About Me

Be prepared for the longest post yet! 

Someone asked me why I never have pictures of myself up here.  Well, I have two reasons, really.  Firstly (and mainly), I am the one holding the camera, so I usually just take pictures of my friends (and food, haha!).  That's kind of sad, because later when I go through my pictures, I have very few pictures of myself and I'm missing my development over the years.  I used to be one of those people to run away from the camera, and it's still kind of like that.  If I see someone pull out a camera, my first instinct is to turn away, but then again I want a picture so when I'm older, I can know what I look like now.  It's weird.  I think it would be better if I was like one of my friends; she purposely tries jumping into pictures, haha!  And secondly, taking pictures of myself is (I admit!) fun, but super embarrassing for me to put them up on a blog.  I mean.. it's like show-and-tell, except I'd be showing myself.  But then again... that *is* what a blog is for, right?  

Hmm..  I guess I should think of my blog not only as a storage or a book of my life, but more of a way to boost my confidence too.  I'll tell you in a bit of my theory of why my self-esteem over my appearance isn't top-notch~  Maybe I'll start taking more pictures of myself with the camera ^^  

Before you think that I have zero pictures of myself, let me clarify-- I have quite self-pictures :P  but they are all using the webcam, so they are weird and dinky, and I'm staring awkwardly into the viewer's soul.

Like this!  :D

Haha!  See what I mean? ;)  That hat was a Christmas gift from my parents <3  Hehehe~  I'll post a few pictures of the one my sister got too!  Okay, well, this post will be *FILLED* with pictures of me, so you'll be satisfied for a while.  Hehe~  You may leave now, because there is no story here-- just a image dump!  

So in the morning, I like to wake up and go clean my birds in the yard.

And afterwards, I eat breakfast with my monkey friends.

A whole day passes, and at night, I practice my calligraphy skills by candle light.

:P  Okay, okay, those pictures aren't really me  (Nah, really?!)!  They're from my iGoogle homepage, and the scene changes with the time.  So cute ^^

So one thing I'd like to share is that I love to swim!  ^____^  More than half my life has been devoted to swimming.  And starting from elementary school all the way through high school, I can only remember visiting the pool.  From middle school up, it was visiting the pool twice a day, five to six times a week.  Whether it was the scalding heat of the summer or the blistering icy winds from the winter, we were swimming in different pools, indoors and outdoors.  @_@

And something interesting; I used to be scared of water!  My sister was on a swim team, and my mom would hold me and walk into the pool (I was probably in pre-school) that wasn't being used for practice, and I would burst out crying.  But my parents persevered; if the older sister is good at swimming, shouldn't the younger be too?  It wasn't until later that a swimming instructor cajoled me into the depths with Dum-dum pops that water became a candy jar instead of a void of dread.  :P  Hehe!

As much as I loved swimming, some of it wasn't all happy-happy-joy-joy~  There were times where I would "plateau," my competition times weren't getting any faster, and I would leave swimming meets unsatisfied and pretty much sad.  All those weeks and hours of hard work weren't making me faster.

Ever read the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom?  No?  ... Well me neither :P  But apparently it's about how Asian moms like to push their children to strive to be their best so they'll have more opportunities and spell out their full potential.  Something like that?  ^_^''  Yeah, so my mom was also a tiger mommy.  I remember car rides back from practice in silence or worse, since my mom thought I didn't perform as well as I should during practice.   I can't even count how many times I was curled up in the backseat, crying silently while she went on about how I looked like I wasn't even trying, how my arms were too slow on backstroke, how I should let people pass me, even though my heart was pounding hard and my muscles were sore from drylands and previous practices..  Here's a picture I took with my parents' cell phone in middle school.  I was laying on my side in my over-sized parka, so the left side is actually upwards.

Can you tell this is me?

Haha, such a gloomy picture!  I'm not sure what all that hard work gave me, other than memories and "character," but I am really thankful that I dedicated my life (pretty much, yes!) to the sport.  I may not have been top in the nation, and I'm definitely no where near as fast as some of the people I was privileged to swim with, but I think I've made my mark (a holler in those in Houston and Texas, especially the little Pinebrookwood Orcas swim team!) ;)  It's a life-saving sport, a low-impact sport, and a sport that I can continue when I'm older too.  And when I have time at college, the first thing I want to do is to head to the swimming pool!  ^__^  When I'm swimming, it makes me feel confident and powerful, like I know what I'm doing :)

And somehow to relate this to pictures of me...  That's one of the reasons why I really wanted to go to the Bahamas!  In search of beautiful pristine waters!  Which we found, but it was really wavy.  Maybe one day I'll find super still, clear water to just soak in and become a super prune XD  These are a few pictures from (I think Elaine's?) Facebook:

Chilling on the beach with chill friends.  Can you believe how white the sand is?!

I'm this one!

My mom stayed and watched me swim the whole time during practices, and she stayed almost every practice.  I can't believe how dedicated she was!  Although sometimes I was scared I wouldn't do well during practice, now I'm just in awe about how much time she's invested in me (as well as my sister!).  Oh yeah, my sister kept swimming too, but more on that later!  So practices were 5-7am/school time in the morning and 6:30-8:30pm at night, and dinner was after swimming, so if Mommy (yes, I call her Mommy!  >:O) was with me at the pool, who's cooking dinner?

The answer?  Her husband, and my awesome Daddy!  :D  Actually, there was a year and a half where he was on a business trip in Taiwan, so instead of home-cooked meals, I got to eat my life's worth of Subway, Arby's, McDonald's, Sonic, frozen dinner meals and Vietnamese food (we had a place relatively close to our home)!  Score!  Haha, yum yum~  It was so un-nutritious that I stayed a runt through middle school-- always the smallest at the starting blocks, hehe~  ^^'' But I got to say, I love fast food!  And I'm quite knowledgeable in this area now XD  Oh my... I can just hear my parents protesting about how I'm typing this down.  >_>  It's not a bad thing though <3  Hehe, and I don't give my mom enough credit.  She cooked too, and the food was delicious!  It's just that if I can't really remember what she used to cook for us, then she must not have cooked as much as I think she did @_@''

Nowadays, my parents eat like rabbits very healthy people.  They're starting to eat more organic foods, and we harvest sweet potatoes, peppers, chives, lettuce, bitter melon, kumquats, and plums from our backyard. Pretty neat, right?  My parents really take care of our home sweet home ^^ <3  My dad just emailed me this salad he made for lunch with stuff grown from the backyard

Daddy's organic salad!  Hehe, such a food photographer!  Maybe this is why I like food pictures~

Hehe, I like taking food pictures too!

But anyways, I went to high school, and then Daddy came home from Taiwan.  He picked up the wok and became the unofficial chef of the family.  By the end of sophomore year, I went from skinny emaciated-looking Asian girl to... uhm.. Asian girl.  Haha!  XD  But just to give you an idea, I was under 100 lbs my freshman year, and when I went to State for swimming for the first time for high school my sophomore year, I had gained 18 lbs.  

Yes.  18 lbs.  That's like...  adding a sack of rice to my body!  Hopefully that was all muscle?  ;)  I also think my appetite just started up too.  Before, I'd eat nothing except veggies and candy.  I'd hand my sister all the meat during dinners, and after dinner, I would head upstairs and pull out a suitcase from beneath my bed.  Inside?  Well, candy of course!  And that was my *real* dinner.  Then I'd head downstairs and eat a pint of ice cream.  Haha!  Wow, so healthy :P  

But in high school, I was constantly eating *everything!*  If we did stop by at McD's or Subway on the way home from swimming if Daddy was too busy to cook, then it'd be two double cheeseburgers or a footlong Italian BLT for me.  I still have that appetite, but since I don't swim often at all, I just have to exercise self-control *Zennnnnnn*  hehe  :)

Ohhh yeah!  Also, that "watchu say" may seem random (and yes, actually it is very random), but that's a picture of me last month with corn rows.  My swim team's girls all got corn rows for Regionals or something like that, so I just wanted to live a little nostalgic moment there :P

So my first love (other than family) is probably food.  The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and a way to my heart is just eating.  ;)  I love eating all types of cuisine, from French to Japanese, Mexican to Cantonese.  Every thing is yummeh!  :D  But if I had to eat something everyday, it would have to be Asian food.  Although I kind of think that's cheating, because it includes everything (Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Thai, etc~)!  I also like to bake and cook <3  And take pictures of food... and eat it.

My second love would probably be sleeping.  Yay time for that obligatory super sexy girl on a bed picture!:

Yep, that's me.

Haha!  Sooooo sexy, right?  That was like... waiting 4am at the airport or something like that.  But I think one of the problems I have is that I loooove to sleep.  I'd rather sleep than go watch a movie = I like having dates with my bed more than dates with a boy.  XD  

It might be because my blood iron content is kind of low, and I try eating beef whenever we go out to eat.  I have a low-ish blood pressure, I take B12 vitamins daily, and the doctor declared me anemic.  But it shouldn't be a problem... since I've been doing some intense swimming for only what.. 11 years until he told me?  Hehe!   But yeah, naps are pretty important though.  If I don't take one, I'm ready to die (okay, not really!) at around 7pm.  My family cooks up a lot of tofu and fish, and when I went to college and started eating chicken, pork, and beef at least three times a week, I started feeling more energetic!  .... but that's probably because I wasn't swimming twice a day?  And.. -- what?  You don't like hearing me rattling on about swimming?  :(  But I <3 swimming...  Fine, fine, here is your super blown up, HD picture of me on a bed:

itty bitty :3

That picture is kind of a lie!  It's me studying for a test on the floor.  Hehe :P  I actually don't use pillows when I sleep, but I do when I study.  So in case you wonder what I look like when I sleep... YOU'LL NEVER KNOWWW >:D  Mwahaha!

Okay, time to talk about Wendy's self-esteem!  :D  Hooray!  I have a sister named Connie who is 4.5 years older than me. She's outgoing, she's rebellious, she's intelligent, she's confident, she's popular, she's got a sense of style, and she's good-looking.  I can believe we're related, but I can't believe I didn't get any of these *cool* genes!  >_

Hello Connie!

I think I'm kind of outgoing.  See this?  "I think I am?"  I should be saying, "I AM outgoing!"  Blah.  But yeah, I love being around people, but I also really enjoy my time alone too.  Connie thrives on people-interaction and can't stand being alone.  She even turns on the TV just for the sound and doesn't even watch it while she's around the house.  

Connie's rebellious-- cartilage piercings without the parents knowing in high school, and now tongue, lip, and nose ring (since I've seen her 5 months ago, anyways).  Not sure if I would have wanted those last three pierced (Ouchie!), but I have wanted my cartilage pierced too.  Hehe, I'm the 'fraidy cat.  I'm scared of what would happen if my parents found out.  It turned out that my mom actually *persuaded* me to get my ear lobes pierced my sophomore year of college!  Along with piercings, she has all the accessories, but I won't list them here ^^''  My parents think I'm a "good girl," but I don't think it's so.  It's not that I don't want anything like that, but more like I just don't want to get into trouble.

She's also intelligent.  No studying in middle or high school got her A's and B's.  Of course B's aren't stellar, but had I not studied, I'm pretty sure I would have failed.  @_@''

Confidence!  That's one thing I really admire about Connie.  Although it can mean she can be pretty dang stubborn (or dense in some ways!).  She doesn't care about what people think about her, and if she wants something, she's going to get it.  On the other hand, I'm too sensitive.  I don't like hurting people's feelings, so I'm cautious and slow to act, trying to see things from different perspectives.  If someone says something mean, it'll stay with me for a while.  I'm getting better at it, especially since I have to practice~  But I remember the first and only time someone called me a "bitch" my sophomore year, and it really, really hurt me.  It definitely wasn't my fault (not even saying this to defend myself!  I've looked at it from all angles, and I can't find why I deserved to be called that.).  In conclusion, this makes me seem less confident.  

Just wanted to point out, that I'm pretty sure other people don't see me as everything opposite of Connie (that is..  introverted, dumb, diffident, un-popular, horrible sense of fashion, and ugly), well I hope not anyways, haha!  but it's just a contrast I put in my head.  It's always, "Gosh my sister is so cool! ... and I'm here studying biochemistry at my desk holding my teddy bear for moral support."  :P  And hopefully you don't think I'm complaining :)  I'm just really in awe about how different we are (and how cool she is!)!

Yep, and other good gene effects for her: good skin!  Pimples and blackheads don't exist in her world.  Hehe, but I also got some good genes too!  I like eating *everything*!  Mwahaha, so yes, I like pizza, but tofu and spinach looks just as yummy to me.  On the other hand, my sister goes crazy over pizza and sticks up her nose at tofu.  And I (usually) have a better self control.  I can save money for things that are useful instead of splurging and buying on impulse.  And if I really decide I need to watch what I'm eating, I can do that too.  

I also got the *not short* gene!  (thank goodness!)  I'm not tall, but at 5' 5'', I'm not the shortest either.  I think my sister's 5' 2'', kind of short, and while both of us bulk up when we work out, she packs on brawn like no other . She's like a muscle woman!  Which may be good for some, but I actually quit WashU's swim team because we had to do weights so often >_<''  I don't want ginormous triceps!  Oh, and water polo was offered in our high school.  All the cool people did it!  She was really good at it too (free excuse to pummel people?), so my coach was excited when he found out Connie had a younger sister.  When I was a freshman, I was forced to do it for one year, but everyone is so aggressive (Why are you touching me?!  D:).  Then I was free!  And then I just swam instead, and hopefully that made up for it, haha!  (I'm pretty sure it did XD)

I'm also a creature of habit.  Wake up and eat cereal (yum!), eat apples for snack (yum!) try really hard to get 8 hours of sleep, things like this, every day.  If sleeping for 8 hours is impossible, aim for 6.5.  Why six and a half?  Because Yahoo said so, and of course Yahoo is the most legit source of news, right?  haha ;)  I think this is a good thing.  While my sister lives her life spontaneously, I plan things out.  ... makes me sound like an utterly boring hermit.  *pushes non-existent glasses up nose bridge*

OH!  And a I have a nose bridge.  Haha!  Okay, this is just a joke I'm making at my sister.  Her nose bridge is very flat (I think most Asians have flatter nose bridges), and in her 4th grade, a boy asked if someone had punched her in the face.  And what did she do?  She punched *him* in the face.  Omgah, Connie's so cool! Had it been me, I think my 4th grade self would have just cried.

And sense of style.  I've been told I dress like a boy, "why can't you dress like a normal person for once," etc. etc.  I don't wear sweatpants or anything, but I do wear the same thing pretty much all the time.  I'd rather spend money on food than clothes, so that's where clothing money goes ^_^''  Plus, I'm comfortable, so meh~  I'd rather feel comfortable and look regular than look spectacular and feel uncomfortable.  :)  Connie on the other hand will dish out money for shoes and clothes, and she always looks like a bamf.  :D  Also, she knows how to put makeup on D:  My excuse is that I had to swim everyday, so I didn't have time to put make up on and didn't learn how to.  But that's such a sad excuse.  The real reason?  I'm lazy, haha!  I'd rather spend my morning time eating cereal than covering my face in stuff before heading to school.  But I'll try learning this summer^^b  But all natural is a trend, right?  Let's just say I use all-natural makeup XD

Connie's pretty!  My mom literally told me last year that she was scared I would stay the same as how I looked when I was younger, because apparently I wasn't a very pretty kiddo.  (Thannnnnks, mom!)  Connie on the other hand was always the prettier one ^_^  Guy magnet!  She has not double eyelids, but TRIPLE eye lids!  *legendary*  Hehe XD  I used to have one double eye lid and one single that would occasionally become a double, but now it's usually a double (when I cry or drink too much water before I sleep, this will change :P) for each.  Connie's face was egg-shaped since she was young, while mine was a circle until middle school when my face became as long as a horse.  Then it got better when I got some more fat on my cheeks XD

Baaaasically, I think Connie's awesome, and when people find out I have an older sister, it goes something like this:

"You have an older sister?"  

Yes.  Yes, I do.  She's 4.5 years older.

*person goes and facebook-stalks her and sees her profile picture*

"Dannnnng, she's good-looking...  She looks nothing like you!"   

... Why... Thank you, I guess?  

Haha!  Okay, I think I've just spend 30 hours talking about Connie when I promised to talk about myself.  But really, she is family, so I *am* talking about myself <3  Hyu hyu hyu~

Okay, so after that short (I'm kidding, duh) introduction, it's time to dump all my webcam photos.  Begin!

In my dorm room last year... don't want to study!

I was wondering why I had this picture on the computer, and I remembered-- my parents and sister say I can pass as a guy!  They insist it's a compliment ("You look like those pretty guys in the Japanese cartoon/animes!"), but I'm not sure if it's a terribly good thing.  Anyways, I think in that picture I actually can pass as a guy with relaly long hair.  I think I was literally trying to do anything EXCEPT being studying for my test that night, so I was just zoning out.  Durr..

Long hair!

That's when I started growing my hair out for the first time in my life!  Before, I had my hair short and my mom insisted it would make me swim faster.  But I wasn't swimming anymore, so there were no more excuses, mwahaha!  

Hi.

Wait what?

Oh this poster behind my head?

Ohhhh, that's only Seungri.  He has BEAUTIFUL hair.

Ta daaaa!  Looking good <3  *giggle*

Tee hee. *trying not to laugh*

Oh and he also has abs.

Oh my gawd!

So there are TWO things I am notoriously known for falling over heels for.

1.  Nice hair.

2.  Nice abs.  

Durr, so shallow right?

In my defense, I think the abs are because I was raised as a swimmer, and guys I swam with *always* had abs!

And I think I'm adding in another...  which my parents would shake their heads at, so I won't type it out  XD

But Kim Bum has one!  Ha ha ha!

Okay, I'm usually not that hyper when I take webcam photos (not that I do it often.. these are ALL the  webcam pictures I have in the past 3 years!!).  In fact, I usually look pretty bored.

Durr =.=

I manage a sleepy smile sometimes.

Or force one out in the morning.

And sometimes I end up looking like an alien.  O_O

I think natural smiles are the best!

But it's so much easier making silly faces.

My most attractive face ever!  *can just see my mom cringing / face palming* Haha!

Not taking these for aesthetics, just to see what I look like at that moment in time.  Even when the camera is foggy, I still take a few!

No idea how to play with make up >_<''

Why do I look so surprised?

This is me in studying mode!  I think I was indoors for more than 48 hours. 

Back in Houston!  I'm wearing my high school swim team jacket.

Ow.. got something in my eye.. >_o  Haha, I actually think this was an attempted wink!

And now for some sister-sister pictures ^____^b  Connie on the left, me on the right... in case you couldn't tell with the hats, haha :P

Small-eye smiiiiile with our Christmas hats!

Staring creepily.  Hehe, I remember my mom looked at the picture and was like WHY?!

Haha, actually laughing at the picture we just took.

Super Asian smile ^^v

All right, that's it for now.  Thanks for hanging out with me and reading all about it!  Hope that's enough pictures to whet your appetite for Wendy pictures for a while!  

Nom nom nom <3