Control freak, you indeed are one.

Recently, I've finally understood why my father kept referring my home as "my dormatory" all this time. For the past two years, I had been telling him again and again that I no longer live in the dorm but in an off-campus apartment/house. I've really only lived in the dorm my freshman year. Yet, every time when my father calls, he asks the question, if I am still at school or back in my dorm.  When my parents were young, single people used to live in the dormatory provided by their work units until they were married. Then their work units would provide an apartment to the newly wed couple rent-free. I almost forgot how good Socialism was.

Academia taught me not to look at cultures or developments as a single linear process, in the sense that describing a culture different than one's own as backwards is cultural imperialism. I've thus learned not to practice cultural imperialism and as the product of a third world upbringing, I've naturally come with some cultural sensitivities. No no no, I shouldn't judge!! But what about the job seeking process in China? Why do I have so much to say about putting my age and marital status on my resume. Why would I feel "wrong" about answering personal questions about whether I have a boyfriend, whether I'm planning on getting married and having a baby? If the questions are designed with the intent to find out whether I'd take maternal leave, I wonder would it help if the candidate answers with the brief statement that she only dates women? I feel so feminist now.

Maybe, I do have a gift for writing.

The trip back to Philly was particularly long and dreadful. The bus was running late, and soon after boarding, I fell asleep on my own legs, with constant wake-up breaks to adjust my painfully dead right or left leg obviously a result of being in the same position for too long.

At one time, the engine stopped, the lack of motion promped me to open my eyes to see that we were parked in a mid-sized city that I later learned to be Hartford, in the middle of high rise apartment buildings. A scattered number of passengers got on. Actually only two. An Asian girl in her pajamas holding her pillow, and an accompanying Asian male.  If only I had a pillow with me, I wished.  Then I fell into a black-out stage again.

The next time I woke up, I saw another round of high rise apartment buildings, this time, even more first-rate and more grandiose. I pondered for a second whether we were making another stop in another mid-sized city, only to find out that the bus continued running, until midtown Manhattan came into view. And I realized what we just passed was a place that I only hear from fairy tales, the Upper East Side. That's also New York, but how can it be sharing the same city name as the dirty sidewalks of Midtown just a few blocks away? New York City can be so many different experiences for different people. The bus arrived Madison Square Garden an hour early, which to me means an additional hour that I have to kill.

Gege and I walked around and finally decided to kill as much time as we could at Tig Tag, as even Midtown felt unsafe after 2am. We ordered and toyed with our horrible breakfast pancakes (made with corn-meal). I was fighting back my urge to fall asleep and the waiter seemed to understand that we were really there for the purpose to killing time, just like most of the other customers around.

At 6am, the magic time that's safe to be dwelling outside without being taken as or bothered by the homeless, we left Tig Tag and at my suggestion, went inside Penn Station and I finally fell asleep in the waiting area of the NJ Transit, ironically was also where the homeless sleeps. Two hours later, the police came, and insisted on checking tickets. Gege dragged away the crippled me with one of my feet fallen asleep. We got some refreshments at Duan Reade and finally joined the waiting cue at the bus stop. 2 hours later, we were in Philly, finally.