Day 16: My 5 greatest accomplishments

• Great credit score. Actually I don't know if this is actually much of an accomplishment because it's not something I actively worked towards; it just happened. But yay!
• Learning Liszt's "La Campanella" (variations of Paganini; Etude 3). I never performed it, apart from maybe a snippet for a YouTube video I posted. But apart from a few friends (and one of their moms lol--I only remember because she called me a virtuoso pianist and I was so flattered), nobody knew I learned this. This was solely for me, and it was very gratifying--despite straining my carpal tunnel--to realize that I can do anything I put my mind to; I thought this song was legitimately impossible for me to learn. Didn't think I could ever learn a Liszt song all the way through, let alone an etude by him, because of the patience and dedication and frustration I knew it would entail...but I did it! Of course, this was in freshman year of college, and I remember none of it now...
• Picking myself up after being knocked down. Of course, this wasn't without the help of a few friends that I consider to be among my best friends today. But there was a time when I could very easily have given up hope, and it was pure stubbornness on my part that made me persevere. I had to force myself to wake up in the morning and do things with my day that I really didn't want to do, but I knew I had to because I would otherwise have continued spiraling downwards. I had to start somewhere, sometime. It was this one single accomplishment in itself that led the way to the accomplishment of many other things, including graduating from Virginia Tech with 3 bachelor's degrees, leading a fantastic a cappella group in college, falling in love for the first time, performing at the Verizon Center, dancing with a pretty awesome dance crew for really fun performances, and networking with a bunch of really wonderful people by putting myself out there in general.
• My selection of friends. I have retained some great people in my life, and I couldn't be prouder of my friends for their own accomplishments, in addition to their intellect, their personalities, their hotness (I have some pretty darn attractive friends), their morals and sound judgment (or even lack thereof--come on, they make for some pretty interesting people), their senses of humor, their emotional support, and countless other reasons why they are some of the best people I know.
• Is it sad that it was really difficult to come up with 5 great accomplishments in my life? Looking back, I don't know if I've really done anything noteworthy. :( Uhhh I won a scholarship through AASuccess (Asian-American Success) two years in a row, for $1,000 each year.

Day 10: My most embarrassing moment.

I'm not one of those people who are kept up at night by their brain replaying all of their embarrassing, shameful moments.

Sike. I totally am. Er I think I was at one point, but not so much anymore. I'm not sure what changed, nor when it changed, but I just find great liberty in laughing at myself. Besides, if you can laugh at yourself, then they are laughing with you, not at you.

With that said...

I can think of moments that had me in absolutely ridiculous situations. The following are a few of them, because I really don't know which was the "most" embarrassing. 

• I was eight years old and my dad was trying to get me assimilated into participating in the scripts of regular social dialogue, such as ordering food. He had me order food by myself at McDonald's. I got the food in the bag, and the cashier was handing me back my change (I have no idea how we got the food sooner than we got the change back). As I held the change scooped in my hand and brought my arm back from over the counter, my elbow hit the bag of food and fries flew everywhere. My dad yelled at me and I cried, which made him yell even more. The employees felt so bad for me they gave me a second serving of food anyway free of charge.
• I was around fifteen or sixteen, and I was the accompanist at church for service on a particular Sunday. In the middle of the sermon, I suddenly got a stomachache. I rushed out of there (from where the piano was, all the way in the front) and hurried to the restroom, did my business, and then hurried back. In my haste, however, I hadn't checked to see that I was...decent. My dress was tucked into my stocking, and everyone could see my underwear. Nobody mentioned anything until after service, though.
• This was last week. I had too much dairy towards the end of my work day and lactose intolerance turned its ugly head on me. Let's just say you shouldn't park in the row near the exit of the North parking garage.
• My parents are super foreign, and their accents and broken English can be pretty embarrassing to a kid whose other classmates are all white/black. I realized in a few years, though, that broken English is simply a testament to that person's ability to speak more than one language. It's something to admire, not ridicule.
• I think I was either thirteen or fourteen. I was hanging out with the 'popular' girls, one of whom had a crush on this 'popular' guy in our grade. She asked him out, and he said no. So, in an effort of camaraderie, we all decided to ask him out one by one throughout the rest of the day so she wouldn't feel alone in being rejected. Though the point was for him to say no to the rest of us, I still felt rather abashed that the first time I asked a guy out was not even a genuine gesture on my part and that I got rejected by one of the cutest boys in our class.
• I was singing with my high school a cappella group and best friends, Bella, at some event hosted by WKYS 93.9 and Boys & Girls Club. We were singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and one of us didn't hit the right note. It threw the rest of us off. We all stopped singing at the same time, and although we were just supposed to be background noise, the audience stopped whatever they were doing and turned to look towards us on the stage. All four of us, 16 years old and embarrassed, looked at each other not knowing what to do, until finally one of us legit announced, "Okay, thank you, bye!" We all ran off the stage. As soon as we got backstage, we burst into laughter. The rest of the event, we were too afraid to come out from the backstage area, apart from one time when they sent me out to get their purses because I was the least embarrassed. We still talk about this incident to this day.
• Senior year, auditioning for a solo for the senior recital in orchestra. I was not prepared at ALL. I kept stumbling, and eventually it got to the point where my face was burning so hot I started crying. I was so ashamed that I was so poorly prepared for this audition. This happened again sometime last year when I was supposed to be the pianist for some recital and I had no time to practice at all due to personal issues and two other jobs I was working, so come dress rehearsal, I sounded like crap and the director was incredibly angry with me and basically pushed me off the bench so she could play the songs herself.
• Gong show, junior year. I got gonged and then booed off stage.

The cool thing about embarrassing stories is that they end up redeeming themselves as really amusing anecdotes.