Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely, strong, full of love and life mothers out there. I especially want to wish those new moms a very happy 1st Mother's Day - you deserve it for what you just went through. Haha.

Ever since 2000, Mother's Day has been a bit of a sore spot for me. Having lost my mom at 16, I really didn't feel like being very happy on a weekend that most other people were going out for brunches. Thirteen years later, the negative feelings has not completely disappeared, but I do have another person to celebrate on this special day. Having had the time this year to get to know my stepmother, May,  better, I realize I'm incredibly lucky to have another strong female role model in my life.

Thanks to Disney, stepmothers get a very bad rap - generations of kids were raised on the fact that stepmothers marry your dad and go on to destroy your life. I'll be honest, I didn't warm up to my stepmother all that quickly. I only learned of her around my 18th birthday when I started talking to my dad again after a two year self-initiated silent treatment.

My dad, never the one to be great at emotional parenting, thought it would be good to break the ice by telling me he had remarried and that I should say hello to my new mom. Let me give you a piece of advice if in case you ever encounter a situation like this in the future - if you just started talking to your son again after two years of not talking, and he just lost his mom two years before that, you might want to ease into the topic of your remarriage rather than "SAY HI TO YOUR NEW MOM."

I'll admit, I didn't recover from that for a while. And on my first trip back to Taiwan when I was 21, my discomfort with the whole remarriage situation certainly showed. I was terribly immature about the entire situation, and for a person in their early twenties, I had the emotional quotient of a seven year old who didn't get the toy he wanted on his birthday. Needless to say, my stepmom and I didn't really bond at all except for exchanging a few superficial pleasantries.

During my twenties, I had three other opportunities to go back to Taipei, and each time, we did bond more and more. But I was still hesitant, if not hostile, not really knowing whether to direct my anger of the situation at her or my dad, she still received some attitude and cut eye (and for those of you that know me, I throw some incredibly nasty shade when I want to). But just like my dad, my stepmother was incredibly patient, even when she didn't need to be, and still made the effort to bond and get to know me.

I found out a lot about my stepmother this year that surprised and impressed me. She was a Chief Auditor at one of the biggest banks in Taiwan, she oversaw dozens of branches and hundreds of employees. She had worked there for 25 years, gradually climbing the corporate ladder, because she was smart and she had incredible interpersonal skills (which my dad could learn a thing or two from). She and her family grew up with modest surroundings having lost her dad at a young age, she and her four other siblings took care of each other as they either immigrated abroad for education and work - she having taken her MBA in the US.

What impresses me most about my stepmom is her devotion to family. To her own family, she has been incredibly supportive in taking care of her mother. Her mother, my step-grandmother, is a very bubbly and energetic octogenarian, but often loses her memory from time to time. May shows the same patience she had with me and my brother's terrible attitudes, as she often accompanies her during the weekdays and entertains her frequently, and repeatedly asked questions. She is also quite devoted to my dad, even though there are times, I'm not even sure why she's with him. My dad, like so many other men, is quite devoid of reading his wife's anger towards him, which causes some very silly fights between the two.

Since living in Taipei, May and I have bonded over our love of drinking (there are times, she can outdrink me), gossip (she has been my informant on quite a few hilarious Jou family secrets) and being able to talk about life in general. Conversations with her are easier now as we've found more and more to talk about, and to an extent, I'm sure there is some jealousy on my dad's part that I confide more in May then I do him. To be fair, having a heart to heart with my dad can be more painful than extensive dental surgery. I swear, Kristen Stewart has more emotional expression in her face than he does sometimes when I try to have a discussion with him.

Okay, enough dad bashing. I am lucky that I now have another person to celebrate on Mother's Day. Someone who I am happy to introduce to my friends whenever they visit to Taipei, someone who I now email and communicate with voluntarily and someone who I can share stories and laughs over several bottles of wine.

Happy Mother's Day May. Thank you for everything.

Tibet - One Year Later...

During all of my recent job interviews, the topic of my travels has 99% of the time led off every conversation. When I tell people the places I've been, the one that most people ask about is Tibet. It is still hard for me to fathom that I traveled to this remote region of the world a year ago today. 

I had the opportunity to go because of my Dad. After he had heard that I quit my job so I can go traveling, he thought it would be a good bonding experience to take me to Tibet and also experience some other parts of Mainland China. 

Our journey started in Western China, in the dusty city of Shining. Like most of the China that I experienced, it was a city of extremes: 

- a large populous, but many abandoned buildings due to over construction, 

- a diverse ethnic mix, but visible factions between ethic Chinese and the Central Asian minority groups that first populated the region,

- and modernization but with issues with social traditionalism and the treatment of women as second class citizens. 

Shining stuck out as a collection of metal surrounded by incredible geological wonders and nature's most stunning backdrops.  It was here that we experienced the way the Chinese countryside functions - having been stuck in a traffic jam for almost 4 hours and watching the locals force their way around the jam on the one stretch of road leading back to the city.

The trek to Lhasa was also one of breathtaking scenery mixed in with a total kick to my comfort zone's gut. Crammed into a coffin-style bunk (stacked three bunks high with two columns per room) the 24 hour trek up several thousand meters of elevation caused dizziness, shortness of breath and a total lack of any personal space. The best challenge was the struggle to use a squat toilet on a fast moving train where the previous users have been less than careful with their aim. One experience with that, I told my gastrointestinal system that we were going on a full shutdown mode to avoid another traumatic experience with the loo.

Stepping off the train and onto the platform at Lhasa, the blast of fresh air was like no air I've ever breathed in before. Clean. Crisp. Wonderful. Not realizing that I've been breathing at twice my normal speed because of the lack of oxygen, the walk to the tour bus felt like a brutal 5k run uphill.  

Over the next two days, I would spend time during the day wandering alongside the town folk of Lhasa, visiting some of the holiest sites in Buddhist culture and observing some of the strict military presence used to remind the Tibetan people, that someone else owns you. But the Tibetan people, mindful that they are not fully free, have very little cares in the world and are among the most happy and friendly people I've met on my year abroad. A mix of not knowing what else there is beyond their borders and a simple style of life, they greeted you with a familiarity that is hard to explain. In the market of the Johkang Temple, stalls would be bookended by military police posts, there to guard against any protesters ready to immolate themselves and cause embarrassment to the Chinese government.  But the shopkeepers go about their day, as if the guards didn't exist, perfecting their craft, peddling their art, bargaining with passersby interested in taking home a piece of the local culture.

The next seven days were ones that tested my physical endurance and my comfort zones to an extreme. We stayed in not so great accommodations, some without warm water or heat, some looked like the place you saw in the movie Hostel, and all with very little entertainment in and around the area. During the day, we would spend hours in a 4x4 trekking to the highest peaks and then down to flat desert all in an eight hour period. The high point (literally and figuratively) was being at base camp Everest and seeing this monstrous tip of rock sticking out of the ground and being left breathless at the sight of it (and the fact that there was little to no air). The lowest of lows was when one of the cars in our convoy of vehicles hit a small child who ran into the middle of the road. We don't know what ever happened to him - his aunt scooped him up, and ran off to their hut. The image of his wailing mother, collapsed at the doorstep of their home still gives me chills today.

We ended the trip in Shanghai - completely the opposite of what we experienced in the previous 12 days - a city that went from squalor to splendor in 25 years. Shanghai was where my other half of my family was from before the Civil War torn millions of Chinese families apart. Walking down the same streets my grandparents walked down when they were children, I wondered how they would have reacted to the changes and how emotional it might have been if they had experienced that.

My two week trip in China with my Dad was the start to repairing years of a strained relationship. It is always hard to travel with family members and at the time, I kept seeing my Dad as the same guy he's always been - this annoyance that just would not let me be an adult. I was short, I was brash, I was rude on various occasions during our time together and I'd constantly kick myself for being such a child. This was a gift that I was able to experience this trip of a lifetime, and I was a complete dick in the way I was showing my gratitude. But my Dad continued to be the patient man he always is, and looked past my behaviour while looking for nothing else but a closer relationship in return.

Tibet forced me to learn a lot about how I was living my life in Toronto.  How selfish I was, how I had misplaced many priorities which chasing after others that really are not all that important, and how I had been using my "independence" as an excuse for building proper relationships with my family, with friends and with partners. Tibet kicked off a year of self-discovery and reflection that I doubt any other destination I have been to this year would have been able to force out of me. The remote area, the spiritual presence, the lack of a busy lifestyle all made me sit and think, and think, and think...nothing else but that.

I thank my Dad for the chance to see the world's most amazing views, I thank the Tibetan people for their hospitality and I thank whatever's watching over me for keeping me safe and for guiding me through a once in a lifetime adventure.

What a difference a year can make.

Why we should never complain about our job hunt...

Having been back to the city for almost a month now, adjusting to life back in the city of Toronto has been a slow process. Transit is a joke, the weather has been abysmal, and the city has this duality of familiar yet foreign to me - perhaps I've been away for too long.

The job hunt, on the other hand, has been going well. Due to great friends in the industry, I've been flooded with details about interesting roles back in advertising. The interviews have been more like conversations - chats with strangers who didn't feel all that unfamiliar since we spoke the same ad speak. Some interviews have lasted over an hour and a half which is always a good sign. But the process is always long and tedious, with meetings set on different dates, shifting gears from one agency to another, one account to another. A lot of research and a lot of waiting. And waiting. And waiting...

But I should not complain. I should be grateful for having the opportunity to even be considered for a lot of the roles coming my way. It was definitely not that way for my parents and for many of their generation as immigrants to this country.

I cannot imagine how scared my parents must have been during their first interviews in this country. I remember when either had even the opportunity of a job interviewed, they stayed up late to prepare their answers, repeating them over and over again. As if struggling with their own answers wasn't part of the problem, but having to deal with the language barrier was another hurdle that had in their way.

I remember it took months for my mom to find a role in her field of accounting and the role she finally took was an entry level bookkeeping job at a petroleum transportation company out in the middle of (then) nowhere Markham. And the job hunt was not kind to my father, who had a Masters in Marketing Management and was forced to abandon his hunt and taking a role in a fast food restaurant as a Supervisor. This story is common for any child of an immigrant parent and it still plays out today for all of those people coming to Canada.

When I was interviewing other people for ad jobs the one thing that would irk me the most would be how underprepared some of those candidates were. If they had put in a fraction of the time most immigrants put in on their interview prep, they would have the role, no problem.

I put a lot of time prepping for roles that come my way. Most of this training does come from my university days, but I'm inspired by my parents who put every effort they had into trying to land that job so that they could provide a better life for me and my brother.

We've got it easy, folks.