THE BALLOONS THAT GOT AWAY

My adoring fans and faithful followers probably ask, "TOTA, what with your obsession of balloons getting stuck on the power lines?" Below is a previously published post which might explain where it all began and when my obsession (I think it is fascination) started with balloons got stuck on the wires, struggling to break free. I think it might have been the memories of living in the refugee camp (Indonesia) for 7 months after our boat journey from Viet Nam in 1979. After five days on the open sea, evaded the pirate ship (it was a miracle that we were not captured), we were rescued and transported to an island in Indonesia. We broke free from the Vietnamese communist government but we lived in limbo, people without a country, without a home, waiting to be accepted for settlement but did not know where (which country). There were many refugees that waited for years before leaving camp and after that they did not reunite with their family even after their settlement. My family was very lucky that we were together, from May 1979 when our planned escape in the middle of the night leaving My Tho, South Viet Nam to when we came to New York, and then I ran off to Michigan after I got married in 1989!

In previous post I wrote "As I was sitting in traffic, I saw one of the balloons broke away, (from a parking lot at a car dealership) flew off but then caught on the wires. As I watched the balloon swaying in the wind, I thought how sometimes in our lives we feel as if we were the balloons stuck on the power lines. No matter what you try to do, you could not break free. Just like the balloons, you were up high but going nowhere, flapping around in the wind, slowly losing the air inside, then the emptiness took over, still hanging on the wires but nothing left of what was once a pretty balloon full of air."

There a pink balloon that flew as high as the height of the ceiling of a meeting room at a community center. I was there that morning for a business seminar. The pink balloon must be from a birthday party that took place the day before. The party either was for a little girl or a baby shower for someone who already knew that she was going to give birth to a baby girl. Or it could be a bridal shower and pink was the bride-to-be favorite color.

One time we were at a hockey game and the litle boy next to us wanted a bag of cotton candy. The father pushed the boy's hand away when the boy reached for a bag of pink candy from the vendor's container and said, "No, pink is for girl, take the blue one." The boy insisted on taking the pink candy and started crying when the father told the vendor to give the boy a bag of blue candy. (Since then I noticed that the candy has both colors, blue and pink, in the same bag.) The father had an embarrassed look on his face as if somehow his manhood was invalidated because his little boy chose the color pink instead of blue as traditionally the color of manly man/boy. (Although a girl, I never care for pink.)

I also thought the pink balloon getting stuck on the ceiling could be interpreted as the "bamboo ceiling" for Asian American women. Career coach Jan Hyun wrote in her book, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling - Career Strategies for Asians, that traditional Asian cultural values can conflict with dominant (non-Asian mainstream) American corporate culture resulting in lost career opportunities and not being promoted or included in corporate boardrooms. Asian Americans are often not considered as authoritive and management materials. I could be as qualified as the other person but employers would not give me the same consideration because as an Asian woman I would not be able to speak with authority at negotiation tables or the labor unions might not accept the terms/conditions coming from a woman., especially an Asian. I could talk and know more about football and hockey than the men at work and I could even learn to swear like a drunken sailor but I could never be treated as equal.

Well, enough of my rants and raves. My goodness, it all started with the a balloon getting stuck on the power lines, swaying in the wind, trying to break free!