breakthesky.net » Friends

How Am I STILL Not 21?!

Manda — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 04:17:39 +0000

Even though my 21st birthday is only a few days away, I’ve never been so upset that I’m not yet 21. All my friends are out at the bars and clubs and I’m stuck home alone on a Saturday night because I can’t get into the places they’re at. Thank GOD this is my last weekend as a 20-year-old because this seriously blows.

Oh 21st birthday, please hurry up and arrive before I have no social life to speak of…! (I kid. Well, kind of. I miss being able to go out and have wild nights, dammit! I never had this age problem in China!)

When Did We Get So Old?

Manda — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:23:34 +0000

I’ve been on Facebook a lot since being in Hong Kong, seeing as access to the website isn’t blocked in HK. One thing I’ve noticed while surfing Facebook is that amongst my high school acquaintances from my class in Australia there is an alarmingly, and increasingly, large amount of us have been/are getting married and/or babied.

For example, off the top of my head:

One girl with a 4-year-old son
Three girls with two children under the age of 4
One boy with a one-year-old son
Two girls that are married

I’m the same age as my friends that are married or with children, and I can’t even begin to fathom marriage or parenthood. I still remember the good ol’ days in high school where my friends and I would gossip about so-and-so and the biggest thing we had to worry about is whether or not we failed the math test or if we would get a date to the next school dance. To think that now some of us have much bigger things to worry about makes me feel so old!

This Means I’m Next

Manda — Sat, 14 May 2011 01:11:03 +0000

The two friends I am backpacking around southeast Asia with have succumbed to a most awful virus. High fever (104F/40C), body aches, nausea… they’ve got the whole shebang going on. Luckily the tests for malaria and dengue fever came out negative, but whatever they’ve got still seems pretty miserable.

At least they got sick in Saigon, where we planned to spend the most time in any one city and where there are good (albeit pricey) English speaking hospitals and clinics. Better to get sick in Saigon than somewhere in Cambodia, which is next on our itinerary!

As one friend got sick right after the other, I fear that I’m next…

On Good Travel Companions

Manda — Mon, 02 May 2011 13:03:20 +0000

While sitting on a 9-hour bus ride from Luang Namtha to Luang Prabang:

Friend: Who was in that sex scandal again?
Me: Sex scandal?
Friend: Yeah, that sex scandal.
Me: …Edison Chen?
Friend: So not Eason Chan¹, right?
Me: No, it was Edison.
Friend: Cool.

The fact that I was able to pull the right answer to his particular question out of thin air (we had been sitting in silence beforehand and earlier conversations had absolutely no context relating to sex scandals) shows that he and I are often on the same wavelength without needing to verbally communicate. This is why he is my favorite person to travel with – we just get each other.

Quick update regarding my travels: Laos has been fun so far, but I’m excited to move on and head into Vietnam. My adventures in Laos include hiking through the jungle, staying overnight at an Akha tribal village, sailing down the Mekong, and tomorrow I’m going to see motorbike through Phonsavan and see the Plain of Jars. Then, off to Hanoi!

Eason is one of our favorite Chinese singers.

My One Mistake Was That I Never Let You Down

Manda — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:56:31 +0000

What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I be more assertive? Why can’t I stand up for myself? Why can’t I demand what I deserve? Why am I do I just sit there and take it when I know I should speak up?

It’s not like I’m not a strong-willed and stubborn person. But why is it that in this case, I just can’t seem to demonstrate that I actually do have a backbone?

It’s getting to the point where I think I’ve actually lost all respect for myself.

Here’s The Thing With Money, Friends, and Travel

Manda — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:09:05 +0000

This past weekend, three friends and I went to Taishan (泰山), the holiest mountain of the Five Sacred Mountains in China. It was a standard budget weekend trip in China what with taking trains, staying in cheap hostels, eating street food, etc. The mountain was great and all (the climb not so much, but no one ever said climbing a mountain was easy) but the main thing I am taking away from “Taishan weekend” is that money, friends, and travel don’t necessarily mixed well. Especially when you are traveling abroad and there are extremely mixed levels of language ability.

I went with three other friends to Taishan. Two of them speak extremely limited Chinese, the other speaks just as well as I do. Not surprisingly, it was my one friend and I who did most of our communicating and navigating and guiding for the weekend in our various travels and excursions up, down, and around Taishan. And also not surprisingly, it was also my friend and I who foot the bill for about 85% of our expenses during the trip.

We are all poor students. It’s not like we traveled extravagantly during our time in Taishan. We took trains instead of planes, public transport instead of taxis, hostels instead of hotels, street food instead of restaurants. But still, those costs add up. And when the bill for four is split between two people, traveling becomes even more expensive. And it becomes even more expensive when the thought of paying back each share of the bill seems to conveniently slip people’s minds.

Is it really that much to ask for people to pay their own way when traveling? And to remember to pay back people who covered for them when they had no cash? And, when the question of repayment comes up, to actually pay back someone rather than just saying you will?

It is all just very frustrating. Money is such an awkward subject.

Some Guys Really Are Clueless

Manda — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 12:06:04 +0000

Last night, one of my roommates and I went out to a local club. The pickings were slim; most of the male crowd fell into one of the following categories:

Old Asian men who should have left the club forty years ago
White men who were looking to pick up Chinese girls
Men (of all races) who just stood there on fringes of the dance floor, too terrified to do anything but chain smoke cigarettes

Still, we thought not all was lost. At the very least we could try talking to some of the Chinese men by the bar in an effort to practice our Chinese, and perhaps score a free drink or two, right?

Wrong. The first guy we approached on the dance floor had no interest in dancing with us at all. We moved on pretty quickly from him, but further observations led us to discover that the guy didn’t want to dance with anyone at all. No, he was perfectly content bopping along to the music on his own, which is more than unusual in a club setting.

The next guy we approached turned out to be a dud as well. It soon became clear that this guy had no idea what he was doing in a club scene. He didn’t offer to buy us drinks. (Which is his right, of course, but unusual, particularly in the Chinese club scene.) In fact, he asked us why we had no drinks, but in such a way that it was a genuine question – no underlying meaning was applied to the question. He was not a good conversationalist, and he seemed to not understand anything we said as we had to repeat sentences several times for him to comprehend what we were saying.

It got to the point where we were clearly getting nowhere with this guy, as our time talking to him was more painful than anything else. Not to mention that we couldn’t enjoy our night out as two single girls if he followed us like a shadow. When we told him we (making it clear that “we” was my roommate and I, he was not included) were going to go to the upstairs bar, he followed. We then told him we were going to go to the club next door, once again that was met with an enthusiastic, “Let’s go, then!”

It took all of our evasion tactics to lose the guy. Our attempts to evade him culminated in us hiding in the bathroom for half an hour with him patiently waiting for us outside. In the end, we made a beeline for the dance floor from the bathroom and managed to lose him for a bit. But then he found us again, at which point we decided to call it a night and head home. This guy was persistent, and as our entire night thus far had consisted of trying to lose him and failing miserably, we were not going to have a good night.

I still can’t believe he didn’t pick up on any of our hints and signals. Some of them were subtle, many were obvious, but they all had the same glaringly obvious message: you are boring and we are not interested, so please leave us alone.

“Catching Up” Engagements

Manda — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 12:47:35 +0000

This past week (keep in mind it is only Tuesday!) I have done the following:

Had dinner with my entire extended family
Had dinner with my godmother and her family
Had 6 Skype dates, the shortest of which lasted an hour
Had lunch with a childhood friend – the last time we’d seen each other was over ten years ago (!!!)

For the remainder of the week, I have plans to do the following:

Have at least 4 more Skype dates
Call my long-suffering mother, who undoubtedly misses her wonderful daughter
Hang out with the awesome Melody
Respond to Facebook messages, emails, etc

I seem to have become very social all of a sudden. Of course, I’m always social, but having the time for this many Skype dates is unheard of during the semester!

Biddy Behavior

Manda — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 06:18:17 +0000

Biddy: A dumb ass bitch, usually 18 or younger. Picture it: short shorts, Ugg boots, string straight hair and mad eye makeup for a high school frosh. They go out at night looking for the party so they can get shitty on Mike’s Hard, cheap wine, or other people’s alcohol. They have a bun on the top of their head as if they rolled out of bed looking like a pre-pubescent prostitute. Being a biddy means being dumb is the cool thing to do.
- Urban Dictionary

My friend called me a biddy yesterday.

I think it goes without saying that I am obviously not a biddy. I know I am several things, but a biddy? No freakin’ way.

Honestly? If I were a biddy, I would own up to it. I own up to all the other not-so-flattering traits I have, so I wouldn’t deny being a biddy if it were true. But as much as I like to flirt and drink and dance when I go out, I’m classy about it. I definitely do not demonstrate any type of biddy behavior. I don’t get trashed, I don’t depend on other people to take care of me (and consequently ruining their night), I don’t get together with multiple guys in one night… in short, I don’t do anything stupid.

What bothers me most about being called a biddy is that it stemmed from a conversation about what my friend and I did last weekend. Obviously the weekend involved going out, and we were trading stories as we didn’t go out together. And our stories, despite experiencing them separately, pretty much amounted to the same thing: going out with friends, drinking, dancing, and meeting people. But because I am the girl, I was the one that got judged for my actions last weekend even though his weekend experience was essentially parallel to mine!

I hate how these double standards exist with guys and girls. They irritate me in any context, but they are especially annoying in social and romantic contexts. There are definitely biddies in this world (both of the male and female variety¹), but just because I am a girl who likes to go out does not automatically make me a dumb biddy. Nor do I exhibit biddy behavior at any point in time!

I can’t think of the guy equivalent for the term “biddy.” Is there one? Or do guys just get called biddies too?

I’m a Runner

Manda — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:06:24 +0000

Something I discovered last weekend: I run off when I’m upset.

I never thought I was a runner, but I guess I have a tendency to run away when I’m upset as I feel like I just need to get away for five seconds. I literally run away from who I’m with, which is strange as I hate running and can’t remember the last time I properly ran. But I’ve found it’s what I do, and it’s something I did a fair bit last weekend. I ran up stairs, down stairs, across streets… None of the times I ran off were for long, nor did I go far, but I just wanted to feel like I was getting away, even if it was only for a few seconds.

Anyone else want to physically run away from everything when it all gets to be too much from time to time?