When I was in elementary school, my mother wanted me to understand my culture’s Asian dialect, so she sent me to an afterschool program to learn to speak and write in her dialect.  I was excited to begin something new and meet other kids.  On the first day of class, I quickly realized that the kids, having known each other for a long time, had already established strong cliques and a social hierarchy, the top of which sat a group of what would these days be described as the “mean girls.”  The girls, sensing I was new and different, targeted me for their hostility.  Mute from fear, I performed poorly in class.  One evening at home while I was doing homework and struggling with the pronunciations of kindergarten-equivalent vocabulary words, I shut down and started crying.

Shocked, my mother sat next to me, and everything bottled up just spilled out – my feelings of rejection by my own culture, the bullies who were the catty Asian girls, and my disinterest in the subject overall.  I told her that I was sorry to disappoint her and I knew I was failing the class.  I knew I had to pull myself together, so after a while, I stopped crying and told her that I was going to just try harder.

After listening to me in silence, she asked unexpectedly, “What would you rather learn if we took you out of this class?”

I was surprised.  I shrugged and said, “Spanish…?”

A few weeks later, I was enrolled in Spanish class, in which I not only did well, but I excelled.  Years later, my fluency in Spanish coupled with my laser-beam focus enabled me to win a highly competitive national program and become the junior ambassador in South America.  Living in Ecuador, exploring the Amazon Jungle, and hiking the Galapagos Islands remain one of my favorite memories.

This became my first lesson in learning that I am not always going to be the strongest, but I had to be smart about my weakness and find ways to control it.  I am still reminded of my failure in that class by my current abysmal grasp of my own dialect, but my fluency in Spanish became critical when I lived in South America.  When I started working, the "fluent in Spanish" on my resume got me the break I needed by winning me a highly coveted role on an investment banking deal where one of the players of the deal was a large Spanish bank.  The success of the deal made headlines, instantly establishing my reputation on Wall Street as a wunderkind.

* * *

There is someone reading this who is experiencing some frustrations and is feeling unsure of himself.  I write this post because I want to remind him that, despite what he's feeling, he is a force of orderliness and industry, and when people get to know him, it changes them.  Everyone’s internal map into their own core continually gets redacted by rejection and failures.  I still can’t walk by that building where the class was held without my pulse quickening.

I know he's having a tough time.  I know about rejections and failures.  I know this because I remember once at my hedge fund, I had been working around the clock with our traders and people all over the world on a very private deal that would change the course of my firm and establish me as a heavyweight in the hedge fund industry.  A few weeks later, the deal failed and I took it personally.  I felt as if I had failed and the world was passing me by and I was off track.  The whole thing reminded me of being in that Asian dialect class.

Right after that, with no other intense deals to work on, I left the trading floor at around 5pm each day.  One day, I got a text from someone asking me to have dinner with him because he was only going to be in town for a few days.  I was still sulking, but I thought, why not.  I knew that if my project hadn’t fallen through, there would be no way for me to meet him.   So I left the office and met him for dinner.  The night grew wings.  It was one of the most fun and memorable evenings I remember, eating and laughing and walking all over the damn city in my heels.

I want to share this with you because sometimes our hands have to be tied in order for us to see the right things.  Hang in there; the right thing will come to you, and your job is to recognize it when you see it.  We all need to walk our own paths and resist the urge to compare ourselves to others.  Sometimes, the things we want come in unexpected packaging.  If my deal had not failed, I would never had had the opportunity to get to know one of the smartest, funniest, wittiest, most ambitious, and most conscientious man I have ever known, a man so wise that he has taught me more than I could ever imagine.  Even if his wisdom sometimes come in odd, ghetto-ass packaging, like when I complain about someone who's mean-spirited and he just says, "Don't worry about nuthin', just keep doin' your thang.  Haterz gon' hate."  The dinner that night was going to be the beginning to one of the best and most unexpected adventures I would have.

Remember?  It was the first time we met.

New York City is filled with the glamorous, the sinuous, and the high fashioned.  Oftentimes, I share stories from my life about the absurd that I once had only imagined or had seen on the television when I lived in my small hometown.  Then I moved to New York, and everything changed.  Just the other day, I was reminding my girl friend about the “Sex and the City” episode where Carrie Bradshaw was invited to model for a designer as the token “Real People” model.  The difference this time when I had been asked recently to do the same thing is that I got to choose my outfit and I didn’t fall on my face.  =)

However, there are also countless smaller and quieter moments, still significant events that fill my life in this city.  The children at the Sunday School I teach are quickly developing into beautiful people in God’s image, my late-night Latin class is kicking my ass and I like it, all my life, my work life has always been incredibly challenging, crazy, and fulfilling, I’m filled with excitement on starting a private and intense study with a world-renown scholar on the book of Genesis, and my boyfriend, who endlessly spoils me more than I could ever imagine (and that’s saying a lot, considering I’m surrounded by Wall Street guys at work who really really spoil their girls), provides for me a role model, in business and in life, for being the person I have always wanted to be.  It’s a weird and satisfying feeling to know that you can live life intensely and still have a very balanced life.

I think wherever you are, you need to look for adventure, because adventure won’t look for you.  In a few weeks, I’ll be flying to the Virgin Islands, and then I’ll be in Europe spending a good amount of time with the traders in my new role.  So while I’ve been at home in New York, I have snapped a bunch of photos and videos the past two weeks.  It is a blessing in my life, and a humbling realization, that at a young age, I’ve had the chance to experience (some still untold) wild adventures and had the opportunities to achieve things in my professional, social, and personal life that many will never have in their lifetimes.  This whole thing is a gift, an unfettered life of traveling as much I please, happily working as intensely I have, and experiencing unconditional love as undeserving I am.

So instead of sharing some of my bigger, more absurd stories with my friends here on xanga, today it is my privilege to share a few videos and photos of some of the more quiet and intimate moments.  I hope you enjoy.  =)

A photo of my friend and me on a late night out and about one Friday evening.  

I am inside the famed Actors Studio watching the first ever and very private show Angelica Torn was doing about her mother Geraldine Page.  Angelica, whom film-goers might recognize from the Sixth Sense, and her parents were considered acting royalty (her mother, Geraldine, was named by Tennessee Williams as the “best actress of all time in the English speaking world”) and accumulatively won the most awards.  No photos and videos are allowed inside this very private club, but on this one occasion, I snuck my camera in at the back and recorded this for you.  =)

I attempt to make curry chicken salad.  I learn a fact about myself: I do not know a thing about plating.

 I had the privilege of attending a private event to see a rare appearance of Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez.  (Because who didn’t love "Wall Street?"  And when people ask me to name my favorite president, I still answer “President Bartlett.”  And am I the only one who had a huge crush on the coach on Mighty Ducks?  And really, HOW MANY TIMES have I seen The Breakfast Club and The Outsiders?)

 Martin Sheen, explaining how he chose his name "Martin Sheen."

Emilio Estevez, explaining why he opted to stick with the family last name. 

Martin Sheen, on meeting Mother Theresa

Martin Sheen reveals his political leanings while talking about the West Wing.  ;)

Um.  Only one of my favorite rappers/actors, Mos Def, BUYING AN ORGANIC, GRASS-FED BURGER NEXT TO ME IN WHOLE FOODS WHILE TALKING ABOUT HIS NEXT PROJECT!  No, YOU calm down!  “Brown Sugar,” the movie where he plays the coolest taxicab driver-slash-aspiring-emcee is like the one of the best movies ever.

Most weekends, I go for a drive in my car.  Last weekend it was to visit the northern parts of the Hudson River.

My boyfriend and I are always looking for new places to buy.  We had gone through the coastline in Monterey, CA, so then we started looking at the properties in Alpine, NJ and were awestruck by this tower, known as the Devil's Tower.

What about you?  What are some of the things in your life you don't share as much that means a lot to you?

Dear @synaesthetics,

I may or may not have said to you that I create the most natural and convincing cleavage as a final touch to any outfit by putting duct tape on myself in a certain way. You stared at me.  Whatever.  I was in junior high when I first employed this method.  During that time in my life, I did not have cash for a push-up bra, so I looked around for the next best thing, and like what Robitussin was to Chris Rock, a roll of duct tape was a panacea to me.  And anyway, rejection from society is what made the X-Men.

But imagine my surprise when I found your driver’s license in my wallet after I returned home well after 4am from my absurd night out with you, a night filled with so much hilarity that my waterproof mascara started running and you offered to look for a server for a cocktail napkin.  You tried to make plans to retrieve your license from me the next day. I told you that you can find your license on eBay.  And then I received this response:

“Very well then.  You can find your duct tape story on the front page of Financial Times.”

Wow. Well played.

First of all, I wear duct tape because it works better than push up bras.  And anyway, I’ve done that a few times in the nights I’ve gone out with you and you wouldn’t have even known if I didn’t tell you these things.  Second of all, I told you that story in the strictest confidence, homeboy.  Like when I told you I planned on making my future children pay for the food in meals from their allowances.  You said, “To teach them the value of the dollar?”  And that’s when I knew that you get me.

You get that I come from humbler places.  You know this because when I was running late to meet you, I was running down the street in a very delicate white dress and midway through a stride, my right nude heel flew off my feet. I turned around and hobbled back on the dirty streets of New York to retrieve the heel left behind, and when I finally arrived at Ph-D, I revealed two things to you: One, my right foot might turn green and fall off that evening because I had touched my bare foot to the grimy urban streets of New York.  Two, my feet are different sizes.  My left foot is slightly bigger than my right foot.

Which would be the end of the story any girl would share with you.  I, on the other hand, went on to tell you how, when I was a little girl, I would try to switch the right shoes of different sizes so that I would purchase a pair of shoes inside a box of different sizes, the right one slightly smaller than the left one.  Only, I got caught at the cashier, so I was forced to take the Walk of Shame back to the shoe shelf and correct this “mistake.”  It was pretty embarrassing, my dignity waning with each step taken under the florescent lights of Payless Shoe Source.  You looked at me like I was crazy.  Then you laughed and laughed and laughed.  Whatevz.   I'm not sorry. I had to do what I had to do to get here, today a girl set to take on this glittering world with a spritz of Guerlain Chamade and her required Emmanuelle Khanh sunglasses, even if it meant trying to steal a shoe in her earlier years.  My past was my Dorian Gray portrait.

And anyway, I had only lost my shoe a la Cinderella because of the texts you were sending, remember?!  I was texting you, “I’m here!” and you texted back, “I’m 1 minute away,” and so I texted back the truth, “Oh.  Me, too,” and you texted back, “Lol.  I’m here now.  I’m right in front of Ph-D,” and I texted back, “Wait!!!!  I’m not there yet!!!!”  And that’s about the moment I was hobbling back to retrieve my shoe.

This was all a prelude to the pretty high-level and cerebral socioeconomic discussions we would be having.  Because I’m totally mature, I tell you that when you tutor kids, you should tutor them “North Korea Style! MATH MATH MATH!  SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE!  YOU CAN’T LOOK AT A MAP!”  To which you quipped, “You know about the troubles of the world, how?  Because you can see the signs of the Occupy Movement through the tinted backseat windows as your driver passes by them in your black car?”  But you quickly forget that you are an Ivy-Leaguer, which gives me endless material for jokes.  So I tell you, “Ah, you know that life in this world is tough, don’t you.  You read that in a book once.” You threw back something like, "Honestly, you're not even a 1 Percent. You're like a 0.5 Percent."

But then I revealed a truth to you on what I do on Saturdays, "Whatever, I'm grounded. I drive to Costco on Saturdays and walk around and look at giant tubs of margarine because I'm a woman of the people."

You raised an eyebrow and asked skeptically, "You drive your BMW X5M to Costco and park next to everyone and walk around?"

Then I gave you a look. What are you, crazy? I answered, "I don't park next to those people! Are you kidding me?? I park as far away as I can from the crowd and hike across the parking lot! This is Costco here! Who knows who has insurance?!?!"

And on this ridiculousness went, the height of which was when, inside the dark den of New York's The Electric Room, I made you stare at my eyebrows and asked if I looked more youthful because I changed the shape of my brows. The sun threatened to come up that early morning, at which point knew we had to go home because I needed to sleep and you needed to inspect that Jaguar you planned to buy that day.  We looked for a cab.  I suffer from slight PTSD from grabbing a cab with you, because I can never wipe clean from my memory the time one winter when I left a cab with you still in it, me precariously balancing on the stilts that were my Louboutins over snow and made my terrifying way across the icy streets into my apartment.  All I remember was the sound of merriment and laughter from the cab as you bonded with the cab driver over watching the spectacle that was the girl fighting the elements in stilettos and a cashmere coat.

All this is to say, synaesthetics, you might be charismatic, bright, handsome, and articulate, and you might eek of greatness.  But I've been through stuff. As you tell me about plans, I know you are a man set to make unprecedented and structural changes on the international stage. But I have this theory that everyone has a savant ability, and mine might just be fighting dirty.  So while I adore you so much I would walk across hot coals for you, I am not intimidated by you.  So go on, call your reporter friend at the Financial Times.  Tell the world about me trying to beat my own record of how long I can go without washing my hair.  Because, as you've learned, at first glance I may appear deceivingly delicate, a girl who...how did you put this again? Ah yes....a girl whose arms are so delicate that the only work those thin "pipe cleaners" have done is carry around luxury designer bags.  But as you've read in this post, I treat trouble-making like I do writing - it is my outlet for creativity. If I read in the news anywhere that I give my breasts some oomph by the use of duct tape, you, sir, and I say this with love, you are going down with me.

Yours,

leprovocateur