted post. i can't wrap my head around this topic, and if i tried, i'd write an entire book on it, so i'm just going to stick with this. i'd love to hear your thoughts though! they may help me sort out my own.

i promise to post some fluff this weekend and get away from the hum-drum dreariness of my recent posts.

oh, sophacles.

old habits die...never.

i try not to overwhelm myself. i really do. and i would definitely never call myself an over-achiever. at least, not seriously.

but somehow i always manage to commit myself to a million different things all at once. and the semester hasn't even started yet! i'm just incapable of passing up a good opportunity. you know that saying, "take advantage of (insert whatever here)"? yeah, i took that to heart. i take advantage of everything, even when it can't possibly fit in to my schedule.

for example, during the spring semester of my first year of law school i hit full panic mode because my resume was absolute crap. i had no legal experience, only one actual job to list as work experience, and that was it. so what did i do? i applied for three internships that summer. i got all three internships that summer. i took all three internships that summer. and ever since then things have been sort of just...growing.

so now i'm simultaneously editing and publishing two articles, taking a full load of classes, working (probably), and planning a symposium at a law school i don't even go to.

it's really almost laughable, this thing that i do to myself. go ahead, you can laugh. it's ok.

and this isn't to say i'm not completed jazzed about all of this. it just leaves little time to do the things i wanted to do for myself as opposed to for my phantom future career. but i refuse to let those things fall on the wayside. i will do things for me this time around. i will not lose sight of myself again.

and just to prove it, i'm touring and joining a gym on wednesday.

rice and seafood, and cute wedge shoes

so somewhere between walking around in shoes that are admittedly either a size too small for me or just made of incredibly incredibly tight leather, and listening to some friends tell the unsuspecting waiting at the tapas bar that the paella we ordered was all bad for a number of reasons, i realized something.

i'm not a complainer.

i mean, i'm a whiner like most people are. i whine about, well, the fact that my shoes are too small, and about law school, and my boyfriend when he forgets things that he shouldn't forget. but in the general sense of the word, when in comes to things in public, i'm not a complainer.

take tonight for example. my shoes are too tight for me. i bought them almost a year ago online, got them in the mail, tried them on, and realized that yes, they are too small. but i didn't return them. i don't know why i didn't, i just didn't. since then, i haven't taken them out of the shoe box. tonight, however, i thought to myself: lets try the shoes out. did i think my feet shrunk? did i think the shoes had magically stretched themselves out while resting quietly in a box at the bottom of my closet? no. but i put them on anyway.

and a little later, i'm sitting around a table at a cute little tapas bar on piedmont ave and we're about to pay our bill. the waiter comes back to clear our dishes and someone says how the paella (which i of course didn't eat because the shellfish would have sent me in to anaphylactic shock) was a bit burnt. then someone chimes in that it was really greasy. and someone else says how they used bacon to cook the rice (which - and i didn't know this - you should never do with paella). and someone mentions that it was really just not good at all. however, as we're all saying this, it's made a bit awkward by the fact that the paella bowl is sitting in the middle of our table...empty. but this goes on for a few minutes, and then it's made clear to our waiter that this is not being said to get the cost of the paella taken off of the check, but rather to offer some constructive criticism.

and N. leans over to me and whispers, "you must be just so uncomfortable. this goes against everything about you."

so i thought about it, and then i realized he was sort of right. i'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or just me and the way i was raised, but for some reason, i don't complain. if a waiter gives me the wrong order, i'll eat it. if what i ordered tastes bad, i'll suffer through it and remember not to order it again next time. if my waiter sucks, well...okay, then i cut the tip. but you get the picture. i just hate feeling like i'm inconveniencing someone. i don't know. maybe it's a side effect of being shy.

bottom line is that the paella was indeed taken off the check, and my shoes are now broken in and quite comfy.


OFF TOPIC:
it's been officially confirmed that taylor lautner will continue to play jacob in new moon!

there's always room for improvement

i'm constantly amazing and embarrassed when i read my writing from years ago. amazed because of the changes and improvements i can see that i've made, and embarrassed because of the way i wrote before those changes and improvements were made. i mean, i know that it was necessary to write like that in order to get to where i am now because bettering your writing is a stepping-stone process.

but still.

and for the record, i'm not talking about my writing on this blog. this is where i don't edit what i write most of the time. i'm not trying to be grammatically correct here (obviously). hell, half the time i'm just exciting if my posts make some sort of cohesive sense (which i know they don't. sorry!)! right now i'm definitely talking more about my academic/professional writing.

this all came up today because i've begun to edit my senior thesis. a journal at my undergrad has asked permission to publish it, and so i decided that before submitting it to them i should probably read over it for the first time in three years.

oh. my. god.

i actually stopped reading at one point and asked myself why these people would ever offer to include it in their very legit publication. and then i had to ask myself why i would ever do that to myself. i mean, it is leaps and bounds away from the way i write now. and yes, my writing now has been very influenced by my legal training and so is obviously going to be much more clean cut than it once was...but duuuuuuude.

i'm already nervous because of the subject matter, and because i've now got to get in touch with a bunch of people i interviewed for the piece over email and ask them permission to publish their opinions (or just take them out). so the fact that i would never stake my reputation on the writing i did three years ago is just freaking me out.

so i began editing the entire thing all over again today (even though the journal editors will do the same once i give them a finalized copy...it's just that as a journal editor myself, i needed to give them something better to work with, you know?). and i'm going to end up revamping everything, i can just tell. my language, my style, my organization. i mean, i can't stand the first sentence of the thesis! that can't be a good sign...

like i said, leaps and bounds, my friend.

so i've got my work cut out for me over the next couple of days. wish me luck!

no, no, you need a REAL job.

just some randomness tonight:

over break, my mother said something interesting to me. i tried talking to her about the fact that i'm not sure i still want to be a lawyer. i tried talking to a bunch of my family about that and got the same stunned disbelief from everyone. none of them can understand why i would pass up the opportunity to get such good paying jobs when i have them at my fingertips. i guess a part of me still understands that. it wasn't too long ago that my driving force was the fear of being poor again. it's not an easy life, and i can see why my family, my parents in particular, need to believe that i'll go through with becoming a lawyer. i'm the first college graduate in my family. i'm the first to go to law school. i'm the first to, in the most conventional senses of the word, "succeed." so for my mother, hearing me say that this career that i've worked so hard for may not be what i want must be terrifying.

i've never not known what i wanted. in fact, i may be the only one in my family who has ever set out to do something ambitious and followed through with it. it's what i'm known for. my stubborn ambitious drive. if i will something to happen, it'll happen simply because i refuse to accept anything less. i guess the fact that i wasn't a hot success at law school (aka, i'm not top 10% in case you're wondering) has kinda showed me what all that stubbornness has got me: not a whole lot.

i'm not happy. that's just the bottom line. i'm not happy.

and when i sit and think about what really makes me happy, i can think of things i'm interested in (indigenous rights and policy, environmental and wildlife conservation) and the things i'm passionate about (writing, travel). and so over break, i told my mother that i really want to write something. i want to write a book. now, this is a huge confession for me, to say this out loud and approach it, well, realistically.

and my mother says this: "well, maybe you need to do that. maybe you just need to get it out of your system before you get a real job."

i almost died on the spot.

how can my mother, this woman who loves me so much, who comforts me through any hardship, who knows me so well, actually know me so very little when it comes down to it?

sigh.

all this is just to say that i've started writing again. tonight. i've started writing for fun, for myself, and it feels like it's been forever since that last happened.

maybe i'll get it out of my system.

but i doubt it. this is me. this is who i am. and one day i'll let them see that, and they'll understand.

other than that, here's some fluff for you:

1. i'm obsessed with O.A.R.'s "shattered" at the moment. i predict it'll be on repeat for the next several days. but it's inspired me, so i'll just go with it, as usual.
2. if you're following me on twitter, you know i've become a fan of "the city". i wasn't huge on "laguna beach" or "the hills" but for the some reason, i love this spin-off. there's just something about it. maybe it was that whitney found an apartment in tonight's episode, and i'm desperate for an apartment at the moment. i need to move out. need. but if that's not it, then hot jay doesn't hurt either. incidentally, tonight's episode also had the best song placement that i've heard in a while. you tube it. the last scene with beyonce's "if i were a boy".
3. i've begun the ever-looming post-graduation job search. here's what i've got so far: i'm applying for an internship (another internship! will i never get a real job?) with penguin group, as well as a 1-year associate position at random house. yes, those are publishing houses. no, they have nothing to do with law. yes, they are in new york city. and yes, i do realize i'm in a long-term monogamous relationship with a high school teacher in the bay area. (we'll deal with this when/if the time comes). i'm also applying for a few fellowships, which are in fact legal in nature (including the one at the firm i'm currently at), a public policy publishing internship, and one internship position located in wellington, nz. yes, new zealand. SO, here's my plea to everyone out there (readers, commenters, lurkers alike), if you come across any interesting open positions in the fields of public interest law, public policy, indigenous rights, environmental rights/law/protection, wildlife conservation, publishing, editing, travel, writing, and/or research, please send them my way (mandyland67@gmail.com). lol. until the writing thing pans out, this is obviously my search for a REAL job.
   

do you believe in reincarnation?

a good read. not as good as some of the reviews claimed, but interesting nonetheless.

so i think i picked up this book because the most recent book by m.j. rose, "the memorist," was reviewed by cosmo or vogue or glamour or something and given pretty good marks. since "the reincarnationist" came first, and it sounded more interesting to me, i thought i'd give it a shot.

now, initially, two comments about the book caught my eye.

• "One of the most original and exciting novels I've read...I'm sick with envy I didn't think of it myself." - Douglas Preston

i've never read anything by Douglas Preston, but i've always thought that this is one of the highest compliments anyone can pay an author. i've felt it myself often enough. come to think of it, harry potter is a prime example of a story i wish to God i had written. not because of whatever wealth the author may get from book sales or movie rights (because i've actually wished i wrote books that i don't think anyone else on the planet ever read), but more because the ideas are so...thorough. i've said it about lotr as well. these authors created worlds. who does that?!

• "Tale of intrigue that's more believably plotted and better meets its ambitions than Dan Brown's ubiquitous book." - Publishers Weekly

and that right there is a fine example of why i don't put much stock in any sort of reviews, whether they be for books, movies, or tv shows. i'm sorry, as good as this book was (and it was), it was not better than dan brown's work. and i'm not just saying that because i'm rereading "angels and demons" next. lol. dan brown's books are some of the best plotted mystery/suspense books i've ever read. okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much!

that's not to say that i didn't enjoy "the reincarnationist." after all, it's along the same lines of "the da vinci code" and "angels and demons." as always, it's about a historical cover-up of magnificent religious proportions. in this case, a reporter has "lurches" in which he's sort of taken into a trance-like state and experiences past lives. in one of those past lives, he's a temple priest in ancient rome at the time christianity is beginning to be the "encouraged" religion of the masses. he falls in love with one of the temple priestesses, and she's buried alive for breaking her vow of celibacy (she's sort of like a high-powered nun of the old religion). the priest and priestess plot a scheme in which he'll save her before she runs out of air, but the plan is foiled, they both die, and now his spirit has come back as the reporter to right the wrong that was done way back then. during all this, it comes out that the priestess was guarding some magic "memory stones" which the church wants hidden and about a million rich people and art collectors want to own. so an archeologist finds the tomb where the priestess was buried alive, the stones are found, the reporter starts regressing way more than usual as the story unfolds, and people start dying.

but who's the killer?

there are other plot twists and turns, but that's the gist.

now, i love stories of reincarnation, especially if coupled with historical religious drama and a love tragedy. but for some reason, parts of this book just didn't flow for me. i guess i just wasn't particularly convinced of the love between the priest and priestess, or that the church was really that hell-bent on keeping this a secret. and that's another thing! unlike dan brown's books, we find out the "secret" of this book at the very beginning! the entire rest of the book seems very anti-climactic in comparison.

so in light of all this, i'm currently debating whether or not to read "the memorist." the story line doesn't grab me as much (i think it's about a composer rather than religious persecution), and i'm worried that i'll just be...well, bored.

but i can't get it out of my head now so i may just read it to satisfy my curiosity. and just as a side note, i totally need a bigger bookshelf...

new year, new layout

so i've been a busy little bee today. i organized all of my photographs on my computer, took a crash course in photoshop, took another crash course in html, successfully revamped my blogger (which i decided to stick with rather than switching over to wordpress) and, after all that, was finally taught a lesson in humility (because naturally at this point i was feeling pretty darn impressed with myself) by none other than flickr.

so flickr is going to have to wait until next month to get added to the blog, since, in trying to figure out the best pictures to host, i inadvertently used up all of my bandwith. this would be all fine and dandy, but i didn't exactly read how flickr operated and assumed that it was based on space used to host, not bandwith. so i deleted the pics i had uploaded, thinking this would free up space for me to upload others. which it obviously didn't. and now i have no more bandwith to upload any more pictures this month.

stupid bandwith restrictions.

(**as it turns out, i had a tiny bit left of my allotted bandwith, so i uploaded a few pictures from back home, which you should be able to see in the badge in the far right column. more pics will come next month!**)

but what do you think of the new layout? i'm liking the two columns on the side thing. it's so much easier to see all of my stuff now that i don't have to scroll way down my blog. :)

and has anyone done any research on their genealogies? i think that's going to be my next mini-project and i'm trying to figure out the best online resources to begin my search.

hello, 2009. it's nice to meet you.

so the other night N. and i were over at my bff's amazing new house with her new husband and my other bff, and we were having a sort of wrap-up of 2008 discussion. across the board, this has been a pretty bad year for most people i know. and my bff started talking about how it should have been a great year for us since we're the year of the rat and all (she's been finding out more about her chinese ancestry since she's been working on a genealogy project for grad school for the passed 2 months), but since that hasn't happened, maybe it'll roll over to 2009. she's prepared to do various things to ensure that this goes through (which many people, my grandmother for example, do), including cleaning her house from top to bottom before last night, setting off certain fireworks from the four corners of her roof at midnight, making the proper offerings of money or incense (?), and receiving licee, etc. i don't know a thing about any of this (though N. does since he's half chinese as well), but she said she'd include thoughts and hopes for my 2009 into her rituals, i'm not arguing.

my rituals, on the other hand, are slightly different from hers. i don't actually think i have any, come to think of it. originally, N. and i had planned to do a whole new years things with friends last night, but plans changed since we missed our flight back from hawaii on the 30th and ended up getting back to oakland at 10pm last night instead. it was silly, really. we didn't miss our flight for any huge reason; we were sitting at burger king in the interisland terminal chatting away before we realized that our flight was taking off. so we rebooked our flight for last night and ended up calling my older sister to come and get us so we could stay with her for the night. which actually worked out amazingly well, since it allowed me to FINALLY meet my new niece, and hang out with my nephew. not to mention that big sis let us borrow her truck for the afternoon, so N. and i just drove around to beaches, got something to eat, and hung out.

there are worse places to be stuck on a layover.

but since we got back so late last night, i wasn't in the mood to jump off of a 5 and a half hour plane ride and go straight to a party. so instead we just hung out at home, which was fine with me.

i have made some resolutions, however. i'm trying not to make them too overly ambitious since no one ever ends up keeping those resolutions, so they may not be too interesting.

1. join a gym. notice that for once it doesn't say, "lose weight." i never keep that resolution. this one is a bit more baby-step-ish, so i feel better about it. there's a gym i have in mind that i'm going to check out next week. and yes, the joining does entail actually going to the gym. i purposefully set up my class schedule so that it allows for more "me time" this semester, which includes exercising, so i think i'm headed in the right direction.
2. write. this one excites me. it's purely meant to be writing for pleasure. not publication, not academia, just for fun. whether anyone will ever read it doesn't really matter. i need to write again.
3. get out of credit card debt. for more on this, see "confessions of a shopaholic" post.
   
4. not make myself sick over what may happen after graduation. my problem has always been that i need a plan to the point where i make myself suffer if i don't. this is the first time in my life that a huge life change is coming up (graduation in may), and i have absolutely no idea where i'm going to be after it. currently, i have the possibility of a job i may want lined up, and the ability to apply for other jobs i probably don't want at my fingertips. it's the first time i don't know what i really want though, and normally, this would make me sick to the point where i wouldn't be able to function. but i'm working on not letting my ocd tendencies get the better of me. things will work out. things will work out. things will work out.
5. be happy. this one ties in to the last one and is probably the biggest and most important of my resolutions. while i didn't have control over a lot of what happened in 2008, i did have control over my reactions to those things, and in the end, it's those reactions that paved the way for how the year would proceed. so my only conclusions can be that i made myself unhappy this year. i made 2008 difficult for myself. and i refuse to do that in 2009. whatever else happens, i want to approach my decisions, big or small, with the goal of being happy. should i take the bar? well, would it make me happy to do so? should i apply for this job? well, would i be happy if i was offered the job and accepted? it may sound selfish, and i'll try not to be, but i just feel like this is a much better approach, and a sort of middle ground, to how i usually go about doing things. we'll see how it turned out, i guess, on december 31st, 2009.

anyhow, there it is. there are more mini-resolutions that i'm not going in to detail about (blog more regularly, read more frequently and eclectically, go to shows again, finish publishing my article, travel out of the country), but i think those are the biggies.

oh, also, i'm going to be working on a new blog layout over the next couple of days, and will probably be shifting over to wordpress, but i'll keep you posted.

stuff to come:

• flickr
• review of "the reincarnationist" by m.j. rose