Meme procrastination!

[oyceter]

From lots of people:

Ten things I assume you know about me

• I am Chinese.
  
• I spent the latter half of my childhood and teen years living in Taiwan.
  
• I am feminist and anti-racist and my personal is political.
  
• I read. A lot.
  
• I have pet rats and I think they are the cutest thing ever with their fuzzy little paws and noses and whiskers and the way they lick my fingers and even Ruki who is evil and escapes all the time is the cutest thing ever.
  
• I live in the Bay Area and I love love love love love it. LOVE. I love the sunshine and the blue skies and how the grass covers the dirt hill in the winter thanks to the rain. I love the sometimes-embarrassing yuppiness of it and my farmers' market and how Asian it is so I can feel invisible for once and buy things I actually eat in supermarkets.
  
• I like food. A lot.
  
• I knit. A lot.
  
• I like genre and pop culture (despite having zero pop culture knowledge to speak of) and the fringe and the outcast and that which is generally not accepted. I like women who are girly and strong and women who are fighters and women who have the courage of their convictions. I like multi-cultural worlds that acknowledge non-standard family units and GLBT characters and POC.
  
• I am drawn like a moth to flame (or perhaps like a flying walrus to wolves?) to the crack.

And just for the heck of it...

Five things you may not know about me
(I can't think of ten)

• I am Chinese. As in, I am not Taiwanese, I do not speak Taiwanese or understand Taiwanese, despite spending eight years in Taiwan. I'm not insulted if people call me Taiwanese and normally would not care, except I feel like I am wrongfully appropriating, as people in Taiwan would consider me a mainlander because my grandparents emigrated to Taiwan from China while fleeing the Communists and there is a lot of anti-mainlander sentiment right now. Also, if you've called me Taiwanese in the past, it is ok! I usually don't explain unless I have a good half hour, just because the politics are so complicated. Anyway, I think now I identify as Chinese-American and Asian-American as well, though I didn't before. California is home now, though Taiwan will always be home as well.
  
• I am really girly. I like pink and skirts and knitting and dancing and butterflies and lace and anything cute. (I think most people know this? But maybe some do not?)
  
• I adore food science and reading about how recipes are constructed and how and why food works the way it does (Good Eats!), but I don't actually cook because I don't have time (or more accurately: I do have time, but I choose to spend it on rats and dancing and knitting instead). I do like making stuff for special occasions though, just not the stress of preparing daily meals.
  
• I hate going to bed and will in fact stay up as late as I possibly can (and usually later than is sane), but once asleep, I never want to get up. It also takes me forever to wake up (i.e never try talking to me before I am caffeinated), and I sleep like the dead.
  
• I hate competition and will generally try to avoid anything that will compare me with other people unless it is completely unavoidable.

Comments

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Hey, I didn't know you were in the Bay Area! Naively, I thought you just visited here a lot :)

[oyceter]

I am indeed local! And very happy to live here.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Then maybe we'll run into each other someday when we're not both in Wisconsin :)

[oyceter]

Yes, that would be nifty! Are you going to Bascon?

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Nope. I'm not a big congoer in general -- Potlatch and WisCon are about it these days.

[makaidiver.livejournal.com]

How do you pronounce your LJ name? Oy-setter?

We've not met, and I LJ-friended you recently after reading either interesting comments or a link to one of your posts from one of our mutual friends, so this is new and interesting! I also live in the Bay Area: howdy, neighbor!

[oyceter]

How do you pronounce your LJ name? Oy-setter?

I pronounce it "oyster," but I really don't mind how people say it. I think most people say "oy-setter" ;).

Also, hi back neighbor!

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I hate competition and will generally try to avoid anything that will compare me with other people unless it is completely unavoidable.

Oh, geez, me too. It's one reason I prefer tabletop roleplaying games to any other kind of game: in general, if the GM is good, an RPG is a cooperative venture among the players, rather than a competition between them.

[oyceter]

Oooh yes. And that's why I like games more like Taboo or Cranium than things like chess or checkers.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

I am Chinese. As in, I am not Taiwanese, I do not speak Taiwanese or understand Taiwanese, despite spending eight years in Taiwan.

Oh! I didn't realise that. Just checking -- by the Taiwanese language, d'you mean 闽南语? I know very little about Taiwan, to my shame.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I think it's a variant of it? I'm not actually that clear myself and sort of feel embarrassed talking about Taiwan in general b/c I am woefully ignorant about it.

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

The only reason why I know Taiwanese people don't speak Mandarin (or don't only speak Mandarin) is 'cos people come to me and say, "They speak Hokkien in Taiwan! :O!" Hokkien being 福建, and very widely spoken in Malaysia and Singapore. One sort of knows in theory that Hokkien must have come from China, so people outside Malaysia and Singapore must speak it, but it is such a, a homey dialect that one is astonished to find it elsewhere.

[oyceter]

Oh, that is awesome! And yeah, I get so confused about all the dialects because there are the dialects and then there are variations on the dialects and then the dialects stem from one place but go to many others, and of course there's that whole Chinese diaspora thing ;).

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting! It looks from this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoklo_people) like Taiwanese = Hokkien people, only Hokkien people in M'sia and S'pore identify as Chinese. I suppose that makes sense in the racial context.

[oyceter]

Oh neat! And of course I am neglecting the Taiwanese aboriginal people who don't self-identify as Chinese or Taiwanese afaik.

[jiawen]

I think Taiwanese 台語 is actually a subset of Minnan 閩南, though lots of people use the two as if they're equivalent. Minnan has tons of dialects; it's one of the classic examples of "go over the hills and you can no longer be understood".

Thanks for clarifying that you're Chinese, by the way! I think I'd been wondering but not asking.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I think it's a subset too...

[littlebutfierce]

how Asian it is

That was what hit me the most when I went to the Bay Area when I was in high school. I don't think I'd spent much/any time in Flushing/Chinatown here before that (b/c I grew up on Long Island), & anyway the Bay Area has so many more Filipinos than here!!

[oyceter]

Yeeees! I love that so much about Bay Area, especially places like Cupertino and Milpitas. Also, it means easy access to good Chinese food.

[kintail.livejournal.com]

I hate going to bed and will in fact stay up as late as I possibly can (and usually later than is sane), but once asleep, I never want to get up.

Me too! If only I also had the sleep like the dead part.

I hate competition and will generally try to avoid anything that will compare me with other people unless it is completely unavoidable.

Again with the me too. But in my case it's also tangled up with a huge fear of confrontation, which makes things like speaking out about my political views so difficult.

Also, thank you for explaining that you are Chinese! And I really want to visit the Bay Area someday, and I think your posts about your Market and restaurants have added a lot to that. Heh.

[oyceter]

Ugh, yes to fear of confrontation! I had to really work on that one for myself.

Also, yes, you want to visit Bay Area! Really!

[larryhammer]

Heh. Our Sometimes Roommate is Taiwanese but she is embarassed that she does not speak Taiwanese -- not even her family's village dialect -- but does speak Mandarin. And is further embarassed that she's functionally illiterate.

Not to set up a competition or anything....

---L.

[oyceter]

Oof, yes. I actually really hate speaking Mandarin in Taiwan because my accent immediately gives it away that I'm not a native speaker. Well, I'm sort of a native speaker because my mom says I learned Chinese first but I have an awful American accent and a pretty small vocab. But it's really annoying when just opening your mouth and talking will get people asking you if you're visiting from the States.