Mild Amusement

There's this line in Eminem's "Not Afraid" that I find particularly clever: " like a f*ck you for Christmas, his gift is a curse ." I'm not the biggest fan of the song as a whole, but every time I hear that one line, I end up with a grin on my face. Unfortunately, though, I think I know a little bit about how that feels. See, I have a fairly good memory. It's not a photographic memory or anything, since I can and do remember things incorrectly with hilariously bad results . Still, I've found that on average, I can remember details that other people can't. Most of the time, this is a good thing. I remember most of my friends' birthdays off the top of my head, for example. As a result, I can take advantage of information I processed long ago in order to adapt to the current situation. Like I said, this is a good thing. Then again, I also said that this is mostly a good thing. There is a dark, dark underbelly to this ability. On the mos...

If anyone has ever wondered why my last name is Chang but I speak Spanish, I have a Chinese father and a Peruvian mother. As my sister has once jokingly said, my siblings and I are rotten eggs: brown on the outside, yellow on the inside. Having been raised with both cultures, I know what a quinceanera is, I have received red envelopes during Lunar New Year, I love ceviche , and I know what kind of dim sum I like. You get the idea. Ultimately, though, it's the combination of the two cultures that makes things amusing. One of my favorite examples of this involves going to a Peruvian restaurant and seeing " chaufa " on the menu. It's basically a stylized version of Chinese fried rice, with a new name that reflects the Spanish tongue. But every single time I've seen it on a menu, the description for it says something like "Peruvian rice dish." Yup, sure it is. Things get even more amusing when my parents get in on the act. My dad, for example, met my ...

As many of you know, I have a non-trivial commute to work every day. I've gotten used to it, but it means that I spend more than a few hours on the road. That means that I also see quite a few cars on the road. Most of the time, I only pay attention long enough to ensure that said car is not going to endanger my life. Other than that, I forget all about the vehicle as soon as it's out of eye sight. Still, there was this one car that managed to make a permanent home in my memory. I first noticed this vehicle out of my peripheral vision when I was making a turn. On this particular intersection, three lanes all turn left, and I usually end up in the middle of those three lanes. I've learned over time to keep an eye on the lanes of either side of me as they turn, because people have very interesting ideas about which lane they are allowed to use. Also, some folks have a harder time staying in their lane. Either way, there is a bigger chance than I would like that I have to a...

You know how sometimes one of your friends will eat something weird? Most people react by scoffing in a surprised manner and then shaking their head in disbelief. Me? Not so much. Sure, I do the surprised scoff just like everyone else. Where our paths diverge, and drastically at that, is with what comes next. I usually take a second to think about it, and then I figure, "why not?" So, I usually end up resolving to try that particular item or combination of foods. Really, though, given how willing I am to tweak my diet , this should come as no surprise. Actually, there's a very good reason why I'm willing to trade one bad meal for a lifetime of certainty: I've seen that scenario bear fruit in the past. I specifically remember the first time it came up: my old college roommate swore up and down that dipping fries in to a milk shake was delicious. I'd never eaten that way, and I looked at him skeptically. After all, combining my sides with my drink sounded as a...

I didn't grow up going to the beach very often, so I don't have warm and fuzzy memories of being near water. This was largely due to the fact that I learned to swim as a teenager, but the fact that the water  in the nearest beaches  is really cold didn't help matters any, either. Regardless, I can usually be talked in to hanging out at a pool or at the beach, but those aren't exactly at the top of my list of preferred activities. Even with this as a detractor, though, I discovered that I can still have quite a bit of fun while on or near the water. First of all, we ended up going whale watching on one afternoon. I didn't really think much of it before we left, but whale watching is one of those activities that sucks you in. One moment you're just sitting around on a boat talking, and the next you find yourself absorbed in the task of spotting brief flashes of whale tail. I think part of the fun was in trying to get a decent picture or video of the whales. It...

Since I was on a bus tour for this particular trip, I didn't really bother to pack much other than some jeans and t-shirts. Sure, I had a little bit of outerwear in case the weather got cold, but I wasn't super concerned about that turn of events. In fact, I wasn't even horribly concerned about rain because I figured that we'd be on a bus for good chunks of the trip. There were some advantages to traveling on one of those pre-packaged group tours, after all. Anyhow, since I was on this trip for a little over a week, this meant that I needed more than a week's worth of t-shirts. I did own that many t-shirts, but it's not like I the number I owned was orders of magnitude higher than that. This meant that I was bound to pack at least one shirt that I owned because I found it amusing (read: there was something smart aleck-y about it). As it turns out, I packed a few of them. For example, the current and former school teachers in our travel group chuckled heartily...

I was on a trip to Canada recently. Usually, I tend to to do road trips with a friend (with hilarious results ), but  this time, we both got a bit lazy about planning and driving. So, we hopped on a bus tour that took care of all of that for us. Sure, we had to sacrifice some independence in order to do this, but it seemed like a pretty good idea. And all in all, it wasn't that bad. Still, there were a few quirks. First off, I was the youngest person on the trip ... by far. I had never really stopped to consider what kind of people might be on the tour with us, but apparently the kind of people who have decent amounts of disposable income and prefer to be shuttled around tend to be closer to retirement age. Weird. We actually had an introductory meeting the first night of our trip, and we walked in to a room full of gray hairs. Don't get me wrong, the majority of the people were fun to talk to and I had no problem with them. Still, it was a little disconcerting at first. As...