Introducing Miss Cee and the Quirkiness of Being Asian

So most everyone should have heard by now that I moved into a new apartment and I got a new roommate!  Miss Cee is a second year graduate student in the Education department from Taiwan, and we attend the same church congregation, which is how we met and decided to room together. 

It's been a while since I've had an Asian roommate (family doesn't count), and I am completely TICKLED by some of our similar habits and quirks. I know it's really 80% personality and 20% Asian-ness, rather than the other way around, but there are some similarities we share that are so "unique," it's easier (and fun-ner) to attribute it to being Asian and let everyone just shake their head, roll their eyes and mutter, "Oh you Asians..."

Example 1: We both shower at night.

It's nice to have white American roommates (who generally shower in the daytime) because then we don't fight for the bathroom (especially on Sunday mornings). But it's also nice to know that my roommate has a cultural understanding of why I shower at night. FYI, according to my undergraduate 101 anthropology class, there is an anthropological cultural explanation for why different cultures shower at different times- yes this is what we in the academic world study... 

2: We sleep late and wake up late. The saying "early to bed, early to bed" is usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but even if Mr. Franklin wasn't the one who came up with this saying, I'm convinced it was NOT invented by an Asian. Alright, there are exceptions to the rule on both sides, but I do notice that most of my former Asian roommates and I have a later "daylight clock" than most of my American roommates. My theory is that we Asians grew up having to stay up late to study, and so formed the habit of sleeping late. Bad, unhealthy habit but hey! Don't look at me- blame it on the education system! 

3: We drive the same car model, the Toyota Echo. I'm not kidding you. And we bought this model for practically the same reasons- cheap, low gas mileage (less than 100,000 miles when we both got them!) and runs smoothly enough to get us from point A to point B without worrying about breaking down. 

Mine on the left, hers on the right

Isn't that just hilarious?! Her car is 3 years newer than mine though. Now whenever people comment on how tiny my car is, I have an excuse to say, "It's an Asian thing" (Ssh! Don't tell them it's really not). By the way, my car is really not that small. It has FOUR DOORS, is really the perfect size for Asians who tend to be smaller in built.

4: We cook dinner for lunch the next day, even if it is already 11pm. 
Over the past Christmas break I visited an old roommate of mine in Kentucky, and one of the things we reminisced about was how one time she came home from work at midnight to find me in the kitchen cooking mac-and-cheese for my lunch the next that day.

Well, it's nice to know that apparently, I'm not the only crazy Asian who does this, because guess what Miss Cee and I were doing at 11pm this past Monday?

Yup.

I'm still grinning from recalling these memories. What can I say- I'm Asian and proud of it!