Hell yes.

Things to do after graduating.

1. Continue working like a slave to the Dollar.
2. Enjoy that grace period before I have to start officially paying back student loans.
3. Convince some friends to go Mexico with me. (After this swine flu thing blows over.)
4. Renew CPR / First Aid certification for Peace Corps application, and possible big bucks babysitting gig for the infant of one of our head chefs.
5. Learn Spanish and/or French, also for the Peace Corps app.
6. Go to the beach as often as possible.
7. Apartment hunt in downtown LA.
8. Spend more time in Silverlake (hopefully).
9. Make a new portfolio.
10. Attend a billion weddings this summer. Okay, more like 4.
11. Work out, lose that college + restaurant weight.

I GRADUATE THIS SATURDAY!

This is no surprise.

Since APU is a Christian university, they're intent on making sure we don't forget that. So, one of the requirements of our school is to complete a certain number of "Ministry & Service" credits by the time you graduate. You know I'm all about love and service but obligatory volunteer work never made much sense to me. Thus, I avoided turning in any paperwork for what I've done in the past 5 years. That is, until today when I had to do them so that I could be officially cleared for graduation (and receive my cap & gown tomorrow!). It was such an immense feeling of satisfaction that this was the last formality (well, aside from finals and that thesis). After getting my clearance, I was suddenly hit with this wave of sentimentality.

But this is no surprise. I knew it was coming. I've known that I'm probably going to be an emotional wreck on graduation day.

I've been sitting in the library on campus tonight, reading and jotting down notes for perhaps the most important paper I will write. And no, it's not my senior thesis. As I've said before in my previous posts, my Asian American class has been my favorite course this semester. Our final paper is on the AA experience and well, I get to write about what these last 5 years have done to me, for me. The pain, shame, growth, power and self I have discovered because of the unraveling and coloring I have gone through as I have learned about being a person of color, an ethnic minority, Chinese, Asian, American, female, etc.

Needless to say, I am pretty emotional right now.

It's not that I'm not ready to graduate. I am so ready. It's just the realization that this chapter is almost over really blows my mind. I never thought I'd get here. 2 weeks from now, this will no longer be part of my life. And I think the distance will do me some good.

Overdue.

Wow, I'm so cool: I sit around in my robe w/ sunnies on.

Library fines, I swear, are the death of me. I always have library fees. Even when I was in high school, there were different stations that you'd have to go through in order to register for the next school year. One of them was the library fines list and every year, I would find my name on that list. I regularly pay overdue fines or I stay classy by accruing a balance and never going back to that library. Or, better yet, I borrow one of my brothers' cards.

Sorry blogosphere, I've been overdue on this thing too.

What's been going on?

Well, I have about 3 weeks left of school. Congratulations to me!

I have been working loads at the Bobo. Jessica Biel came the other night but no, I wasn't there and no, Justin wasn't there either. I think there was more hooplah made out of the fact that the owner of Pink's Hot Dogs came to eat. I work a lot and eat a lot. The breads and pastries are amazing and motivate me to keep exercising because I do not want to give up food.

I'm well on my way in fortifying some good friendships.

One of which is a fellow coworker whom I got to talking with last week and learned that he founded a non-profit with his friend and one of their primary projects is in serving orphans in - wait for it - Cambodia. Oh, do I need to mention that he's totally cute and age appropriate (26)? All he has to say is that he loves Jesus too and we could well be on our way to Cambodia together (forever)! Hey, it's a deadly combo. Cute boy + volunteer service + Cambodia. Way to make a girl weak.

Oh but didn't I make some self-commitment to be intentionally single for the whole year? So I can really learn to not be dependent on another person and the importance of sexual discipline? Well, I still believe in those things but now it's made infinitely harder by this fellow. Life is always challenging, that's why I like it! Do I also need to mention the other dozens of good-looking people at my work?

I went to a Peace Corps info meeting Tuesday night and straight up grilled the recruiter on all my questions. It was incredibly informative and really gave me a concrete picture of what this federal program is really about. I feel like I've now comfortably seated myself on the fence about the whole thing. I think I want to do this at some point but if they can't assign me to Cam and I still have such a strong desire to return there, I might have to do that first.

Learning boundaries at work and when to say no has been hard. I can't give them all my energy while I'm still in school full-time and being on my feet all day with little to no lunch break (because I always work morning & lunch and those are our busiest times). I'm glad we're busy and that I hope we'll continue to generate a daily crowd but I'm exhausted. My room's a mess, my grades are suffering and I don't get enough sleep. It kind of sucks but I'm operating on the notions that this will only be for a few more weeks and that I'm still so young and vital that I can handle all of this.

Coffee helps. And moments with friends. And cute fellows from work.

For now, I return to not paying attention to this wretched elective I'm in.

Peace & love,

Wen

Lately.

Lately, I've been spending most of my time, energy and money in this place they call, Bottega Louie. It is a place of fancy. Where nothing is too good or too expensive for our guests. Where the salt in our shakers are pink because they come from the pink salt rocks of the Himalayas. Hand-grounded pure salt. A place where they spent a year perfecting the "L" of the branding, going through thousands of Ls until they found the right one. A branding inspired by Gucci. Where gold brass and Italian marble adorn the entire house. Where the aesthetics of the place are every bit as important as the organization. Where the president wished our every move could be choreographed like a ballet.

It is a place that I am coming to know more everyday. A place that often leaves me confounded, somewhere between impressed and conflicted. I spent the last 3 years of my undergraduate education learning about the poor, now I will spend the next - year? - learning about the rich. And once again, life moves me forward, shocking me with a new culture, challenging me, testing me.

Our uniforms? Black shoes (no lace, the kind you can polish), black socks, black pants, black belt. A white, long-sleeved button up shirt, with no pockets and no buttons on the collar. None of which anyone will see under our kitchen jackets. But they'll know. Some of the most meticulous, detail-oriented people I have ever met in my life. They care about everything, down to how many plastic utensils are in each container for to-go orders. Everything is critiqued, given a dozen edits. And yet, they are also some of the most passionate, professional and nurturing people.

I'm still trying to find myself, my place, my voice, in all of this. In the big, grand house itself, in the management, amongst the staff and my fellow co-workers.

For now, I'll be grateful for the remaining work-free weekends and all those beautiful paychecks that will come to my account. And 47 days till graduation!

Introducing my new work.

Yes, quite the extraordinary camera work and narration skills, right? Thank you.

As you can see, the place is quite big and white. Hmm, kind of like my church and school. Whoa, what? It's funny that I just likened the two institutions to my new work. In a way, it kind of is - it takes the ideology of goodness and equality, and mixes it with capitalism.

I listened to a two hour seminar-type presentation on the fundamentals of good business, with all kinds of words like "lifestyle enhancement", "service culture" and "corporate concierge". Bottega Louie believes in a lot of things and perhaps that is what will help it succeed: ideology. If you have the belief, passion, ambition and a couple of million dollars, investors and fancy friends, you too can make any dream a reality!

I sat with 200 other people today and thought, wow, you're all going to become my new world. It's a new time in my life. A real job that did not come to me through nepotism, a non-profit org or my university. A job I got all on my own accord. They're so professional that it blows my mind. They completely believe in what they're doing, in the language they're using, in the vision of this sophisticated lifestyle of "excellence". If the president had it his way, all the servers would move like a ballet. Yes, a bit fanatical. In fact, that's in the motto: "A fanatical pursuit of excellence."

We're training for these next two weeks so there will be more to come. I'm sure I'll tell you all about the cliques that will inevitably emerge. Or about my two managers whom I already kind of adore (Nicole, the one you see in the video is one of them.)

Wow. A job I might actually like?

Labels, words, identity.

One of the main topics we discuss in my "Asian American Experience" class is words of identification. How do people identify themselves? Are we Asian? Asian-American? Just American? Are we confined to only one term; can we simultaneously be all of them at once? On Tuesday, we were in yet another discussion on the issue of labeling. In the pursuit to find ourselves and find the words truest to who we are, we've come up with even more words. White-washed. Black-washed. Mixed-racial. Bi-racial. Twinkie. Banana. Coconut. The list goes on. There are words we give ourselves. There are words people and society give us.

I got really frustrated with the discussion because it finally dawned on me how ridiculous and ultimately trapping it is to constantly try to find ourselves in the right words. We say we are fighting for the truth of our spirits, so that we can settle in ourselves. So we can relax, breathe easy and say, "This. This is me." I am ________. I think the thing with living as human beings is that each person, whatever social location or ethnicity they are marked by, is dynamic. We are never just any one term.

Why is it so important for us to have words of identification? I think sometimes there has to be a deep shaking sense of fear. Fear of living in the abstract. Of identifying to a higher truth that society cannot have power over us. Words are so arbitrary and mean different things to different people. So if context for these words are never the same, how can we trust them? Perhaps the paradox is in the validity of the words we use and the lack of power it ultimately has. And it only has power if you let it. What I mean by this is that it is completely valid for me to say I am Chinese but does that identification hold me back from anything? Does it put me above someone else? Or believe that it makes me somehow inferior?

I have felt my own personal exhaustion with words, and it is a tension that has left me conflicted throughout my entire college experience. I have felt lost, cheated and played by the system. I have been torn by the complexities of adaptation and assimilation. Of compromise and loss.

Spiritual identification is the only thing that I have discovered that can be true. National identities are arbitrary because there are not really such things as borders. They're man drawn. And unless you put up walls that reach to the heavens, you cannot really keep people out. (The problem of using force to do this anyways is a different conversation entirely.) We know now that race is socially constructed. We were never categorized by our differences and set up a system of privilege because of it until well, we started to. Whatever box I have to check on an application doesn't make me any less anything. I still need food, shelter, safety. I still walk and breathe just like you.

It's so strange and wonderful to find myself in God and in God alone. This has completely changed my own self-perception and view of others. This has both all at once given me such a sense of security and liberation. It is like I have found my freedom while I have finally come to live in the only safe place that exists.