If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, what planet do non-binary people come from? ...
We had been waiting a few years on an inheritance check from my wife and her sister’s grandfather. When it came in the mail, I messaged a real estate agent and soon enough the three of us were moving into our new house. No, seriously, it took like a month from getting the money to owning and living in a house. Well, I don’t own it, but I get to stay there for free. I do a lot of the chores and…
I’m a little offended the Wikipedia page for the Oakland A's mentions (Vegas band) The Killers and not The Lonely Island. Why did I only today learn from Wikipedia that the Oakland Athletics are mentioned in a Killers song? “Her elegance and charm are worthy of praise And I heard she used to throw, for The Oakland A's” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Killers fan for over a decade. I saw them in…
I wrote a lot of poetry when I was younger, but there is one poem that stands out to me. Even now, I think it’s one of my best. I called it “The White Girl with the Asian Eyes”. You hurt, you haunt, You criticize The white girl With the Asian eyes You don’t use slurs You never curse But you’re my friend Which makes it worse You tell the jokes And lightly grin I laugh as well So I fit in The racist…
It’s my 29th birthday; ten years ago exactly, today, I turned 19 years old. That year was an exciting birthday for me: I traveled to New York to stay with my cousin and see America's latest obsession, Hamilton , for the first time on Broadway. Lin-Manuel Miranda was still performing in the title role. (I had been in In the Heights my senior year of high school, so I was familiar with his work. I…
The 2026 Winter Olympics have come and gone, and I’m proud of both of the gold medalists from my home area: figure skater Alysa Liu of Oakland and freestyle skier Eileen Gu of San Francisco. As a Chinese American, and as a lifelong Bay Area resident, it’s awesome that young women athletes in my demographic are achieving success on the world stage. I think the whole controversy over Eileen Gu…
I’ve been cooking a lot this year, and one of the recipe websites I like the most is Serious Eats . They usually have well-tested recipes with scientific explanations of why they work. However, I (an amateur chef) have had mixed results. These are presented in no particular order. Recipes I liked: Fried Chicken Sandwich I halved the recipe and only made three chicken thighs because I live with two…
I only met my wife’s stepfather once, and once was enough. It was at my sister-in-law’s college graduation. My wife and I had been dating for several months at this point, and I was early in my transition. She had already met my parents because they lived in the area, but her parents were visiting for the graduation, and I was meeting them for the first time. The introduction went something like…
This is a big problem for me. I always think my opinions from yesterday are soooo cringe and outdated. Then I read what I actually wrote and I usually am like “actually it was fine.” I wrote “The revisionist urge to delete everything I ever wrote” while in a somewhat manic state (though I hesitate to use that word without a diagnosis). It is true that I barely got any sleep because I was convinced…
When I was a kid I electrocuted myself…in a way that would’ve been completely avoidable were I not an idiot child. But it wasn’t completely my fault. See, some other idiot kid - maybe a sibling or friend - had left a paper clip standing up like a piece of toast in the vertical slit of an extension cord in my room. I noticed. That’s not supposed to be there , I thought. That’s probably dangerous,…
Capitol One sent me a piece of junk mail addressed to my old name before I transitioned. I haven’t gone by that name for seven years, and I certainly haven’t gone by that name at this address. They probably merged databases in a way that preserved old names but updated addresses. A simple mistake, but one that is hurtful and dehumanizing to trans people. It’s the kind of mistake that is forgivable…