Doodle 001 | What Overkill Teaches

AP exams are done, so doodles are starting up again. But with doodles come more ramblings from a disillusioned teenager.

Over the past two weeks of exams, I reflected on my priorities and found that this year felt like a survival game more than a thriving game.

I took on more commitments than I should have and probably felt miserable more days of the school year than it was worth. The only benefit is the pressure it created on me: I either break or I find a way to manage everything.

I’m here, so evidently, I managed it.

I learned to work more efficiently. I bring my laptop to school to get things done.  I used lunch period and my free class period to finish online homework. And yet, there just was not enough time to do everything right. I wish I could have spent more time speaking Spanish and I wish I could have spent more time learning to code properly. And maybe my ears would be better at picking up music during our melodic dictation sessions if I took the time to experiment with my piano.

I pulled off good grades, rarely angered my club advisers, slept decently, and yet I feel like I just barely survived–

There was just not enough motivation. My priority changed from learning to completing my to-do list. It got to the point where I just felt exhausted from doing paperwork tasks like typing meeting minutes, ordering something online, financial aid applications, or dare I say it, college applications.

So when I finished my exam on Thursday, a heavy weight had been lifted. A smile on my face came easier. I felt happier to see people. And on Friday, when our last Spanish assignment was turned in, and when I took home my artwork from class, the unraveled threads were raveling back together again. Everything became whole.

I realized the problem. It was not the time management. It was the motivation and the corners I was forced to cut as I made decisions. It was always feeling as though there was something to be done. It was not being able to spend more time on things that I cared about because there were other things that “needed” to be done.

—

Things are winding down. I finally made time to revisit one of my favorite animated series of all time:

Prince Zuko: Stop it, Uncle. I have to do this.

Uncle Iroh: I’m begging you, Prince Zuko! It’s time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions. Who are you and what do you want?

Who am I?

I am a workaholic and a procrastinator, or really, a pseudowork-aholic and a deep procrastinator. I am a flawed, obnoxious human being.

What do I want?

To keep drawing, to keep writing, to someday conduct research in engineering/physics, to be healthier, to learn different languages, to spend time with family and friends, to meet interesting people, and most importantly, to become a better person.

Not much else really matters.

Not sure if I like the doodles by themselves or if I like them posing with my watercolor brushes and pens.

Why I Drink My Tea Without Sugar

Earl grey, man, earl grey. It sucks when you run out of it.

The box of earl grey on my bookshelf is now only useful for storing index cards until I buy more sachets of earl grey, which will likely be in their own box. This reminded me of another item to add to my to-do list.

314. Find decent earl grey sachets/tea bags and buy them.

If you have recommendations for tea, please let me know. I’m not well versed at all in tea.

Fair warning: The following is boring, brief anecdote of why I drink tea. If you just came to see the doodle, then scroll to the bottom and skip the entry entirely which says, in TL;DR terms: I drink sugarless tea because it makes me feel miserable.

But anyways, a pattern in my recent posts is the continuous presence of a trip down memory lane — like everything else that reminds me of everything else, earl grey tea reminded me of the first time I tried a London Fog latte.

I hated it.

And although I hyperlinked (above) an article by Kara Newman of Tasting Table which praises this latte, I’m going to have to disagree due to personal preference and the somewhat pretentious history lesson of yours truly.

The first time I tried tea was when I was around 6 years old, when I sipped a little of my grandfather’s green tea after asking him for a small teacup of the blend. It was bitter “hot leaf juice.” As a child, my mind made the instant association, equating all tea with bitterness — literally and emotionally — a generalization that will soon be subverted the moment I tried jasmine tea a few years ago at a small dim sum place.

The tea experience was not life-changing, but it was significantly less bitter. And my mom laughed after I told her about grandpa’s tea.

“Obviously. Green tea is supposed to be bitter. He steeps it longer.”

“Why?”

“It tastes better stronger.”

Some other time that I was at Second Cup, I saw the menu and didn’t feel like coffee or a smoothie. Instead, I decided to be a cheapskate for a day and picked the cheapest (or almost cheapest) drink on the menu: tea. Earl grey tea sounded like the cooler name among the teas, and I chose it on a whim.

And I don’t know why, but I got it. I finally got why my grandpa liked drinking bitter tea. It tasted sturdier and richer, and the aroma hit stronger. It was the most pleasant drink I had in a long time.

…is what I wanted to say, but it’s only true if I think about it long enough.

No, the real truth of why I still drink bitter tea and steep my tea for over two hours is because it makes me feel miserable. It makes work feel like work. It makes life seem feel like those nihilistic teenage years again. And it grounds me to my sardonic side.

So if London Fog latte is the sweeter side of life, then instead of tasting delightful, it tasted saccharine and wrong. The vanilla and milk blocked out the bergamot and natural bitterness of earl grey, almost like an “ignorance is bliss” approach to life. Almost like a sweet lie that covered up the bitter truth.

I concentrate better with tea because I felt misery each time I took a gulp. Yet because earl grey tea provides a lovely aroma that smells untainted with sugar, it felt like it just…was. It just was.

So the long answer to the question of why I drink my tea without sugar: I don’t know, honestly. I just drink it, and I like drinking unpleasantness.

Or the better question: Why do I drink my tea bitter at all? It might have come from my grandfather, who never struck me as miserable, or it might have come from my weird way of appreciating misery. Tea doesn’t keep me awake or keep me calm or trigger that smiling-tea-aficionado-face in the ads.

I guess bitter earl grey tea is paradoxically wonderful because it’s unafraid of being both fragrant and miserable at the same time. The reward is managing to finish the abominable charming thing.

I would have used “tea watercolor” but again, ran out of tea in the house. Note to self: Will be buying more and downing the suckers in the near future.

Just realized that it’s been 9 days of posts, 9 days of randomness, and 9 days of doodles with stick figures wearing top hats.

Feeling

I felt it.

The sensation of raw music honed by weeks of practice. Yet tiny, unnoticeable imperfections lingered in the air. Rather than detract from the orchestration, they humanized the piece, reminding me that these musicians were classmates, and some of them, friends.

I used to have nothing to do with the band wing at our school. Separated off in building 8, the orchestras and bands that practice were nothing more than a club that exists, even if many of my friends were in music. I play piano (courtesy of my parents) but music never came to me as a calling, a raison d’être. I played because I liked it almost matter-of-factly, and occasionally it moved me, but to exaggerate it in melodrama would be a lie.

But when music does move me, it truly touches me.

I watched our school orchestra for the first time a few months back and as it was my first time hearing a live orchestra, the memory was profoundly vivid. If you have ever sat a few feet away from a live orchestra, you probably experienced how the music transcends into your body and reverberates through your soul. It is nothing like hearing a YouTube video or a CD. You feel the music more deeply, more intimately, and whatever invisible barrier existed between your ears and your earbuds seems all the more annoying the next time you listen to the piece at home. I use earbuds much less often now.

I dropped by to help out a friend in the band room today. She is playing piano with the orchestra and it’s very neat, being a part of producing music. I was reminded again why composers wrote music, why conductors led music, and why musicians played music. Music and humanity existed side by side, intersecting lives day by day.

…

As I walked out to the parking lot to be picked up, I thought about things. To practice for months and months only to produce one performance lasting less than 15 minutes…it seems almost illogical to the amount of time sacrificed for such a small reward. Yet when you heard it, logic melted away. It no longer mattered.

And yet, I would have needed to tell my younger self to stop being so logical and to stop thinking about the clock when practicing. I would have told the eight-year-old me to suck it up and to just play it because the act of creating something wonderful mattered. And the kid probably wouldn’t get it because the Nintendo DS was sitting five feet away.

Well, wait until you’re older, kid. But by then, you won’t get a choice.

By then, you’ll just feel it.

…and you’ll never escape. No, seriously, orchestral pieces are replaying in my head and I can’t get them to stop. Please help (not really).

No, we had an upright piano, not something as awesome as this. But I’d like to imagine my younger self would’ve loved to have a grand piano.

“You’ve Never Seen Snow Before?”

 

In the lovely state of Florida, snow is rarer than a…than a…(than a half-way decent metaphor from me)…

I give up, snow hasn’t shown up in Florida since January 19, 1977. Even with the abnormal winters that have been shifting later and later with each passing year, Florida snow has never fallen in my short lifetime. It is no lie that we Floridians joke often of a perpetual summer, and while I am glad that our winter has passed and shows no signs of returning, I cannot help but wish for snow. In anticipation for CPW, I checked the weather forecast and found out that tomorrow, a 33 degree Fahrenheit snow day will grace Boston, MA.

Or technically, 34 degree Fahrenheit snow day will grace Cambridge, MA.

If there is such a thing as fate, then it is playing a charming joke on me. About eleven years ago, my family went up to Canada to visit family, and somehow, we missed the time when snow was falling. Fast forward to 8th grade on our class Washington D.C. trip, we somehow missed seeing snow by one week. Fast forward to 10th grade on my class Europe trip in March, we also missed seeing snow while still walking through a cold, rainy London. Fast forward (again) to 11th grade, when I went up to New Jersey with our debate team for the Princeton tournament in December, and I missed seeing snow again.

And I guess since CPW starts on Thursday, I won’t be seeing too much snow, if any. By the time the weekend comes, the negligible snow would have melted away.

I presume people who live in snowy areas will tell me snow is overrated. And they are probably right. Snow is likely the worst thing to shovel out of a driveway (sorry, I wouldn’t know what that’s like) and creates a muddy mess after it melts. And even I will admit that when it gets cold, I feel less productive and more likely to huddle under the covers. But I cannot help but want to see snow in the future.

I still remember my elementary school friends talking about flying up to Boston, or Chicago, or some other large northern city.

“Are you traveling this break?”

My answer is usually, “No, just staying home. What about you?”

And if it was winter break, the conversation would turn to snow.

“You’ve never seen snow before?”

Most of my friends would put on incredulous faces and would go about inviting me with them. But we were 2nd graders, and my parents didn’t know their parents. It wouldn’t have worked, but I’m glad we were still innocent enough to earnestly believe in things like that. Fast forward (again) to today and I still have never seen snow except in pictures online.

Snow, I had thought as a kid, was reserved for people who could afford to fly north in winter break.

Snow, I had believed and still believe, was special.

Most people see snow in winter, but for my family, holiday break was never a good time for vacations. December was the time when restaurants were the busiest, the time when tips were highest, and the time when my father came home the latest (around 1AM usually).  It wasn’t just a bad time to take vacations; it was the worst time, money-wise. And I don’t like begging my parents to see something so silly like snow in comparison to family income, despite how badly I wanted to.

But it’s not just me. My parents, my grandparents, and my brother have never seen snow either. When they spent years on paperwork and immigrated from China to America, they began to work long hours in a restaurant and did everything for my brother and I to go to college. Vacationing, and naturally snow, were trivial in comparison.

—

 

 

After I go to college and probably live more comfortably than my parents have ever lived in their entire lifetimes, I want to show them snow, because seeing snow, even if it is a muddy mess, is the act of breathing, living, and feeling a new experience. Seeing snow is like a rite of passage, because it meant that somehow, we managed to do something we never could have done before. It meant that I managed to take care of myself and relieve my family of their worries over my future.

I was once convinced by my parents (Asian parents, gotta love ’em) that college is the key to success, but now that I am older, college has become a door that leads to another door, instead of a master key that opens all doors. In the coming years at college, I would be breathing, living, and feeling a new experience. And everything feels okay and well.

I’d like to believe that the choice to attend college was a decision of my own volition, a path that I forged because I wanted to go instead of being told to go. Going to CPW alone and flying alone for the first time means that my parents have grown to trust me enough to let me go. And thankfully, letting me go, be it to CPW or college, means they just as equally trust that I will return to them, hopefully wiser and kinder than before, having experienced more opportunities than they could ever imagine.

And naturally, such opportunities include seeing snow.

You know how in music, there are B-sides, and sometimes, the B-sides are better than the A-sides? This is one of those times where the B-side (without lines) of an index card is more suitable.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

I considered putting up a blank doodle to celebrate but that seemed arrogant and rude. After all, if the purpose of April Fool’s is to create silly fun, then silly stick figure doodles should belong too. Instead, I did calligraphy with my Pilot Parallel Pen (3.8 mm nib) and drew a stick figure next to it:

For the non-fountain pen enthusiasts, feathering is when those jagged “feather-like” areas appear while writing because of the way the paper absorbs the ink. Ideally, I should not be using watercolor or fountain pen ink on cheap index cards if possible.

I am not an expert on fountain pens, even though I’ve been using them regularly for over three years. I usually carry fountain pens with me to school because they make writing more pleasurable and it’s really cool.

At school, I am frequently asked where I buy “calligraphy pens” or “fountain pens.”  I generally point my friends to simply look online. Numerous online stores including Amazon and eBay sell fountain pens, even older pens that are no longer produced. Currently, I am hunting for a good wet noodle fountain pen, but unfortunately, the good ones are usually upwards of $300 and my parents could not spend that much on one single pen. That’s alright, since I can buy a restored pen once I get enough time for a part time job to earn my own money.

I could argue I am an “old soul” (pen geek is more accurate) but the term is somewhat age discriminatory and in all honesty, many teenagers are pretty tolerant of or even enjoy “antiquities” such as old music or in this case, fountain pens. Using the term “old soul” implies that it is unusual for young people to enjoy “old” things, which understates the impact that these “old relics” have on our current generation. I assure you that it is not unusual to see students wearing old band T-shirts to school or discussing classical literature. Appreciation among teenagers should be encouraged, not labeled as unusual, even if the “unusual” is a positive label.

For me, the use of fountain pens became absorbed into my lifestyle to the point of normalcy.  It is not “unusual.” Admittedly, in my freshman year, I received a lot of questions about my “new cool pen” but now that I have amassed quite a few more fountain pens and write with them consistently, it has become accepted and perhaps it changed the way I act. Even people who have never met me don’t ask questions anymore about my pens, and this “new normal” became…normal.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

—

ADDENDUM: No, to clarify, it is not an April Fool’s joke that I like fountain pens. This actually turned out to be a more serious discussion than I expected it to be.

As always, I welcome questions and blog suggestions in the Comments below.

Tutoring Days are Awesome

I tutor a lot at school, mostly because I have nothing better to do after school and I find teaching people fun. I don’t know why, but it can be fun.

I managed to tutor three Algebra II students at our after school session, to go to piano class, to get home for my online course, and to tutor another student over the Internet. So awesome seeing kids who want to learn math (and not at the last minute before the exam either!), because the best moment when they finally “get” it.

It’s almost midnight, but I’m getting a doodle in. Experimenting with coffee “watercolor” on the desk:

Good night, world.

Hello, world.

Hello. I’m Ivy.  Like the plant.

Well, even ivy vines have to start sprouting somewhere.

Ten things about me:

1. I’m an 18-year-old kid who is about to go off to college. I’m pretty excited.
2. I have black (dark brown?) hair that used to fall to my waist until I cut it.
3. I wish to travel the world and learn different languages. Currently, I’m working on Spanish. A veces es difícil pero estoy aprendiendo.
4. I write in a personal journal, sometimes in Petrarchan sonnetry. It calms me.
5. The nerd in me is fascinated with the sciences, especially chemistry and physics. Yes, when I was a little kid, I wanted that periodic table of elements wooden table.
6. Okay, so I never got said table, but I did learn to recite the elements in order. That was probably worth more than the wooden table itself.
7. Drawing is awesome. If I get inspired, it is the best feeling in the world.
8. My eyes need glasses because without them, everything is blurry. However, if I take off my glasses at night, the street lights and traffic lights become floating discs of flickering golds and reds in the darkness. It looks like bokeh photography, but I don’t need a camera and Photoshop to see it.
9. “Bokeh-vision” is quite beautiful until I walk into a lamppost. I have walked into doors, into walls, into cars (I don’t mean through the door), but not into lampposts yet. I’ll keep you posted.
10. Evidently, I am not perfect but I like the thought of self improvement. I might slip up sometimes, but I try to learn from mistakes. One of the reasons why I decided to draw (at the very least) a silly doodle every day was to prove to myself I could commit to something. So here I am. Let’s see where this goes. But…

…the most important thing about me is…

…my small obsession with the quality of patches of grass, because one of the nicest things in the world is laying on a patch of grass. If you find a good patch of grass, do let me know. And if you see a crazy person using a backpack as a pillow to lay in the grass, that is probably me.

I wish most patches of grass were this green?!

If you ask me what I’m doing, I’ll probably tell you that I’m probably watching the clouds. From space, cloud-watchers probably seem like tiny specks staring up, up, up…

But isn’t nice how us tiny specks still try to spark changes in our world? Because while I don’t think a doodle a day can feed a hungry person or generate money for a family living below the poverty line, creating art is important, no matter how silly.

“The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward.”

-Kurt Vonnegut

Little things like that are what move me and it does not take much to make me happy.

I’ll be fine, wherever I am, preferably in a place with a nice patch of grass.