Category Archives: Observations and Reflections

My Biggest Mistake Applying for Jobs Post-Graduation

Posted on by under Career, Observations and Reflections, UBC

Sorry for the clickbaity title, but hey, we know it works.

I went through four very self-assured years as an English major, hating the “What will you do post-grad?” question but always having some kind of answer: one that would satisfy…

  1. my grandma
  2. my partner’s parents
  3. my friend pursuing a Bachelor of Science
  4. etc.

I won’t bother giving you the half-artificial answers I gave these people, most of whom were genuinely and benignly curious about what kind of life I would have with this kind of undergraduate “training,” if you even want to call it that, but here’s the real answer: I had only but a faint, faint clue. As I approached graduation, I fixated a lot on the people who I knew graduated with English degrees from UBC. Outside of graduate school students, none of them had the same job. Editor at Penguin Random House. Sociology professor. Teacher. Lawyer. Public relations professional. Executive director at a non-profit.

More importantly, none of them planned out the steps to get where they ended up at that time that I spoke to them. I was hyper aware of this fact throughout my job application process, so I wasn’t too worried about the fact that I didn’t know exactly what the next steps were.

In my journal roughly around graduation time, I wrote out all the things I knew I cared about in a professional life, and they were vague, broad things like being community-centred, words-based, team-oriented. Having a work-life balance. Believing in my employer’s mission or cause. This approach was right, but not necessarily helpful at the time when I was applying for jobs.

So my approach shifted, for the worse, toward “not being picky.” Despite my confidence that I would be some kind of okay, I also knew that I didn’t know what was really out there, what I was good at, and what the world wanted from me. So I applied for jobs thinking I didn’t really have the room to be picky. In other words, I applied for jobs that I knew I wouldn’t take even if I was made an offer, which put me in difficult positions, because I would either get offers that felt like I should accept but didn’t want to, or I couldn’t commit fully to a hiring process, which really shows during an interview. Employers can tell when you’re bought in, and when you’re not.

Here was my biggest mistake: I should have, and could have, been picky.

I want to emphasize that what I’m sharing here is my specific experience. I know that this isn’t the case for everyone, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, and what I’m saying is: Have optimism, but it’s not going to be easy. Applying for jobs was draining. I shouldn’t have been, but by June, I felt discouraged and impatient. I also wanted to be earning money. And, I can’t emphasize this enough, applying for jobs was so much work. I am no stranger to the job application process: the nature of getting jobs through UBC, whether through co-op (which I didn’t do) or internship programs or Work Learn (both of which I did do), is you have to apply for multiple positions. So I was used to applying for multiple jobs at once, but I cannot stress the dramatic increase in volume for post-graduation job applications versus during school, for positions meant only for students.

I kept a spreadsheet to keep track of jobs I applied for, which I’m not saying you have to do, but if you know me then you know that lists and spreadsheets and planning and tracking is just generally kind of my style. Largely due to my “don’t-be-picky” strategy, I ended up applying for over 50 jobs until I got an offer for a position I was excited about at an organization that I believed in. Had I known at the beginning what I know now, that number would probably be cut in half.

So, how did my application process change? After doing a few interviews (over the phone and in person), getting one offer and a few rejections, and doing a little bit of travelling, I realized that I needed to stop applying for jobs I didn’t see myself accepting, ever. If I didn’t like it from the posting, I wouldn’t like it during the interview or even if I get the offer.

I also started focusing on the opportunities in front of me. I got so caught up in jobs that I thought were such a good fit that when I got invited to interviews for other jobs, I would only half-commit to those interviews because I thought other invitations would be coming. They didn’t.

When Dixon showed up as an opportunity, I genuinely thought I didn’t have much of a chance, based both on my experience over the last couple of months and how (un)qualified I thought I was. Despite what I thought, I was invited to an interview. I did my research (unbeknownst to me when i applied, I had two friends who had worked at Dixon). I went to the interview, and at that point, I knew that my predictions didn’t really amount to anything, so I wasn’t holding my breath. I had also, around the same time, interviewed for a digital internship for a private sector job that I was pretty confident I would get, and I would have accepted either, but I knew I wanted Dixon.

I accepted because–and I can’t emphasize this enough–Dixon had such a good reputation in my community, and the people were obviously fantastic from the get-go. Everything else fell into place perfectly around that: I would be challenged in this position because, even if I am qualified (which I am), it’s a step up for me. That was another reason I accepted. Yet another reason was that the position was only four days a week. I could have been making more at another job with full-time hours, but this way I would have time and energy to develop professionally in other ways, or time to devote to myself, or I could keep teaching skating, which would make up the income that I lose in working only 28 hours a week.

But at the time that I accepted, these things weren’t obvious yet. I mentioned earlier that I had been feeling discouraged and impatient: these were factors, and I can’t deny that. I wanted to start making money, and I would have accepted the next offer I got at that point, especially since I was being pickier in my process. I got incredibly lucky with my situation, but I also won’t diminish the fact that I worked hard to be able to get here.

I planned out almost every hour of my four years of undergrad. So you can understand my frustration with this fact, something which I knew but didn’t really learn until this spring: there is no exact science to applying for jobs, or being offered jobs. Sometimes it really is just timing. Fit. Luck. Things that are completely out of your control. It sucks. But it’s not so dreary as all the Grown-Ups told me when I talked about my English degree. My biggest takeaway from this experience is a real faith in the Universe in being able to work things out, if not in ways that you expect. More often, actually, in ways that you don’t expect. So be patient. Trust the process. And, especially if you’re a liberal arts major, be brave. Be open to the possibilities, and be especially open to the possibilities you can’t even imagine.

2017 Reflections

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections

Rather unbelievably, 2017 has come to an end. Last year was an incredible one for personal growth, as can be seen by the events documented in this blog, even if sparingly, and even if the fake news would have me believe the world is rapidly approaching its demise. Although that might not be far from the truth. But I don’t want to talk about that too much.

So many of my dreams came true this year, which just reiterates for me the value of dreaming big, planning, and believing. Following through on big plans becomes much easier when you do all the thinking beforehand, I’ve learned.

I saw my name in print. I made the Dean’s List, finally. I returned to Los Angeles and Las Vegas after two summers away, reuniting with many of my family members. I visited Europe for the first time, travelling solo on a new continent and new countries and cities. I worked my first full-time job. I got some scholarships.

And my favourite: I can’t even begin to wrap my head around all the incredible people I met and got to know this year. I feel like I am at a point in my personhood where the idea of making new friends becomes confusing and daunting, so I never even imagined meeting the kindred spirits whom I got to know this year, but I am so grateful for them. My Edinburgh flatmates, my new Vancouver classmates, and everyone in between, like my old friends who have stuck around, my incredible support network of family & basically family, and my new mentors and role models at work: I’m so happy to have you in my life.

Ultimately, it was the incredible people who made this year for me, showed me the value of friendship and the power of shared values and interests. Like I say, I didn’t even realize I wanted so many of the new friends I made this year, let alone did I realize I needed them—to renew my faith in humanity and my love of life, and people.

This penultimate semester of my BA was an immense hurdle to cap off an otherwise relatively easy-breezy and wonderful year, although 2017 was all the better for that challenge, of course. Despite the struggle of last semester (and being scaled down in psychology [grumble grumble]), I remain steadfast in my belief that I like school, but this semester also confirmed for me that I am ready for something new in my life… at least for now.

The proverbial Bend in the Road finally approaches, and I see the road clearly until April, at which point the road bends and I can’t see beyond. I can suppose that adulthood (ha) lies after the bend in the road. Hopefully full-time hours which pay money and don’t make me too miserable (if I set the bar low, I’m less likely to be disappointed), probably studying for standardized testing for law school and grad school, and applying for further ed eventually, but I have no further details, and it has never been this murky for me. I think maybe that should (?) scare me, but it actually doesn’t. I have well-established dreams in place and this past year has shown me that that will be enough to carry me through, even if ways that I don’t expect.

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6 Lessons I Learned from my First Full-time Job

Posted on by under Career, Observations and Reflections, UBC

I just finished a Canada Summer Jobs position at Mom2Mom Child Poverty  Initiative, and am heading back to school (for the last time in my BA!!!) next week.

After spending quite literally all my money in Europe earlier this summer, I returned home at the poorest I’ve been since I started making my own money, and all I really wanted was a job–ideally one that would pad my resume, pay off my trip, and would understand that I was going back to school in the fall. Mom2Mom’s Canada Summer Jobs posting showing up on my Facebook feed was absolutely providential for all those reasons, but I definitely got so much more than just a job and paycheque. I learned so many things that I can hardly distill it into a list, but here are 3 things I learned about working, and then 3 things I learned from working at Mom2Mom.

It was my first time working a full-time position. There was probably only one week in my life that I worked upwards of 35 hours before this summer, so having a 9-5 office job was new to me. The weekend before I started at Mom2Mom, I was chatting with some friends who had been doing full-time co-op jobs all summer or all year, and they talked like people tired of their full-time jobs, tired of spending 40 hours at the same place doing the same thing every day, and listening to them, I felt a little bit of dread for what I thought I knew would be a dull, mundane office life.

It was also my first time working for a non-profit, although I’ve always been involved with a number of non-profits, always a volunteer. I’ve always known that it’s not glamorous, and that it would never make me rich, which is perhaps why I never seriously considered working in non-profits as a career.

On both fronts, my expectations and assumptions were seriously questioned and then proven wrong.

#1:

I bring so much more than just “English major” to the table. It was very cool that my boss graduated from the same program and the same university that I did, and it probably helped both in terms of getting the job and in terms of getting the job done, but what I actually did at Mom2Mom, and what I did well, cannot be fully expressed when I tell strangers that I am an English major, Law & Society minor.

#2

I distinctly remember my mom telling me when I was very, very young that she wanted to do anything but an office job. I’ve seen the media caricature the office drone at a computer, tapping at keys for 8 hours and then going home to a greyscale life. What I forgot to consider is how I would fit into that frame. I have always been a go-getter. I love setting goals for myself and getting things done.

Working a 9-5 office job just means that I can leave work and I can actually leave work. When I leave school, I come home to do more school. Every English major knows that doing reading for pleasure is out of the question during the semester; sure, you might be on top of your reading (if you’re lucky!), but you can always read ahead, so why bother starting something for your own leisure reading?

This summer, I got to spend my transit time reading books that I chose. I got to write more, watch Netflix when I got home, go to the gym, hang out with friends, and more, because I had a 9-5 office job. My life became fuller of things I love and am passionate about because working at Mom2Mom left me with time and energy to do so. It also meant I could go back to work ready to get stuff done. I was a better employee because I was better to myself.

#3

I have always loved school. I love reading deeply, writing thoughtfully, and thinking critically. That, coupled with the fact that I like a challenge, always suggested to me that staying in academia makes sense, because wouldn’t a 9-5 office job, doing admin or comms, be mundane?

In fact, I found myself confronting impossible problems and internal conflicts throughout my term at Mom2Mom, and I was always thinking critically, which brings me to my third set of lessons.

#1

Moms love their kids. Love cannot be measured by gifts, involvement in extracurriculars, or public displays of affection. Moms don’t all start from the same place.

#2

Poverty cannot be solved by work. It cannot be solved by throwing money at it. Because not everyone learns how to budget. Because families get stressed. Because children grow, and have needs. Because making ends meet can only do so much, and because emergencies happen. Poverty cannot ever be reduced to a single root problem.

So many of my peers–myself included–think that we can create the most efficient change by creating and changing legislation, or advocating for the underdog. I still think that the law is a powerful tool, and I’d love to explore that, but legislation is slow and it doesn’t focus about the individual.

Government services doesn’t imagine solutions to a single mother’s broken laptop for school: Mom2Mom does. Community members do. Volunteers reach out to their communities, look into their resources, and do the work themselves. Change doesn’t have to be large-scale and dramatic to be worthwhile. We don’t have to “fix” poverty. It is enough, and it is also so much more, to help make changes for the individual and the family.

#3

I am privileged. I get to take out student loans to attend one of the top universities in the world. I got to grow up competing in organized sport. I have had fancy, shiny electronics, I’ve accumulated books and expensive clothes and accessories. I am a woman and a visible minority, and I am privileged. My job earnings at Mom2Mom could have helped feed a family, and I thought about this every time it felt like I was wasting time.

When you plug in the numbers, it doesn’t make sense and the system sucks. But liberal arts majors know what accountants don’t: privilege, society, and humanity don’t work like an accounting spreadsheet.

I come out from this incredible summer job so much more grateful and simultaneously so much more critical of my degree. I recognize that it equips me with the skills to do great things, but I am also so much more than my degree. I love university, and I am excited to go back, but I am also so excited to finish; there is a world beyond May 2018 and I can’t wait to see what it looks like, but thanks to Mom2Mom, I am assured that that world is not so bleak as others might have me believe.

A great and terrible beauty, and: why we visit graves

Posted on by under Chronicled Adventures, Observations and Reflections, Travel

I have visited cities where it is great fun to be a capital-“T” Tourist.

Here I am eating pizza on Wall Street in New York City, wearing a dumb Statue of Liberty headpiece. (about as touristy as it gets)

Paris, however, is not one of those cities. Being a solo female tourist in Paris is daunting. Walking down boulevard de Rochechouart, where my hostel is, I found that eyes tended to linger on me—something I’m not accustomed to—and I figured that I must either be very beautiful or very strange to the Parisians, neither of those being particularly reassuring. I am lucky in that I generally don’t live/work in a place frequented by catcallers, so until being in Paris, I never had to learn how to deal with them.

On the British isles, I could fake being a local. I could pass off as one: I even got asked for directions a few times, and I could even give it. But Paris was impenetrable to me. It was partly the language, partly the solitude, the timidity that makes me stick out like a sore thumb.

I dreamt of Paris for so long, and I was so determined to crack it. I was determined to find some kind of home in Paris, like I found in all the other cities I visited. I kept remembering the conversation I had with my flatmate Alex in Edinburgh, when I shared my travel plans post-Scotland. When she found out I was going to Paris, she asked me, “Do you idealize Paris?” Such an oddly phrased question and it rang in my head the whole time I toured the city, once I finally got there. I began to realize that my idealization of Paris was preventing me from truly knowing it: there was  Paris in my head, and it was different from the Paris I was experiencing.

I never thought of Paris as being hot and humid, or smelly and crowded. I never thought of the way scammers are quick to spot tourists and take advantage of them. I never imagined being in Paris with hardly a euro to spend, so sick that I could hardly walk in the heat without getting lightheaded, getting up in the middle of the night in my hostel bed because I couldn’t stop coughing.

All this being said, I still want to and believe I can feel at home in Paris. I’d love to wake up in a little Parisian apartment, with the doors open to a Juliet balcony with flowers blooming on the railing. I’d love to ride a bike down to la boulangerie ou la fleuriste and carry a bag of baguettes or bouquet of cut flowers in my arms. I would love to be able to talk to the locals fearlessly in French. Paris was still beautiful to me, and thinking about it now that I am home, I know that when I go back to Paris, I will be ready for her.

On my last full day in Europe, I visited the Père Lachaise cemetery and mused on how quickly the last two months went by. I had seen and done so much, met so many people, that the 7 and a half weeks somehow also managed to seem like it wasn’t a long enough time. And yet the trip that I’d been dreaming about for more than year had come and gone so quickly.

At the cemetery, I visited Oscar Wilde’s grave and memorial, and I kept thinking about a class I had taken with Dr. Miranda Burgess in second year, where she shared pictures of Oscar Wilde’s memorial on her own visit to Paris. I remember her asking the class why we thought people visited graves. I don’t remember the conclusion of that discussion except that it seemed like Miranda was never satisfied with our suggestions.

It occurred to me that day that the whole trip had been structured around exploring a big graveyard of European history, art, culture, and literature. All the places I’d visited were rich with past lives, past moments, and memories.

But in between visiting Shakespeare’s grave in late May and Oscar Wilde’s in early July, I’d managed to also live, and find life. I’d met so many cool people with interesting, funny things to say about places they had come from, had been, and will go to. I had reached my own conclusions about how to live my own life, to make my own art, to write and tell my own story.

So, Dr. Burgess, maybe that’s why we visit graves. A reason to go to a place, but with the hope—and expectation—that we discover something entirely different from the reason we came. I know that’s what happened for me.

Dealing with language barriers

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

My relationship with the English language is complicated. For one thing, I love it: I study English language and literature and enjoy doing so, and I also speak, think, and dream in English. However, I also speak English because my parents brought me to a land colonized by people who spoke English and forced English upon the peoples indigenous to that land. Furthermore, I myself was born and spent much of my childhood in a colonized country where many different languages and dialects are spoken, where speaking English is attached to a certain kind of person, and being “inglesera” is usually not said with fondness.

I find myself confronting every facet of my complicated relationship with the English language while I am abroad, despite the fact that I am visiting not only an English-speaking country, but England itself. In every corner of Britain that I have visited so far, I have been forced to face the fact that the way I speak and the words I use betray me as a foreigner.

Something an American tourist told me in Glasgow about an interaction she’d had with a native Scot:

“Accent? I don’t have an accent, you have an accent!”

My philosophy about being a tourist is that I enjoy being a tourist: I don’t shy away from big tourist spots like Buckingham Palace or the Brooklyn Bridge, and I bristle when people complain that these places are “flooded with tourists” and complaining while they are tourists themselves, but I also dislike looking like a tourist, especially as a solo traveller. So, I do not dress like a backpacker, I don’t carry around a camera, and I avoid paper maps like the plague, but I find that my accent betrays me. I am not usually shy when interacting with strangers, but I found myself suddenly speaking quietly whenever I had to interact with native Londoners, because I was so aware that my rhotic dialect makes me stand out in conversation.

Something I overheard in London, said by someone with a North American accent:

“The French could speak English, but they choose not to.”

Collectively, my flat-mates have a working understanding of upwards of eight languages. Having grown up somewhat bilingual, but never having learned a language to a working proficiency (we’ll find out how functional my French is when I visit Paris in July), I have so much admiration for people who learn languages in their adulthood. I have especial admiration for people who learn English, which has rules that even I am still learning, and—as my flat-mate aptly put it—is “so idiomatic”.

The problem with English being so widely spoken, so dominant, is that it does not give native speakers much reason to learn other languages. My multilingual European flat-mates, upon listening to me and my American dialect pine for the knowledge of other languages, say: “But you speak English!” as if it’s enough, and I suppose it is, and yet I know that it isn’t.

More things I’ve heard:

  • From a Spaniard working in Glasgow hoping to work in Canada someday: “I came to Scotland to improve my English for when I move to Canada, but the Scottish accents… … whenever I meet an American or a Canadian I love listening to them talk!”
  • From my mom, to her goddaughter raised in England: “Do you have an accent?! Jia says you have an accent.”
  • From an American tourist in Glasgow: “Now… I mean… I hope this doesn’t offend you, but… I’m sorry, I don’t think you have a Canadian accent at all!”
  • And finally, on an episode of Rick and Morty, which I was watching thanks to my flatmates: “As they say in Canada, peace oot!”

A blog post written by nostalgia, gratefulness, and wanderlust

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

This was written on the day of, but hours before, the recent terror attacks in London, in particular at Borough Market.

Over the past few days, I have had a lot about big moments, seen a lot of impressive sights, and been to many meaningful places, and certainly when I think back on my first time in London, I will probably remember seeing the Rosetta Stone, or the incredible way that Westminster Abbey and its stunning architecture made me feel (i.e., very religious, more than I’ve felt in my life), or sitting in the Palace Theatre watching a show that I never imagined being able to get tickets to see.

But when I tell you that I love London, I want you to know that I fell in love with London in the moments of solitude and quiet found between those big moments as much as I fell in love in those big moments. I loved learning the art of navigating the tube, finding home in the ability to traverse London’s underground maze. I loved sitting atop a double decker bus and watching people and black cabs hurry by modern shops housed in old buildings. I fell in love with London sitting with food from Pret in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, leaning against the trunk of an oak in Hyde Park with my journal in my lap, or sitting on the banks of the Thames with a “butty” from Borough Market and a view of Tower Bridge.

It was hard to be alone, but London was undoubtedly one of the best places for me to learn how to be alone. Leading up to this trip, I made a point to spend time with all of my favourite people, and after each of those times, I reflected on how much I valued each of them, and how sorry I was to be leaving them, how grateful I was for their genuine excitement for me. Now that I am away from my friends and family, however, I find the feelings and thoughts I directed towards them being reflected back onto myself. I am learning how to spend time with myself and how to value myself.

The solitude also gave me ample room to meet new people, to accept the friendliness of strangers. My first hostel experience was certainly not luxurious comfort, and I did not expect it to be. I am excited to have my own room again, and I will not miss having to open so many doors just to use the toilet, or having to fish my belongings not only out of a suitcase but unlock it from a locker. Despite the many things I didn’t like about staying in a hostel, however, I cannot imagine staying anywhere else anytime soon—not only for the economic benefits of staying in a hostel, but for the people I was able to meet and the conversations I was able to have with them. I am grateful for those people—a local from Kent, a seasoned traveller from Australia, girls from South Carolina studying abroad, a man from Virginia finishing a doctorate in Britain with good things to say about the UC system, and a fellow Canadian (albeit from the opposite coast) beginning a new chapter of her life in London.

Being surrounded by people from all over in a new place also gave me appreciation for the ability to truthfully say, “I am from Canada.” I’ve found that it’s a privilege to be able to make that claim; saying it never failed to bring delight to the people I met. I am so lucky to be able to pack Canada’s international reputation with me on my travels. Interestingly, however, one morning I braided my hair and the cafeteria lady at the hostel asked me how I did it, and commented that she has to ask a relative to braid her hair for her. When she said that the relative was from the Philippines, I said, “Oh, that’s where I’m from!” I didn’t think anything of it at the time when I said it, but later I mulled over this gift of mine, to be from two places.

As I get closer and closer to Scotland, and the plains are becoming increasingly hillier and mountainous, I realized that despite my bouts of loneliness in London, I will miss that city. Around three or four days into my London adventure, I found that I wasn’t sure what to do with my time, but now that I’m gone, I can’t help feeling like I’ve only barely scratched the surface, that I desperately need more time, even with the six days I spent there—a longer stay than those of many of the travellers I met.

What I’m discovering with travel is that I rarely visit a place, and then leave it feeling finished. I am never finished in Los Angeles; on top of visiting my family, I always find there are a number of reasons to go back. There will always be shows to see and food to eat in New York City, and we still haven’t been up the Empire State Building. I haven’t visited the Strand bookstore in the City, either. I still have to see all the parks in Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando. And now, as I leave London, I am leaving with a to do list to be put on hold until I’m able to go back.

Still, in the event that I am never able to go back to these places, I know that I loved each of those cities as fully as I could while I was in them. I will surely remember all the big moments—climbing to the Hollywood sign, watching Wicked for the first time, seeing Hogwarts from the back of a fish in Seussland—but I have left these places knowing that I relished in the little moments, too. Those, I don’t need to remember. They exist fully and completely in their own present, and I am grateful that I lived in those moments.

All of these towns I’ve never heard of, racing past

Posted on by under Books, Observations and Reflections, Travel

Inside the train, up through the glass
My finger tracing
All of these towns I’ve never heard of racing past

– Amelie, “Times Are Hard for Dreamers”

Sitting alone, waiting for my train at Nottingham Station to depart for London St. Pancras, I find myself feeling rather anxious again. The comfort that I found in Nottingham with family friends, while reassuring when I was there, now produces an opposing effect as I leave them behind. I am finding that the freedom of travel—which I longed for so much a month ago while my mom was planning the family trip to Los Angeles—is overwhelming and frightening.

If home is found in the crevices of human experience, homesickness is most certainly found in the expanses of suitcase living: sharing a room, having to take toiletries with you to the bathroom and back, not being able to leave your belongings lying about. (Mommy, if you’re reading this: I leave my room messy because that’s just part of the experience of being at home!) I am excited to be able to leave my toothbrush on the bathroom counter, to unpack my clothes from my suitcase. (Maybe long-term solo travel isn’t for me after all. How distressing.)

For the first time since landing in England, it is dark and gloomy today, which reminds me of home and certainly helps me feel less anxious. With the greenery of the English countryside dampened by rainfall, England looks more and more familiar to my beloved Pacific Northwest.

Speaking of the English countryside, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ve never really felt like calling Vancouver the big city before, but having spent some time in Nottingham, I suddenly feel like quite a city girl. I love the outdoors, the open sky, seeing farm animals, and narrow, winding dirt roads, but I am excited to be in the city again—thus confirming for me once again that Vancouver, a city in between city and country, is truly the most perfect place for me.

Having said that, though, I don’t think I can stress enough how much the English midlands and the English countryside felt like home to me. As we drove back from Chatsworth House, widely believed to be the inspiration for Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (one of my favourite books), I looked around at the grids of farmland separated by stone walls and hedges and I found myself thinking about Dr. Dalziel’s Honours seminar on storytelling, and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd.

When I visited New York City, I was in the middle of reading Edward Rutherfurd’s monster book New York, and I felt familiar with NYC because of that book (and, of course, all of the movies and clichés), but what I feel in England is a truly different level. So many of the works that I’ve loved for so long, or have studied intensely—Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd, Shakespeare’s plays and poetry—were set in England. British authors seem to have truly taken the advice “write what you know” to heart, and with this beautiful place, they had good reason to.

What I’ve found in the crevices of human experience

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

Before I left, whenever I told people I was worried about possibly feeling homesick, almost every single person told me that I would be having way too much fun to be homesick.

I am not writing to say that those people are wrong, exactly… though I’ve been quite busy exploring, and having fun doing so, there are still other moments. When I am visiting tourist attractions, I am certainly not homesick, but during other moments, I still find myself at home, quite unexpectedly.

I have found home here, on the other side of the world, within the crevices of human experience. I have tasted home and the cooking of mom at home in the familiar Filipino dishes of Tita Ma’an’s making. While waiting for buses at bus stops on the wrong side of the street or standing on moving trains, I am transported to Lougheed Town Centre, to a moving sky train on the Millennium Line. Walking into Waterstones, even with my allergies (or “hay fever”) stuffing my nose, I find that all bookstores manage to smell exactly the same. At a public session at an ice rink, there is always that one guy on hockey skates going recklessly fast, cutting me off.

There are moments when I think about the comfort of my own bed at home, of the freedom to waste time or to watch Netflix or wander into a pantry and eat whatever’s in there, and during those moments I feel a little sad. Still, I find that I am reassured by the commonalities of living; I am so grateful for these commonalities, and to Tita Ma’an and her family for making me feel at home here in Britain, and I think it will help me through my own adventures, by making Britain feel far less foreign to me.

This must be what Tinder dating feels like

Posted on by under Observations and Reflections, Travel

Being in England for me is like coming across a creature you’ve only seen in dreams, or perhaps only online. Everything feels vaguely familiar. The hills and plant life look like those of home, so when I don’t look far into the distance as we roll along the motorways of the English countryside, I feel like I am home. I’ve also lived certain aspects of British living from books I’ve read, as many of us probably have: “loos” and “lifts”, great halls, double decker buses, trains rolling across British fields.

But of course, “visions are seldom all they seem”. I think that when visions manifest themselves in reality, the small details reveal themselves—even the ugly details. Much like how I imagine Tinder dating is like, places, like people, are rarely encapsulated sufficiently in photos and lines of text.

I came to the motherland of my academic discipline and my strongest language fully aware of the men (and, I suppose, women) who left this very land to conquer, collect, and colonize lands like the home from which I came. From my first glimpse at English land from above, as my plane landed at Gatwick airport, I looked down at the parcelled grid of farmland, remembering instantly that British colonizers forced that method of farming upon the Indigenous peoples of North America, whose method of farming the settlers ignored or disregarded.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling excited about finally being in the Old World. I was excited to touchdown on a continent I’d never been to, to get to know a country and culture I’ve only known secondhand, represented with purpose (à la Tinder). With the nagging thought that I was arriving in the region of the world from which North America’s original colonizers came, I continued on my British adventures anyway.

This feeling of dissonance didn’t go away; in fact, as we explored the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (already a problematic label on its own) and the Pitt Rivers Museum within it, I found myself and my experiences at odds with my values. Spanning all floors of the Pitt Rivers Museum—a large room with upper level floors overlooking the main floor below—was a Haida Gwaii totem pole, overlooking the maze of glass cases housing all kinds of archaeological artifacts, including masks, clothing, toys, weapons, and so on, of the Haida Gwaii people.

I wondered at a sign overlooking the room describing the totem pole as something that was “discouraged” by the missionaries who settled in North America, and sent totem poles and other similar meaningful pieces to be ogled at in the Old World—as I myself was doing at that moment—where the impression of Indigenous peoples becomes that of the Dead or Vanishing Indian. As I admired cases of various dolls, coins, or bows and arrows, I felt distinctly uncomfortable at the placement of cultural artifacts from the distant past beside the cultural treasures of the strong, living peoples of today.

At this point in the Tinder date, England seems to be saying somewhat problematic things, but not so offensive that it ruins the whole date; given the fact that England is so aesthetically pleasing, some potentially dubious comments can be disregarded at this point.

But then, England doesn’t hold the door open. As my awed eyes looked up at buildings from the past, admiring the unique architecture, my tired legs strolled along Oxford’s narrow walkways and unevenly paved streets, climbed up and down stairs or superfluous steps. All this difficulty, for those in wheelchairs and such, for the purpose of preserving old beauty.

Despite all this, I am captivated by the old beauty. This world is resilient, built by brick and stone and weathered by time. I am intrigued by its longevity, tradition, and I hunger for the thoughts born into people who walked these streets.

Despite its faults, England is still beautiful. England is very human. Stunning, awe inspiring, but equally fallible, and simultaneously so… containing multitudes, as humans do, and in more ways than one.

The most compelling argument for Mr. Cook’s Shakespeare conspiracy

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Observations and Reflections, Travel

In my final year of high school, I took Literature 12 with Mr. Cook, who was a firm believer of a Shakespeare conspiracy. When I say “firm believer,” I mean firm believer: he introduced the idea simply as though it was fact, as if it were common knowledge that “Shakespeare” was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. One of Mr. Cook’s biggest qualms with the idea of William Shakespeare having penned “Shakespeare’s” plays and poems was the (alleged) unlikelihood that some small town boy from Stratford-upon-Avon could dream up the politics of the aristocracy or royalty, of foreign countries, far-off places.

Today, I visited Stratford-upon-Avon, supposedly the most convincing piece of evidence that William Shakespeare couldn’t be the father of British English literature, the literary genius that the discipline holds him up to be. You understand how the idea dismantles a great bulk of my academic field: though I am not the most familiar with Shakespeare’s works as far as an English major goes, and I am skeptical of the British white male canon in general, I was eager to make a pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s home.

Although it is quite a bustling tourist destination now, with shops and cafes and big tour buses rolling through it, the market town’s medieval grid pattern of streets is still preserved, for the most part, meaning that Shakespeare would have little trouble navigating the town if he were to walk through it today.

Far from high street and the Shakespeare Centre, however, it is different. “I like it here… it’s quiet,” my incredibly hospitable host, Tita Ma’an, commented as we walked to Holy Trinity Church and the site of Shakespeare’s grave.

Its oozing Englishness and quiet streets hardly suggest to me an inability to write about royalty or Verona. As we walked back to the Shakespeare Centre, I looked about me at Stratford-upon-Avon and thought: If I grew up in this town, I would enjoy nothing more than imagining thrilling worlds.

This is not to say that I feel like Shakespeare felt stifled in Stratford-on-Avon. When we visited Sherwood Forest later in the day, there was no signal, and all I wanted to do was write; I imagine Shakespeare felt far freer to focus on his writing in his small town than he did in London. More to that point, the houses of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (Shakespeare’s birthplace, the garden now planted where his last house once stood, and the home of his eldest daughter) impressed upon me the value of family to William Shakespeare. The immense love, care, and heartbreak of Shakespeare’s family life show themselves in his work. From passionate sonnets to despairing parents who have lost their children, it is clear that life at home inspired Shakespeare as much as imagining Venice and Rome did.

Sitting in a cold Coquitlam classroom, the idea of alternative Shakespeares seemed almost possible. But walking through the streets and homes of Shakespeare’s life, you realize that the man did not need to live his plays to write them, and that beauty does not discriminate. Beauty—even of the simple kind—can beget wondrous beauty.

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