The Shallows by Nicholas Carr propelled me into technology. I first read this writing as an undergraduate in Journalism school. As someone learning about the science and arts of communications, the internet — I mean everything underneath the hood — seemed like such a far-off world. It bothered me what a paradox it was on how little I knew of the tool I use the most.

And so, five years later — I myself am now carving out a space to learn about technology as a software engineer.

I really do love this book because of the questions it draws out in my responsibility as practitioner in technology and a thinker in communications theory.

In the world of technology we like to think of most efficient transfer of data to and from systems.

Is the data usable? How long does it take to send the data? How do we intend the data be used? Is it easy for our users to access? What does it mean? What can we infer?

In the world of communication we like to think the community of ideas — the the transfer of ideas to and from individuals and society.

A question we like to ask in the world of communications is — who had access to the medium of communications? Who determined what was communicated?

Do we shape and mold our communication methods or do they shape and mold us?

This question is fun to ask because I do think at the end of the day — when it comes to computers and systems — it is the creator (usually driven by money) who is determining this.

What we decide to record and pass onto the next generation is a hallmark of what we value in our society. Our brains, the way we think, the things we measure… The Shallows brings up ideas and questions that is relevant now more than ever on a personal and societal level.

On neuroplasticity on our brains

Carr frames the book by introducing the idea of neuroplasticity — our brains are always changing and developing by how we use it.

I’m a neuroscience junkie. And in my endeavors of being a logical youth with chronic depression, learning about the science of the brain and body helped me develop better personal habits and peace of mind.

It goes without having to say I devoured this early section about the brain. The belief and the research in the Brain adjusting and adapting to change is everything that is keeping my depression from winning.

And I love the counterargument to the folks who see the brain as a machine. The brain is so much more than a machine of inputs and outputs. There’s a certain mystic to the brain — like how when one sensory is impaired, parts of your brain will rewire to adapt to compensate for the impairment.

But with the context of the internet, neuroplasticity means that the way we communicate and consume media is rewiring our brains. There is so much going on on an app, a webpage, a video.

As we train and practice sifting through all the noise, we’re training our brains to make hundreds of decisions at once to filter out what’s important and what is not.

That energy used to filter — is energy that is not used to think thoroughly through the very media we’re consuming.

Webpages today are designed to be addictive mainly because the source of income is ad revenue, or how many items are sold, or how many clicks can we get.

I think it’s not completely broken. It think rather — a redesign is in order.

What do we measure? How do we define success? What are the outcomes we want with our technology?

These questions are the questions I’d like to continue to pursue and shape.

It’s similar to how we think of GDP today.

I think many people can agree GDP is an outdated measure of success. In any other situation in nature — something that endlessly grows is a cancer. GDP is measuring success on data points that are irrelevant to the things that matter.

A bit of a tangent there, but being more aware of how things are designed and how it affects my mind has propelled me to reshape my relationship to technology.

A basic framework to visualize the spectrum that Carr proposes is, on one side we have the filtering processing part of our brain, the side that helps with multitasking and deciding at a quick glance what’s relevant. It’s almost like the surveying side of your head. On the other side we have the deep thinking part of the brain, the side that needs to tune everything out to focus on one specific thing and draw connections from one part of your experiences and thoughts to another.

I think thismodel is useful in trying to deduce which side would I like to exercise and when. What is healthy for me?

It does make me wonder what the brain of someone is like who completely grew up with social media as an extension of their communication.

What our medium of communication says about us

I recall an amazing article from my high school English class, the famous Body Ritual Among The Nacirema. It’s an anthropologist’s commentary on how future anthropologists will see Americans today (it’s on of the the nerdiest commentary I’ve ever read, still). My main takeaway from this is — that by creating this observer’s view on our contemporary culture, we’re able to examine ourselves with less bias.

So — today as we are leaving decision making to our algorithms, is this the society we want today?

We often hear of the algorithms that google and facebook use determine what we see. Amazon uses technologies in their platform to ensure their own products win. What we get is — a machine that a human created that determined what is communicated.

For example, Google is well known for their intense A/B testing. There is an anecdote in Carr’s writing about Google A/B testing just to see what shade of blue attracted to most clicks.

In this case the success means a click through.

Is it not possible to create a different kind of model of success? How do we measure something subjective? It certainly would be harder to measure. A click is about as concrete as a piece of data can get.

Do we value this new human brain that we’re creating with multimedia? Or perhaps we must be that much more intentional about it.

Our internet today is shaped by what our society values — money.

Once upon a time in American history, there was legislation to bring controversial topics of the public interest that were honest and informative called the Fairness Doctrine. It’s hard to imagine some sort of legislation like that would ever pass in today’s political environment.

It’s not completely impossible. Other nations do have things like it; Australia is a good example.

I want to highlight here that governments do have the power to decide the values in the nation.

A cross disciplinary look

I could dive deeper in all the ideas I wrote here today… but I figure an article to articulate everything I’ve learned in my Journalism theory class isn’t all too fun.

There are way more fun ways to learn about them now that these ideas are now mainstream. John Oliver does plenty of segments on journalism that describe all the theories I learned those years ago.

What I love most about this book is it’s appeal to people outside the world of communications.

With the other ladies in this book club — I was able to introduce them to a piece of my mind, the bread and butter of how my brain sees things, and learn peak inside their brain, what these words mean to them.

What is technology for those not creating it? What is communications for those not in the theory of it?

There are days where I know I’m out of touch with that…

The Brain I Want — was originally published in book babes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lately, people have been coming to ask me for advise on making a similar career switch. They come for all reasons of all kinds to take up code — money, ego, passion, curiosity, escape.

I’m excited to see so many people willing to catch up with our times. I’d like to say I’ve become a maven of sorts when it comes to — “How do I get into I.T. ?”

Computers and Servers

When you first start exploring the world of computers, it’s helpful to realize computers and servers are one and the same.

A server is the root. A server is a machine that is optimized to store data. There’s usually no keyboard, not even a screen. People make adjustments on servers by connecting it a computer remotely.

Computers are servers optimized to be used by an average Joe. It has the same base as a server, but maybe not so much storage and maybe more compute power. It’s the PC. It has a graphics card. It has something you can see, click and interact with.

Front-end, Back-end and Full-stack

Now that we know that computers and servers are basically one in the same — we can talk about how a modern web application works.

If you’re looking to learn about career paths for software engineers you’ll discover that there’s Front-end, back-end and full-stack developers. These three categories are a great way to understand the architecture of web apps.

You can see our average Joe on a computer.

He’s on a website. That website there by the code running on our Front-end server.

His computer will communicate with the Front-end server to know how the website should look and act like when he hits the URL.

The front-end server holds our front-end code, or Client code. The people that focus on the code here tend to think of user experience. They think about how to best make a website user friendly. A common term you’ll hear in the world of front-end is UI/UX. JavaScript is usually their language of choice.

People with a good eye for aesthetics and empathy are appreciated here.

To get the data to show on our website — we grab it from our back-end server. People usually call this side of the code the Server because it serves data.

The server code is responsible for connecting to and pulling data out of a database. They pull data out and manipulate in a way that’s useful for the Client code. People with a knack for logic puzzles in data structures are appreciated here.

There are even software engineers that shift into Database analysts — they organize data in a database that makes it easy to pull clean data out of.

The Full-stack developer will do a little bit of everything. They’re the master of none, jack of all trades type of people.

A universal goal for any developer is run time optimization. Everyone wants their code to run as fast and as smooth as possible.

Servers talking to servers

A key part to being a developer is understanding how computers talk with other computers. How is data transferred from one computer to another?

In life — we often have a sort of expectation when engaging in social exchange with someone we want to learn from. We introduce ourselves, we give a handshake, perhaps a smile to show we have only good intentions.

In the computer world, they’re called protocols. Protocols are rule sets that computers agree to use to communicate with one another.

More often then not you’ll be using a protocol that is already popular today. If you’re developing on the web — you’ll be using HTTP(S) protocol. You may be familiar with the four/five leading characters in front of your URL.

To refer to the picture earlier, it’s Joe’s computer knocking on the door of the Client saying I’m expecting you need these things in order for me to communicate with you — and the Client saying I’m expecting these things in order for me to communicate with you. If they match then they should be able to exchange data and information as necessary/ that is made available

In real life

What this looks like in real life depends on the technologies that the company decides to use. In web apps it is common to see JavaScript used for the front-end and back-end.

You’ll see something called the MERN stack. It is an application that uses MongoDB, Express, React, Node.

React is the front-end framework. Express is the back-end framework. And MongoDB is they type of database.

For now you can think of frameworks as a pre-made patterns of code that can be used as a standard for your code base. Fun fact — React is a pattern developed by Facebook!

You’ll learn that if you see Node, it is a JavaScript based application. We can go into detail more about Node in another time, but think of it as a central hub of JavaScript packages.

Packages in a software development sense are pre-made code that are made open to reuse because they have popular functions that other developers may want to use.

Next Steps

If you fancy any of the job paths described I highly recommend looking around Medium for other engineers that write about what they do at work . I have found Medium to be a great resource in learning more about careers in software engineering.

Googling a framework or two might be a good way to see code in action and humble yourself to realizing you should pick up a coding language before you hurt yourself.

I also recommend searching equivalents or common frameworks for front-end, back-end in which ever language you decide to pick up.

My family at home was taking care of her. They send messages all day long. And tonight, I just received a photo of her, thin, in the hospital bed, doing her best to smile.

And it’s such a bright smile, my grandma.

She had a bone fracture.

I am breaking.

It’s haunting.

I’m shaking.

Aching.

I miss her so much.

When I was growing up under her care, she was relentless. She broke me. She completely destroyed me. She shamed me. She never pardoned me. She never praised me. She never told me things were going to be okay. She told me to be smart. She told me to remember others. She never let me see my self as anything less than a man. She expected I do everything they did and more.

With every crack she broke into me, she filled it with her stories of growing old. She trusted me with her words and honesty.

And I as a little girl I lived her life through her stories, feeling death eminent at each word.

And I as a little girl I understood despite it all, my grandma was an optimistic person.

She broke those eyes into me.

I want to be at her side and have her stories lullaby me into sleep. I want to be at her side and tell her my stories to lullaby her to sleep.

The sun still hasn't colored the sky. My eyes struggle to peel open.

A crack of light meets my eyes only to filter my room in a cool tone of gray. I take a deep breath. My back seems to have attached itself to the bed, and my legs to the fluffy blankets. Everything’s comfortably heavy. It’s been two months since I had to roll out of bed so early.

I have to serve jury duty today.

I stare at my phone. Slide, tap, tap, tap, tap. I unlock it and open Instagram. I stare at photos of food, over cluttered, over filtered, wonderfully clumsy. I keep scrolling until a cup of coffee stares back at me. There it is, coffee in its mundane beauty. I want one too. I sit up, make my bed and head over to the shower.

This will be my first time as a Juror. I am twenty and formally educated through a public university. Last night, I Googled “Jury Duty” and found pages of angry anecdotes and slick tricks to slide past the service. But I am unfettered. I am good citizen. I hope I get an interesting case.

I stand in the shower. Blast cold water. Wash my face. Brush my teeth. I slip into my athletic gear and head down into the kitchen. Clean and fresh, I can finally greet my coffee with a good morning.

Normally, I’d finish the rest of my morning reading some sort of periodical or some acclaimed literary nonsense and top off the day by writing, researching something online, then cook some food, watch Chopped, edit some papers or marketing materials, grow frustrated and question my abilities. And finally go for a run, and play a round of DOTA or League to keep my mind sharp.

But today, the morning will be completed by planning out the route to Downtown and the rest of the day left buried under a veil of uncertainties. Somehow, us, the jurors, the public, will sit in a court and and decide the outcome of the case.

Seeing the traffic notice, I decide to bike. After all, it’s a cool, moist summer morning under a hazy light. Everything is just beginning to glow. I hit play on Morning Edition and go.

It began with a news update. The number of deaths caused by gunshots reached 87 today. That’s already one over the total number of deaths by gunshots from last year. We’re only half way into this year. Crazy.

Why?

My mind starts to wonder as I begin my bike ride at an unimpressive, no-name suburb just outside the city. After some time I enter a neighborhood filled with apartment complexes catered for city escapees. At one point I enter a rundown district that let out odd morning cat calls.

Over some time, notice there are actually people at bus stops. Everything seems beaten down and forgotten. The ghettos became my world. As I rode past, people smiled, and called out hello.

An hour and half of biking later, I see the city skyline slowly emerge.
At the final crossing of an unnecessarily steep bridge, the courthouse rises into skyline to acknowledge my efforts. The Romanesque building overlooking a hill, consumes the square and commands attention.

This is the city.

I forgot how big my home is. Or rather I never knew. This bike ride changed

My world about three times and grew it ten.

Jury Management

My sweat coats my skin. My breath frantically fills my lungs. I am tired. I hope I don’t smell too bad. Maybe It was a mistake to bike Downtown. But I am here now. I hop off my bike and spot a place to locked it up two blocks down from the courthouse.

The streets are still dreaming. All around are empty police cars and clunky dark blue uniforms walking. A person trickles into the scene every now and then by the time I reach the doors of the courthouse.

The air is thick.

Last night’s rain seems to have carried into to building. The shadows of the room are highlighted by the defused orange glow from the dim lights.

Perhaps this is a sign that they’re cutting back on on public spending.

At the end of the hallway, sits a little grey box over a motorized belt, like the ones at grocery stores. Perpendicular to it, a plastic grey door frame with a hefty, uniformed man, who let age get the best of him, dangling a wand in his over-sized hands on the other side.

It’s security check.

I wait in line. There are three ladies standing in front of me, dressed in glamorous, summer wear. I wonder if I am under dressed for the occasion. The overhead lighting over their heavy eye make up casts deep shadows under their eyes. They look like they could be Cinderella’s evil step sisters or perhaps the evil step mother herself.

I am sorry for having such thoughts.

I pass through security and walk up an unlit stairwell. I continue to walk towards the light and am greeted with marble walls lined with green accents and aged copper green metalwork that lead my eyes to appreciate the high ceiling.

I get lost.

But it is a moment of pleasant fear: something new, something different. something real. The people and place were out of place. People came from all walks of life. There were young families dragging their toddles, jaded suits dragging suitcases, and confused individuals wearing dirtied jeans, sweats and t-shirts dragging their feet.

That last group, I’d say I belong to them, the jurors. I walk up and down three flights of stairs three times until I reach the right section of the courthouse on the right level. The door reads “Juror Management.”

Push.

I enter the room. The florescent lights casts a blanket of white onto the scene. The decor (I don’t know if I should even call it decor) never bothered to leave the 1980s. I am greeted by a series of bank teller-style boxes. I walk towards one with a young woman I made eye contact with. She prompts me to show her my ID number. I pass over my crumbled juror summons paper that I received in the mail two months ago. It is validated with a smile, and I am herded into the assembly room.

The assembly room feels more like a Greyhound bus station. We sit in rows of beaten down chairs. I couldn’t tell if it was a blue or grey lining on them, or perhaps it was meant to be that way to hide the age. Either way, the rainbow specks of color on them failed to brighten the sad chairs.

There are about 100 or so people from our county in this overly lit room. As a crowd, nothing quite stood out them. But as my eyes examined each individual, I saw odd quirks. Mainly white, mostly middle aged, gut hanging, clothes wrinkled, faces exhausted.

This is it, a cross section of society. This is average. This is normal. This is the real face of the public. We waited for a good half hour. No one spoke.

The television in front began to play a video. The editing of the film, too seems like it was an artifact of the 1980s. It introduced the purpose of jurors and the greatness of the American court system supplemented with classical background music, and all. The video was sure to repeat that it is because of jurors that our court system works.

But I still didn’t feel all too important.

After the video, the district judge walks in and rambled off a few thank you words. And we are left here pent up in the assembly room, still confused. I start to fidget through my book bag. After a while, books pops up, blocking the faces of the readers from peering eyes.

More people read books than I thought.

Eventually I hear my name called on the PA system. I am instructed to line up outside the room on number nine.

From here on out, that is who I am, number nine. There are 24 of us in total. We are to enter a screening process that would cut that number in half before the court hearings began. After everyone’s’ new identity is confirmed, a security officer turned bailiff leads us to the courtroom.

By now the time is about 3:00 p.m.

The Courtroom

We walk single file in number order. The eyes of the public are on us. Heads are turning. As we walk close the to courtroom, the lights grow dimmer. The overcast lights and unflattering shadows return, only this time, without the orange glow, but a cool blue overlay too weak to define any sort of highlight instead.

A young black man in the audience looks at us in the hallway and shakes his head and says, “Man, hardly any of ‘em a nigga.”

I am reminded that these are guests of the trial I am about to hear. My heart sinks a little. I am reminded of the crime, miscommunication, distrust, and blind hatred that #blacklivesmatter revealed over the past year. And I wonder how the other numbers feel about the issue.

We are not to discuss anything until after the trial.

The bailiff directs us to line up against the wall. And again, we wait.
We were sent into little rooms to sit. Again, silence. Lots of fingers tapping. Eyes are wondering or staring into the worn-down table of an abyss.

Another thirty minuets pass, and we are directed to the courtroom. We sit, number order inside the jury box.

The courtroom isn’t like the courtrooms on TV. It seemed to be a makeshift court in the judge’s office. To our right, is the honorable judge herself sitting high on an elevated platform. Below her is her secretary and the court reporter.

To our left are what seems to be movable tables with a black tablecloth pulled over them. The table closest to us is the defendant table. The defendant is a young man. His eye are in another world. But his body is tense. I look at him. And I wonder, what has forced him into this position. His attorney is slouched over with an oddly strait back that forms a triangle shape like a pyramid that flatted out under the pressure from above.

Behind them is the prosecutor table. On the left side is a lady with bright eyes, neat hair and eyebrows that often wiggle and jump three inches about her eyes.

Behind the prosecutor table is an area for the public to sit in. A few people sit inside. A journalist from the local paper is there as well. The courtroom is blocked off by sound proof glass. An audio system is set up so that everyone can hear. The remaining wall space is guarded by bailiffs.

We are given a quick debrief on the case.

The defendant is accused of drug dealing and illegally carrying a gun. I suppose, in formal journalism practice, since it’s a crime and race matters in this issue, it is important to point out that he is Black.

The Selection

After the case is quickly debriefed with us, we were to orderly state our name, marital status, occupation, neighborhood, and prior experience and a juror. Number by number we recited the prompt and each time I heard someone’s five facts, my world grew: a bar keeper, a security deputy, a nurse, a social worker. Never would I ever be in any other setting that prompts me to deliberate the definition and meaning of justice as a supposed equal with these people.

After a few more questions from the attorneys, we are sent back to the tiny rooms we were in earlier. Another thirty minuets of silence passes. And the bailiff retrieves us only to send us back into the jury boxes.

Those that held strong opinions were denied the opportunity to participate. But I wonder, if those strong opinions are what we need.

Is it fair and equal to leave them out?

It is now 5:50 p.m. At the end of the selection process, only 13 of us remain.

If our demographics is important, everyone except for myself was middle aged or older. There are five women, seven men, all white except for one Black, one Latino, one Asian.

Tomorrow we begin the trial.

I work for a new drug research institute in China and have been in and out of China’s academia for the past year or so at Tsinghua University, whose name for some reason cannot be stated without mentioning Harvard or MIT.

My research center hopes to develop medication and other treatments for diseases most harmful to developing nations, diseases like, malaria, diarrhea, and bronchitis — most are diseases that already do have treatments, but they’re too expensive to reproduce and distribute in say, Uganda, India, and yes, even China.

Most of my colleagues here are scientists who have been working in American institutions for all of their professional lives. It’s easy to put them all into a box and say they simply went to America for a better life and are suddenly coming home out of some political ploy, but me, I see it cutting deeper than that.

Prior to my current position, I spent my last two years of college chasing the story of living history. I wanted to catch the anecdotes of the first Chinese scholars that studied in the States after China’s Revolution before they — well to put it quite frankly, died.

I traced about 80 names from the University of Wisconsin — Madison (the UW), Shain’s Scholars was what we called them. It would be in the mid-1970s, when they first arrived in the States, already well into their careers as scholars.

With the help and support of the Wisconsin China Initiative, we were able to track down about twenty of these scholars and sit down to talk with them about a year ago.

They were ecstatic to hear from us.

Before I get deeper into their story, let me tell you that these men and women are all devoted scientists.

Let me tell you that in order to fulfill their thirst for knowledge many of them taught themselves English so they could read English publications related to their fields. Let me tell you they were running experiments off decade old technology, translations of English papers, and dim lighting. Let me tell you that they proudly wore their titles in the name of science despite the political strife in China. Let me tell you when they went to the States, they understood how dire the situation in China was.

One of the scholars in our Shanghai discussion put it like this:

When he started studying at the UW, he was amazed at the fact that we had a 24 hour library. Our machine could do the work that he tried to do at home at 10 times the quantity and 10 times the quality in a shorter amount of time, reliably. Lights and equipment were on when he needed them.

In China, there was no heating, reading was done in candle light during after hours. Scientists had to wait in line to use one machine.

That was the level of disparity in sciences then.

Of the scholars that attended our discussions, just about all of them ended up returning to China and set up the new fields of study and methods of research

Every one of them commented on how they tried to remodel their department after the UW’s research ideology, hands on, applicable, communicative, and for the public. I would assume the many of the other scholars that studied at other universities in the States during this era attempted the same.

However, the full dispersal of this new system of education was spotty and technology was expensive. Typically only those university departments with the returning scholars restructured their education curriculum.

That situation is reflected in the quality of the academic papers today, spotty. The Chinese government and academia do recognize this.

So let’s now fast forward to today, these prominent scholars who I share a building with, they were young, fiery students in the 80s, where they too lived through China’s desolate labs

I’m saying, young, fiery students that witnessed the rising tide of China’s intellectual complexity and the complete shutdown of youth voices after the infamous 1989 protests.

From my conversations with individuals from this generation do have it them an idealistic yearning that perhaps there was chance for them to shape China during those days. I’d find it hard to believe that they don’t have the knack for it in them today, that sliver of possibility.

Even my parents that left China for the U.S out of political strife have that in them.

It was after all, this generation that came to age during the Cultural Revolution when youth reigned supreme.

Most of them left for the States and remained there for their career in the pursuit of knowledge, better quality facilities, structured research programs, same deal that our older scholars saw.

But, now that the Chinese government has made it their goal in their Five-Year Plan, to be a leader in specific fields of science and Technology, money is there, politics are at their side, equipment will be there to order, and a blank slate is waiting for them to create the research centers of their imagination.

But, I wouldn’t say any of my colleagues saw this and came back pro-china with the flavor of “Make China Great Again” in the same macho angst of “Make America Great Again.”

They know China is not great. In their lifetimes, it was never great. Their childhood, their coming of age, their adulthood, China through the sixties up to the nineties was a disaster. There was definitely something they needed to change. Their memories of the past in China may be fond, but never great.

They’re not agents of the Chinese government.

What people are really forgetting is that for these are scientists. They are scientists enamored with their work. They’re the ones that are so obsessed they’d willingly go into a deep depression for it — for the progression of science, for the progression of knowledge.

So I’d say yes there still is that idealism in them — yes you’re going to build this field for an entire nation, and we’ll rewrite policy if necessary for you to help make this path — plus everything that has been previously stated, and the circumstances in the U.S., I’d imagine is an offer difficult to reject.

The U.S. government denies the existence of global warming. The U.S. government treats its Chinese scholars as spies from another era. The U.S. government frowns upon its immigrants. The U.S. government is blind to the fact that education isn’t free. The U.S. government is blind to the fact that knowledge is power.

There is perhaps, from an outsider’s perspective that China’s government may interfere with the integrity of research, given that it is pushed by government policy and only the ethnically Chinese are being recruited may be room for suspicion.

To that first, I’d say please let go of your cold-war politics for once.

To that I’d say, scientific integrity is likely why they’re trying to source scientists from abroad.

To that I’d say, many of these scientists are at the top of their fields, in leadership positions, and have been working for American institutions for more than twenty years (exhibit A).

To that I’d say yes, China still isn’t a very welcoming place if you aren’t prepared for it mentally and physically.

To that I’d say, it’s rare to find someone who isn’t Chinese and has Chinese language skills at an academic level, or even to understand the recruitment opportunities — unfortunately even after 100 years of realizing their lack in international finesse, the government has still yet to learn how to successfully write up English copies of their international initiatives.

To that I’d say, science calls.

This is not a lure, this is a crisis of scientists not up to par within China, academia realizing it and returning scientists seizing it.

Myth of Lure was originally published in ChinaKnows, Business News for the China Market on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re only a couple of years apart, both recent college graduates. We were chatting about how we were getting by in life. I’m in Beijing. She’s at our hometown in small Midwestern America, Milwaukee.

“We’re really lucky to have family — that we have such a strong sense of family,” I said.

There was a pause.

“It kept me grounded.”

“You say that family grounded you, but how does that lead you not caring about how people think about you? I agree, but it seems too simplified.”

Korina sighed. I thought for a moment.

“I mean yeah it was hard at times, getting left out by my classmate and things. I didn’t really understand then, but I believed that I should do things that felt right to myself and do them well. I got that from our family, especially grandma.”

I started traveling back in time.

“I’m not sure if it was as simple as respect for elders, but even throughout childhood, I could tell she had been through a lot. I took her words for things. Actually, she really scared me.”

My first memory of my grandma was her left pointer finger.

She was in the kitchen. Everything had an orange glow in the dimly lit room, just the light over the stove was on. It was just enough with the afternoon sunlight slipping into the room.

She must have been making us kids some ramen or rice porridge, as she does. I walked in by myself to watch her cook.

She handed me a little bowl of noodles. That’s when I noticed it, her finger. It was an odd, stub — without a nail — that could still somehow move and hold onto the bowl. Half of it was cut off, must have been from years ago.

It scared me senseless when I first realized it. I didn’t know what to say. I was quite scared of her, but I was alone. And she made me food.

Korina started to travel time too.

“Yeah, I would be so intrigued by everything she talked about. Then I’d go back home to tell my mom, only to be corrected by the right version of the story.”

Korina chuckled.

There was another time when Grandma scared me senseless.

There were weekends when all of us cousins would sleep over at the same house. There were usually about ten of us together. Being short on beds, most of us spread blankets and towels on the floor to sleep.

It remember it was on a late morning, the sun must have been waiting for us for a couple hours already. We didn’t notice because the curtains were closed.

I slept beside my brother. We were just getting up.

My grandma drilled us to always make our beds and fold our blankets (or I guess towels).

So that morning, as we were folding our blankets, I asked my brother to help my reach the far corner of my blanket towel. I couldn’t reach it. He began to reach over when my grandma suddenly knew to lean over my shoulder with a contorted face that made her wrinkles fold in, maybe ten times deeper.

“Hey, What are you doing?! You can fold your blanket by yourself. You don’t need a boy to help you!”

I dropped the blanket towel. Pulled it away from my brother and picked all back up by myself.

That day, her voice rung throughout the room the entire morning. I can still feel it echo in my ears today.

It was such a small task. I was both confused and scared senseless. That’s when I learned to never ask a boy for help, not even family.

“Well, I’m sure grandma and your mom have different views on the same stories. We never really will know which was the truth,” I said.

“Yeah, True.”

“We had a good childhood, lots of cousins to hangout with and learn from each other. The last one is Jessica, she got me angry today.”

“Yeah, we have a pretty amazing family.”

I smiled.

When I have too much free time I dig through the pantry and fridge and challenge myself to make something to eat.

I made a cool, refreshing, iced grass jelly bowl — a street food dessert you might find in East Asia, Southern China especially — dressed in lemon juice, raw green tea leaves, sweet basil, dragon eyes (the translucent bits) and a touch of sugar, garnished with lemon zest.

I imagined the sweet tea leaves playing off the bitters of the grass jelly and melding into the sweet basil while the lemon flavor helped cut the sweetness of the dragon eyes. Together, the crunch of the dried tea leaves and dragon eyes would help the textureless jelly and marry Chinese and Italian flavors.

It was a fun bite.

I made a second bowl for my dad. But he gagged at the raw tea leaves and the disruption of the smooth texture grass jelly has. Remember your audience, right? My dad is a traditionalist when it comes to food.