On my third night, I once again returned to the hostel past 1AM—and once again, I found my bunk occupied. Without so much as setting down my bags, I returned downstairs to reception to inform them, expecting to find that my bed assignment had been unexpectedly changed once more. However, to our mutual bewilderment, my…
Blog
When All Else Fails…Hedgehogs!
From a PR perspective, having upload schedules is a great thing. Even from a self-management point of view, working toward a deadline ensures a constant flow of production, no matter how arbitrary the deadlines may be. That said, this series is the hardest for me to keep to a schedule. Some days, I find myself…
You’re Going to Be a Sister!
I wrote a lot as a child. Once, on a trip to America over summer, a childhood friend of mine showed me an autobiography she was writing in the third person for an assignment. I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to write my own. So I tried, and tried again. It never felt quite right,…
The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 2)
I barely slept on my first night in the hostel. I fell asleep past 4 and was woken by the clamor around the room just past 6:30. I went downstairs for breakfast only to find, to my disappointment, that they served only coffee without mugs, orange juice that tasted more like fanta than orange, cereal…
No One Else Can Save You: Saving Yourself
So, having recognized that I do, in small ways in daily life, need to be saved, and having acknowledged that I am, in fact, worth saving, how does one go about it? I started small. It started with acknowledging that I am, in fact, human and as such, do have limitations. I learned that most…
Falling Face-First into Gender Norms: The Books
My mother often railed at the “happily ever after” mentality and the mindset that it teaches children. She told me how there is no happily ever after, because the wedding is only the beginning and it’s hard. By the time that she thought to tell me this, I didn’t believe her one bit. She’d already…
The Hostel in Paris (Pt. 1)
I stayed in a hostel in Paris for a few nights. On the day that I arrived, I checked in and paid for my stay, and was assigned to bed 3 in a 14-bed dorm. I was given sheets, so I made my bed and headed off to meet some friends. When I returned past…
No One Else Can Save You: The Realization
We live in a society that teaches us that we will be saved. This isn’t usually a teaching we explicitly propagate, or even teach on purpose at all. In fact, I hear it frequently being explicitly contradicted. Yet we worship deities that save us. Most of our folklore is characterized by someone who saves the…
Subverting Gender Norms: The Toys
When my parents got married, my father said to my mother, “I want four girls.” Eight years later, when they had my sisters, my mother joked, “You said you wanted four girls. Well, you have four of us now.” It took me a long time to realize how unusual this was, given that it was…
The Girls Visiting Indian Boyfriends
As a teen, I would often converse with the person in the seat beside me. On two separate occasions, I met girls with very similar stories: they were in their twenties and visiting boyfriends in India that they had gotten to know over email. One was a German girl dating a Muslim boy; the other…