Danny ChaiSo with the explosion of the whole 25 random things, I thought it might be interesting to do 25 random things of your significant other, and I drafted one. It ended up not being exactly what I envisioned, as the most interesting things are either too embarrassing or too personal. But whatever, I wrote it, so here it is. 25 random things about Jieun.
1. Jieun can ice-skate on land. Ask her to show you.
2. When Jieun watches Friends (and Legally Blonde, for that matter), she watches with a huge smile on her face the entire time. I find it mildly disturbing.
3. I bought Jieun all 10 seasons of Friends on DVD. Despite having them, she prefers watching the abbreviated, commercial-filled episodes on TNT. Something about the serendipity of what happens to be showing.
4. She loves Legally Blonde because she relates to the movie. She thinks she’s legally blonde – scatterbrained on the outside, but brilliant on the inside.
5. Jieun was homecoming queen at her high school. Her school didn’t have football, so she was paraded around the basketball gym.
6. How she won: her school was a 7-12 grade magnet school. During some part of the homecoming process, candidates had to choose an escort for some event. The other candidates chose friends/brothers around their age for their escorts; Jieun chose a 7th grader. The candidates split the upper class votes, but she dominated the 7th-8th grade vote. Jibin is not the only political mastermind in the Park family.
7. Jieun didn’t know she was an extrovert until she met me. Previously, it was a great source of frustration. It sucks not knowing yourself. You think you need alone time but find that lowers your energy even more.
8. Jieun secretly thinks she’s way better than me at a host of things but that she just doesn’t try, many of them physical activities like snowboarding and basketball. Actually, it’s not a secret; she tells me how she’s better than me all the time.
9. She may be right about that. Except her belief that she’s a better hula hooper. On that one, she’s wrong. Dead wrong.
10. Jieun’s super into moisturizing and skin care. But on other girly-type things, she really doesn’t care. Like nail polish. She’s not that into it. And flowers. Could care less. In fact, she hates flowers – “they just die”.
11. Jieun was captain when her school was on the “nationally televised” Kid Quiz show. Video here. They won two matches, but lost the third.
12. Jieun is strongly conversational in 3 languages: English, Korean, and Japanese. When we went to Korea, everyone mistook her for a national. And she spent a summer in Japan with no translators around and did fine. She can also speak Spanish and Mandarin. She wants to learn 10 languages. I think she will.
13. Despite her gift with languages, her college friends used to make fun of her English. Connie once got her a book “100 English Idioms” for her birthday, with examples like “kick the bucket”. I’m not entirely certain she meant it as a joke.
14. Jieun had no non-Asian friends between 4th grade (whom she offended by asking if she spoke “Mexican”) and college. When she got to college, she straight-up asked Anne B0nner if she would be her white friend.
15. Karen is Jieun’s BFF. A lot of people use that term, but with them, I really think it’s true. One year, Jieun forgot Karen’s birthday. Karen called up to say so and Jieun apologized and explained it was a hard day and Karen ended up consoling Jieun. She’s a good friend. However, she skipped Jieun’s graduation to go to an ‘N Sync concert. So it all evens out.0
16. In junior high, Jieun and Susan used to use code words in their letters to represent boys they liked. They were based on “ithig” – they would add “ithig” to letters of the alphabet as the code. I’ve read some of them, and apparently they were boy-crazy, because there were a LOT of ithigs. I think they ran out of letters and moved to new codes like “Chicken Camella” at some point. So they were collectively boy-crazy for at least 27 boys.
17. Jieun is really sad that I hate kimchee jjigae, but she dislikes a bunch of foods I really like also. Like root beer, cinnamon, and butterscotch. Granted, she doesn’t hate them and will eat them if need be, but still.
18. Jieun believes that you can smell your hair by quickly moving into the space it occupied. For example, if you quickly moved your head down, back, then back up and forward again, you could smell your hair. Similarly, it happens when you’re in the car and making a turn. You occupy the space your hair used to be in.
19. Jieun thinks her own notes are the funniest notes. I personally believe that most people think this of their own writing.
20. Education is in Jieun’s blood. I find it amazing how she teaches Abby. And other kids, for that matter. I remember she was interacting with a toddler years ago and was trying to teach them the concept of “more” and “less”. She’s good at it. No wonder she was a San Jose Magazine Educator of the Year.
21. With brothers who are both baseball-crazy and who watched it constantly growing up, a sister will either end up being crazy herself or just hate sports. Jieun is the latter. Which makes me kind of sad. However, she does accurately know what a balk is, which is better than 90% of all females and 10% of all males.
22. One way in which we’re very similar – once we start something, we’ll commit to it forever. So the Mary Kay thing Jieun’s doing? Other people might stop, but she never will. She just bought some of the leftover inventory from a unit member who’s taking a break. I love this about her. Steadfastness is a big deal in my eyes.
23. When I first met her, Jieun was extremely quirky. Like, her freshman year, she would do all this weirdo body-worship during praise, standing in the back row so as not to creep out the staid Reformed folks. Either that’s faded, or I’ve gotten used to her, but she’s not as quirky anymore. Honestly, that makes me a little sad, and I hope I wasn’t the one who stamped some of it out of her. Her quirkiness is one of the things I love about her. Life is too short to be normal. And boring.
24. When the Park kids first got their Nintendo Entertainment System, Jieun was the one who figured out how to hook it up to the TV. They were so happy they embraced and did a spontaneous dance of joy. It was the only time they hugged as kids.
25. When Jieun gets stressed, she puts on lipstick. Just like Cher in Clueless – it gives her a sense of control in a chaotic world. She used to do it more in college, not so much anymore. But the other day I came home to her wearing lipstick for the first time in a while. A clear and present danger.