My mom do bussiness and manage financial assets on a smartphone…

Phone literally old, laggy, half-dying, charging port is filled with dust… and also no backups…

lmfao

Of course, actual word documents and stuff and printing were done by me or my older brother

You kinda shift the entire pitch of your voice so that the words are still, relative to each other, have the tones and it’s distinguishable to a native speaker intuitively.

Its easier in Cantonese, 6 tones, you can play around with words to make the tones go high or low, the tones don’t change much from what I’ve noticed in Cantonese songs, yo es sounds almost the same as spoken. In Mandarin, 4 tones, and the tones are much lower and deeper in the sounds, you just have to change the tones a lot to make it higher pitched, you rarely pronunce the tones as-is. Still understandable.

I’m in UTC-5 and my brain sometimes resets to factory defaults UTC+8 lol

TIL North Korea: Nippon Edition existed before actual North Korea

Some kids there don’t even learn their first Dutch words until they go to school.

That’s kinda was like Guangdong province where I’m from. Mandarin wasn’t used at home, but once school started, it was all Mandarin. Nowadays… I think Mandarin is slowly starting to take over.

It’s why the immigrant parent’s kids who never went to school in China cannot speak Mandarin, I know kids that only speak like Fuzhouese.

Lol, sometimes I have to remind myself I know 4 spoken languages/dialects, and can read 2 written languages, it’d be a waste to end this story this early.

Which reminds me: I heard of a story about a Chinese American helping South Korea’s side during the Korean war and like yelling “别开枪，自己人” (“don’t shoot, friendly”) in Mandarin and confusing the PLA, it was such an intriguing story.

Of course, if you look up that story in Baidu search, dude’s branded as a race traitor.

I mean like my (well not technically my house, it’s my parent’s) house has like cracks in the walls and in the ceilings. Like sometimes water from the bathrub area starts leaking…

Like… average Philly house

It’s been like this since like I was still in middleschool/highschool many years ago.

Never really got fixed.

Also, heater is semi-broken, since like 2016/2017 I think. Randomly stops working and my dad has to use some weird temporry fix and it would last a maybe a fee days to weeks, and like next winter its the same shit.

Also, the refrigerator/freezer sometimes has like the top freezer part the it would get above 0°C and icecream would melt. Ruined a lot of icecream lol.

I feel like your standards are too high… just live with it. Like my current shitty house is not even the worst house I’ve lived in, I’ve lived in much worse in my home country.

Lol everyone says therapy

Can therapy make the ICE Agents go away?

Can therapy change the fact that my original home country has a bunch of authoritarian “communist” thugs in government? The thugs that never wanted me to be born.

(apologies for the rant)

I mean I have indecisiveness issues.

I was supposed to pick an English name so its easier to pronounce than my real name, but kinda procrastinated and didn’t feel confortable actually using a “foreign” name when I didn’t even speak the language at the time.

So like… hypothetically, if I were trans, not only would I be so afraid of picking and using another name, I would probably just be too scared to actually transition and keep hiding it in my head forever, I never gave any thought to such hypotheical names.

Although I wonder, if I was AFAB, what name would my parents give me? Kinda wanna ask them for fun.

But is it safe from the cats? 😼

glass shattering sounds

Not really a loophole, more like legal grey area stuff that is hard to enforce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nationality_law#Dual_nationality

Dual citizenship of Japan and another country is prohibited in some cases due to the provisions for loss of Japanese nationality when a Japanese national naturalizes in another country (see “Loss of citizenship” above), and the requirement to renounce one’s existing citizenships when naturalizing in Japan (see “Naturalization” above). There are still some ways in which a person may have dual citizenship of Japan and another country, including:

They acquire multiple citizenships at birth, such as being born to a non-Japanese citizen parent and acquiring that parent’s citizenship as a result of that country’s laws or by being born in a jus soli country. However, they must choose one citizenship/nationality before the age of 22 or within two years if the second citizenship is acquired after the age of 20, or they may lose their Japanese nationality (see “Loss of citizenship” above), although this is often circumvented by dual Japanese citizens not using a foreign passport when entering or leaving Japan.

In practice, dual nationality may also be maintained with states not recognized by Japan such as in the cases of North Korean or Taiwanese dual nationality as the Japanese Ministry of Justice does not recognize either North Korean or Taiwanese citizenships.

I never had friends in China, I never missed anyone “back home” (well… its not like I got to know any of the relative very well, so I didn’t miss them being 8 at the time) but I constantly think about the hypothetical alt-universe where I never left China… like for better or worse… its hard to stop thinking about it.

I feel like I belong in neither places.

Like existential crisis stuff.

On the surface, in 2010, the US was also seemingly welcoming, but you have subtle casual racism stuff, especially when you move to less-immigrant cities like Philly. Kids here wete just horrible. The Elementary school I went to had not much Asians so racism was common, worse in middle school.

Like you had no idea how much shit I had to go through, and identity crisis. Who the fuck am I. I don’t know if I can do this again, especially the learning a language thing, now I don’t have the advantage of youth again. And I’m the adult now having to plan everything, instead of everything already being done for me.

Like… it’d be so sad if I pick a place, miraculously get an immigration visa, then that place goes to shit AGAIN, then I’d have to do this v3.0 lmao

Depression is killing me lol

I think for me, its not just “move to EU” that easily. Like… the population of Asians in EU is much lower afaik, I would feel even less “belonging” there tbh.

Stardew Valley in a nutshell

I heard its by age 22

2 decades to decide

Something you can look forward to: you get to watch anime without subtitles after you learn Japanese :P

Its funny how my mother has did some arranged marriage thing for my older brother and… basically I overheard some talks about visas and that he was going back to China for marriage or something (相親 is the term for it I think), and by marriage, I assume they’re gonna live in the US since all the family assets are here. Like they already exchanged WeChats… I have no idea how that’s gonna go, dude has no social skills, probably worse social skills than me lmfao.

I have -99999 social credits at birth

Reason: The crime of being the illegal 2nd child born in violation of the One Child Policy

Punishment: You now must have at least 3 children to fix the declining population/birthrate

PRC Government in a nutshell

(/joke, idk if the social credit thing is actually real)

They can deport you. Unless you try to claim asylum, but then you need to “prove” that the US Government is actually persecuting you, do you even have such “proof”?

Fun fact: Before 2015, you were banned from buying tickets if you are the 2nd child (cuz One Child Policy) and your parents refused to pay the fines. I mean they didn’t even give you a legal identity, didn’t even recognize that you exist.