LIFESTYLE: VSL, or How to Not Speak Like a Child

Let's see a show of hands - how many of you brown girls speak your first language as well as you do English? How many of you speak it as well as you did when you were living at home? How many of you speak it as well as a 5-year old? That's what I thought. Guess what - if you are only calling your mom a few times a month and feebly ordering at an ethnic restaurant in your native tongue, you will soon forget the nuances of the language and end up grammatically and vocabularily sounding like you're four years old.
If you ever find yourself at family functions nodding and having a hard time piecing through your cousin's thick northern (or southern) accent, you know what I'm talking about. Keeping that other language up is hard, even if it was your first language and you grew up speaking it. It's even harder if you don't know how to read or write in it. This can become difficult as your parents start giving up on their own English skills, or when traveling back to the native land to visit family you've never met before.
Here are some good tips on how to keep up on that first language:

Call your parents. Like, regularly. Explaining to your mom why you you decided to not meet her friend's son who is a doctor or why you don't want to move in with your cousins in that house in the suburbs will challenge your rhetoric skills. Also, attempt to chat with your siblings a little bit in your native language, especially if you don't want spouses and friends who are around to know what you are talking about.

Learn to read and write. Many brown ladies I know are illiterate in their native language - it's more common than you think, and it's something you can change. There are many books and cds available that can be readily found on Amazon that are designed for those who already speak the language to learn how to write it. Rosetta Stone is effective for pronounciation and phrases, but not so good on actual literacy.

Take a class in your language. You can find foreign language classes of every type nowadays, and some are offered in community centers for a very nominal price.

All in all, it'll remain a huge benefit to you to keep those language skills up, even if you don't end up using it that often. Language is a part of who you are, and how you grew up, and it would be a shame to lose out on it over time.

FASHION: Tiny Dancer, Tiny Feet

One of my favorite things right now are my new Converse Jack Purcells. The are white. Like unflavored mashed potato starch white:

My favorite thing about them is that they fit. Like, actually are about the same size as my feet. This is fairly rare for me. If you've got tiny feet, it's difficult to find shoes that fit right, and often times you learn to settle for shoes about a half to a whole size too big. You put in insoles, stick tissue in the toe of pumps that are too long, forgo high heels all together. Never fear - your options on tiny shoes is admittedly more limited than if you had size 8 feet, but there are lots of options for different kinds of shoes:

Target ballet flats Target sells their ballet flats for around 12 to 15 bucks a pair. They look cute with everything and they have new prints and styles it seems like every few weeks. I've seen them in sizes as small as 4.5 (!).

Converse sneakers Since Converse sneakers are marketed towards all age groups and genders, it helps with their size selection. For regular sneakers, they offer a 5 for ladies that's a true 5. Easily available online.

Bass "Bass legions" as they've been known to be called do not give you a social stigma in the late 2000s as they may have in 1980. The quality of Bass shoes is a little questionable, but they are cheap. You can buy a pair of new leather Bass loafers for $45 about every day. They come in various styles and leathers, and are really comfy as an every day shoe with a little style. They also have a "good toe."

Get them to bring out the good stuff If you need a particular kind of shoe, department stores often times have an area in the back where they have smaller shoe sizes. So if let's say you need a pair of silver pumps, but you need it in a 5, grab a sales person and tell him or her, and they will bring out all of your options regardless of the brand. That way, you don't have to walk around for an hour finding all the cute shoes that don't carry your size. This is also when you get to ask them who does carry a 5, and then you can keep an eye out for it later.

Frye and Doc Marten Boots Both have served me extremely well. The Frye size 6 runs small - completely my favorite pair.

Enzo Angolini and Nina carry strappy cute

Tres glamourous shoes often aren't carried small enough in stores. High end stuff (Prada, Chanel, etc etc) tends to come in a loooooong 36 for some reason. 35 is almost impossible to find in a store, but you know they make it, so if you really want a pair, call the boutique and have it ordered.

And of course: thick socks and in soles are your friend.

DATING Funny times...

Dinner with new (white) boyfriend's parents, 2001:

Mom: When did your parents come to the US?
Me: [chewing] In 1979. My family were boat people.
Dad: Oh! We're boat people too!
Mom: Randy! Not that kind of boat!
Boyfriend: [snicker]

FOOD The Real Recipe vs.The Lazy Brown Girl Recipe

My mom is a really really good cook. I am an okay cook. It's not that I don't care, I am just a lot lazier than her. I mean, she can butcher an entire pig. I have been known to cut up a tomato to put on top of a package of cous cous and call it good.

This is my mom's recipe for ragu as translated by my dad. I estimate it feeds about 25 people, give or take 10. Ragu is probably a colonial European transport to Vietnam, much like baguettes, butter, and sophisticated cigarette smoking.

Best time is tonight buy meat and seseonging put in Refregator and then cook tomorow. If not you can seseoning meat 1 hour before to cook.

Ingredients: 6 pounds beef.2can pasted tometoes.2 CU onions 1/2 CU garlic 1 table spoon Monoglutamast sodim.1 table spoonsugar.2/3 table spoon sodium

vegetable oil.5pounds potateos.2 pounds baby carrot if you want add 1 pound green bean (HOT-Grain) at Frozen food spot.

How to cook: UOP THIT:(Seseoning meat).Beef cut cube shape + Garlic (DAP DAP)+ Glutamatsodium+ sugar+sodiumStir well and then keep aileast 1 hour before cook.

Slice big piece onion stir with Vegetable oil in minute. put seseoning meat in stir well in few minutes until see meat (SAN) and then put tomateos pasted in still stir well dont let them stick at bottom .Take all out.

With litle VEge oil stir potateos and carrot ( skin out poteteos and cut 4 pieces of each potateo ) stir few minues and then take it out

Now How to cook: With water and boil until water get hot then put Meat+carrot+ potateos Keep stir dont let them stick at bottom

Cook at Tem: Midle hight in 30 to 45 mimutesIt well done when you use 1 chope stich or folk go through the mead. if you want add green bean grain put them in at 25mimutes after time you start cook because bean esea get done.

If tast is LAT put some more sodim.If liquit LONG take 1 or 2 tablespoon wheat flour + cold water stir well and then put it in and stir well.

(Capital letter is Vietnames luangage.....Pasted tometeos cans buy midle size) Good luck to you

My lazy ass version. Serves you and your boyfriend on a rainy Sunday before you watch that last Flight of the Conchords dvd:

- 1 tray stew meat or 1 package Field Roast fake sausages or fried tofu cubes
- 2 potatoes
- A handful of baby carrots
- Half an onion
- Frozen peas
- Either 1 can of diced tomatoes, two tablespoons of tomato paste, or a quarter cup of tomato sauce

- 2 cups of stock from either bouillon or some oriental noodle spice packets.
- a few spoonfuls of flour mixed with a few spoonfuls of butter

You need two pans (three if you're cooking rice in one). In a pot, get some water boiling and boil the potatoes and carrots until they're soft. Throw in the peas towards the end to cook until they're bright green. In the other pan, get some oil hot and cook the onion until it's translucent. Throw the stew meat or fake sausages in and cook until they're a little brown (like you!). Add the tomato stuff and the stock and and the cooked potatoes and carrots and peas. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan so all the tasty bits get into the sauce. Simmer it all together for 15 minutes or so. Then (here's the trick), stir in the flour/butter mixture so it gets all saucy. Adjust seasoning (i.e. squirt in some Sriracha), and serve with some leftover rice from last night's Thai take-out.

Good luck to you!

LIFESTYLE Getting Out of Going to Med School

I've spent almost 4 entire years in graduate school now with a masters degree in chemistry and almost a decade's worth of post-secondary anguish and bitterness under my belt. The day I defended my masters degree was the happiest day in my life. It was better than the day I got my braces off, the day I was released from the hospital, and the day that I lost my virginity. The day I defended was the day that my contract was finally released - I was no longer an indentured servant for a wily master. I was a free agent! I could look forward to weekends and more money, self-worth and no more self-induced pathos. I had my ticket out of town. "See you guys at the taco stand, I am start-ing my life!" Five months later, and I am still in fucking graduate school.

The culprit? Me, and my irrationally self-given duty to finish a doctorate to please my parents.

As early as I could remember, there was at least an encouragement to become a doctor, or at least to verbally confirm that I would become a doctor. Between being fed spoonfuls of chicken noodle ring soup, my mom would remind me that someday she and my dad would be old and sick, and wouldn't it be nice if I could take care of them? Mmm hmm... Wouldn't it be nice to be a doctor and make Mom and Dad sooo proud! Doogie Howser continued to feed into my mom's hopes that I would someday wear a stethoscope and carry a clipboard. As much as I adored Doogie and his curly locks, I began to resent him and the unattainable hope he gave my mom that I would finish med school by age 14. Goddam him!

Med school became an ominous burden hanging over me, making me feel apprehensive as I became more interested in punk rock and boys. Then somebody whispered in my ear that I could go to art school. I daydreamed about it - painting all day and having interesting haircuts and friends. It seemed worth it even though it would be a message to my parents that I did not in fact love them. Eventually a Nova video shown in AP Biology about DNA translation and transcription interested me enough to consider becoming a biochemist. I thought fuck it, and here I am now. Miserable and in grad school.

I'm still having trouble pulling myself together to finish the "next best" thing to med school, which is getting a PhD. When my sister was trying to get out of med school, she managed to convince my mom that grad school was "just as good" because you still get to be called a doctor and my mom could still brag to her friends about it. And in my sister's words "Mom, you can stick your hand up somebody's ass if you want to, but I'm not going to do it." I don't know if Hippocrates could have put it better.

So, how do you get out of going to med school?
1) Change the subject.
2) Go to art school.
3) Get a sibling to go to med school for you. Parents will typically settle for one doctor child.
4) If your siblings are unwilling to attend med school on your behalf, convince them to marry a doctor into the family.
5) Tell you parents that you did, and keep insisting on it.
6) Go to grad school. This method is good for deferring med school for 10+ years.
7) Have some babies. Your parents will defer med school pressure on your children instead.

The truth is, your parents will love you even if you're not a doctor. They might be disappointed and remind you of it until one of you dies, but they will still love you. Even if you're single and read books for a living.