Introduction - PLEASE READ ALL

NOTE: PLEASE READ ALL (ESPECIALLY THE LAST PARAGRAPH)! I know it is long, and I'm sorry to request something requiring so much of your time, but it is very important if you plan on reading any of my future posts! Thanks! =)

Hmm.... I noticed many of my friends had Blog-type things. I have always had a disdain for Blogs since I thought it was a fad and it was immature to think that others will read about your thoughts. But it seems to have caught on, and seeing that I have always wanted to share my experiences with the world, I have to concede that avoiding having a blog is becoming harder to justify (although I still feel the tinge of embarrassment when I admit to myself I have a blog now).

I would like to share with you some of my daily thoughts about this wonderful world of ours that people seem to take for granted and abuse. Having lived through many very varied conditions, I have noticed, and I hope I'm not being ignorant by suggesting it, that I seem to have an ability to judge a situation from all sides and to realize why people act the way they do. Sometimes when I see someone acting in a disrespectful or dismissive manner, it angers me that people do not try to learn from each other and always seem to be imposing their own will and beliefs onto others. This is one of the main reasons for starting this blog. I am not going to try to impose my opinions on to you. I will only describe my personal experience of the world. I encourage everyone to comment and add their thoughts as well. I would like this to be a constructive forum of ideas. After all, that is my personal philosophy, that every interaction is an opportunity for mutual learning, exploration, and understanding. Everyone should leave an interaction with others having learned something new and seeing just a tiny piece of the world that one was not able to see before. It is only in this way that people can construct an accurate idea of what the world is. Although no one will every get even close to understanding the world, if we all make an attempt to, the world will be a much better place for all.

But you may be asking, who is this crazy person writing something that sounds so strange as the last paragraph. Well, here's a short introduction about me. I was born in Beijing in 1985. After the 1989 Tiananmen incident, my parents decided to move to Canada permanently as my dad was already studying there. (By the way, my parents indicated to me that if they had any idea back then of the progress that China has made in the past two decades, it is likely that we would have stayed in China). Because my dad was a graduate student and my mom, who used to be a doctor in China, didn't speak a word of English, we lived under the poverty line. We lived in a two bedroom apartment filled with roaches that we shared with another Chinese graduate student, and furnished the apartment with furniture gathered from the streets when people where throwing them away, or from friends who didn't want it anymore. I still remember the first new toy that my parents ever bought me in Canada: a $3 fishing game from the now-defunct discount chain Biway. I remember my parents felt so proud that they were able to afford a new toy for me, and I felt so guilty for having my parents buy me something so wonderful. We also always bought food from the discount/last day of sale cart in the supermarkets, and never bought juice as it was too expensive for us.

As my dad graduated, he found progressively better and better jobs, boosting our economic status ever higher. At the time I am writing this, he is the head of the Research and Development Department at a hundred-million dollar firm. My mom, however, never got back into the medical field as we were too poor to send her to medical school for her to learn English to get certified. By the time we had the money, she felt that it was too late in her life to start over as a doctor. As for me, I was thrown into kindergarten when I didn't speak a word of English. I eventually learned by motioning and interacting with my teachers and students, although after many extremely embarrassing situations and incidents, one involving the fact that I did not know the word "washroom."

Because of all of this, we kept moving around. Even now, after 21 years of life, I still have not lived in a single location for more than 5 years. This helped me become very adaptable and gave me the ability to feel at home anywhere, although I often feel that everything is temporary and you cannot hold on to anything. Due to the different socio-economic situations that I lived through, I have many friends with many different backgrounds and learned what life was like in the different classes. And because we moved to Canada, I also have many friends of different cultural backgrounds. I am very thankful to Canada for this, and the motto taught in schools that, summed up, was "cultural tolerance is unacceptable, cultural celebration is what everyone should be involved in." In fact, I had thought racism was extinct in the real world... until I started attending University in the United States. I have even recently noticed disturbing discriminatory feelings bubbling up inside of me after being exposed to, compared to Canada, the harsh racist, xenophobic, and elitist American culture (or at least the American Northeast, Upstate New York, Ivy League culture - Harrumph!, which is only a small segment of American culture). Of course, the US has also taught me a lot of good things - how to stand up for myself, how to be a leader, and how to discriminate between fact and propaganda. As of now, I am finishing my last semester at Cornell University as a double major in Engineering Physics (the program is ranked #1 in the States!) and Computer Science. I have accepted a job at Electronic Arts in San Francisco for next year (My friends all tell me that California is probably the most suitable place for me to live in the US in terms of culture), and am actively trying to look for teaching and volunteering positions abroad for this summer. Due to my background, I cannot stand it anymore if I am not exploring a new culture or a new way of life. I am the kind of guy that will always choose a new experience (food, activity, etc.) over one that I am familiar with.

I am also extremely grateful to my parents, who are very liberal and always let me make decisions for myself from a young age. My parents would never force me to do anything, but always offer very helpful advice, and always support my decision no matter what it is. Although sometimes I wish that they could make the difficult decisions for me, I feel that letting me take responsibility for my own actions has taught me a lot. They are always there for me when I start doubting myself or my decisions. So with my parents, I feel free to explore the world, while having someone to turn to when I get into trouble or feel generally down on life.

Well, sorry about this long rant about myself. I know it seems arrogant of me to talk about myself, but I promise I will refrain from taking about myself unless it is necessary (or amusing) in the future. I only rambled on about myself in this post because I believe that in order to understand one's writings, ideas, and thoughts, one must first know the person behind them, and that person's life experiences. Knowing someone will help immeasurably towards understanding what that person is trying to say.

I look forwards to maintaining this Blog and sharing my daily revelations and thoughts about this world. Although I am still embarrassed about starting a blog :) I feel worse when thinking about all of the thoughts that I have had that had been lost. Although I do hope someone will read this Blog and hopefully learn something about the world and themselves, I will be more than happy just having this blog serve as a personal notebook of sorts for me so that I do not lose any more important revelations about the state of the world.

Please note that some posts in this blog will be very blunt, will challenge current society and may convey some ideas that many people do not agree with. But I ask you that instead of dismissing or reacting to the post in a knee-jerk manner, please pause to think of all of the reasons and points of view involved. And please, please post your own points of view, if you agree or disagree. Again, this is meant to be a forum of ideas. That way, we can all learn from each other rather than believing that problems will go away if we ignore it, or that you can't make a difference in the world. Every voice counts! I promise to read all comments, and you should also try your best to read as many as possible. I always re-judge a situation when I learn about a new point of view, so it is possible I will even completely reverse my position if you point out something that I haven't thought about before! Only a stubborn fool will not admit his or her mistakes and stand firm on an opinion or decision when new, dissenting information emerges. As you can tell, this blog has radically different goals than most. It is meant to be an open forum where everyone can make observations and suggest ideas to make society around us a little bit better for all! Even if this blog effects one person positively even by just a little, then it is all worth it. And please, if you have something new you want to talk about, post it by all means, or contact me and suggest that I talk about it. Let us all cooperate, share our thoughts, be open to, and learn from each other!