Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

I love to bitch.

Having a low tolerance for stupidity, I love calling out the idiots of the world, whether it’s the person standing at the top (or bottom) of the subway stairs, reading her Blackberry, blocking the rush hour crowd; the tourists who feel they must walk five across the sidewalk; or the taxi driver who thinks I give a crap about his theories of when he has better business.

But does this negativity eat away at me?

Overall I think I’m a positive person. I don’t think bad things happen to me despite everything that’s happened. I’m quite lucky because of lessons learned. I’m healthy (knock wood), financially comfortable, I know what I love to do, I have friends and family who care about me, and I’m pretty.

Haha, just kidding.

What gall would I have to have to complain about my life? I’m not a child prostitute in Bangkok, nor a war widow in Iraq. I’m not an oppressed woman living in mainland China or Japan. I have all my limbs.

In high school I developed this persona as an angry girl. I was angry, especially when people were jerks to me for no reason, but it was a defense mechanism as well. I was so shy, I could barely talk to people. But I didn’t like coming off as shy so I decided to come off as angry instead.

As I got older, I honed this anger into a pseudo-toughness that only in a blue moon transformed into real courage. I loved cursing in front of people who found it shocking, telling off assholes who said rude things to me on the street, not caring what people thought.

I’m a petite woman who looks younger than she is. As kids my brother and I were called chink and chingchong every day. My mother bosses me around. And so how do I make up for all these things? I’m tough with the idiot strangers on the street. I don’t hide my disdain for their inane cell phone conversations, roll my eyes when they bump into me, sigh audibly when they take forever at the subway turnstile.

Also, hey, it’s New York.

But maybe it’s not necessary for me to be so impatient, so negative about these little things. My reactions don’t make the situations any better. I don’t get worked up over the super crowded subway anymore. I’ve accepted it and push right into the middle of train. True, I totally bump into people – it’s the Chinese in me – but I do say sorry in a sincere way.

I was talking to YP about this, and after we agreed it’s probably better not to be quite so negative, I bitched about this group on Flickr called Happy Couples.

I mean, c’mon! Blech.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 12:38 pm and is filed under awareness. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.