DJ

How much do you curse and why? I don’t curse. Only rarely does one profanity slip out accidentally—I keep a firm filter on my words. My journey with profanity has been a long one with many winding twists and turns as my environment, personal beliefs, and the ideas around me evolved throughout my life, but I strongly believe my position now is where I will reside for the rest of my existence. Growing up in a Christian household, I never swore. The school and church environments that I was placed in allowed me to be surrounded by people my age with similar beliefs and values, so until the age of ten I would sustain the belief that “stupid” was defamation, and comparing a fellow classmate to any mildly-negative word was the highest atrocity possible—I was once sent to the principal’s office for calling my friend that “i” -word in a moment of heated weakness. In my middle school years, I received unrestricted access to the internet and sustained a majority of my education and learning thro...

What could you live without? Shortly after I was born, I was given the nickname “小蘑菇”, or “Xiǎo Mó Gu” by my mom. It meant “Little Mushroom”, because for some  reason, I reminded her of one. She never told me why, but if I had to guess it’d probably be because my small  frame reminded her of a red mushroom living in the forest.  The nickname for me stuck for a few years in my family until the fateful day when I tried mushrooms for the first time: Five-year-old me was sitting down for supper, and my mom had made soup with beef, carrots, cabbage, and mushrooms. When I bit on my namesake for the first time in my life, I had never felt such a revolting sensation. The flavor of mushrooms was earthy, abnormal, and evil. And the salt in the wound was that the texture was unlike anything I’ve ever had before: Unlike the carrots and cabbages which fell apart nicely in your mouth as you bit into them, these vile creations of nature were chewy and rubbery. For a five-year-old, that ...

What hobbies have been passed down from your family? My Dad, in my eyes, is the pinnacle of productivity. He works 40 hours a week, but somehow manages to engage in numerous personal projects at a time, simply for quality of life—Skills to learn, online courses to finish, self-help books to read. Although busier than me, he somehow finds time for it all. In order to keep track of everything he does, he uses a system called the “Bullet Journal”, or “BuJo” for short. Essentially, it’s a way to organize your goals for the year, sectioned into quarters, months, weeks, and then days. The idea is that by allowing your BuJo to hold and record all of your tasks, you can let it go from your brain and optimize your mental energy on things requiring more creativity. Ever since my Dad got his first BuJo many years ago, I’ve never seen him more faithful to anything else. Oftentimes when I come downstairs for breakfast I see him studying it intensely: Crossing off tasks, rescheduling others, and pla...

What’s the most memorable thing you ever got in the mail? On the day of my 13th birthday, I received a mysterious envelope addressed to me in the mail. Inside was a  folded sheet of yellowed notebook paper. I was pretty confused at first—it looked like an old letter written by a child. Upon taking a closer look (and an interesting glint of light in my mother’s eyes) I realized that child was me. And it was addressed to the tooth fairy. By then my mom had probably realized I didn’t believe in the tooth fairy anymore, which is why she was bold enough to hand me the letter she had kept all these years. The day I lost my first tooth I was eating spaghetti. It had been driving me crazy for a week now, and it finally let go when I was chewing and bit into something hard. Excited, I carried it proudly inside a ziploc bag everywhere I went. I begged my parents to let me bring it to my friend's house that same evening. They told me no—knowing my character, they assumed I’d lose it. But bein...