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While in Washington (the State), I had a discussion with my family over potentially dropping my first name, as my parents (and consequently the rest of the world) have always called me by my middle name. My parents were against the name drop -they did give me my first name for a reason after all- and so I have decided to join the ranks of F. Scott Fitzgerald and E. Annie Proulx and officially become C. Devi (It’s on my new business cards, that’s what makes the change official).

Now that’s been decided, it is my new goal to embrace the C. In addition to my two concrete New Year’s Resolutions -stop biting my nails and write more blogs- I have three abstract goals for the new year which I have deemed the “3 C’s:” 1) Become more Cultured, be more Culinary, and Contribute more to my community (if Contributive were a word, I would have used it, but it’s not).

Be more Cultured

I am lucky enough to live in a city rife with history, art, events, galleries, museums, artifacts, architecture and all sorts of other culturally uplifting things, but until yesterday, I had not taken advantage of it once in the four months I’ve lived here. School and internships and friends do take up a lot of time. Yesterday, however, I ended my uncultured streak with a trip to the National Portrait Gallery with my sister and a couple of friends. It is amazing how much high school history I have forgotten; names like Cotton Mather, William Henry Harrison and Chester Alan Arthur were all distant memories. I also learned a lot of interesting things at the museum that I could use to trick people into thinking I was an American history buff, such as the fact that the first Bible printed in America was in the Algonquin language. Which begs the question, were Algonquin Indians even literate? I can’t imagine that reading was a useful skill for Native Americans back then. In any case, it is for little tidbits like this that I would like to visit more museums while I am here in the heart of DC.

Be More Culinary

I love to cook, but alas, school and internships and friends again have hampered any culinary conquests more adventurous than pasta, curries from a packet, and fried rice. With all the new kitchen gadgets that I received for Christmas -one slap n chop, a rocket blender, an olive oil mister and 2 slow cookers (one large, one small)-I’d like to start being an adventurous chef again, that is if other people’s diets don’t get in the way of my culinary genius.

Contribute More to my Community

In high school, volunteer work looked good on your college applications. In college, it looked good on your resume. Neither of those matter for me any more, but after living in China where altruism is rarely seen, and after benchmarking Corporate Social Responsibility reports as part of my internship duties for Vz, I’ve come to realize how important social responsibility is. Altruism is a beautiful thing, and I’ve decided that I’ve gone too long without doing anything that didn’t directly help myself. I’m still on the lookout for ways to volunteer my services and skills in the DC area, if you have any good ideas, let me know!

A couple weeks ago, my friend Lauren and I decided to take advantage of the cold and go ice skating. We went to Zhongshan park near the Forbidden City, only to find the ice cracking and no skating allowed. I guess it was warmer than we thought! Disappointed, we decided not to waste our three kuai (42 cents) entrance fee, and decided to walk around the park, which was rather nice, full of pagodas and frozen fountains. While walking, we encountered an area teaming with middle age to elderly Chinese people, just idly mingling like church just got out and they were waiting for the coffee and donuts.

Curious about what was going on we walk through the crowd, and I notice white paper signs propped up against bags on the ground, and even pinned to the shirts of some. I begin to read one sign: “Male, 28 years old, Beijing residence, Masters Degree in Science.” I read this first part to Lauren, incredulously saying, “I think this is a dating gathering!” Lauren, who has been studying Chinese determinedly for the past 6 months turns to face a Chinese woman who has come up beside her and asks “Nimen zuo shenme? Nin zhao nanren ma? A blunt way to ask “What are you doing? Are you looking for a man?” I reword the sentence a bit, and the lady responds that she is looking for a girlfriend for her son. Everyone there were parents trying to find a match for their son or daughter (mostly sons)! Then she asks us, “do you have boyfriends?” We respond that yes we both do, but the answer isn’t important, the fact that we speak Chinese, are foreign, relatively beautiful and just happen to show up at a matchmaking gathering are what catches the parents attention. Those who had been eying us with curiosity now surround us desperately. “It doesn’t matter if you have a boyfriend, look for another! How old are you? Where are you from? Where did you study Chinese? Do you like Chinese boys?”

We were literally engulfed by a swarm of desperate parents. I know the gender disparity in China is bad, and that the government is going to have a huge social crisis in a decade or two when millions of men can’t find wives, but experiencing the gender gap first-hand was an interesting experience. Lauren and I were able to escape (and I did feel very overwhelmed by the parental pushiness) when we told them our ages. Apparently 22, according to Lauren, is ” just too young for their aging, soon-to-be-spinster-types sons.”

Today marks the very first time that I have worn a suit to a job interview. All my previous job interviews have been held at non-office locations like Starbucks, CCTV, hotel lobbies or for a Chinese company where I didn’t feel the need to put on a suit and jacket, so it was quite a novel experience wearing one for the first time.

Feeling spiffy and oh-so adult, I show up at the office, and am ushered to a conference room. I glance around at what people are wearing. Jeans and sweaters. Its amazing how awkward you can feel when you are not dressed for the occasion, but I figured I was still in the clear because I was an interviewee, and you have to look better than you would on a normal day at the office.

In comes my three interviewers. The main guy interviewing me is wearing glamorously distressed jeans and a pullover. He takes one look at me and says, “It’s casual Friday, so you’ll have to pardon us for looking like rubbish.”

The accent and phrasing was so clearly British (the company is also a British one, which I knew from the start) that I responded with, “Oh no, you still look very smart.” I thought that response was better than smiling and giving the impression that I agreed that he looked like rubbish.

Now my interviewer was rather young, and relatively good-looking (from an objective standpoint of course), and after I said that he paused for half a second with what I interpreted to be a “look,” before he kept going with introductions and continued with the interview.

In retrospect, I really hope I didn’t start off the interview with him thinking that I just hit on him. I know “smart” means good-looking, but I guess I thought I could use it interchangeably with “sharp,” which does not have an “I think you’re attractive” connotation.

Sometimes I mess up cultural meanings. I do this a lot in Chinese, but it has always worked in my favor rather than create an uncomfortable situation. For example, one of my Chinese friends asked if I wanted help with something. I didn’t want to bother her, so as a way of saying no, I said “I’m a bother to you” (wo mafan ni). Of course I had forgotten that in Chinese this was a way of getting help, as in “Could I bother you to do this…” and her reply of “Okay, I’ll help you” was exactly the opposite of what I was expecting.

So Jaci and Ben, maybe you can alleviate my concerns that I hit on my interviewer by calling him “smart.”