Just to clarify, I’m not scared of women, individually, but more like seeing groups or “cliques” of women who I don’t know all too well.  Yeah call me a wimp, I don’t care, but boy do they scare me!

Before I entered college, from kindergarten to high school, there were some people (or kids back then) who picked on me, taunted me, harassed me, basically tried to make my life a living hell.

The frequency of boys who bullied me was random.  They usually picked on me whenever they had the chance, sometimes they had friends with them, sometimes they didn’t.  The girl bullies, on the other hand, were consistent and would always come in packs only during lunch time, and sometimes P.E. depending how many girlfriends they had in that class.  I hated it.  I’ve always hated them more than the boy bullies because the girls always had their own little backup.  You can punch a boy and maaaybe have him punch back at you, but you can’t punch a girl without having five more punches–the other five pulling your hair–coming at you.

Females, of any age, have this sick proclivity to pull the rest of their girlfriends in to their own problems, literally.  The only time they feel indestructible and heroic is when they have their girlfriends standing right beside them as they try to tear down one single girl whose completely alone. Take their clique of girlfriends away and you have one poor and defenseless sobbing idiot.

Yesterday, for Memorial’s day, my older sister really wanted to take me to a picnic that her friends were having, so I went. It was a bit nerve racking for me because she had a lot girlfriends, and again, meeting groups of girlfriends can be intimidating for me when you are your own backup.

We were a few hours late, but as soon as we arrived, all of her girlfriends greeted her and hugged her, and when they were done, they looked at me and looked away immediately as if they pretended nothing was there…but something was there, ’twas I standing there waving, waiting for somebody, anybody to wave back but nobody did…doh!

It was such a gawd awful way to start the picnic that I already wanted to leave. But after eating my plate, alone, I decided that I wanted to go up to the girls to, you know, talk. It was really terrifying for me seeing as how dreadful they looked as a single, cohesive group never leaving each other’s side, but I worked up the courage to walk up to them and this is what happened:

“Hey, so how are you guys liking the food?” I asked in a friendly tone

They looked at each other, chuckled, and then continued to eat, as if nothing was there…again.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Bunch of ungrateful, discourteous women, who are at least eight years older than me, acting like teenage girls.

So instead of trying to make conversation with them, I talked to some of their boyfriends, who were kind enough to actually talk back, they also showed me where the yummy foods were hidden. I also took very boring pictures of the park to kill time. When there was nothing left to do, I tried to make convo again, when I saw one of the girls get up to get food by herself:

“You and your friends are very quiet,” I smiled.

There was a slight look of shock in her face, she turned to look at her clique of girlfriends, and then looked at me and said, “I-I-uh-I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just getting food.” She continued to put food in her plate.

Yet another failed attempt to make normal conversation, except this one, actually talked…with hesitance and stutters and nonsense! Only because she was alone, and didn’t have her girlfriends standing behind her ass to give her that confidence to shun me completely.

You girls are funny.

Ugh. I don’t know anymore, it’s 2 AM and I probably not making any sense anymore lol. It just saddens me how they can judge so quickly without even talking to me. It saddens me how I had to waste 2-3 hours of my life.  It saddens me how that little incident reconfirms why I should be cautious of women and their pack.  And it saddens me how my very own sister likes to interact with them.

2. My first physical fight happened when I was six years old. My opponent, Michelle Tran, and I both wore adult sized boxing gloves. My memory of the incident is still clear as day. I remember the people who were watching and rooting for us (my older siblings and mostly our neighborhood gangbangers who made us duke it out), I remember where the punches were thrown, and unfortunately, I remember that I lost.

3. When I was four, my older sister thought it was funny to joke around by pretending to suck my brother into our vacuum. Since I thought what I had witnessed was real, it lead to my intense fear of vacuums that lasted for over ten years.

4. I had a pet African Grey Parrot named Ruby. I loved her! She would say a lot of things, even weird things, things that were never taught to her such as, “help meee!” She also liked making noises that sounded like she was coughing up a loogie (I have brothers). Ruby had a near death experience when I, accidentally, chopped her finger tip off with a nail clipper (I was cutting her nails and ended up going too far). She lost a lot of blood and her cage ended up looking like a brutal murder scene. I felt bad and her piercing bird-scream still haunts me to this day.

5. One of my earliest Internet friends was Jenalyn, whom I met on an networking website for kids called Freezone. When we were little, we both started making websites that is no different than my website today. All of the layouts were created using photoshop, and it also had an online diary, which is now called a blog. We met, literally, a decade ago, and we still keep in touch sometimes (via Myspace), and you have no idea how grateful I am for that.

6. The first zombie film I ever watched was “Night of the Living Dead” at the age of four or five, and I’ve been fascinated with zombies ever since. Prior to that, I had the proclivity to reenact the scene in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” where the chick runs to the abandon house and frantically shoves the furniture in front of the doors and windows, but only to find that it was no good when the zombies started crashing in. That has always been my favorite part. Epic.

7. In 1997 I founded The Dolphin Club, and in 1998 I co-founded The ‘N Sync Club which had a whopping total of two committed members.

8. Five years ago. Favorite haircut:

9. Five years ago. That haircut was forever destroyed by cutting it into a nasty mullet (thought it was a good idea at the time):

10. The very first time I said “fuck” was around the age of four. I was overhearing an action movie my sister was watching that had a lot of “fucks” and “fucking” in it. Funny thing is, that paricular word caught my interest, and even though I had practically no idea what it meant, it had given me the idea to yell, “Fuck my dad and fuck you!” during the film. When my sister heard it she shrieked and asked, “What did you say?!!?” And at that very moment I knew it was a word not to disclose in front of the adults, but rather to share with my classmates.

It was the summer of 1996, a 99 Cent Store had finally opened for the first time around our area, which was a big deal for most of us, as decent houseware appliances selling only for a buck seemed too good to be true. I went to the new store with my two older sisters, and one of them, Diane, told me that I could have anything I wanted there. I was thrilled! And I was ready to shop.

When we arrived, I first remembered seeing how outrageously packed the place was, and how awesome and cartoony their shopping carts looked. Their carts weren’t like any other shopping carts you’d see in grocery stores where it’s all metal and banged up with rust. The ones at the 99 Cent store were made of plastic and were bright blue. I wanted to take one of them home with me so I can use it as my pretend car from the future, but that didn’t happen.

The overwhelming number of customers there made it difficult for me to look around, so my sister pointed at the journal section and suggested that I get one to write in it. I declined, but she coerced me into picking one. So I selected the journal that had a cover of a butterfly sitting on top of a purple flower. After my sister had bought the item for me she told me I had to write in it, at least once a week, and then I remember her saying, “You’ll thank me for this when you get older.”

And you know what? She’s right. She’s absolutely right. It’s just…I don’t know. Haha. The feeling you get when you read your own private writings from 12 years ago is purely indescribable.

I’ve been reading that journal I got from 99 Cent, and you know, it was pretty intense for a third grader.

I talked about my love and hate relationships:

If you can’t read my eight-year-old handwriting, it says:

Sept. 17, 1996 I have a crush on Shon. And he was in my class. But I never talk to him or play with him. But I wish I sit next with him.

It was later crossed out in darker ink, and under the entry it says, in the same dark ink:

Oct. 26. 1996 not any more

Foes:

I didn’t like one of the girls at my school, so I drew her as a slimy Medusa.  Those are snakes, btw.

Obligatory censorship:

And finally, my discovery of the online word usage “LOL”  in 2001:

My spelling has improved huh? (LOL) (LOL means)= Laugh Out Loud) Got it from chatting!

Man, I am so motivated to write in a journal again. Plus the 40-year-old me can go back and read it and say, “Man, that 21-year-old me, what a hoot!”

Last year I met a guy on MySpace. Let’s call him John. John liked watching my YouTube videos (I don’t have them anymore); he also liked reading my blogs since he found most of them to be “raw”, abrasive and direct. Because of that, we then started to exchange messages on MySpace and talked on AIM for a bit.

He was going to fly to Los Angeles to visit his friends there, and since I live about 45 minutes away he suggested that we meet up. He seemed pretty cool. He was smarter than most guys I’ve encountered, and he was funny and interesting, mostly in a vulgar condescending sexist way, so I figured, “Sure why not?”

The day that he arrived to LA was the day before I leave to Boston and New York, obviously we didn’t have much of a choice to pick a date. So during the only day in which we were available to hang out, I brought a friend along, and he did the same. We met up at the beach, and things are already off to a bad start.

I couldn’t get him to open up. I asked him questions that never made it to a full on conversation. I threw in random jokes and funny comments here and there in attempt to break away from the awkward tension. But something seemed off about him. The way that he played with his thumbs, the way that he sat in his chair, and the way that he glanced at other people made it appear as if he was simply waiting and expecting something else from me, something specific. I just had to find what it was to unravel the John I knew online, but I never did. I gave up anyway since he made no efforts either.

We ended the day with an awkward and unsatisfying taste left in my mouth (and probably his too) but luckily, we both had vacations to look forward to. So that weird and uncomfortable incident I had to endure was moved to the side… I had a gawddamn vacation to enjoy.

When we both got back from our trips we eventually talked about it. I told him that I was disappointed when we first met up. He felt the same way, and the reason being he was expecting a different side of me, and he didn’t get it.

Oh…so he was expecting something else.

We talked some more and I later found out that he was anticipating meeting the bad-mannered-cursing-like-a-sailor-who-is-pissed-off-at-everybody Tiff like he reads in my blogs and watches in my videos but ended up with the Tiff who is completely normal and slightly dorky on occasions because she spouts her favorite movie quotes and laughs at her own jokes.

So the point of the story is: If you meet me in person and expect me to tell you to go fuck yourself and everybody else in the world because I’m supposedly angry and abrasive all the time, then you would surely be disappointed.

Why?

Because I’m not socially retarded. In “real life” I’m pretty nice, polite, and likable. I’m not blunt. I don’t creep people out. I try to avoid confrontations. I treat everyone with respect. I don’t freeload off of people’s food. And I certainly don’t go off on a tangent listing my aversions then go into detail on why they piss me off unless you ask for my opinion.

Sometimes I do swear. Sometimes I say “fuck” more than Orange County people say “like” but it really depends who I’m talking to and how comfortable they are with my use of profanity.

My writings can sometimes be different from the way I am perceived in person because I usually don’t describe what I do on a day to day basis (unless something funny/weird/interesting happened, but my life is pretty much normal). That shit bores me and I’d probably end up typing myself to sleep if I wrote how I walked the dog and then studied for a Biology test while eating Mac n Cheese.  When writing, I tend to pick out the ones in which I have fun writing about.  I write for myself and I let everyone in.  I do it at my own pace. No expectations. No courtesies. No politeness. Just me.

I wouldn’t mind wearing braces right now actually (Visaline is too expensive). I really liked it as a teenager. The pain felt quite nice (I know, I’m a creep!).

The only thing I hated about it, is that, when I would talk to strangers, they would usually bring up the topic of braces, asking if it’d hurt and stuff, which is fine, but they’d also ask, “Why do you need braces for? You don’t need them.”

Can you believe that shit? I usually say, “I ono” because giving them an honest answer might make them think that I’m trying to be a smartass.

“Because braces make your teeth straight…um yeah.”

When she realized I was the next customer to order, she looked at me and gave me this rickety, awkward smile.  It wasn’t a surprise to me because I knew she’d remember who I was.  The times that I was bullied by her was so long ago that I was completely over it, we were over it, however it wasn’t old enough to erase each other out of our memories, so it made a terrible awkward situation between the girl and I.

As she was taking my order, I kept on thinking, at the back of my head, if I should ask, “Hey how are you? It’s been a while!” since she knew who exactly I was, but I decided not to anyway and imagined as if I never knew her.  When you start talking to someone that you haven’t seen in a long time, usually you end up talking about the past, because that’s the only memory you have of that person.

I didn’t want make the awkward situation even more awkward by saying something like, “Hey remember when you use to make my life a living hell? Haha yeah, that was, uh, great.”

After I got my food and went home, I thought about the other bullies in the past.  It’s so funny, I never had that one main bully, I had different bullies for different things.  The one that I was talking about teased me for my weight, I was really skinny back then, and she was well, fat, and still fat today.

The first bully I ever had was a kid named… Billy or Jimmy. I think.  This was in first grade.  He sat next to me in class, and everyday he use to unzip his fly to show me his little penis.  I fucking hated it and I felt harassed.  He once picked a shit load of his boogers and wiped it on my chair, in which I sat on.  My mom once bought me this cool Lisa Frank folder that had unicorns on it and when I wasn’t at my desk, he took it and fold it all the way so that it would have huge wrinkles on them.  My mom doesn’t have a lot of money, and for her to buy that folder was really appreciating.  I fucking hate that guy.

The second bully, Courtney, made fun of my clothes all the time because I never matched.  I STILL don’t match my clothes, so fuck you Courtney.

The third bully was AJ.  He was actually my very first crush, but obviously, he never liked me.  We lived on the same streets and so he knew what my house looked like.  He loved making fun of my house because he thought it looked shitty.

And then on to middle school, there were these two boys that sexually harassed me.  They were in my woodshop class and they kept on grabbing my ass and other bad things.  I tried to tell the teacher but he never listened.  But you know what’s awesome? Years later one of them found me on Myspace and tried to hit on me, and he didn’t remember who I was.  A year later, the OTHER guy bumped into me when I was in college, he didn’t know who I was either, he also found me attractive so he was trying to flirt with me but I treated him pretty badly. Ah, sweet, sweet revenge.

The next asshole made fun of me for my flat chest.  He was the reason why I became so insecure about my breasts that I began to stuff my bra all the way to my junior year of high school.  They never really grew that much, but now, I really don’t care anymore.  I actually love my size and would never, ever go any bigger.

The next one was the WORST of the WORST of all bullies, the queen bee of fucking bullying, Rosemary.  Rosemary was one the most popular girl in school and she was liked by many.  She was very involved with the school, like, I think she was the president of ASB or something like that.  Essentially, she was excellent in everything…yet so evil and manipulative. Anyway, she had a huge circle of girlfriends, I was one of them, more like a follower though, but yeah she accepted me.

She hated this girl named Esther.  Esther and I became close friends, because she was the only one that would actually talked to me and listened.  She told me about the problems that Rosemary was giving her.  I listened, but really never said anything, because I told her that it was between her and Rosemary.

When Rosemary had found out that I was talking to Esther, she assumed I was talking behind her back, so she told all of her circle of friends that I was a traitor.  Her friends, who use to be my friends too, all gave me shit for it.  They ignored me when I tried to say “hi” to them, they looked at me with an evil eye, they would “accidentally” bump into me, and other things that evil teenage girls would do to belittle other girls.  Rosemary was their puppet master, anything she hates, they hate too. There was even a time when I was hanging out with the girls, she went up to them and said, “I found out the person who’s talking shit!” and then she pointed at me and said, “her.” And started laughing, and skipping away like the evil, evil person she is.

There’s more to it, if I wrote every single detail, you’d be staying up the whole night.  Basically, she had everyone turned their backs against me and made my middle school years awfully miserable.  She had the power to convince everybody that I was the bad person.  I had a plan to deck her in the face, but punching Rosemary would be like punching the whole school.  Everyone loved her.  I never did though.  She was NEVER alone; she always had her “circle” of friends, who acted as her bodyguards or something.  I guess it’s better that way.  Violence would never solve anything, but boy, it would feel pretty damn good to deck her pretty little face, at the time.

There’s a chance that she might read this.  I have some friends who read this blog, and some of them are friends with her.  But really, I don’t care.  I don’t even see her anymore, so the drama ain’t gonna happen this time. I heard she was really nice now, but sorry Rosie, I had to write it anyway.  Bullying, especially from you, impacted my childhood and the way that I am today.

I left out a couple of other people who picked on me, but after writing THAT, it’s going to make them look more like a saint.

I also wanted to say that kids are evil as hell.  My nephew, whose only six years old, is already telling me that a boy is picking on him.  I’m pretty scared for my nephews and niece, and for my future kids too.  You can’t be there when it’s happening so you can only give them advice and hope that it’ll work.

Now that I’m trying to take on an acting career, I have to be consistent with one particular look (I have to look like the conventional Asian girl), and if you didn’t know, I’m actually half human half chameleon.

I’m somebody who needs to change and progress nearly every single day. I frequently change my themes on this site. I change the interior design in my bedroom.  I change friends all the time. I change guys that I date, etc etc (These are all upgrades, btw, tehee).

I just can’t stand keeping my things dead and stagnant.

My image, especially my hair, changes a lot and I love the fact that I’m able to reinvent every now and then. I just dyed it to all black yesterday and unfortunately, I have to keep this color for a long time, which makes me a little sad now that I can’t experiment on it anymore.

So in honor of my humbling hair history I’m going to post my hair timeline/collage.

Some good, some bad, but all Tiff.

The most awesomesauce guy I had ever met by far had high standards and never wanted to show an ounce of interest in me (a turn on, spankyouverymuch). I eventually completed my assignment by winning his heart because I had done the same to him.

But it didn’t end there, we continued to talk because everything about us just worked. One of the crucial things that made our DATING (he was not my boyfriend) relationship so thrilling, addictive and weird was our attitude of “I’m too good for him/her” towards each other. Both of us were “too good” to make the first move, or we were “too good” to divulge how we really felt about each other, so we’d actually wait for one of us to initiate some love-related shit (’cause you can only hold in so much). And when that did happen, it was always like a huge relief since we seldom open up. You know that feeling when you’re significant other holds your hands for the very first time? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. It’s nice.

I was discreetly working for his affection and attention while he was working for mine. And little by little, we were slowly opening up to each other. I really think that’s what kept our relationship together so interesting and unpredictable.

We don’t talk anymore, due to distance, but I’m sure we’ll meet again in the future.

But the bottom line is life is boring without having challenges and nothing good ever comes easy. =)