Some time this past week marked the six-month anniversary of my move to Santa Cruz, my work, and my workout journey. I think a lot has happened, mostly for the better, especially the chance for me to go home soon for the first time in three years.

What is going on in my mind:

• I have been meeting up with people that I knew in high school, with whom I only got the chance to reconnect by association with the Bay Area. I am very thankful for a college experience with scant presence of high school memories, but our lives (certainly mine) have taken so many a twist that I feel ready now to pick up from our point of bifurcation. For that reason I have been speaking in Vietnamese more often, and I am more flustered with my unnatural tempo of my mother tongue than ever.

• I have had a lot more opportunities to know about anthropologists and Vietnamese studies scholars in the past month as part of my own research fellowship initiative. There are components of Vietnamese formalities that I do not miss, but there are simultaneously a humbling amount of knowledge that I can no longer claim authority over because of my distance, both from Vietnam and from the humanities. Right now I am thinking a lot about urban public space design.

• Different from my summer selection of songs that are upbeat and pompous (dominated by the release of Renaissance), my winter workout playlist is rather sombre. It is bizarre that I feel adrenaline from mid-tempo synth-driven melancholy rhapsodies, but whatever keeps me enthused works. On the other hand, I have been reading a lot about old-school rap scene and engaging with the history of either coast’s pre-2000 upheavals. About two years ago I have a similar interest in the Harlem Renaissance, ballroom culture, and drag history. These communities, especially before their commercial prominence, operate with a structure that eludes the power conventions of classical Americana that are truly anthropologically captivating and analytically queer.

• Hearthstone Battlegrounds is getting a bit stale and Mini Motorways has slowly become a less time-consuming favorite. I will get my hands on Pokemon Scarlet/Violet either when a ROM is available or if someone gifts me a Nintendo 3DS.

• I should cut down on social media use.

• Whenever it gets chilly, I feel like every step I take is consumed with considerations of heat sources. My housemate lent me her space heater, so when I open my door now there is a gust of cold air that rushes in. I have weaponized this phenomenon as a rationalization for laziness, but, hey, at least I do not get stuck underneath my blankets all the time. That said, I just cannot love the wintertime sadness.

• I had a very enlightening conversation with a friend about the history of the Model UN community in Vietnam, which was in all honesty the extracurricular activity raised me in high school. Almost all of the people I admire the most from the scene have long ceased associations with MUN, which prompts me to stay that way. It just feels gut-wrenching to see something that has benefited me so much, that I continued to rejoice in in college, be bound to wither away, and not intervene. I hope that the teenage youths of this generation can continue to create their own nourishing spaces with or without the exact same activities that I for once clung to.

• Drawing was never my forte, but I always wanted to match my creative energy with its outputs. When I was younger, I used to sketch outfits inspired by shows I would watch on cable network as if I was a fashion designer, all on one-sided scrap paper that my dad gathered from the discard pile of his office job. I am very blessed to have technology-assisted design (i.e., Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) that both allowed me to stop frustrations with my ungifted hands and provided the fulcrum for my sister and my close friendship. As I lose access to university license to Adobe software, I might try doodling outfit ideas again, now with much more percipience about aesthetics.

• I will be tuning into the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race–it is always a blast! Their timely reappearance very diligently cures all my seasonal mood swings.

• One of the reasons I have taken great stride in my fitness journey is because of how much I shunned athleticism away from my childhood. For as much as I could recall my dismissal of sports had persisted through primary school when I was hit in the face with a plastic soccer ball, but I remember just not being sure why soccer was hailed as the king of sports when I found watching matches to be utterly energy-sapping. In contrary, activities that I enjoyed like competitive jump-roping (my homeroom class was really adamant about being the best), chess (more on this later), or even badminton was considered ‘soft’. There was an inevitable bout of taunting from bullish classmates that left me repulsed against the idea of liking sports. I felt compelled to excel academically to distinguish myself from physical sports that were so vehemently imposed upon me. It truly took until COVID times when I stayed with a friend’s very hale and hearty family that I found working out pleasant, and just generally until moving away from the vestiges of a culturally stifling environment, for lack of a better word, that I could explore the component of my identity that involves my physique. My middle name means strength and my first name can be interpreted as agility; I cannot say I am the best of both yet, but at least I have come round to what my parents originally wanted me to have, even if the journey was replete with self-effacing tribulations.

If you are ever in the Bay Area, or if you ever want to chat, please do not hesitate to let me know.