Moving to the City of San Francisco & APAHM 2018
In San Francisco at last. Mother’s Day. APAHM 2018.
May 17, 2018
It’s official! My roomies and I made the big move to the city this past week. We’re in a small, but beautifully renovated apartment. We’re so excited that we decided to call ourselves the “Bobagals”.
Let me just say though — the housing search crushed me with such a force of anxiety. I’d be hyperventilating at work because you just never know what’s going to happen in SF housing. It is the greatest relief to know that I have a home in SF and I’ve got the greatest housing squad I could’ve asked for.
Last Friday night, all three of us met up to decide on how we’re splitting rent and rooms. It’s typically a pretty touchy topic to tackle. I’ve seen people reveal their worst selves in these moments. We sat on the side of the road, opened up Splitwise, and estimated our rent split based on attributes of each room. Then, on our phones, we ranked the three rooms in order of preference. After a 3-second countdown, we revealed our rankings to each other. Each person went through their rankings and what their needs were. After, we just had an open, mature conversation on what’s important to us and what we’re willing to compromise on. I’m thoroughly impressed by how we handled the conversation. We have evolved into true adults.
Moving itself was the death of me. One of my roommates and I rented a 15’ Uhaul truck. It took about 2.5 hrs to load my stuff. It took us 40 min to load his. We moved all of our furniture and belongings by hand with no trollies. My hands are all cut up. I can feel them sting when I shower. In this process, I’ve learned that I have way too much crap. I’ve always been a hoarder — it’s the immigrant mentality. You just don’t know when something will be important, so you keep everything. A big lesson I’m learning is that, sometimes, you just gotta let go~ I’m pursuing that easy, light-weight life — physically, emotionally, and mentally.
In pursuit of evolving into Chloe 3.0, I’ve jampacked my life as much as possible. I went to a Columbia College Women mixer, First Friday in Oakland, Urban Air Market in Hayes, a coworker game night, a Taiwanese leadership fireside chat, the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival, and random dinners with friends. On top of that, I flew to LA to surprise my mom for Mother’s Day. She’d been complaining for quite some time that I don’t come home at all. My brother picked me up from the airport. We sneaked into the home while my mom was showering. When she came out, I started playing the Chinese classic, 月亮代表我的心 (The Moon Represents My Heart). She cried for a hot second, and that made the whole trip worth it.
While I spend more time alone, I’ve discovered an old flame of mine. As you may know, it is May, which means it’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (Wikipedia here). I’ve been looking up events and resource centers in the area. Apparently, there’s this thing called the Gold House, which is an exclusive collective of pioneering Asian founders, creative voices, and leaders dedicated to elevating the professional and cultural legacy of Asian America. They have an award called the A100 Honors that selects the top 100 most impactful AAPIs in culture. The selection committee includes people like the Far East Movement, Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Founder). Michelle Kwan, and Pharrell Williams. Some honorees include Ali Wong, Cassey Ho (Blogilates), Bruno Mars, Constance Wu, Eugene Yang, Nathan Chen, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella and so many more. There was someone I personally knew on the list as well. And, for the first time, I looked at this list of celebrities, executives, and high-profile people and thought, “whoa — if he can do it, then I can too.” And there it was — the moment that ignited my drive to share my voice as an Asian American young professional. That night, I stayed up until 3:30am (on a school night!) to write a spoken word poem on my Asian American story. I’m working on producing a creative short video to share this. I hope I can finish it soon! The project seems daunting, but I am fired up. Wish me luck!
With all my heart,
Chloe
My Asian American Story
A snippet of the 15 stanzas.
I love who I am, where I’m from, and how it all began
But I want to share with the world the story that never goes according to plan
Being Asian American means that life is kinda hard.
We’ve got a history that’s permanently marked us with scars.
Being Asian American means I’ll have to try much harder in industry
It means I have the lowest odds of getting promoted statistically
It means I’ll probably never be an executive realistically.
It means I’ll get microaggressed constantly and explicitly.
Not only that, someone like me will probably never be on Wikipedia
Not only that, it means that I won’t be represented in mass media.
Although our people are known to save you from leukemia
I can’t be a CEO since I don’t fit the criteria.
And that’s okay.
Because I had to try all my life.
I had no backup plan when facing my strife.
I had no safety net when walking the tightrope
I had no option but to charge forward and rely on hope.
And when you’ve lived your life with all the odds stacked against you
You kind of become invincible and you start making your breakthroughs.
Asian Americans, by history and not by choice, have had to live this way
We were meant to be trailblazers, innovators from the very first day.
Because courage is not the absence of fear — It’s what you do in the face of it.
Being Asian American takes the darkness and erases it
Our generation takes adversity and displaces it.
It embraces it.
Chloe Shih, May 2018
