I gave myself a haircut

I got myself a better camera on my phone, after breaking my old one washing it...

It is ridiculous how much it costs for women to get their hair cut. I was yelping around for hair salons a few weeks back, and all the “cheap” salons were like $40 minimum for a haircut (minus the stores in Chinatown). That compounded with the fact that almost every single place got bad reviews made me super anxious about getting my hair cut. When you have short hair (or at least when I have short hair) by the time it hits three months or so, I’m just itching to get it cut. Any longer and it looks like you’re starting to grow a helmet.

So I was thinking, I trust myself a lot, I trust myself to alter my own clothes, why not trust myself to cut my own hair? Plus, if it turned out bad, then at least I didn’t blow $40 and I only had myself to blame. So I decided to jump on Amazon to buy some clippers.

Before cutting my own hair I’ve only really had three other experiences on my CV. Before I came to college I decided to take a pair of scissors and do a straight chop on my bangs, while I was in Japan I briefly did my own side shave (which by any means did not look very good because I was so timid about it), and earlier this summer I cut my brother’s hair (he said it was choppy but he’s picky and no one ended up making fun of him).

I care a fair amount about my hair (like my urge to get it cut when it gets “too long”), but I’m of the camp that hair grows back, in fact it grows back way too quickly which gets me in the bind where I need to cut it every few months or so. Because hair grows back, I decided I could’ve live with myself if it turned out badly, plus the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is usually how you decide to own it.

I actually had a camera jerry-rigged, but I ended up taking too long so the batteries died way before I ever finished cutting. The thing about cutting your own hair is that you’ll always cut it way shorter than you planned, because you’re a perfectionist. I went over that fade in the back a bajillion times, and each time it got shorter and shorter and still looked wrong. Thank god I eventually was happy with the result, I would hate to imagine what the back of my head would look like otherwise.

So I’m locked inside this tiny bathroom, and it's 90 out and humid, so naturally I’m sweating all over the place. The tiny hairs that fell off my head would stick to my skin and prick me as I maneuvered my arms behind my head like a clumsy T-Rex. I don’t think my hand-eye coordination has ever been this bad, I was working by looking at a mirror, at a mirror, and I couldn’t tell what orientation was what anymore. Using the scissors was the worst. I ended up nicking the back of my hand once cause I couldn’t tell exactly where the scissors were spacially.

Am I pleased with my haircut? I would say so. And I can only get better and better at cutting my own hair. While we're on the topic of hair I have another story I want to tell.

So over the past year or so I’ve been experimenting with not shampooing my hair, there’s actually an entire neo-hippy movement called “no-poo” which despite its constipation connotations is actually short for “no shampoo.” It ranges from people using apple cider vinegar & baking soda to wash their hair, to people forgoing shampoo entirely and just using water. What people usually end up reporting back is that their hair is healthier and they can go more days without washing without looking like someone dipped them headfirst into a grease tank.

So I how I ended up doing the whole no-poo thing was actually due to pure laziness. Last summer before my internship I was staying at home for two weeks or so, and because I’m never there my shampoo was running dangerously low. I did what any other lazy person would do and just filled it up with some water, shook it up, and continued using the watered down version instead of going downstairs and asking my mom for a new bottle of shampoo. That worked out fine for two weeks and when I got to Tucson I was still rather shampooless, so instead of going out and buying shampoo I decided to forgo it.

Now I didn’t just go “screw it” and not use shampoo, I did do some research, and because my hair was used to using weak shampoo, transitioning to no shampoo wouldn’t cause it to freak out and produce more oil than usual. That summer was pretty amazing for my hair, I remember not having to wash my hair for up to five days and it wouldn’t feel oily, this is coming from someone who used to wash her hair every other day to fend off the grease monster.

Unfortunately this honeymoon stage didn’t last too long, while my hair didn’t feel oily or itchy for the next couple of months, it was starting to develop a waxy texture. And because it was so waxy, dandruff and dust would just stick to my hair and not come out. I bought a very fine tooth comb (some might argue it could be a nitcomb) and tried to comb out all the specks but it never worked, and it was proof that my hair was trapping dust.

This entire time my parents called me every week to beg me to wash my hair with shampoo and I would refuse. I didn’t want to admit that my waxy hair was a disaster and I didn’t want to go back to having to shampoo every other day. Eventually I got sick of my dust trap too and at the beginning of this summer my parents convinced me that I had to do something about it. But rather than go back to the silicon based shampoos that most people are addicted to, I decided to look for other alternatives and eventually settled on a natural silicon & sulfate free shampoo bar.

So I’m now three months on this shampoo bar, and my hair no longer feels waxy, is no longer a dandruff trap, and I can still go up to four days without feeling gross.

Water Works: Light Up Water Piano

The group of highschoolers I mentored

For the past summer I’ve been mentoring a group of teenagers at the South End Technology Center for the Learn2Teach Teach2Learn program. The L2T program is a summer program for youth in Boston (highschoolers) to learn about technology (different fabrication methods, microcontrollers, programming, etc.) and then teach STEM workshops to younger kids all over the greater Boston community. So during the course of this program, in addition to learning and teaching, the youth teachers were put into groups. Each group was expected to complete a project that integrates the different technologies that they learned to solve a problem in their community. The best way to describe this to an Oliner would be like a POE project.

I actually didn’t know going into it that I would end up as an mentor. I had the vaguest understanding of the program, and walking into a room of high school strangers was like reliving the nightmare of being the new kid again. At first I was just awkwardly circling around like when you don’t know where to sit for lunch, then Susan (the program director) pointed at a group and told me to join them, so I did. I helped them out that day, and then one day turned to two, and then every week when I came to the SETC they were always around and eventually this relationship naturally formed.

So what they wanted to do was to bring together the community using music since music is such a big part of who you are when you’re growing up. Their solution was to build a light up musical water piano that could deploy in parks.

If you want to hear them explaining their project go here: https://youtu.be/olgX-EqxAGo

The best picture I could find with all the components featured.

How it worked was the water keys were connected to a Makey Makey, a Makey Makey works such that when an input circuit is completed (ie. you hold ground and touch the water inside the key) it sends a keystroke. The keystroke would then play a note on a keyboard piano pulled up on their computer. We modified source code on the Makey Makey so that in addition to sending a key press it would also write one of the output pins to high. That signal would then be sent into the Arduino which would control a RGB adafruit LED strip. The protoboard connected between the Makey Makey and the Arduino served as a pull down resistor for the signal from the Makey Makey to the Arduino, without it the signal would float around resulting in gibberish being received on the Arduino causing the LEDs to blink in seemingly random patterns.

Trinity lasercutting the cover for the microcontrollers.

So one thing that was really important for me was that they were the ones working on their project, so I tried to be as hands off as possible (generally I only stepped in to debug when even I didn’t know what was going wrong). So they were the ones typing all the code, they were the ones who did all the soldering, they were the ones who designed and laser cut the boxes and I was really impressed, because here were teenagers who learned most of what I asked them to do for the first time this summer, and they were patient, asked questions, and did the work even when it was hard.

Gerard debugging the circuit.

Since I had other responsibilities this summer, I was generally more absent than the other mentors in the program, 2 days a week vs 4-5 days. I usually gave them a list of things they needed to accomplish for the days I wasn’t there, and the thing that would make me feel really proud, was when they would give me a debrief when I came back on what they got done, or send me update emails (keep in mind before you get to college, no one sends emails) telling me what’s up with the project. I was really impressed with how autonomous they were able to be and it really solidified my belief that anyone could do anything as long as they had the right support.

Technically the Arduino was actually unnecessary since the Makey Makey itself is a modified Arduino Leonardo, and has its own output pins, but I really wanted them to have a clean Arduino coding environment without having them work within the existing code uploaded to the Makey Makey.

Satta, Jojo, and Trinity went to the park to take pictures of kids playing with the piano.

I think out of the work I’ve done this summer, this was what I enjoyed the most and found the most rewarding. It was absolutely humbling seeing my group grow over the course of two months. And at the end I knew that they truly owned their own project because when they explained it to people during their project expo they talked about what they had done and not what I had done.

"Where are you really from?"

Typically when I get asked the question “Where are you from?” I tell them Kansas. I think I get some twisted pleasure from the rift between their expectations and my response. But to be perfectly honest, I feel almost as Kansan as most people living in the world do (hint: not very Kansan). I don’t know why Kansas City BBQ is famous, I could care less about the Chiefs or the Jayhawks, pick some random American and they probably know more about Kansas than I do.

Before living in Kansas I lived in New York. Before that I lived in Japan. I felt like a New Yorker just about as much as I feel like a Kansan. I certainly do not feel Japanese. I honestly don’t know how to answer the question “Where are you from?” I have roots everywhere but at the same time nowhere. I think about this alot.

Occasionally I’ll have the person who’ll follow up with “Where are you really from?” This question often finds itself at the top of the list of microaggressions for many Asian-Americans. There are entire videos posted to Youtube where people snap their fingers in a Z-formation as they proclaim that they were born in the whitest city in rural Iowa. Usually people don’t ask “where are you really from?”, they ask things like “where were you born?” or “where are your parents from?” When that happens I feel like they’ve caught me, that I need to unzip my American outer skin and reveal myself as me, me who was born in China. I feel like my generation has been indoctrinated to feel offended when someone asks where they’re really from. My ABC (American Born Chinese) friends can harken to some hospital in America and feel insulted. I don’t know how to feel.

I mean it’s true, I wasn’t born here, so is it stupid that I feel insulted when people ask the question? The whole reason why people get offended in the first place is because deep down that question masks another remark “you’re not American aren’t you?” For people who’ve lived here their entire lives, it's easy to see how that’s offensive. I’m an American too, I’ve had my citizenship for five years, before that I had a green card, before that, my parents visa. I moved here when I was four. My friends are ABC so does that make me a CBA? Is there any difference between their version of being Chinese-American and my version?

I gag when someone asks me where I’m really from for another reason. I’m disgusted by my knee jerk reaction to hide my Chinese origin. Why should I be ashamed of being Chinese? People seem to have no problem inserting the fact that they’re 3th generation Irish, 1/5th Norwegian, and 2% Cherokee into their self introductions. Oh wait, I know why, America has been spewing years and years of anti-China propaganda, and we Americans are racist as fuck. I might not be able to hide the fact that I look Chinese but at least I can hide the fact that I was born there. I wonder if this us vs. them mentality is why so many young people insist on getting all up in arms when they’re asked “where are you really from?”

Updated Portfolio Site!

www.jiayingwei.com

So I just updated my portfolio site, it’s been a good 2 years since I’ve changed it’s looks. I wasn’t resonating with how I was portraying myself there anymore so it was time. It’s pretty amazing how much you see yourself change in just two short years.

Here’s what it looked like before:

There was an easter egg where if you clicked the paint tube she would wink.

Despite doing more illustrating now than I have two years ago I considered myself more of an artist back then than I do now. Though I really do have to thank this blog for helping me develop my my personal style, if you look back at my first few comics there’s a noticeable difference in quality. I do feel that artistic style isn’t something you work towards… I tend to go for art that looks more like

I was a huge fan of ProdigyBombay back in the day…

My personal work seems to be pretty orthogonal to the type of stuff I like. But I’m chill with that.

You know what’s the worst thing in the world? Writing short personal statements. Usually I find them sounding like utter bullshit for example: “I’m an explorer of deep meaningful caves and enjoy writing css in my spare time,” I swear most of them sound like you have your pinky up your ass (or arse if we’re being fancy). I mean who talks like that? My last one is pretty cringy.

Can you tell I’m pulling this out of my ass?

I can’t say that my new one is spectabulous but it does the job and makes me want to barf less. Let me know if you have a better tag line I could use.

Some other gems I found were in the project descriptions. Sometimes I find that I just have no filter, and left the kinda stuff you probably shouldn’t sneak in there for your future employer. This time around I found myself deleting unnecessary cheek. Some descriptions I had for things I did (aka. skizzles) were:

• Had fun “testing”
• Saving money: dissecting old and broken printers for their insides
• Assembly: “Why is this crooked??” Just kidding. But only a little.

Now hopefully this iteration of my site lasts for a couple more years before I need to molt.