What that says to me is that their notion of who they are and where they come from is very vague.

The human being is unique because of the constant interaction of the body with the mind and vice versa. At times, the body has the majority of the control, such as when a person is engaged in sports. Other times, the mind is in the driver seat while the body rides shotgun, such as when a person is taking an exam. In a partner, then, has to be qualities that both the body and the mind can love.

In other words, your mate should be someone you find both attractive and can connect emotionally. An attractive partner allows for a physical attraction that keeps you focused on your partner intead of getting distracted by someone else. Furthermore, during hard times when a couple isn’t getting along, maybe not even on speaking terms anymore (so the emotional interaction is fairly low), one might think, “hey, she looks pretty good…better than anything I could get on the street with the money I have in my wallet right now.” and choose to stick around. Most importantly, romantic physical interaction is a means of expressing your overall love for each other. Flirting may represent the playfulness between the couple, the friendship between the couple, but expressed in a sexual way so that there is a special affection between two people. For many, making love might be the culmination of romantic physical interaction. Two people get as close as they can with the other (literally) with such trust in the other that they completely give themselves over to their partner. Finally, cuddling, although the simplest, might be the most important indication of the state of your relationship.

I once asked someone how they knew they were in love with their wife. Their response was that cuddling with their special someone just on a couch and just watching TV was the happiest moment of their day. A while after people are married, the lust, “honeymoony love,” and puppylove affection fades; life gets repetitive. If just sitting on the couch and holding your husband or wife is the highlight of your day, your husband or wife must be the most important person to you.

Caring about the looks of one’s partner is not shallow.

While my health have always been a continuous and layered problem, with endless things to deal with, this particular episode basically started at the end of July. My skin condition had gradually gotten worse while I did research at UCR for the summer. The air there was significantly worse than air in claremont (if you can believe that), which was devastating to my asthma and skin. On a side note, my skin allergies often gets worse in bad air conditions since it takes away from the already low body resources that I need to battle all the things I’m reacting to. Furthermore, there were tons of chain smoking graduate students there. By the end of July, 8 weeks into the project, my hands were severly infected and I had to call it quits. Skin was just falling off like I had a third degree burn, there were puss and exposed flesh all around my fingers and palms and wrists.

At this point I had no choice but to go to my doctor at Kaiser Permanente Hospital where they gave me some antibiotics for the infection along with the standard steroid Prednisone that use when things get out of control and they don’t know what else to do. Prednisone is so strong of a steroid that it can keep a dying person alive a few more days, so when in doubt, they give you that drug. However, what they fail to realize, as most of the doctors who treat me don’t realize, is that my case of Eczema (technical term for skin allergies) is not what it appears on the surface. And so like all the time before when they gave me prednisone, as I reached the lower doses on my tapering schedule of the dosage, the rasehs started to come back slowly in all the same places that were infected before. With the other instances where I had to go through this painful process, I used the two weeks while I am on Prednisone to focus on my Qigong exercises and get myself back on track without having raw, rotting hands to slow me down.

That worked most of the time, but for some reason my infections came back much stronger than before this time. What is worse is that the rashes and infections have spread to almost everywhere as skin just started to not just peel but simply fall off as I stopped the Prednisone. I went back to the doctors and they basically said they didn’t know what to do and suggested that I go to UCLA or some other university research lab and be tested with experimental drugs. I ain’t no lame Art or Humanities major, I know pretty well that when scientists do experiments, it’s because their idea and understanding of something is fairly vague. Too many times before have I been tested on again and again and gotten worse again and again.

My last desperate attempt was to call my Uncle Chen (qigong master in Taiwan) and have one of his students whose a Traditional Chinese doctor to send me some herbal medication. The medication got here last Tuesday and thankfully there’s been good progress. However, it was a little too late as I still have bandages wrapped around each individual finger as well as a bigger bandage around my hand as I write this. Truthfully, as much as I want to finish my college career without a break, I am tired, damn tired. School is hard as it is, especially at Mudd, without having to make it second priority to constantly dealing with sicknesses.

edit: August 30th, 2004
Although the herbal medication has been working, I didn’t realize I’ve been eating a snack that I was allergic to until this morning, when the rashes that started to appear on saturday turned into a full-blown rash and infection. With my skin turning purple and blue, I had to rush to the ER. We realized why my condition was going back downhill when my mom accidentally read a small label print on the dried cranberry snack I was eating. The label said: Allergic Warning- This product is packaged in the same facility as peanuts. It seemed no matter how hard I’ve been trying these few weeks to get ready for this school year, something just kept getting in the way. Just wasn’t meant to be.
end edit

One of the many things my life has tought me is that miracles don’t happen, medication that works for other people doens’t necessarily work for me, accupunture that makes retarded kids normal again doesn’t necessarily work for me, praying, going to church where supposingly crippled people are made to walk again, doesn’t do jack shit, and hitting puberty and such doesn’t take away the allergies and asthma just because. So, before tomorrow, or even before next week, I don’t think I’ll be in any condition to drive, walk under the sun to classes, or even hold a pen or pencil to take notes.

I know many of us are headstrong and believe that we are in control of our lives, but life really does make one humble. Life makes the decisions for you and the paths you must take. So does that mean that people are not in control of their own destinies and should just sit back and be a couch potato? No. You can’t control much about how your life and your world proceeds, but you are in total control of how you handle things and what you take away from your experiences. Everyone who enters Yale University go through the same curriculum, same professors, etc…but why do some invent miracle technologies, successfully run multinational corporations, while Bush came out only with an empty head and a stupid look?

In closing, I’d like to wish everyone of you all the best both with this year as well as applying for grad school or interviewing for companies. As we all know, this year for you folks would probably be just as tough as all three years before, but I hope what I’ve said here would help you through the tough times. Just the fact that you guys can finish this year, get up everyday and go to class, take exams, and even get bad grades, are blessings that I envy. Fights between friends, breakups of relationships, rejection from Grad schools, and bad grades can all feel devastating, but I would trade fighting for my life anyday with any of these problems. If you would grant me one wish, please think about what I’ve said when you’re feeling down, realize things for you aren’t really that bad, cheer up, and go on with a happier and less dramatic life.

Taking 1st Semester Senior Year Off

1. Taking a Semester off from College
2. Semester-Off Midtrip Report
3. Semester-off Final Report

This time around, I had four full months for treatment. However, bad luck seemed to follow suit with the severe sickness I brought back so that I continued to get worse for the first month I was here. Due to confusions with the hotel we planned to stay at, we had to live in the regular hotel section for a week rather than the apartment-like section for long term guests. Right away I began an intensive treatment schedule, getting treatment two hours a day for five days a week. Still, every morning I woke up in a terrible condition, skin rotting everywhere and my face reddish black. I’d go for my treatment and do fairly well the rest of the day, but the following morning the previous day’s progress had already been erased. When I told this to my Uncle Chen (my qigong master), he found a cold gust of air had been aimed at my feet and shooting up to my head. The result- a lack of oxygen in my brain. He asked if I had gone out on a motorcycle of had air conditioning aimed at my feet. He hasn’t seen the room we had been temporarily put in, but sure enough, the air conditioning of our room was aimed directly at the foot of my bed (but not my mom’s). Bad luck count one. So that night my mom and I switched beds and everything was fine the next morning.

A day or two later we moved to the section of the hotel for long term guest. I had gotten much better without the AC pointed at my feet and was pretty excited to be moving into the apartment-like room where there was a kitchen, living room with a TV, two baths, and best of all- my own room. As my luck would have it, my condition went drastically downhill again a day or so after moving into the new room. Uncle Chen saw no reason (with my body as it was while I was at the qigong center for treatment) for these problems to surface again, so he asked us to take pictures of our new room to see if the problem was with the room itself. It turned out that the qi(chi) of the new room we moved to made it hard for any occupants to breathe or for the occupants kidneys and heart to fuction smoothly. Uncle Chen wasn’t sure exactly why, possibly the way the room was built or the orientation of the room. However, the fact that the hotel was built on grounds that used to be cemetaries, the room being in line with a coffin dealer as well as a major hospital, gave the area a strong negative force (Yin Qi) that would particularly harmful to a sick person such as myself. Well, bad luck count up to two. So, we immediately checked out of that hotel and moved into my aunt’s apartment- which is kind of small for U.S. standards but pretty big for Taiwan standards. Either way, I’ve been sleeping on the floor of the living room for the past month and a half after moving out of the hotel.

The bad luck continued though. For some reason, probably the changing weather, but a lot of old folks died during this time (late September). It’s a tradition in Taiwan for the household of the person who has passed away to decorate their front doors and even alleys to let everyone know their loved one has died. It’s also a belief that the spirit of the dead hang around these decorations. I didn’t know of these decorations before and didn’t know to look for them, but it was very apparent to my mom (who knew what these decorations looked like) that everytime we passed by one my asthma would hit hard. At first we had thought I was still getting over the effects of living at the hotel. But for the week or so before my mom put these two concepts together, I was like a magnet for dead spirits and suffocating on every in the car. Uncle Chen tought us a few ways to fend off the spirits while in the car and I haven’t had any spirit-related asthma attacks in the car since, but nonetheless- bad luck count number three.

After that, I had a terrible incident of food poisoning. Within two minutes of having dinner, which my mom always cooked because we didn’t trust take out food to begin with, I had a major asthma attack and couldn’t breathe at all. The asthma medicine didn’t help one bit. At first we weren’t able to contact Uncle Chen, but a few minutes later we found him. Just like, he worked on me for less than five minutes on the phone, and I was fine and dandy and fell sleep. Maybe Uncle Chen didn’t completely neutralize the poisoning because was just about to teach a class when we called him, but five hours later at 1am, my asthma hit hard again. We woke up my great uncle (who owns his own clinic) and rushed there. Steroids were taken, the allergic reaction ended, but I had taken a few steps back. A few steps back for the damage done by the poisoning, and a few steps back for the damage done by the steroids. Bad luck count upped to four.

Taking 1st Semester Senior Year Off

1. Taking a Semester off from College
2. Semester-Off Midtrip Report
3. Semester-off Final Report

So, “Why not Western Medicine, other alternative medicine, or other types of Qi Gong?” It was made clear in the introductory paragraph that I’m done with those types of treatment because they didn’t work and often made things worse. To be truly capable of treating all illnesses, doctors must completely understand the human body. Aside from the human anatomy and a few simple processes that Western doctors have observed, Western doctors actually know very little of the human body. It’s undoubtable that Western medicine has treated many illnesses, but tell me how many illnesses has Western medicine actually cured? By cured I mean no side effects when you take medication, not having to take medicine for some other medicine you’re taking for some illness. By cured I mean not having to take the same allergy pills every spring or old people not having to take pills for high bloodpressure for the rest of their lives.

With all the commercials of new medication on TV, the strongest impression people get is usually not what these drugs do but how many side effects these medication have. Would you say that the Auto Garage has fixed your car if you take it in to fix your door and they simply removed the door and said it’s fixed? Obviously no. So why would you say that removing a body part because it has cancer is curing cancer?

In the same way, my allergies and asthma weren’t curable because the doctors didn’t know what was ACTUALLY wrong with my body, only speculated. They aren’t even able to make an educated guess because they do not have the right knowledge to do so.

Having just bashed Western Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) isn’t much better. Formless Qi Gong does use the same basic TCM conceps such as the Five Elements, Meridians, and Acupuncture points. Yet almost everything else in TCM are misconceptions accumulated over the five thousand year history of the Chinese culture. Thoughout history, too many wars were faught during which knowledge of true TCM was lost and too many incompetent students of TCM handed down the concepts and knowledge of TCM incorrectly.

Take the idea of the Five Elements for example. Organizing the whole TCM around the Five Elements of Wood, Fire, Earth (Soil actually), Gold, and Water makes the Five Elements seem like no more scientific Medieval Alchemy. Yet, taking a closer look, the Five Elements is actually a very scientific method of categorization. Just as Western science uses Greek and Latin words to describe and organize, TCM uses the Five Elements. Qi behaves in a cycle with particular characteristics at each stage of the cycle, the ancient Chinese scholars simply chose elements that best described each stage and the relationship between the stages.

My friend Jackie asked if “believing in Qi is part of my spiritual belief.” Well, you believe in something if you have some hints of its existence and someone you trust is more knowledgeable than you guides you towards an explanation for it. That’s a belief. As a self-proclaimed scientist and engineer, nothing is acceptable without first hand proof by the senses (such as experimental proof.) Would you say you believe you ate a sandwich or you know you ate a sandwich? Would you say you believe you drive a red car or you know you drive a red car? Same with Qi, I don’t believe- I know.

Our society may not be as advanced as we think. An advanced society should consist of people who behave in a manner that is in their own best interest. Yet, paying more attention to the immediate surroundings that you perceive and less attention to things you read about and hear about results in naivety of your true surroundings.

For the longest time I wondered why I rarely, if ever, see anyone with skin allergies as bad as mine. Its obvious that my condition is severe, but I’m sure there still are folks out there with similar conditions. The reason, I suspect, is that the majority of sick people (such as myself who have a hard time with everyday life) are in a hospital somewhere or homeschooled or resting at home. They probably aren’t as crazy as me trying to lead a real life and thereby exposing myself to the environment- the very environment I’m allergic to.

50,000 Americans suffer from the esophageal varices and cancer that my spring ‘04 clinic aimed to treat. Most severe medical illnesses have cases of this magnitude, yet where are these millions and millions of people with heart problems, cancer, handicaps, etc?

People without the ability to function on their own are hidden from the sight of society. They are hidden in hospitals, hidden in special centers, and hidden in their homes under the care of family or nurses. For most people, illnesses don’t seem as immediate and real as they actually are. This is because don’t see the old men in the retirement homes nor do they see the cancer patients in the centers. Although medical reports, warnings on the news, and cancer donation commercials make people aware of the problems, people aren’t aware that these illnesses can as easily affect them as they are affecting those already in the hospital.

This blindness of the reality continues because the healthy world and the “hidden” world is separated. When people do get sick, they are moved from the healthy world to the “hidden” world of hospitals, centers, and confined rooms. They are removed from the healthy world before the real world has a chance to see the true problems it faces. These patients with severe illnesses do not exist in the healthyworld long enough to accumulate and form an image large enough to make an impression.

It is natural for people to separate the sick from the healthy world to keep the healthy world healthy. Call it an organism’s natural defense mechanism or some spin off of survival of the fittest. Don’t get me wrong, hospitals are one of the few great institutions of the modern world. However, as I have shown, hospitals and their function of removing the ill from the healthy world gives those young and healthy the misconception that they will be young and healthy forever.

People are born with the sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch because we need it and we have used it well. Similarly though, people are born with a brain, a brain that can think about the new information it learns and make judgements about that new information. It is important for us to expose ourselves to the emerging research reports and honestly understand the extent of the situation.

Just because we have black hair and brown eyes does not mean we are the same. Just because some non-Asians can’t tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Fillipinos, and Indians does not mean we have to fall and associate in the category we have been put in. In many ways, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Fillipinos are as different from each other as they are from any European, Latin, Arabic, or African nationalities.

So when these Asian American youngters start boasting “Asian Pride,” what exactly are they proud of? It is as if Italians and Russians and the French all start boasting “European Pride.” What they’re proud of must be something they have in common. But as I’ve just said, Asian cultures are as different from each other as they are from the rest of the world. What Asians have in common are pretty much what the average redneck sees- black hair, brown eyes, and yellowish-brown skin. In other words, the similarities are skin deep- so the pride these young Asian Americans feel are pretty much only skin deep too*.

There’s actually a lot of national and cultural tension between Asian groups so it’s great to see these kids leave the problems of their ancestors behind and become friends with other asians. The problem I have with the association that these kids make is that they don’t know when to stop. What I mean by this is that they take other people’s cultures and say it’s their own. It’s like going around and just randomly picking someone to be your parent. It’s just wrong and it’s not true. It’s ok to be proud of your culture, but make sure it is YOUR culture. Some Chinese kids go around associating themselves with Sushi while some Japanese kids go around associating themselves with boba. Why not just go out and associate yourself with Mozzarella Cheese or Tacos? Is it because your people don’t eat Tacos or Mozzarella Cheese? Chinese people don’t eat Sushi unless they’re in Japan or in the U.S., and Japanese people don’t have boba (actually most of China doesn’t have boba either.)

Each culture has a lot to be proud of. Why go around being proud of something that has nothing to do with you? The reason for pride itself is because you are related to these traditions, behaviors, food, and items by the history of your family and thereby your people. Not only that, to be proud of something you should understand why your people have such traditions, behaviors, food, and items and what distinguishes them from other people’s culture. And to do so, first and foremost you can’t confuse your culture with someone else’s.

Other than the culture and history mentioned in the previous paragraph, the third important aspect of someone’s heritage is “language.” I believe culture, history, and language are intertwined and one must truly understand each in order to know who they are.

It seems like a daunting task and some would ask why should they learn about the people they barely relate to and are half a world away? For one, only when you understand yourself and where you come from can you truly appreciate other people’s culture. For those of us in the U.S., we’re given a great opportunity to learn about people of the world just from everyday life, but we can’t recognize what makes their culture unique unless we have our own culture to compare it to. Secondly, even though Asia is half a world away, the rest of the world still sees us as Asians and in one way or another, treat us as Asians because that’s who we are. If the world thinks that’s who we are, we should probably know who we are.

After the food poisoning incident last mentioned, there was a breather period with the help of the steroids. Even after the pills, I made some improvements and spirits and health were actually pretty good when we moved into the new apartment we bought. Then the bad luck started up again.

The new furniture that we bought had several layers of paint and chemicals to guard against rotting, corrosion, and termites. The environmental and health control in Taiwan, however, well sucks and no one really cares as long as they get the job done. So our furniture were overly painted with these chemicals and it just made the whole room stink with fumes. Just walking by the furniture and breathing would make my dizzy and make my tongue numb. We tried to keep the windows open to let out the fumes, but they were damn strong and they were doing a number on my skin. There wasn’t much I could do except wait for the fumes to clear and try to stay away from the furniture as much as possible. There was no place for my mom and I to go. We bought the apartment to escape from the outside environment to begin with.

Then a few days after we moved in the whole building had a disinfectant cleaning that only happened once a year, lucky us huh? And, just our luck, the cleaning crew seemed to have spilled tons of the disinfectant on our floor, so our whole apartment stunk like crazy. It’s the tingly smell you get at hospitals, but because of the spill, it was 100 times stronger and could probably kill little dogs- not just the germs they were going for. Immediately my mom and I felt numb and wanted to throw up. Sadly, we had to escape from our own apartment and hide out at my grandparent’s house until night.

Later that week, our good friend that lived five stories above us on the twelfth floor came down to chat and hang out. She brought with her this traditional snack of tofu in sugar water and I had some. I’ve had this snack all my life and it was a very simple snack whose ingredients have been the same for generations. Naturally I thought it should be ok and had some. Another baaaaad mistake. This store, for one reason or another, had changed the snack completely, adding who knows what and made the tofu hard like jello instead of soft tofu that melts in your mouth. Immediately I got a rash and my esophagus and air passage swelled up. Another allergic reaction and food poisoning to add to the list. It wasn’t just that I was too sensitive because our friend and my mom tried to finish the rest of the snack for me and got major stomach aches before finishing the snack.

After this incident, it was the end of fall so farmers were harvesting all around and even within the city we were living in. The farmers would burn parts of their crops that were useless, chugging undescribable amounts of black smoke up into the air. During the last month or so of our stay in Taiwan, the sky was constantly gray and you could hardly see a hundred yards into the distance. The sun never broke through the smoke and the smoke irritated the eyes so much they burned. For someone who has skin allergies and, more importantly, asthma, this kind of air is unbearable. Isn’t Taiwan a pretty developed country? Yes- in Asia probably only Japan is more advanced. Doesn’t Taiwan have laws against pollution and crop burning? Yes- but the thing is no one dares to report it to the authorities because everyone lives so close together, if you report your neighbor they’ll make your life very miserable or maybe even kill you.

Finally, what pushed us to the decision of coming home was that we got food poisoning again- from something as simple as a tomato. We were already too scared to eat out and cooked everything ourselves, but only after washing all the vegetables until their skin came off. This led to needing more steroids and even some antibiotics and disinfectants. Apparently because Taiwan’s population grew too much and there’s not enough food, they use tons and tons of pesticides and inject chemicals into the crops to make them grow. Then, they harvest the crops the day after the pesticides are used to keep the crops fresh. Such practices also leave VERY unsafe amounts of pesticide poison in the crops- which we ate and got sick from.

My bad luck streak was nice enough to give me another farewell incident before leaving Taiwan. There was only four days between deciding to come home and coming home. But just after deciding to come home, the internal circulation of our car broke down so all the black smoke in the air from the crop burning kept coming into our car when we went out. This also let in all the car and motorcycle exhausts from the traffic- exhausts that aren’t as clean as those from American cars. Exhausts that only burn fuel halfway, burn unclean fuel, or burn diesel fuel- to put it simply, exhausts that were black and very choking.

My bad luck streak was also nice enough to give me a welcome home present. We landed in L.A. Monday night. Little did I know there I had gotten some kind of stomach virus on the plane- from the food or just from all the sick (literally) bastards on the plane. Wednesday afternoon, around 3pm, I threw up more than two buckets of food. I didn’t know my stomach could hold that much stuff, but it did- nothing I ate that morning or the night before digested at all. Everything came up in chunks. I had diahrea several times until my intestines could spit out nothing except intestinal juices. Still, my stomach and intestines were convulsing. My ab muscles had pulled me into a shrimp-like ball and still it was convulsing but I couldn’t move anymore. I gave up trying to wait out potential stomach flu symptoms and went to the E.R. By then I was overly dehydrated, my stomach was still in a ball and convulsing. I was given two IV injections for dehydration, three shots for the convulsions, and a few more for the pain.

I think that’s a good place to stop. I’ve recovered from the stomach rampage, but still very tired from the past 3 months of constant pain, lack of air, lack of sun, lack of people. My mind and body need rest.

Taking 1st Semester Senior Year Off

1. Taking a Semester off from College
2. Semester-Off Midtrip Report
3. Semester-off Final Report

Loser-sign rule
When the girl is some distance away and facing you, make a loser sign with your index finger and thumb. Move your had so that the girl’s face is exactly in the hole between the index finger and thumb while your hand covers the girl’s hair. This helps you visualize what she will look like bald. If she looks like a witch, a man, or just plain ugly then, uh duh, she’s ugly.

Make-up danger
True beauty does not need make-up. Actually, truly beautiful ladies would look uglier with make-up. If a girl is ugly, using make-up is just lying and being deceptive. Be careful guys, do not wake up one morning and turn to your wife and puke.

True Beauty
True beauty, in the eye of the beholder, is when every moment that you see the girl she gets even more beautiful. She never looks like the same exact girl, but from every different angle she is the prettiest girl you have ever seen. So, its like watching an infinite number of godesses at the same instant.

Cute or Hot?
If a girl is all cute, then I feel perverted because its like I’m hittin it with a child. NASTY!!! If a girl is 100% hot, then I feel low because its like I’m with a prostitute or slut. KINKY BUT NOT REFINED!!! What I look for is an unique blend of cuteness and hotness so you’re with a mature babe who also can be fun and playful.

Stone’s advice
i”When you go to a strip club and it does absolutely nothing for you, you feel like you’re wasting your time, and you just want to go home to your girlfriend/fiance, then you know you’re ready to get married.”
~Prof. Greg Stone, DBHS Economy/AP Econ teacher

Age image
This is just a wierd thing that popped into my thoughts…its kinda absurd in a way. Throughout my life, I have seen enough women of all ages that when I see a young woman I can imagine what she will look like when she is an old lady. If the girl looks ok now but I think she’ll be ugly later on in life, its a turn off for me. As mentioned before, I wouldn’t want to wake up 30 years later, wake up, turn to my wife, and get scared to death.