Now discover your strengths...

The other day, my aunt recommended that I try this book, "Now Discover Your Strengths," by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. It's premise is that people spend too much time trying to minimizing their weaknesses when they should instead be finding time to maximize their strengths. People don't spend enough time nurturing their talents and abilities, which is silly, because these are the things that will push us onto bigger and better things. Rather we waste a lot of effort forcing ourselves into uncomfortable situations so that we can feel less deficient. While I don't completely agree - I think that if you see a weakness in an area and you want to get better at it, there's nothing wrong with that. At the same time however, we should spend more time being aware of our strengths - our familiarity with them will help us make better decisions.

The book discusses 34 potential strengths or themes that each person could have, and provides a password for an online test so that you can discover your five dominant themes. After the test, I found out that my themes are:

• Arranger: I'm an organizer.
  
• Individualization: It's all about the individual and why they're unique
  
• Responsibility: Well that speaks for itself.
  
• Harmony: "In your view we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. It is a good boat (lol). There is no need to rock it to just to show that you can."
  
• Significance: It's all about me! me! me!
  

Isn't that kind of interesting? I recognize each of these elements in myself, but I never thought that these five traits would be my dominant five. Arranger - well, that makes sense, I like to plan things and I adapt easily, because I can rearrange things as I see fit. Individualization - totally didn't see that one coming, I always thought I was more of a generalist. Responsibility - I am an older sister lol! Harmony - always has been important to me, but I've learnt the value of confrontation and arguing at Columbia. Significance - surprises me actually. Now I just have to see how the pieces all fit together...

Palin is McCain's running mate

McCain has finally chosen his running mate - the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. She's pretty conservative - pro-life, pro-Christianity, and I think pro-guns as well (not sure) - and will probably help McCain's case with the conservatives of his party. Surprisingly, Palin is also known to be a reformer - someone bold who can help McCain make the changes he wants in the US government. Not to mention - she's a she. It's kind of mindblowing, this choice of McCain's. Think about it - if Obama wins, the US will have its first black president, and if McCain wins, the US will have its first female vice-president. We've returned to the battle of the firsts started by the face-off between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all over again.

At the same time, I can't help but feel that both presidential candidates are hedging their bets, so to speak. Obama's choice for vp, senator Joe Biden from Delaware, has been around Washington for quite a while - someone with experience that can balance Obama's youth. Similarly, McCain's pick is young on the political scene...Hm. This race is going to be interesting.

Devil Beside You

Gosh, I should just make this a blog about asian drama serials, and be done with it! Luckily, after talking to my aunt, I have discovered that my addiction to these dramas is a genetic thing. The Tangs are naturally inclined to love watching them - it explains why my dad is eagerly following his Korean drama right now, why my aunt has 57 (at least) full drama series at home, and why I have watched like 6 dramas (each around 20-30 hours long) in the past 3-4 weeks :) On the plus side, my colloquial mandarin is improving dramatically - no longer am I restricted to chinese myths and legends when I am conversing. Now I can also say expressions like "oh that's too exaggerated!" or "the road of love doesn't always run smoothly" haha.

Anyway, a bit about the "Devil Beside You." This time I decided to try a Mike He drama - one that made him a taiwanese screen legend pretty much.
Rainie Yang plays Qi Yue, a sincere good-hearted girl who has fallen for the school's resident nice guy, Yuan Yi (Kingone). She decides to tell him so, and presents him with a love letter (funny how many manga adaptations start this way). However, thanks to some miscommunication, Yuan Yi misses this moment. The entire thing is viewed by Qing Zi (Tsai Pei Lin), Qi Yue's best friend, and Jiang Meng (Mike He), a first-year heart-throb admired for his devilish/bad-boy tendencies. Despite their missed connection, Yuan Yi and Qi Yue start dating. However, Qi Yue begins to fall for Jiang Meng, who despite his rude ways, is extremely kind-hearted and cannot resist helping people in pain. Lots of personal back-story there. Yuan Yi and Qi Yue break up, and Qing Zi and Yuan Yi eventually go out. Qi Yue and Jiang Meng fall in love - but (of course) there's a snag.

They're about to become step-siblings.

Which makes their relationship taboo. Other obstacles include Jiang Meng's complex and scarring family history - which involves his mom leaving his dad and taking his younger brother (but not him) with her, Qi Yue's long-standing tendre for her deceased dad's mentee, and various third parties of the oddest kind. Anyway, after the two spend eons working through issues - including telling their parents about their relationship - they come to the main crisis. (Surprisingly, despite all this backstory, the plot of the story stays tight, and doesn't wander off like other Taiwanese dramas. Major props to the director. Back to the story...) Literally less than a month after Qi Yue and Jiang Meng's relationship is accepted by all, Jiang Meng's mother dramatically returns to the scene, and begs him to move with her to Italy. It's a chance for them to repair their relationship - one that Jiang Meng cannot pass up. However, doing so will mean that he has to leave Qi Yue behind, after all that she's sacrified for them to be together (and honestly, she's gone through a lot to be with him). Jiang Meng tells her not to wait for him - he doesn't know how long he'll be. Qi Yue is devastated, but for Jiang Meng's sake, puts on a brave front - she realizes that JM needs to know his mother to ever be completely happy. So Qi Yue numbs herself, throwing herself into work and school. This was so painful to watch, especially since the 19 episodes before this moment all focused on how the two stayed in love and supported each other through emotional obstacles. I was so into how much they meant to each other and how much they had to over come to be a "normal" couple, that to watch Jiang Meng brush Qi Yue off made me bawl like a baby. I started crying about 5 minutes into the episode, and only stopped 10 minutes to the end...it was horrendous.

The climax comes a week before Jiang Meng has to leave; there is a horribly awkward moment when Qi Yue comes across Jiang Meng as he is packing to leave. Qi Yue is cheerful, and tells him to be careful while he's in Italy, but you can feel this numbing emptiness radiating from her as she talks to him. The contrast to their interactions before is heartbreaking. That night, his friends throw him a farewell party, but don't invite Qi Yue, because they're afraid that attending the party will cause her to snap. Qing Zi and Yuan Yi (the other main couple in the story that I briefly mentioned in the beginning) go drinking with Qi Yue that night instead, and Qing Zi rails at Qi Yue for not sharing her real feelings, for being numb. Qi Yue runs away into the night, her control finally broken. Qing Zi and Yuan Yi search for her, and bump into Jiang Meng, returning from his farewell. JM freaks out when he realizes that Qi Yue is alone, and runs all over Taipei looking for her. He finds her and they have this oh-so-awful scene where he suggests that they break up. Qi Yue screams at him, finally, and runs off into the night again. He follows (this sounds so dramatic when I'm typing it), and finally they discuss the whole situation. Qi Yue cries - when you're gone, what if someone else pursues me? What do I do? Jiang Meng finally loses his control and tells her that it doesn't matter, because he will only love her, can only love her. Goosebumps! They reunite. He still moves to Italy. That was probably a lot of unnecessary detail, but I've never had a single episode of a drama touch me as much as that episode did.

I think I'm going to have to go watch it again.

Love Contract

So - I've been (and still am actually) really into this Taiwanese drama serial called "It Started With A Kiss" and its sequel "They Kiss Again." I loved the two main characters and their relationship, so I thought I'd look at some of the other idol dramas each of them has done. I started with "Love Contact," a series made in 2004 starring Ariel Lin (girl from ISWAK) and Mike He (also pretty big in the Taiwanese drama scene). "Love Contract" is about this kind of bossy girl, Xiao Feng, who's a total tomboy. Her friends see her as this really tough, fierce, loyal person - what they don't know is that she is really insecure due to an ugly burn scar that covers her shoulder and back. One night, she reveals that she wants to fall in love and be in a relationship, and so her friends set up a "Love Contract" between her and the captain of the swim team in her college. The captain, Ken, is Japanese, very dedicated to his pursuits, strong-minded, and really fit. He agrees to fulfill the contract if her friends can persuade people to join the swim team...things happen, and eventually the two fall desperately in love. It's really heartwarming to see how the previously independent Xiao Feng softens as she and Ken interact. The two have chemistry, I'll give them that. In one of the sub-plots, Ken's mother dies, and watching Xiao Fong comfort him was pretty amazing. Dramas are built on connections like these. Anyway, in the end, Ken pretty much proposes, but Xiao Fong refuses and tries to leave him because she feels like she isn't worthy of him. Ultimately, she reveals her secret to him...but then discovers the love contract (which is a physical document, sillily enough) and breaks up with him again. Ken falls into another fit of depression, and her friends try to engineer a way for them to get together.

And this is where "Love Contract" confuses and upsets me. On Xiao Feng's way to the meeting site, she has a run-in with a car, and becomes a vegetable. Permanently. There's no happy chance of her recovering. She's comatose and that's how it's going to be forever, it seems. So after grieving for a year, Ken decides to take her to all their favourite places. He brings her to where they first held hands. To the aquarium where they scuba dived and kissed underwater. To the movies, something that they had always meant to do together but never got to. He cooks her dinner - she always wanted to taste his food - and acts out this sad dialogue, revealing his despair that she's gone. Finally, he wheels her to their beach and talks to her about how he never wants to be separated from her, ever, and carries her into the ocean. And that's where it ends. A suicide attempt. There are two other short clips that follow - one where Xiao Fong comes back to life and they play in the waves, and another where they're in wedding gear and their friends (including someone who died in the accident) celebrate with them. I don't understand! These serials are supposed to be funny and heartwarming and happy - and this is not the case at all for this series! I was sorely disappointed - the series started out so well too! I really wanted them to get together - Xiao Fong should have realized that Ken was sincere and they should have lived happily together. I feel cheated of my storybook ending :(

Mosquito Bait

That's what I am. I don't know what it is - my yummy warm blood or that my skin is thin - but mosquitoes love me. The love is not reciprocated mosquitoes, please stay away!

I couldn't sleep last night - kept tossing and turning between dreams of being bitten. After a particularly fitful 10 minutes, I found out that mosquitoes had actually bit me - on my back, legs, and arms. ARGH. I am no longer me, but a canvas of itchy red dots. Help.

The 2.5 Pillars of Wisdom (the von igelfeld trilogy)

My current read is a book by Alexander McCall Smith, a sort-of Scottish author who has a very dry sense of humor. Fittingly, I first read one of his books in Glasglow last summer entitled "44 Scotland Street," which is a story about these wacky characters who live in the same building in Edinburgh. It's not the usual kind of book I read - people who know me know that I tend to steer towards fantasy/sci-fi or romance - but at the time, it seemed like a worthwhile read. Surprisingly, I was captivated - and not because I was on a plane flying 10,000 miles above ground. "44 Scotland Street" had some pretty impressive characters and (to me) showed the strange sides of "normal" people. I went on to read the next two books in the series before returning to my ever-faithful faeries.

But the other day at the library, I picked up a copy of Smith's "The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom - the von igelfeld trilogy." The little blurb on the back immediately intrigued me:

"Welcome to the extraordinary world of Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, an unnaturally tall and memorable character whose sublime insouciance is a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and Inspector Clouseau's hapless gaucherie.

Von Igelfeld inhabits the rarefied world of the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg, which he shares with his equally tall and equally ridiculous colleagues, Professors Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer."

Just the names of the professors are ridiculous :). I'm midway through the book right now, and adore it! It pokes fun at pompous and serious von Igelfeld who spends his life thinking about the contradictions of the phrases "x, a friend of cardinals and popes" and "x, a friend of a cardinal and a pope." I love how the most random things are discussed in the most serious manner - from the merits of the sausage dog (to which almost a whole chapter, as well as multiple references, is devoted) to the importance of portuguese irregular verbs. "The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom" is a light-hearted funny read, and I recommend it to everyone - especially fans of P.G. Wodehouse.

The Moving Checklist

Hurray, I'm almost done with my errands checklist for when I moved to Singapore. And it only took 3 days! This is due in no small part to my Dad, who is the furthest thing from a procrastinator there is.

Checklist
- HOUSE
~ clean it. (check)
~ get bed sheets and other misc from Ikea. (check, but I'll probably go back)
~ unpack. (waiting for pm to leave first)
~ wall decorations (see above)
- CELL PHONE
~ figure out what my current cell phone plan is. (check)
~ add nual as free caller (random plan thing). (check)
- INTERNET
~ get it. (check)
~ buy and set up wireless router. (check)

Now all I have to do is fully unpack and set up my room. Yay.
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