Sent to me via MMS, via international roaming...

Mom told my brother to send photos to me with his phone which is better(?) and he said he posted in WeChat... and just basically ignores me lol... dude hates having a younger sibling lol

But I don't have a WeChat account... (not sure if I want WeChat on my phone (corporate apps and all)... but like every Chinese Diaspora uses it tho 😕)

So many Chinese diaspora / Asian diaspora groups on Discord... aaahhh wtf I don't want corporate scanning my entire phone lol (can they even do that? sandboxing prevents that right?)

It's a Galaxy A32 5G from like years ago...

I don't think she even cleans the lenses... I mean dust probably got inside the camera... 🤷‍♂️

I remember I kinds did some "parkour" on the ledge... (just walking on the ledge there not really "parkour" but its more fun to think of it as parkour lol)... Like you see that wheelchair ramp thing? I remember like just hopping over the barrier and on to the stairs and the back on the other side... kinda scary to think the on the other side of it is like a very high drop... 🫣

Oh we used to play with these "Skateboards" in the plaza around the area... (still played this a bit when we were in Brooklyn NYC during the first few years when I was like 8-12, then just grew out of it... felt childish to me)

Also safety? Pffff my dad literally just turned off an electric circuit then proceeded to TOUCH THE WIRES without gloves to fix something...

Like what if the circuit switch failed? Where are the precautions? Do electritions do this? (He did not have a license in electricity stuff)

I was like: Aaaahhh dad don't die and leave me alone on this mortal realm... 🥺

Luckily nothing happened

Also: OSHA is not a thing in China.

On a related note: My old apartment building would not meet western safety standards...

Hey, don't question me, not my doing LMFAO. 🤣

(Very frugal parents... literally every thing gets repurposed for something else. There are still stuff in the house that is never fixed... heater randomly quits working, bathtub randomly leaks water downstairs, refrigerator sometimes lets icecream melt, roach infestation... don't judge xD, not my fault. And my family is no longer poor anymore, not as of currently, just refuses to spend money to fix stuff since they grew up in poverty. Literally every penny gets invested)

Red envelopes that my mom asked me for it to "help me keep it safe" 🫠

So in my experience, it's all just a big show, its performance.

My cat doesn't even wanna touch any "human food", only eats catfood. You can out fresh fish and she will not eat it. Only smell it.

In China, it used to be that there was food insecurity and cats just, unfortunately, get fed scraps of leftover food basically, and they actually had to eat mice.

Idk what happens in new years... probably get fed better? maybe? idk

My cat never eats the mouse, only kills them and leave them around. Sometimes my cat leave them half-dead and the mouse runs away.

So my cat is a privilaged American cat that gets to eats catfood whenever she wants, all year round lol

OMG 我屬馬嘅 I'm gonna be 24 this year after my birthday

Going off on a tangent:

But its funny how because 落地占歲 I'm technically unofficially 25 since I was considered 1 years old at birth??? (cuz 9 months spent inside a womb apparantly counts lmfao), and new years, even before your official birthday counts... towards your age...

So I ask my grandma, what happens if you were born the day before new years?

So you just become unofficially "2 years old", 1 day after your birth cuz of weird shenanigans... where you are 1 years old at birth, then on new years your age counts uo by 1?!? lmfao

So I was like "A 16 year + 1 day old person can say they're 18 then?"

I don't think a Mainlander can walk into a bar in China and get alcohol that way, only legal age counts lmfao, not this 迷信 stuff

But anyways... I kinda wanna magically become a horse and run around wild

My older brother was born in '97, the year of the Handover from British, so he got to visit HK fore free for bring born that year (or something like that, maybe I misheard), so that's why we went to HK for tourism as family... so long ago... I can barely remember.

My paternal grandpa would say something like: 牛耕田，馬食谷。 Because he's 屬牛 I'm 屬馬 so my brother didn't like that saying lmfao.

Anyways: 新年快樂

Family of Origin is so frustrating tho... 煩死啦

Oops I said the 死 字

新年流流，唔好意頭 or something... i dont really care anymore...

In the US:

1st generation refers to those that immigrated as adults.

2nd generation refers to their children that was born in the new country and (presumably) grew up there.

I came to the US when I was 8 years old. I went to school in China for 1st and 2nd grade. Then from age 8 up now, is in the US...

So although I'm technically in the "1st gen" category, there's another term for those like me: the "1.5 generation"

So I didn't get the "full Chinese experience" enough to be Chinese... since I have no idea what life is like in China beyond 2nd grade.

But also not the "full American experience" since I didn't spend Kindergarden in the US, and I had to spend the first several years being like "wtf" in a classroom full of people speaking a language I didn't know, didn't make much English-speaking friends in the beginning due to language barrier and feeling foreign and lack of confidence self esteen issues from the first few years of feeling "alienated".

So I'm in between a 1st gen and a full 2nd gen's experiences... like a bridge between the two worlds

I know enough to be able to just embrace which ever side, which ever "culture" I chooses to identify with. I'm like standing right in the middle of a gateway between the worlds.

I would say anyone from grade 1 to grade 12 to be on a spectrum of 1.5gen-ness, the earlier you emigrated, the closer you're to a 2nd gen, the later, the closer to a 1st gen.

I struggle to express myself in Chinese so I'd consider myself leaning more towards "2nd gen" but not fully 2.0 gen.

That's why its called a 1.5 gen.

Or I guess if I were to invent a new term, I call myself a "1.8 generation" since I'm SOOO CLOSE to being native, except I didn't get birthright citizenship so I can't run for US Presidency. But I primary language is English, so I think I could theoretically "pass" as an American-Born Chinese.