Power Of Make Up

I don't wear make up because I don't want to set the standard too high for myself, but putting on a nice dress and blazer is different because I'm dressing for the job I want and it's out of respect for my co-workers and the work environment. Putting on make up has so many negatives for me. For instance, it requires me to wake up earlier, spend time learning how to apply it appropriately, and spend money on products and tools (I'm a cheap ass).

Recently, I purchased several Butter London nail polishes for a friend and I ended up receiving several beauty samples. One of them was Giorgio Armani luminous silk foundation and just for shits and giggles, I decided to try it out. And holy shit, it made my skin glow!

Here's what my skin looks like with the foundation:

And here's my skin before:

I don't think I have shitty skin, but I sure feel like I do when I look at the before and after. This can hurt my self esteem because I'm setting beauty standards too high for myself, and I'm not sure if I want to buy into society's standards even thought I have no problem spending several hundred dollars on a dress and squeezing my fat toes into heels. Pick and choose your battles they say, and I am opting out of this one.

Prolapse:

Scott wrote “prolapsed:” on the white board, turned to me and asked, “Do you get it?” “Yes, I know what prolapsed means, I –“ and then I erupted into fits of unladylike laughter. Ben, who is eleven years old, looked confused and asked, “I don’t get it. What does it mean? I looked to Scott and he walks away.

I am unfazed by this because I realized that this is one of those teachable moments that you have to seize because the American educational system is inadequate and broken. In fact, I consider it my civic duty. Somebody please drop the banner that says “The more you know” and release the balloons. Children, gather around, your aunty has a story to share.

An individual can prolapsed one’s vagina or anus. It can sometimes happen vaginally when a mother is pushing out the baby and she somehow pushes out her vagina. The same thing can happen with your anus, but in this case, it would be caused by anal sex or whatever.

“What!?” Young Ben exclaims.

This is where Scott steps in. I think he said something like “You know how when you shit you can push too hard? Well, you can push other stuff out besides shit. Google “prolapsed anus.”

There is something I can learn from here and I think it goes something like this, “Google, do you use it Motherfucker?”  

Not Awkward

One of my supervisors asked me to entertain her by telling her some random facts. According to her, I'm really good at that. All I could think of at that moment was a short article I read on the Holocaust, so I regurgitated that. It turns out that kind of stuff is really depressing, especially when your supervisor immediately goes on a rant about how people shouldn't have children during war.

Don't worry, I'm preparing an assortment of fun facts to be store in my mental rolodex to prevent awkward situations like this from happening in the future. See, I am proactive!     

Racist Or Not?

R: How did you get that bruise on your leg?
Me: Paintball.
R: Ping pong?
Me: Paintball.
R: Ping pong?

I'm Asian, by the way.

Over Heard Today...

M: You look nice today. What for?
J: Thanks. I dress like this everyday...
M: No you don't, I see what you wear everyday. 

There's Value in Evaluate!

I had a surprise employee evaluation yesterday, which is much like accidentally raping myself with a tampon. I love how my supervisor vaguely tells us that he’s reviewing our employee evaluations and will be meeting with us individually, and then bam, five months later, he yells for me to come into his office. There’s no heads up on what this meeting is about, but I get an uneasy feeling when I see that he’s sweaty and stuttering. I’m pretty sure I heard a banjo and a pig squealing as he closed the door.

It was just what I expected - another year of half ass excuses on why he can’t promote me. The first year was because I didn’t know enough technology (when asked what he wanted me to focus on specifically, he said everything), the second year was that I wasn’t assertive enough (through trial and error, I realized that actually meant that I had to come up with plan of actions and SOPs and let him take credit for it), and this year is I’m too mean and I need to take trainings. And like every year, I ask for specific examples on what I can improve upon and he launches into an hour long monologue about how he would hate to see me to be stuck in my current position. But this year, I wasn’t going to let him get away with that bullshit, so I really pressed for an answer. I ended up with, “It’s really up to you to decide what you want to do. I have to go now, I have a meeting.”

So my job is to decipher this message. The potential twist in the plot is that it’s all bullshit! I think I’m going to go with that because…ah, fuck that noise!    

ESL

Me: Should I cancel this?

O: Yes, done.

Me: You’ve already done it?

O: No, cancel it.

Me: Can you forward me that e-mail?

O: Actually, it’s already been done.

Me: I don’t see it?

O: I’ll send it to you right now.

I have conversations like this all the time with my supervisor. It’s frustrating because he’ll inevitably become upset and tell me, “Do not misunderstand me!” In that case, does that translate to no means yes and yes means no? I understand that ESL speakers may find it difficult to convey ideas at times because I’ve had to deal with my ESL parents my entire life. For instance, when I graduated college, my mom told me that I needed to hang out at UCSF so I can find a rich doctor boyfriend to be dependent on. I was like, what the hell? All my life, my mom told me to stay away from “the boys” and then suddenly she tells me that I need a rich doctor boyfriend immediately? Something must have been lost in translation so I asked her to explain. She patiently explained to me that “dependent like you go back to school to become doctor and he pay for it.” Oh wait, that wasn’t a misunderstanding.

My mom has been speaking English for the past 26+ years, and I have to commend her because English is hard bitch to learn. Cantonese doesn’t have all the phonemes in the English language (this is why t’s, d’s, and l’s are difficult for Cantonese ESL speakers) and it’s difficult to translate certain words in English so I understand that the inability to articulate what you mean is stressful. My English is pretty atrocious despite the fact that I’m a native speaker and you know that whole thing about black kettles. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to chill the fuck out and be more understanding. Now, I need to work on those de-stressing breathing exercises I learned on YouTube…