  i went to rice w/ some family friends this afternoon. i saw the pool there... hmm it's interesting how at msu they actually let you swim in the real pool... the one they used for competitions and such. but at rice, it's just some sort of "fitness pool/aquatic center" or maybe rice doesn't have a swim team or host tournaments... anyways, even though the pool wasn't the huge standard sized one i expected, it was pretty good considering it was indoors and such.
we're going tomorrow! ^_^ wow... it's so freaky all the things you can find out about yourself from the ppl that have known you since you were born. so this family that i went to the pool w/, the husband has known my dad since high school... and they even went to the same college to teach and stuff.
so of course i spent much of my childhood in china playing w/ their daughter (wen), who is a year younger than me. apparently, i was a vicious little urchin when i was five or so... i bullied everyone cuz they were younger than me... and made them eat dirt and such... hehe so the mother of wen tells me this story that i don't remember: we were running to preschool one day and my mom was w/ us, when wen fell and scraped her knee or something. she then turns and bites my mom. the mother speculates that i did something to provoke wen... such as push her to the ground or something... but i can't remember. anyways, wen tries to nail another such incident on me... once when we were little the boy that now lives in austin got a huge bump on his head.
wen's mom says she hit him, but wen says i did. well, knowing that i had a short temper and was consumed by power (i was head of class and could slap the sleepers during class and such... hehe), i think that it is very probable... since wen is quite docile and that leads me to something else... one time when i was in england, me and my dad were on the bike riding home over this hill when the bike toppled over.
i immediately asked whether my dad was alright and tried to help him up... but the reason behind such care as is not usually demonstrated by me has stuck in my head even after all these years. you see, even though my grades were better than everyone, my parents were not content w/ my behavior. they often compared me to wen or that boy in austin. they'd say things like "how come she always obeys her parents? why can't you be more like her? " i'm not one to forget... so i guess on that occasion in england i tried to be "more like her. " man i'm so twisted... of course all that is history now... after the spanking outside a library when my dad was reproved by this english lady. i think that is the real reason i protested at going to austin so much... i didn't want to be compared to both of them... again. they are perfect examples of how chinese children should act. they work hard at school and are obedient at home.
i am not... but i've given up trying to be more like them to make the comparisons stop. i realized that it would never end. i would never be good enough for their standards. they would only find someone else to compare me to... liang, jane, the rest of my friends, children of co-workers... "how come you're not like them?!? " "she got into harvard! will you? " in the end they dragged me there and afterwards told me that the parents thought my behavior was "good. " great. 
