Impressions, covers, and bullshit.

Last night I received a really interesting phone call at 3 in the morning by a good friend of mine. Probably not the greatest things to hear right before I go to sleep, but I'm glad he called. He told me some things pertaining to a person whom I used to know very well. Some things that really shocked me. Never would  I have imagined how someone could change so much. Maybe I was just naive before and I couldn't see it. Maybe I changed the person. Maybe that person was like that all along. Anyways, it really made me think about people and their covers.

First impressions are hardly right. Many of my closest friends now are people whom I couldn't stand in the beginning. I used to be so quick to judge someone based on the first time I met them, and then I realized that it is impossible to judge a person's character by just a few simple interactions. Some people give off a wrong vibe in the beginning, but the more I got to know them, the more I liked them. Everyone deserves a chance and that is something I am still working on. Don't be so quick to judge a person. Nothing is completely black and white.

On the other hand, you think you know someone so well, and then you find out that that person isn't who he/she claims to be. That's called disappointment. Why is it that people try so hard to hide who they really are? If they are ashamed of that side of them, then why be it at all. What happened to honesty and being real with others, but most importantly with yourself. I don't understand why people try to project a certain image of themselves, when in fact, that is not that who they really are. Perhaps peer pressure, mixed with popular media and low self-esteem are drivers of such behavior. Hello! We are not getting any younger. It's time to wake up, take a good look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself "Is this who I really am?" "Do I like who I am?" If your answers are no and no, then change. Start becoming the person who you want and aspire to be. It's never too late to become better.

I'm also intrigued by how fake people can be. I've seen too many girls act all nice and sweet in front of a person whom they actually cannot stand. Then they go behind each others' backs and talk shit about one another. Just be real. If you don't like that person, then don't. Stop pretending. Ｉ was once guilty of this, but then I came to realize who gives a shit what someone I don't like thinks of me. So pretty much if I don't like you (which doesn't happen often), you know I really don't and I will not pretend to do so. I think what I am trying to say is that it is important for people to care about what others think about them to some extent, but it's also important to be true to yourself. Something to think about.

So in the end, that saying "don't judge a book by its cover" is in fact, very wise. Don't be fooled by outside appearances because those appearances could merely be projections of lies. Open the book, read it, and then make your judgment.

Life, or something like it

I always thought I knew where was I was going for the next year of my life. I was going to pursue my masters degree right out of college and then start working after that. Oh how life loves to play jokes on people. After this weekend at home with my mom and brother, I decided to hopefully defer my admission for a year. There are so many reasons why I decided to do this and I definitely cannot go into detail in this blog, but just know that some of it deals with my family, some of it is personal, and mostly because this is just the right thing for my family and myself at the moment.

How well do we actually know one another? How well do friends actually know about the personal life of a friend? I can tell you that even some of my closest friends know close to nothing about my family, and honestly, I'm going to keep it that way. One of my friends once told me, "Tiffany, out of all our friends, I probably know the least about your personal life." Of course she wasn't talking about all my boy drama because pretty much that stuff is out in the open, but she was talking about my family situation. Most people probably don't even know my parents are divorced or that my father is not part of my life at all. I'm bitter about it and I'm angry at him, but what can I do. Being angry and upset won't make him start being a good father. I believe things happen for a reason and that everything that my family and I have gone through will only make us stronger, only make us better.

It's weird. Life. How it's so unpredictable and sometimes it just comes and bites you in the ass. I'm going to make this year count. Who knows, maybe after a year I'll know for sure I don't want to do the MAC program and maybe I'll never do it. Maybe I will.  I guess time will tell. I feel that up until now I've been living for my family and what I ought to do, but why can't I live for both my family and myself? I've decided that from this moment on I will live for both. One day I will be able to take care of my family completely. One day I will become the daughter that I always wanted to be. One day I will be happy in my career. Just taking it one day at a time.

This is Life.

It's the little things in life that count the most.

Since my last blog was so negative, I decided to blog about something positive.  This blog was inspired by a text I received today. It said "This weeks your rough week right? Good luck hang in there!" This week is pretty brutal for me and I definitely talked about how stressed I was on fb and twitter. My intentions were not for people to respond to them, but I just wanted to let out how I was feeling at those moments. I was really touched by this small gesture. It may seem to be just a sentence of encouragement, but to me it really meant much more. It's those little things in life that truly count. Sometimes people don't know I'm noticing, but I notice, and I remember.

I feel that sometimes people take things for granted, and I definitely am guilty of this. Sometimes I may seem unappreciative of things because I don't show it on the outside, but truly, I am thankful. I remember when my brother got into a football accident and broke his arm, a friend of mine came to the hospital to bring me, my mother, and my brother food with no questions asked. I know I said thank you to her then, but seriously, I'll never forget it. I also remember this past semester when I was in Hong Kong, I put on fb that I wanted someone to write to me, and a few weeks later, a letter came in the mail for me. Thank you. A morning before an exam, my friend came upstairs to my dorm room and brought me cereal to wish me good luck on my test. Thank you. There are also countless instances that have deeply touched my heart, and for that I am so grateful to have these types of people in my life.

There are also small things in my daily life that I am touched by; I guess you can say that I'm one of those people who are easily touched. I'm the kind of person that has that little "aww" in my mind when I see someone people go out of their way to help others, such as giving up a seat on the bus for the elderly or sharing an umbrella in the rain with a stranger. I am also strong believer of chivalry and sometimes it seems like it's pretty much dead. However, I have a friend who always opens the door for girls, and when I say always I mean always. I remember a time when another  friend and I were walking on the side of the road and he pulled me to the inside so that he was the one closest to the oncoming traffic. Once in a while, I'll see a guy pull out a chair at a restaurant for his girl. These gestures may be small, but the impact to me is much larger.

In the end, it's the little things in life that count the most, that mean the most, and that last the longest. People go through life thinking that the most important things are fame, success, power, and money, which are great for the moment, but honestly, they only bring temporary happiness. I believe true happiness is living your life knowing that people genuinely care about you and that there are people whom you genuinely care about as well . True happiness is a collection of memories created by the small things in life that we often take for granted. True happiness is giving more than you receive, and not asking for more in return. So the next time someone does something little for you, no matter how small, remember to tell or show them you appreciate them. Remember, a small action can go a long way, so let's start creating true happiness today.

STOP! The key is NOT to care.

Seriously, why do I care about people? When all they do is screw you over in the end. I, Tiffany Lan, am done with bullshit, and definitely done with stupid people. I'm going to stop caring about people who don't care about me. I'm just going to concentrate on the good things in my life.  I have great friends, people who love me dearly and people whom I love back in return. That's enough. I feel like sometimes we are so wound up in some kind of fantasy world when we forget to appreciate what we have in our lives. I am grateful for my friends, and when I say friends, I mean my true friends: those who are there for me through thick and thin, those who appreciate me despite my imperfections, those who care about me no matter what.

People need to stop assuming stuff and stop believing rumors because most of the time, it's not true.  IT'S NOT TRUE. Stop believing stuff that you don't know about. FUCK YOU, FUCK BOYS, FUCK ALL THE PEOPLE THAT EVER SCREWED US OVER, because you know what? You guys are the reason why it's great to be fuckin single.

Maybe I drank a little tonight, maybe I'm not in the best state of mind to be writing a blog right now, but who the fuck cares. Everything I said is from my heart. Everything I said is what I wanted to say, so dammit, I'm just gonna say it. When I graduate I hope to never speak to these kinds of people again. I will only stay in contact to those who mean anything to me. Goodbye losers. I'm done, I'm over it. I'm moving on with my life.

Heartbreak warfare....

Is it true when people say that you don't really move on from one person until you've found another? Sometimes it's easier to pretend that everything's alright instead of facing the reality of it. I have been out of my relationship since last August and I'm still not quite sure if I'm over it. I don't if this is the smartest choice publicly writing about this extremely personal subject, but since I decided to start blogging I guess this is the place to be honest. 

I would say that first loves, first everythings are the hardest to move on from. Studying abroad was the best distraction for the break-up, but coming back here and running into him randomly made everything so much more complicated. It made me realize how much I missed him and how happy we were at one point. Then I thought about how much we fought towards the end of our relationship and how unhappy we both were in it. It simply wasn't meant to be. Our personalities, interests, views on life, etc were all completely different. Then why the hell were we together for so long? For comfort? For love? What does love even mean? We believed in this fictional word called love and that this word could overcome all problems and obstacles. But boy was I naive. So after that I decided that there may be such thing called temporary love, but love doesn't last forever.

There are many things in the past few weeks that I haven't been very proud of. After the terrible thing that he did to me, I decided to declare war and was determined to win at all costs. My ultimate goal: to make his life miserable. I wanted to show him how happy I was without him and how much of a mistake it was for him to do what he did to me. I wanted to hurt him so badly that I sacrificed the feelings of innocent people, and in turn hurt myself the most. So today I decided to surrender; I surrender to myself. Perhaps I'm still not over him. Perhaps people don't truly move on until they've found another. However, all I know is that for now, I need to work on the most important relationship of them all: the relationship with myself. This is the last semester of my senior year and it's time to just focus on me. So today I've decided to let you go, to let us go; I'm letting go of a memory that was once special to me. I'll hold on to the good times, and learn from the bad. I'm moving on...

Where have our dreams gone?

Instead of studying for my accounting final, I am sitting in the cafeteria of my business school writing my first blog. I always wanted to be a blogger and I thought it would be begin when I studied abroad last semester, but I never got to it. So here I am about to pour my heart out to who-knows-will-read-my-blog. 


I don't know if you call this a quarter life crisis, but it sure is something. Up until now I have always been that confident girl who knows what she wants in life and goes for it. Recently, I've been doubting myself. Sometimes I feel like I gave up on my dreams because I'm scared of the unknown and stopped believing in myself. I ran into a friend walking into the cafeteria today and we talked about our plans after graduation in May. He saw me holding my intermediate accounting encyclopedia of a book in my hand and asked "are you doing the MAC program?" I replied "Yes, but I'm not sure if I want to do it." The next few words he told me were probably the best advice I've received in a while; he simply said "Then don't do it; you're too interesting to be an accountant." He told me his plans after graduation is to move to LA and pursue his dream: a career in acting. He told me that this is the prime time in our lives:we are 21, and this is the time before we have serious relationships, mortgages to pay, and heavy responsibilities, so why not go for our dreams. If we don't do it now, we will regret it in the future. The thing is, he is absolutely right. 


I admire what he's doing. He is actually doing what he wants to do. Then why can't be as brave and do what I want to do? Are people these days too scared to reach for their dreams because they bounded by the standards that society sets for us? Did we stop believing in ourselves because we feel that going to college, getting a degree, and working in the corporate world is our destiny in life? I know deep in my heart that being an accountant is not for me. Then why am I going through with it? For security reasons, for my family, for having a stable job and making money? Sometimes I feel like a puppet being controlled by society. I don't want to live like this. I'm Tiffany: spontaneous, quirky, confident, passionate, and a go-getter. Where has this girl disappeared to?


I've said this a lot to people recently: "sometimes I wish I could just buy a one-way ticket to somewhere else and just start my life there." Then reality hits me: where would I get the money for the plane ticket, for living expenses, for other expenses. In the end, does it come down to money? Do people give up their dreams because of materialistic boundaries? I think so because I am the prime example of it. The truth is, I don't know exactly what I want to do in the future. I feel more confused now than I did coming into college. One thing I do know is; I don't want to be another puppet in the corporate world climbing up the corporate ladder. Decisions, decisions...