A Review//The 'Girly Girl'//Notes on Dating

Thank God for material blessings: mom just randomly called me on her way back to TO when I was having brunch with a friend in NY, that I could purchase this Diesel bag for work! lolol. When I returned to TO I also was allowed to get a Macbook Pro with all the programs etc. Will get it in Oct. I know, I'm spoiled. But thanks God and parents!

Well, I'm back.
I guess the term 'back' is vague for someone who is constantly 'back' somewhere, some place.

Three weeks ago I was in NY,
Two weeks ago I was in TO,
One week or so ago I arrived here.

But first a review of my week in TO.
I've sort of stopped caring about catching up with people. Well, I do care, I've just grown tired of it. Tired of the same old: having to initiate with people. It started off with MSN: I've made it a personal rule to not talk to people unless they message me first. I break it with certain girl friends or if I have some random line to say to someone and that's it.
In saying this, I used to stress myself out if I didn't see TO people more than once. Now I see it as if "hey if you don't initiate a meet-up, then I'll just see you whenever I come back" And to be honest, many friends, I don't really need to see more than once.
I can't live in Toronto because it's a comfort zone.
A lot of the times, I complain about Toronto not because I hate it or am anti-Canadian, it's because I do in fact have a soft spot for it. And when I recognize soft spots, I often try to push them away.

Favourite moments in TO?
-Girls get together with my two accountability partners: we rarely see each other but God granted us a night to chill. We ended up doing a bbq and then sitting in a souped-up hot tub with fountains and lights with cold drinks... just talking and enjoying the full moon and stars. After we baked readymade brownies and made sundaes and watched 'Stage of Play' before going to sleep. So movie-scripted but so great. They're so encouraging.
-Talking about visions, dreams and goals with Robyn and Andrew till 2am at 'Go For Tea'.
I'm very encouraged to hear other peoples' dreams in life; perhaps aspirational but at the very least, they dare to do so. And simply knowing others who are striving to achieve what God has placed in their hearts is exciting. For I do not doubt the fact that He places passions in us to fulfill a higher calling that will eventually reveal itself to us in heaven.

My dream? My dream is use what God has given me to give back to Him.
How? By not using what He gave me physically but being a good steward of this earth and through my God-given interests in fashion and sustainability.
Why? Because God has called us to help those who are weakest in this world. While we, especially Christians, often equate third world countries as the weakest (therefore poorest), people often forget the reason for their poverty is that the environment around them has been neglected. How can you teach a man to fish when there isn't any fish, let alone the amount of pollutants in the water itself? I want to the missionary in the fashion industry, to be a Christian through design.
I remember I used to read this Christian teen magazine that would feature an industry professional in each issue to give readers an idea of not only what the responsibilities included, but how to be a light in that field. Yet NEVER was there a single issue about someone in fashion. To say the least, I was very discouraged. Anyway.
By?Although indirectly helping the poorest, my entire thesis company is what I want to strive to flesh out in ten years. I want to be the Pixar of fashion and revolutionize the way we produce and consume clothes.


There, you said quite tactlessly that I wasn't articulate about my dream, there it is organized in point form. It's always been the dream- the dream that came to me this past year. Always in my head and always woven into this blog. Sure as you said, people don't read blogs (well maybe we should say "people don't read."), but I write them for a reason. I write it for myself: to know myself fully what I believe in. The philosophy and reasoning behind it all comes out of the idea that we come into this world with nothing and we go back into this world with nothing (1 Timothy 6:7). Therefore, the reason that I designed a product service system based on co-ownership of clothes is precisely based on the idea that we are so set on the idea that "THIS IS MINE."
Perhaps this is not what I will end up pursuing ten years from now, only God knows. Yet I've made the commitment to pursue it if I am supposed to. If I fail, then I obviously have another calling elsewhere.

But here comes the point about Hong Kong.
This time moving back, I've felt very at peace.
I constantly talk about this past year but this how I perceive it:
1. God brought me a slew of new friends based off of old ones all by random encounters that I had no control over.
2. God brought me closer to Him through accountability partners that I did not desire in the first place.
3. God created a thesis for me that was both so quintessentially me yet solving the problem of waste production and mindless consumption of clothes in the industry is friggin amazing. I know I am the only one who thinks this is God's grace but I find it mind boggling that I am actually in love with my thesis idea because it is so very me. I mean who can say they're really in love with their line of work right now!??! It is so very me because I can actually see myself as a customer of the system. I would actually use this friggin business. And I'm so in love with it because it falls into this idea of total design experience- a core belief that Apple and I share: you cannot revolutionize a brand by designing a product, you must design an entire system of ideology so that the product REFLECTS that thought. Closed system thinking. I like. It's kinda been where all my passions, philosophies and strengths all intersect.
I like:
people
fashion
street style
writing
photography
design
business
=thesis
4. God allowed me to have a full summer going to the most random places where I got to reunite with family and new friends. This past year I've been musing about how I wish I could get one last summer before finding work, and lo, I got it. I started work on Monday, Sept 7.
5. God gave me a job. Um. Yeah. I got a job with a good salary.
6. God gave me a temporary house. I wake up every morning to a postcard view of Hong Kong. No joke. It looks like something you'd get at a souvenir store. It's literally the cityline of all of HK at my window on the 67th floor. It's stunning. It's a tourist hotspot. I could see any type of holiday firework from here sitting on my bed.
7. God opened the new purple train line here two weeks ago. It cuts my traveling time by fifteen minutes. It's a little crazy cuz I save a lot of time with this new line that just so happened to open up when I arrived.


So to say the least, although I literally do not have any friends here, I'm at peace. I'm at peace because of full knowledge of how God has worked in my life this past year, that I set my hope on what is to come. And peace comes from this because I do not rely on my own strength or efforts, but on His good timing.

The job itself is quite tiring. It's tiring in a way because I do not get to be creative, I just sit in front of a computer and write. I write about products and how one should style it. I get so bored from recycling the same words such as 'dolman sleeve', 'U-neck top' and 'drawstring hooded pullover', that I start talking about Prada and James Jean collaborations when talking about graphic tees with a girl applique, or I talk about William Morris and Mary Engelbreit pattern inspirations when it comes to fob clothes. I know, they probably won't get it, but talking about art and design keeps me sane.
In all this, I find that God is teaching me discipline and patience. The discipline to maintain a steady schedule over my free senior year. AND the discipline to keep Him at the top of my priorities. It's been nice, in a way, that I have no friends here because my devos have been more focused.

I've set a few goals with Robyn and Andrew for Christmas 2009:
-have a portfolio website up
-learn food and fashion words in Chinese
-get weekly exercise
-tweak my thesis more

I'm already frustrated with work. But I realized, on my first day of work, that I should just treat work as school. I am here to learn. To learn how to run a company, and to learn how not to run a company. I've learned a lot already and am taking notes of it in my sketchbook so that when I pursue my thesis, I will know what to do.
Work is school. But the best thing about that is is that you get paid to learn. lol.
It's made life a lot easier because I know what I do now will come into use in the future.

As for my coworkers, I really like the people I'v met so far. We cab it every day to eat lunch. I've met a lot of international people, ironically while HK is so monoculture. Met a Belgium who doesn't eat chocolate, met a Toronto girl who lives one big intersection away from me, met my coworker who shares a mutual hatred for cute Korean models, and a boss who I can ICQ with about Threadless t shirts. lolol. So in the end, I like my company because the people are really funny and chill.

Sigh, so the adventure continues.
I know to the average person out there, I talk/babble about God nonstop. But what else can I say other than to give praise for what He's done? To most, I sound dillusional, but I've come to realize this past year it's been hard for me to even stop thinking about Him because He has been so good to me.

Hm that's a good sign.
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The Girly Girl

While most of my friends boast about they all went through a tomboy phase, just like 'one of the guys', I never went through that. My cousins did, aunts did, elementary and high school friends did: I never did beyond the gloriousness of the Power Rangers and episodes of Star Trek. I liked my Barbies and Polly Pockets. I enjoyed skirts that twirled (more like 'mushroomed' when it comes to child's clothes), my goal was to grow my hair long (cuz my mom would always give me a bob cut) and my favourite Disney film was 'Beauty and the Beast.'

Looking at friends who talk about how "oh I wasn't like this before... I have a ton of guy friends yadda yadda" it occured to me,
Why does it seem so wrong to be a girl?

I embrace being a girl. I never cared to be a tomboy. Why try to be a boy when you're a girl? I guess in most people's books, tomboys have a certain cool factor and edginess that being a 'typical' girl does not have.
But what I find I dislike, is the idea of the 'girly girl'. Being a girl is fine, adding that extra punch to it makes me cringe. The 'girly girl', is someone who I equate with 'airhead', 'pink boas' and 'princess.'
So whenever I receive a 'girly girl' gift (even with well intentions) I shudder. This lineup includes notebooks with drawings of handbags on it, frou frou kitsch sculptures that act as dust collectors and stuffed animals (perhaps cute but space wasters).
The reason why I do not want to be associated with the 'girly girl' is because I perceive them as people who base all their decisions on emotions and not on logic. And particularly this is the case because I do study fashion, a rather 'airheaded' topic to some, which I am increasingly trying to disassociate myself with that stereotype. I am not the most logical of people, but I do think things over before doing anything.
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Notes On Dating

Post-Henry Cloud philosophy, I now do not believe you have to date to find out who you are nor what you like NOR to understand the opposite sex. You can do much of it by observations and interacting with people on a friend-to-friend basis.
Notes:

1) The worst girls are the ones who physically reveal too much/too easy: driven by need for attention and affirmation through physical attraction and validation. Men fall easily for them because they're visual creatures (duh).
2) The worst guys are the talkers. The ones who just talk their way into making girls feel special. There is a reason why chick flicks are all talk just as there is a reason why all guy films are action/visually driven (aka 001 films). Their talk is empty and meaningless- just a psychological trap. Girls think more: talkers feed into that thinking. The talkers need attention and temporary validation yet will never admit to the fact that they're emotional players. To them, they're just being nice and being 'themselves'. For this point, I thank my HK jie jie to work out with me.
3) When in love, make sure your friends are there. I've seen enough couples who are on permanent 'honeymoon' status that they don't realize how wrong they are for each other even when their friends warn them. Your words fall to deaf ears. They say 'love is blind', I just think its plain ignorance and stupidity. Which is why I'm saying and writing this now for myself and whoever out there who still reads my craziness, when God introduces him to me, "MAKE SURE I SHARE HIM AKA GROUP OUTINGS". In addition to this, getting to know the person in a group setting is extremely important: you weed out the talkers from the sincere ones. Perfect. Social experiments!
On a sadder notes, a few of my close friendships have disintegrated because of this one problem. My hurts in the past with people come from them totally infatuated with their significant other, that our relationship just crumbled. Thankfully God is greater and although there is still some of that hurt, we've made amends in their realization that they did isolate themselves.
4) This is the obvious one: guys initiate, girls respond. I find this one hard to swallow. I've seen it gone awry before my eyes when girls decide to take the ropes and that's all I'm going to say about this one.
5) Girls must learn patience, guys must learn to man it up (see #4).
I am not patient because for most matters, I can be proactive in pursuing the fulfillment of these goals, but with this, it's a whole different ball game.
6) Date to marry (with an open mind). I know, I've started to inch back to Joshua Harris over Henry Cloud dating philosophy but emotional well being is too important to me than 'finding myself'. I don't find myself in people, I find it in God. This year I learned so much more about myself and about my faith, but I'm still single. And really, why waste time and emotional heartache when he's not the right one? Cleaning up takes a lot more time than the split second hapless decision to date "just because".
7) Dating is not happiness. People who are dating are no happier than people who are single. They've just bought into the cultural lie that it'll make them happier but as I see it, most of them are more caught up in the misery/worry than actually being happy. In fact, some were even worse off dating, than without. Dating, in its most infant thinking, brings validation and emotional security. But the need for affirmation must be repeatedly given by the significant other therefore not healthy.
Dating will not make you prettier. Nor stronger. Not manlier. Nor smarter. Nor cooler.

The sum of all this is to say that although I find this a topic of immense frustration, if I believe God is the author of my salvation, then there is a reason for my singleness. I don't know why, but in faith I trust that He will share with me what He wants me to experience.
The other day over lunch, my colleague and I were musing over the fact that it is extremely difficult to find a good guy here in HK due to the fact that we're both neither fob or whitewashed. Therefore we need to find someone who is also not a fob or whitewashed but usually those are either taken or are the players you see circulating around LKF on Friday nights.
lolol.

GODDDDDDD