Friday, June 27, 2008

Female to Female

As I read Judith Warner's column today, I discovered something that I knew a long time ago but covered under the theme of admiration: I have a crush on Hillary Clinton!!
Warner describes the change in the atmosphere during an MIT workshop last week when it was a woman speaker. As she reports it: "We all became more familiar...We were all immediately drawn into relationships", then attributes it to the fact that "woman tend to speak more relationally". Having lots of guy friends to compare and quite few female ones, I can stand my ground and claim that, the change in the atmosphere as a female spoke comes from the fact that women are very competitive towards each other rather than supportive. In a female-to-female relationship, there's always that attitude of "if she can do, then I can to". I remember a few years ago, I had bought a nice looking convertible, one of my guy friend made a comment "That's a nice car!! How much did you spend on it?" whereas i got a sneer from a gal friend.
A woman will seldom wish happiness or tell her other female friend how proud she is of her without a nip of envy. The Sex and the City movie paints it so well when Carrie, all excited about her upcoming wedding, vents to her friend and says: "Please tell me you're jealous of me" and her friend to reply "I'm jealous of you". I laughed when I watched that scene as it so well depicts the reality of female friendships. Guys friendships (male-female) are less complicated, all they care about is if they can get through your pants. If the answer is yes, one point for them; if it's no, then whatever, they can still enjoy the company (of course as for any rule/theory there's always an exception). Early this year, as I got rid of a 'friend' and her clique, I took the opportunity to review my relationships, had to cut off some, had to add on some. I also got the conclusion that any relationship, especially the human ones, must be balanced to maintain the harmony. It must be give-take, take-give. Whenever the balance shifts, the equilibrium is lost and resentment follows.
Back to my crush on Hillary: I have yet to meet a highly achieving woman/mother, highly motivated, ambitious and intelligent as her. As best one can, I'm diligently building my own path, my own legacy: I'm 27, a professional Software Engineer, a blog writer and a voracious NYTimes reader :).

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Under Different Skies

Don't hate, just appreciate, then congratulate ;).



Friday, June 6, 2008

The Illusion of Romantic Movies

I went to watch Sex and the City. I loved it!! (Of course as any straight woman!!). The only problem that I have w/ romantic movies is that, we (especially us women) can't help but dream we can live the same thing. More often we think that the movie has a better story line than our own life story. Then, we sometimes tend to and make the man in our life behave like the characters in the movies. When it turns sour, we lament that love only exists in fiction. I've got news, each one of us has his/her own love story, one as amazing and beautiful as the other. Some have a Cinderella ending and others don't. I remember this one from my friend Paul, he knew by age 20 who he wanted to marry, he courted the girl of his dreams and she fell in love with him and 5 or 6 years later, they got married. Unfortunately, Paul's job made him travel a lot and sometimes for long periods of time and his wife got resentful cause she found herself raising their kids alone (something she had never envisioned for herself). It got to the point where neither thought it was possible for them to stay together til one day Paul recalled the days he was courting his wife and what had enchanted him about her. His attitude changed, he became more supportive and never skipped one chance to remind her how important she was to him and their kids. They're still married, living happily. Some, if not most, have a disastrous ending. The 50% rate of divorce is the reflection. I believe good endings to stories more often than not are up to the protagonists in the relationship. It's all about appreciating what you have rather than what you think you could have, it's to stop dwelling on the imperfections of your relationship and celebrate its perfections.

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