pain and suffering

i'm such a baby.

i put off doing my TB test for a couple of days because i absolutely hate needles. but i finally made myself go to the clinic today.

yes, i'm still getting a tattoo. and i know what it will be and where i'll put it. but how i'll get through the needle part of it all, i have no idea. it's just a bridge i'll cross when i have to.

:-T

i think the lady who administered the shot to me was surprised by how much of a baby i am. all azngrrls are supposed to inherently be fierce, mean, dragon-lady bitches, and usually i am -- but unfortunately the facade dropped when i saw the needle, and i was soon quaking in my shoes.

i made the lady tell me exactly what she was going to do as she started preparing her materials. she calmly told me what i should expect, and then i reluctantly laid my arm on a table, squinched my eyes tightly shut, and looked away. i felt two tiny pinches go into my forearm, one right after the other. the lady encouraged me to look at what she was doing as she was doing it, but i told her tersely, "no! i'm not looking!" and then when it was over, she released me, and i looked down at my arm. there was a small mound that had risen where she had punctured my skin and a tiny red drop of blood.

the lady gave me instructions on what to do the next couple of days while gently swabbing at the red dot of blood that kept re-appearing on my arm as the blood seeped through the hole in the skin she had poked: basically i shouldn't touch, rub, or bump the area where i was given the shot -- which i'm already finding hard to avoid doing. :-P i'm also to come back in a couple of days for the TB reading itself.

i'd no idea that there would be a second visit involved. but the lady assured me that the worst was over and that there would be no more needles.

ai-ya.

with every pre-employment requirement i get out of the way, the closer i am to being able to work. i'm getting more and more excited -- i'm pretty stoked and curious about the work i'll be doing.

but okay, i'm also eager for a regular paycheck again. i think i'll end up blowing that first paycheck just because! i plan on hitting urban outfitters, sephora, border's, and jcrew -- though not necessarily in that order! i just totally need to update my wardrobe, both daily wear and professional wear.

i'm also in dire need of new books to read. i've finished two books during the past week: the unwanted: a memoir of childhood by kien nguyen and the rape of nanking: the forgotten holocaust of world war ii by iris chang.

i'm a fan of memoir writing in general. there is no more compelling way to tell a good story than using the fodder in one's own life. but nguyen's memoir is probably one of the most powerful i've ever read. he tells the story of growing up as an amer-asian boy in vietnam right around the fall of saigon in 1975 until he and his family are able to leave the country to come to america.

for me, the book is very compelling for a number of reasons. first of all, i finally can get a glimpse into what the conditions of vietnam were like right around the time my own fam fled the country. until now, i'd had only my family's stories and memories -- but there were lots of other sketchy things that i've never fully understood until now.

for instance, it finally hit home to me how dangerous the ideals of communism is when in the wrong hands. throughout my education, my teachers and professors always seemed to expound the notion that egalitarianism on all fronts is the ideal way of life. it's a really great ideal, one that i bought into for a long time, because what can be better than a society in which no one goes needy or hungry? in which our most basic needs are taken care of communally?

it makes sense to me why "my people" then latched onto the idea. vietnam is a poor, third-world country. there were a few rich people who had vast estates and employed a good number of the local villagers to work in the fields to cull rice and vegetables from the land. i'm not saying that that's the way it should still be . . . what i do say is that, if i were a peasant and someone told me it would be possible to form a new society in which i wouldn't have to work so hard for the benefit of another and remain poor, it would appeal to me. but what dismays me the most about it is how virulently violent the people became against each other -- it was virtually brother against brother. who knew that, in vietnam, such hatred, crudeness, and cruelty could sizzle beneath so many people's skins?

on my mom's side, i have a great, great grandmother who, before the vietnam conflict, owned a small estate and grew a few crops in north vietnam. she employed some people to work the land for her, and from what i understand, she treated the workers pretty well. nonetheless, when the viet cong gained in power, they still came after her. a few workers remained loyal to her and helped her escape, but the commies stole her land, her house, her possessions. she lost everything -- but if she had stayed, they would certainly have killed her or at least harmed her in some way. it is useless to feel this way now, but it makes me angry how quickly the people turned on her and turned on each other, just so that they could steal other people's crap.

power-mad crazies.

second, the book gives a taste of just how racist vietnamese peeps can be. as an amer-asian kid, half-white and half-vietnamese, nguyen had to deal with other people, especially kids his own age, calling him "bastard" and "half-breed." especially after the fall of saigon and with all the commies taking over the governing of the country, the commies were particularly hard on anyone who sympathized or worked with the americans during their occupation of vietnam. as an amer-asian, it was hard for nguyen's mother to hide the fact that she had "consorted with the enemy" on a most base level not just once but twice (nguyen has a brother who was fathered by another white american soldier). but even despite the harsh treatment that nguyen faced as an amer-asian, it was nothing like the treatment that other amer-asian kids, whose fathers were african-american, faced. even their own mothers despised them and treated them really badly because of the color of their skin or the texture of their hair.

it just fills me with dismay. like, if you're going to treat your kids like shit because of their skin color or their hair, then what the hell were you doing sleeping around with black dudes?

i hate hypocrites.

and third, the book is interesting because it gives a glimpse of what the country was like after the war was supposedly over, when the americans left, and the rest of the country realized that they now how to live under the auspices of communist rule, under the "kind" guidance of "uncle ho," aka ho chi minh. a lot of them held on to the hope that the new government would fail within just a few weeks, maybe even months. when it didn't, they resigned themselves to the new way of life.

i've already passed the book on to my mom, and even though she hasn't finished reading it, it's already provided a lot of fodder between us for discussions about to the state of vietnam then and now, her own experiences while growing up there, and everything that her family's been through. she told me she was glad that i had found a book that could teach me the perspective of the non-commie viet people at the time and help me understand just how atrocious that period in history was and why she feels such mixed emotions about vietnam and the people.

as for the rape of nanking, that has got to be the most difficult book i've ever read. it tells of the atrocities committed by the japanese army, while world war ii was raging, when japan thought it could extend its empire across mainland china. the chinese had recruited hundreds of thousands of men and boys into its army, most of them never having seen any combat. that, coupled with the fact that the chinese military command was completely inept, allowed japanese forces to enter and occupy the cultural capital of china, nanking. although half of the inhabitants of the city had already fled, this still left approximately 800,000 persons in the city. and the japanese army then began systematically killing, torturing, raping, maiming, castrating, decapitating, and committing other heinous acts against every man, woman, and child they found.

it was just so disturbing to read. chang unflinchingly goes into full detail about how those poor souls suffered at the hands of the japanese men. i had to put the book down when i was about one-third of the way through because i couldn't take it, and then i couldn't get myself to pick it up again for a couple of days. the photographs were particularly disturbing. i just cannot comprehend how easily people can succumb to that darker, crueler side of their nature and do such things to each other.

i just don't get it.

but i shouldn't get so dark and gloomy before bed-time.

i need to find some ogden nash poems to lighten up my mood.

like this one:

To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them
By Ogden Nash

Let's straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I do not like the things that you say
And I hate the games that you want to play.
No matter how frightfully hard you try,
We've little in common, you and I.
The interest I take in my neighbor's nursery
Would have to grow, to be even cursory,
And I would that performing sons and nephews
Were carted away with the daily refuse,
And I hold that frolicsome daughters and nieces
Are ample excuse for breaking leases.
You may take a sock at your daddy's tummy
Or climb all over your doting mummy,
But keep your attentions to me in check,
Or, sonny boy, I will wring your neck.
A happier man today I'd be
Had someone wrung it ahead of me.