Weekly Clam 11

Arthur Came down last week. We ate mainland Chinese food. Too many carbs. We went to $5 fridays at Mission Fitness, it was a lot more fun to go with Arthur rather than my uncle. Lots of fun toys there

Sunday, we celebrated QingMing a week early at Rose Hills. Ethan’s dad passed away months ago, so there is a new grave to pray for. Grandma purchased tons of graves there for all her children, so I made a joke about the amount of incense we will need to burn for all those graves in the next generation. Uncle Tony said there will be no such thing, he was adamant that the tradition would not continue, no one will be there. I meekly said, I will still do it, a much less elaborate version of it, but I will still be here in 50 years. I also pointed to Ethan and said that Ethan would also be there. Traditions are important, for so many reasons that I won’t elaborate upon here. Aggressively dogmatic or inconvenient traditions are bad, but visiting your ancestors’ graves once a year each spring is not a bad tradition. This particular tradition is good to bring people together, an opportunity to teach and learn about our family history (and therefore reinforce whatever values you want your family to represent), its important for people who want/need to feel a sense of belonging to something (something I have been searching for my entire childhood and only recently have made much progress on). Traditions are important, this is a tradition I intend to follow the rest of my life. —unfortunately that is not how this tradition is viewed in my family. Grandma see’s it as an act of service to the ancestors. Grandpa, great grandma, etc, need their food and offerings. It doesn’t matter so much who does it, so long as it is done. She doesn’t think this tradition offers any value to us mortals. Uncle Tony doesn’t think it offers any value to mortals. I don’t live my life for my ancestors. But like many things, acts of service to ancestors or anyone else around me, many times brings value to my own life. Traditions should not be seen as a burden to bear.

Robotics - I spent all day Saturday at Arcadia robotics competition. I was only supposed to swing by for a an hour or two and then go hiking/dinner with uncle tony, but he said his foot got a cut on it? I think I was mostly there all day because I didn’t particularly have anything better to do, I didn’t have any errands to run or any work to do, so I guess I was more fulfilled being there to give emotional support to clin and the kids (I think they’ve seen me enough to not be weird about me and see me as a positive adult presence), rather than play on my phone. And the ADHD makes me gravitate towards chaos. Controlled chaos makes my brain feel like its working at full capacity, even just as a spectator. Also, forever grateful for picking up photography, anything can be turned into a photojournalist assignment (though I don’t think I tried super hard to play photojournalist, maybe if I was a little less tired from basketball and brought a different camera/lens)

Uncle Tony’s cut foot- Sounds weird, but I talked to uncle Sean and uncle tony himself and the story checks out, just kinda odd. Still have not had any 1 on 1 face time with uncle tony since that last big conversation. Will continue to work on it. I think its just been bad timing for a while, he seems continually eager to spend time with me when I go to grandma’s to watch basketball (omfg im getting tired of watching basketball) and the tone in his voice seems to indicate that he’s still eager to try again this sunday for more hiking.

Last - Last weekend I went to the Hammer museum to watch a double feature as part of their Asian Cinema series, Devoted to You + Love unto waste, both films took place in the late 80’s. The entire time I was thinking about Uncle tony, how his brand of machismo felt very similar and familiar to what I was watching on screen. My guess based on context clues is that Uncle Tony was part of one (or more) HK based crime groups, or at least crime groups that had close ties to HK, and he developed a lot of his personality and identity in the 80’s/90’s with HK gangster role models. He has that brand of masculinity. I think this is also why his Cantonese is so good, I always wondered why his Cantonese was particularly good, better than all the siblings except for those who married native Cantonese speakers.

Tuesday, I went Vidiots in Eagle rock to watch DiDi (2024) - it was only $2! - I am always a sucker for a good coming of age movie, and this was the one that felt closest to home. The main character was 14, and only a couple years “older” than us. It felt very similar to my own summer before high school. AIM, Facebook, early youtube (justkiddingfilms), being an Asian teenager in California, tutoring classes. Many moments of intense cringe. Cringe/embarrassment is something I have been more comfortable with. I saw a quote/meme on instagram that said embarrassment is an underexplored emotion. I think about this sometimes when I feel embarrassment and I lean into it. Especially if it is very safe to do so, like secondhand embarrassment from watching a movie.

I’ve been making an effort to watch more older HK and Taiwanese films, firstly I really like them, secondly its giving me a lot of context for a period of Asia and Asian culture that my parents/aunts/uncles were so heavily influenced by. Its helping my Chinese a tiny bit too.

Hiking-I’ve been continuing to hike 2x a week with Leilani in the morning before she goes to work. Its getting easier to wake up on time. We used to miss a lot of hikes because one of us would sleep in. Now we even meet at 6:45 (before it was 7). We have settled on a few neighborhoods, griffith, glendale, la canada, NELA, 3-5 miles whatever we can do in about 1hr15. Shes getting really fast, but in a weird middleground of fast. It used to be really low effort for me, I would treat it as my rest day, but now its getting too intense for that, but not quite intense enough to fully replace a cardio day. I guess I hope she gets even faster and I can treat it as a full cardio day in my fitness schedule? But its very good for me right now to wake up that early, to give me that structure, and be able to know I have a good chunk of time to walk and talk with a friend. Its good for both of us. Fitness with friends is a great 2birds with 1 stone situation. Hiking especially.

So now my ideal fitness schedule involves 3 mornings a week of hiking, 2x with leilani, medium difficulty, 1x with uncle tony easy difficulty. We are blessed with an abundance of little trails within 20 minutes. Hills made North East LA less desirable when LA was being built up. Today it is such a great asset to take advantage of. Its so fun to look down at LA/SGV from different hilltops. Hiking is amazing exercise, it is and has been an amazing activity that has facilitated so many relationships in my life.

My parents are gonna be back late April/Early may