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By Dennis Hong, February 3, 2012 11:49 am

Image by Peter Beavis

Here’s a fun little experiment. Read the passage below in your head and see if it makes sense to you. If it doesn’t, read it out loud to yourself. If it still doesn’t make sense, ask someone to recite it to you. Hopefully, then it should be obvious:

Up led Joe legions tulip lag lovely ewe gnat his date sublet merit cob. Unto theory pup leg, fur wretched stance, unlay shin, on dirt got, end if is civil, whiff fibber tea Angie us diss four hall.

As a teacher, I’ve learned that different people have different styles of learning, the two most common being visual and auditory. Visual learners need to see information, while auditory learners need to hear information.

If the above passage works as intended, whether or not you can figure it out should reveal whether you’re more of an auditory or visual learner. Auditory people will naturally “hear” this passage as they’re reading it, so they’ll easily be able to understand it. Visual learners, on the other hand, will only see the words on the screen and may not immediately be able to decipher them.

As a writer, I’ve learned that writing isn’t just about grammar and spelling. Good writing flows and has a comfortable rhythm. It’s almost melodic.

In this respect, I believe it’s important to “hear” what we write, not just look at the words. Even when we’re dealing in articles that were never intended to be read aloud, we have to pay close attention to how our words sound. Because cadence is just as important to good writing as all the other technical stuff. And because there will be people out there who “hear” your written words!

Continue reading 'Can You “Hear” What You Read And Write?'»

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By Dennis Hong, January 9, 2012 6:00 am

Do you remember learning about self-esteem in grade school? When they teach you to stand up for yourself in an assertive way? To speak up when someone doesn’t give you the respect that you deserve?

As it turns out, that’s only half the lesson. Because they certainly don’t teach you how to respond when someone gives you respect that you don’t deserve….

I went to happy hour with a friend one time. It was still early, so there was only one other customer sitting at the bar as we walked up. The bartender was deeply immersed in conversation with this guy, and as we waited for her to serve us, I couldn’t help but overhear their entire conversation.

Apparently, the bartender had gotten sick a few weeks ago and was worried that she had an ear infection. But, she didn’t have any medical insurance, so she didn’t know what to do. As the other guy nodded along sympathetically, I thought this was sort of a strange thing for a bartender to be telling a customer.

Maybe she knows him? Maybe they’re friends, and he’s just here to chill with her?

Finally, the bartender noticed me and sidled over. I ordered a round of drinks and handed her my credit card, telling her to keep the tab open. She glanced at it and then, somewhat unexpectedly, said this:

“Oh hey! Can I ask you a question?”

I furrowed my brows at her sudden eagerness.

“Umm… sure?”

“Okay, so I got sick a few weeks ago….”

And she carved a screeching u-turn right back into the story that she had just told the other customer. As I sat there, listening to her kvetch about her ear, I began to wonder if this bartender just had a case of oversharitis.

Continue reading 'It’s Okay, I’m A Doctor — It Says So Right Here On My…'»

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By Jon Shellhammer, December 25, 2011 6:00 am

It’s another Sunday in the National Football League. With just over a minute left in the game, the home team is down by three points. The ball is on the 20-yard line. 60 feet from the goal line. 60 feet from victory and glory. At this point, most coaches wouldn’t call for the quarterback to take off running with the football. Quarterbacks, after all, are hired to throw the football, not scramble around with it. Then again, most quarterbacks don’t have the ability to weave through an entire defense and cross the goal line almost untouched to score the winning touchdown.

But that’s exactly what this quarterback does.

So how does this quarterback celebrate his game-winning scamper? We might assume that he, like many NFL players, would do some ridiculous dance, thump his chest, or yell obscenities at the defenders he just ran around.

But most NFL players aren’t this quarterback. This quarterback, after being mobbed by his teammates, points two fingers to the sky and drops to one knee to say a prayer. In a league filled with egotism and celebrations of selfish pride, this man credits all of his abilities to God.

Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos is often criticized and rarely praised. Is it because of his unorthodox throwing motion? Because he runs too much and throws too little? No, it is none of those things.

Tim Tebow is criticized because he is a born-again Christian and not afraid to talk about it. People are quick to say that Christianity doesn’t belong in the NFL. People are quick to say that his faith flows out of his football, and the two should be separated. People say God doesn’t care about sports, and to believe that He does is ludicrous.

Continue reading 'Does Christianity Have A Place In Professional Football?'»

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By Dennis Hong, November 29, 2011 6:00 am

For the past few months now, I’ve been contributing guest columns on Dear Wendy. By no means do I consider myself a relationship expert, but I do believe I’ve been through enough personal drama that I can offer some pretty good insights. Plus, helping people gives me a warm, gooey feeling that’s way more slimming than hot fudge.

Of course, my dry sense of humor tends to seep through in my responses, and I often end up somewhat mocking these letter writers. But really, I do try to be helpful. One thing I respect about Wendy is her ability to tease out the important details in a letter and respond accordingly. Sometimes, she’ll rail on a letter writer, but only because she realizes that they need a kick in the ass. It’s clear that she’s here to help, though. And help she does, even when she’s doling out the tough love.

And this is where the problem arises. You see, tough love is tougher to dole out than most people think….

In the most recent letter that I answered, the letter writer described a nasty fight that she and her boyfriend got into at a bar, in front of all his friends—a fight that resulted in her “throwing a couple knees towards his manhood.”

Yikes! Definitely inappropriate behavior, right?

She went on to clarify that she and her boyfriend had made up, but all his friends now thought she was crazy. She asked how she could possibly fix things with his friends.

I explained how childish both she and her boyfriend had acted, and that they might want to consider taking anger management classes together. I also expressed my shock at her kneeing her boyfriend in the balls. I knew she had a tough road ahead of her, but I offered what tips I could hock up to help her come to an eventual understanding with his friends. As a joke, I even suggested that she let his buddy punch her in the ovary as restitution.

I thought I was pretty harsh, but I also believed that I answered her questions fairly.

Boy, was I mistaken.

Continue reading 'When Ordinary People Turn Into Trolls'»

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By Dennis Hong, November 7, 2011 6:00 am

"It's over, man. Let her go."

I don’t do running.

That is to say, I don’t do running when running is the only thing being done. Running in flag football, floor hockey, or settling of drunken bets? That, I can do.

But… just running? Like, the ancient Greek death sentence known as a marathon? Crap, no. I’m decent at sports that require quick bursts of speed, but pretty much fail at anything that requires endurance. Marathons and I go together like marriages and Kim Kardashian.

Every so often, though, I do decide to improve my endurance. So, I start hitting the treadmill at the gym. And every single time, my utter lack of endurance starts taunting me at around the ten-minute mark. Fortunately, I’ve learned to take that seething frustration and wad it up into a tiny burst of determination to keep me going.

But then, I traveled to Taiwan last month, and I found out that I have a Dutch great-great-grandmother, from whom I inherited a genetic disease called thalassemia minor. Even though it’s not deadly, the condition causes my red blood cells to produce abnormally low levels of hemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen. What this means is that my blood cells can’t provide my body with adequate oxygen, especially during heavy exercise.

Now, I could be melodramatic and say that my world came crashing down when I found this out. But that’s not what happened. My world didn’t collapse. It was more like my world cloudied up and started drizzling (but in a permanent state of gloominess, like Seattle). There wasn’t even any one moment when I felt the big epiphany.

I actually found out that I had thalassemia almost two years ago. However, my doctor was so nonchalant when he diagnosed me that I promptly forgot all about it. I didn’t even make the connection when my dad gave me the news. And it wasn’t until I was at the doctor’s office a few weeks ago that I caught the word “thalassemia” on my medical record and remembered my previous diagnosis.

Continue reading 'Losing My Motivation'»

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By Lady Bee, August 1, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Joie De Cleve via Flickr

Balanced is not my middle name. There are many adjectives that could be substituted for the middle name printed on my birth certificate–friendly, loyal, hard-working, honest, funny, impatient, shy–but “balance” isn’t on that list.

I have an all-or-nothing personality. If I have decided to do something, then whatever happens, I’ll do it. I like to think of this as fortitude and steadfastness, but the reality can be something else. Often I find myself questioning why I can’t let go of the trivial things, especially when my exhaustion levels are at an all-time high (which happens to be most of the time lately).

I don’t think I’m alone, though. We applaud people who “do it all,” especially women. We’re now encouraged to have fulfilling careers and a rich family life. And this is a good thing. No one should have to choose one or the other. For that matter, none of us should be forced to give up anything that provides satisfaction or contributes to our quality of life. I believe striving for what we want and what we hope to achieve is the only way we can reach our goals and will leave us happier when we lay our heads on our pillow at night.

The problem is around the time I actually go to bed. When I am pushing too hard, it’s not just confined to late at night. I look at the clock, and I know that the time I have between that moment and when I have to get up again is just not enough. Sometimes I can feel that I am wearing myself too thin with all of my commitments and the things I do. The same thing happens at work: The hours slip by, and I know that the pile of work on my desk will not get done, and I’ll just be adding more to it the next day. There are too many friends to see on the weekends and at night, too many errands to run. There is just simply too much to do.

My colleagues are experiencing the exact same problems: high stress, crushing workloads, demanding lives, and lack of sleep. However, when the candle has been burnt at both ends down to a puddle of wax, they recognize it and stop. I just can’t seem to identify when to say “when.”

Continue reading 'Leading A Balanced Life Doesn’t Come Easy For Me'»

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By Isaac Kennedy, July 18, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Tom Grill

I hate myself sometimes–my face, my body, or even my hair when it won’t go quite exactly how I want it to go.

Since I was 13 years old, my weight has remained fairly constant, but my height has changed by around a foot. In a span of a few years, I went from awkward overweight child to awkward underweight teenager. I’m only now just at a healthy weight for someone of my size, and it only took me seven freaking years!

Since I’ve experienced being both overweight and underweight, I sympathise with the arguments for each. I’m often asked which was worse, which I considered the worst to deal with.

The honest answer? When I was “just right.” That perfect moment of equilibrium, when my height and weight were in perfect harmony? That sucked, ironically enough.

Being either side of the “right” weight meant I had a goal to aim towards, some target I was aiming for that would grant me a sense of accomplishment when I reached it. Because when I was unhappy with how I looked, I was damn well motivated to do something about it.

But when I was just the right weight? Well, that was hemlock for my motivation.

When I was overweight, I was around 5′ 4″ and weighed 10 stone (or 60 kilos, for you non-Brits). This put me on the cusp of being obese. For around six months, every meal I ate consisted of junk food, but no one in my family or circle of friends commented on this. Despite seeing me literally killing my insides with junk food, no one batted an eyelid.

Of course, my family’s silence was more than made up for by the bullies at school. Their insults made me turn to food more. It wasn’t until I tried running at a school sports day that I realised that even though the bullies were Class-A dicks, they had a point: I wasn’t healthy.

Continue reading 'I Hate Myself, But In A Good Way'»

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By Dennis Hong, July 11, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Yuri Dojc

Being a guy sucks sometimes.

I mean, aside from having to constantly monitor all these fragile dangly parts that we absolutely positively must keep out of the way of zippers, rogue knees, and hand rails (although that last one really only applies if we’re doing rail slides on a skateboard), we’re also trained from an early age that we’re not supposed to show any emotions whatsoever.

“Be strong!”

“Real men don’t cry!”

What. The. Hell?!? What if I need to let out a good sobbing fit every once in a while? What if I want to bawl when a bleeding, limping Bruce Willis throws the German terrorist who speaks with a thick German accent (even though he can clearly fake an American accent) out a 20th-story window and reunites with his estranged wife?

What am I supposed to do about that?

I have to admit, I was a teenage drama queen. In my angst-ridden senior year of high school, I once punched out our kitchen window. My parents were surprisingly supportive of my emotional outburst, not to mention everything else (I thought) I was going through at the time. Even worse, I actually wore my bandages proudly to school the next day. It was as though I needed to advertise how messed up my personal life was (it wasn’t), and how badass I was (I wasn’t) through my ownage of a set of glass panes.

Seriously, I was Emo 15 years before the term Emo had been coined. I was a miserable wreck, suffering from a miserable life. And I wore my plight proudly, as Atlas must have done when he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders for all those billions of years.

Continue reading 'To Be Strong Is To Show Our Weakness'»

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By Reena Mumbai, April 4, 2011 6:00 am

Image via Shreyasrkrishnan.blogspot.com

Recently, a friend and I were talking about the newborn baby of another friend. We were discussing all of the usual mundane stuff, like whom the baby resembled, when she commented, “at least he’s fair-skinned.”

What the…?

I couldn’t believe my friend had said that. Hasn’t my generation moved beyond this crippling, oppressive, racist mind-virus? My generation is supposed to be past such a parasitic meme. We’re supposed to accept beauty with a more ecumenical embrace, aren’t we? I suppose some viruses are tough to eradicate.

In India, where light skin is an obsession, skin-lightening creams are a 500-million-dollar industry. The obsession can be traced back hundreds of years to the time of the British Raj, when a clear distinction between dark-skinned Dravidians and light-skinned Aryans was used in conjunction with an ancient caste system to create the 1872 All India Census.

Indians were subalterns to the white British. British colonization ingrained upon Indians the notion of fair skin being superior to dark skin, even amongst the people of India. And so it came to be that fair skin went hand-in-hand with class and privilege.

Women were more affected by the skin color distinction than men (numerous socio-anthropological studies have found this to be the case amongst many cultural groups and ethnicities). In India, the ideal model of beauty came to be associated with the white woman. Though one might have expected the emancipation of India to have diffused such ways of thinking, the growing availability of modern luxuries, namely television, had ironic consequences. The influx of Hollywood into Indian homes only further perpetuated the notion that light skin and light eyes were the ideal symbols of beauty. Continue reading 'Fair Skin, Foul Play'»

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By Danny Braciole, February 28, 2011 6:00 am

Swerving through traffic on her way home from work, Kristin laughed at me. “Who are you kidding, Dan? You’ll never have that many kids, because you’re never getting married!”

I put my feet up on my desk and smiled. “Well, it’s not like you didn’t try to change that about me once upon a time, kiddo. Can’t say that I blame you for trying.”

Somehow, I heard her roll her eyes through the phone. ”Now look at you, all settled down like an old lady celebrating your 30th birthday… you knocked up yet?”

And so it went, Kristin and I gently poking each other with the once-pointed criticisms that we’d used years ago to cut one another to pieces. Six years apart had dulled the edges enough that we could both laugh about my fear of marriage and her eagerness to rush into it. Each year the laughter came easier and the tension became less, but I always felt the unmistakable lightness of relief each time our annual phone call finally ended.

“How fitting that this song would come on while we’re talking,” she said, turning up her stereo. “It will always remind me of you.”

My eardrum nearly exploded when she held her blue-tooth up to the speakers. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s the Bobby McGee song. You’ll always be my Bobby McGee.”

A slow smile took over my face and, as is my nature, I immediately took the low road. “So you’d trade all your tomorrows for one single yesterday…?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, stud,” she retorted. “We had some amazing times, once upon a time, and I let you slip away…”

“…kicking and screaming,” I thought, but I kept it to myself. Continue reading 'Freedom Means I Have Nothing Left To Lose'»