day in the pants

a day in his pants: the posh deluxe interview with winston liaw

big mountain: baby i love yr way <– sarah & winston’s greatest hits, summer 2000

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today, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to kindest boy i have ever met: winston liaw.

those of you who already know him are probably smiling right now, because you can’t help but smile when you think about winston. he’s just that wonderful.

i’m sorry to say that i don’t remember the exact day when i met winston, but i’m sure it was during freshmen orientation (o-week) at rice in august of 1997. little did i know that, four years later, he and i would be working together to prepare o-week for another generation of freshmen!

winston lived on the first floor of wiess with steve, and no one could ever figure out why the fellows (student advisors) had put them together. steve is large and loud (in a v. charming way, of course), while winston tends to be quiet and sweetly unassuming. of course, given these differences, they became the best of friends, and when steve started hanging out with amber and me, i got to know winston as well (a fantastic package deal, if you ask me).

even though winston was pre-med (like every other person at rice), he was refreshingly active at wiess and always ready to lend a friendly hand (or ear). he became, as steve put it, a “rice superstar,” meaning he was kind of a celebrity on campus. winston was so compassionate, so thoughtful, so easy going, it was impossible not to want to be best friends with him.

winston and eden, looking gorgeous on their wedding day

i love winston’s kind heart, but i think my favorite thing about him is his easy laugh. not only does it make me feel like i’m hilarious (cos i am, obvs), it also makes people feel comfortable… it spreads warmth and good cheer, like drinking mulled cider at xmas.

i spent the most time with winston the summer before our senior year while we worked on orientation for the fall. basically, every week night, you could find us either at a coordinator meeting or sitting in the computer lab, cursing pagemaker and religiously reading the freshmen info sheets. by the end of the summer, most of the coordinators were engaged in some sort of conflict, a natural consequence of spending so much time together. but the opposite happened for me. i LOVED winston. i loved playing rolling chair basketball with him, i loved discussing the freshmen like they were our own children (seriously. we memorized EVERYTHING about them, we were so excited), i even loved when we encountered some kind of problem, because it was so fun to put our heads together and come up with a solution.

when the freshmen finally arrived, it was the best feeling IN THE WORLD to see all of our hard work come to fruition. by the end of the week, winston and i got to see ourselves in skit form (the freshman girl playing me had a mug of coffee glued to her hand and wore crayzee socks), and watching “us” allowed me to step back and appreciate the experience, and our friendship, even more. all in all, that job was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and much of that stems from working with such an incredible person… a wonderful friend.

now that i’ve launched the winston fan club, let’s begin the interview!

[note, i didn't have time to scan any wiess pictures. it's a shame, but rest assured that winston looks the same, except now he has a better haircut-- thanks to me and my hair stylist, erica! but anyway]

so winston, you’re a real, bona fide doctor now. tell me exactly what kind of doctor you are.

i’m a family doctor – which means that i can see everyone.

when did you realize you wanted to be a doctor?

i probably realized sometime during freshman physics class when i started sucking at the physics for engineers. but it was solidified after doing some domestic and international volunteer stuff.

how did yr ambitions change over time? did you ever have doubts about this career path?

i have doubts all the time. we all probably do to a certain extent. but most days, there will be one or two moments that help me endure the other crap. i took care of an older guy for a year who passed away recently, and his son asked me to attend his funeral at arlington national. that was touching, and helped me get through my not so rewarding patients for the next couple of weeks.

i’m still impressed that you and many, many of my rice friends survived medical school. not cos you’re not brilliant, but because it sounds HEINOUS. how did you do it? what were the best and worst parts?

meth. and lots of it. just kidding mom. no, eden helped me a ton. one of the worst months was surgery – surgery itself was pretty interesting. the hours were just killer. i woke up at 4 AM in order to get to the hospital by 4:30 AM where i would stay until 6 or 7 PM. eden drove me to the hospital every morning and made me breakfast. i would have been late and very hungry without her that month.

ok, i don’t want to break any patient-doctor confidentiality laws here, but tell me about something really cray cray that you’ve encountered while working in the medical field. I LOVE THESE KINDS OF STORIES.

i’m going to be lame and steal a mark lewis med school story. he was in one of our obstetrics clinics in the community where most of the patients are spanish speakers. unfortunately, not all of our doctors are spanish speakers, but most of them try their best to get information from the patients using what meager spanish skills they have. standing outside a room, mark overheard this from one of the doctors asking in spanish whether or not a patient has had herpes or gonorrhea (while butchering the suddenly important conjugation): “TENGO HERPES?” “TENGO GONORRHEA?” (“i have herpes” “i have gonorrhea”).

i know yr family is from taiwan. tell me about how this background and culture affected your childhood.

there’s typical stuff like having to go to chinese school on the weekends (sadly, this was lost on me and now john (a westerner) can speak mandarin better than i can), singing karaoke during family gatherings (my uncles sing in karaoke competitions), and going to vegas way too much. for the most part, though, because i lived in the very homogenous suburbs of dallas, my parents tried to get us to fit in. they sent us to jewish community center and bible camps when i was a kid because that’s where my friends were going.

do you see yrself as having a mix of american and taiwanese values?

definitely

when you and eden have a family, how will you pass on this heritage to yr kids?

i would love it if they learned mandarin – which probably means that eden and i would have to learn mandarin too so that we would know when they were talking shit about us.

can i just say how jealous i am that you grew up with asian food? as like, yr regular family meals?!! GAH!!! tell me about yr favorite (and least favorite) dishes so i can drool on my keyboard.

i generally celebrate everything in the dumpling family. my least favorite is easy: sea cucumber (google sea cucumber images and you’ll see why). it’s served at every chinese banquet, and i perform a silent protest every time.

you and eden now live in fairfax, which i believe is kinda close to DC. what’s that like? what do you do for fun in fairfax?

i always tell people i live in dc because it sounds much much cooler. fairfax is about 30 minutes west of dc, and it’s extremely close to where eden and i work. we’ve met a bunch of cool people out here – mostly through work and sports (don’t fuck with eden when she’s playing on the defensive line). but in general, fairfax is pretty suburban and is unfortunately the home of the NRA museum. it is in desperate need of a kick ass brunch place. so eden and i have been plotting our second careers as owners of a brunch place / cupcake bakery. hopefully, this will fund my retirement, which will consist of hours and hours of doing absolutely nothing.

one of my fondest rice memories is the summer you and i spent working on orientation for wiess college. what sorts of things stick out in yr mind from that experience? tell me about one of yr favorite memories from that summer (and/or o-week).

ditto. i remember almost pulling an all-nighter to finish the best wiess oweek book ever – specifically, i remember singing along to the reality bites soundtrack (once again, not proud of this) – specifically, big mountain’s timeless piece “baby i love your way”. unfortunately, steve ruined this song for me because he would always sing “oooh [insert two syllable name here] masterbates…everyday”.

ok i’m a sucker for rice stories. tell me one of yr favorites! bonus points if it includes anyone else who reads this blog.

this story requires some background. every 13th, 26th, and 31st of the month, people streaked across campus. strange, i know. the halloween streak was definitely the largest, and my roommate at the time – to protect his identity, we’ll call him btephen senham – was quite drunk and decided that participating in this run would be a good idea. that evening, i was on a semi-date (a semi-date because she probably did not think it was a date) with a very very very religious girl. after dinner, we were hanging out in my dorm room when the door flung open. outside my room, there appeared fifty naked, and drunk rice students. my roommate was too tired to finish the entire run and decided to run back to our room. unfortunately, everyone else decided to follow him. the other runners moved on while my roommate remained sprawled on the floor, and being the considerate person he was, he proceeded to ask us details about our evening. needless to say, we never went on another semi-date – which was definitely for the best because we would have been an awful match. thanks btephen!

i included this photo from the wedding so you could see bthepen, kneeling on the left. also, you can see half (yes, that’s half) of the rice people who attended.. like bthepen says, winston & eden are superstars.

what is yr secret power?

i am surprisingly good at small talk (it’s surprising because i’m an extreme introvert). part of my job involves making small talk, so i’ve become fairly proficient, mostly because i’ve traveled a bunch. when i was growing up my parents never spent a lot of money on stuff like cable or matching clothes; instead, they spent their money on travel. so we spent a lot of time in small texas towns, national parks, and other countries. whenever i’m examining a patient, i’ll break the silence with “where did you grow up?” and most of the time, we’ll spend the next five minutes talking about a shared experience, blah, blah, blah. occasionally, they’ll say they’re from cleveland – which is followed by more silence – because when it comes to cleveland, i got nothing.

do you sleep in jimjams? what kind?

i’m assuming jimjams are pajamas here. i usually wear boxers and a t-shirt (apologies to eden because the t-shirt i’m currently sporting has missed the boat on several wash cycles). occasionally, i’ll break up the routine with some scrubs (once again, apologies to eden because the scrubs have unpleasant odors; pretty much the last thing you want to wear to set the mood).

what is yr #1 favorite food?

i have a physical addiction to spaghetti with meat sauce. maybe it’s because that punk marco polo stole it from my people, and it’s written in my dna that i must consume noodle products. i’m just waiting for researchers to discover that eating large amounts of spaghetti causes cancer – then, i’m totally screwed. on a side note, i’m neither a spaghetti snob nor a spaghetti connoisseur. i grew up on chef boyardee and probably eat an unhealthy amount of beefaroni.

what is yr top restaurant recommendation in fairfax? what’s the best thing on the menu?

A&J. the best chinese restaurant in the dc area. by a mile. pros: 1) it’s extremely cheap; 2) the dumplings are incredible; 3) the dim sum is tasty. cons: the dumplings are so good that you’ll eat way too many and feel like throwing up afterwards. eden and i go there at least every other week.

tell me about yr top area of expertise.

i have an embarrassingly well-rounded fund of knowledge when it comes to the real world. it all started harmlessly one spring afternoon during freshman year. steve and i had finished all of our tests and were waiting around until our move out date when we started watching a real world: boston marathon. big mistake. 8 hours and hundreds of montana / sean / syrus-based plot lines later, i was hooked. i tell everyone else that i continue to watch it so that i can relate to my teenage patients, but in my heart of hearts, i know i have a problem. part of me watches it to see whether or not they will have cast an asian male. over the past twenty seasons, the producers have cast people from every permutation of ethnicity, sexuality, and class, but they have yet to cast an asian male. while other parents will be grooming their children to be nobel prize winners, i will be grooming my son to be the first asian male on the real world.

what was yr favorite item of clothing as a child?

i am proud of nothing i wore when i was a child. i’m sure my favorite item was a jean short of some kind (which apparently is making a comeback because i saw a ton of them at sxsw).

i love it when my favorite worlds collide. henri, winston & john at sxsw 2008.

what do you plan on doing when you’re 80?

to quote peter gibbons, “i would do absolutely nothing.” this is seriously my dream – to watch tv and surf the internet all day.

if you could assemble yr own ocean’s 11, who would you pick and why?

dbortz (doug) is on the team for sure. that man was born to play cranium (and any other board game for that matter). he’s definitely top 10 in the world. i want him to be on all my teams eden is also in because she’ll work hard and bake us stuff. steve is in because he’ll be the muscle. josh is in because we’ll probably need a lawyer. other than that, i’d probably just email my friends and the rest of the group would be filled by whoever responded first.

what is yr best karaoke song?

cruising – the song from the movie duets. i’m not proud of this answer either by the way. eden does the gwyneth paltrow part and i do the huey lewis part. every once in a while, i’ll try to harmonize, but apparently, i had a stroke that involved the portion of my brain that is responsible for harmonizing because i’m really bad at it.

do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? who?

yes. the chinese guy from harold and kumar. and when i’m in central america, everyone thinks i look like jackie chan.

tell me something scandalous!

jessica simpson went to my high school, and she was obsessed with me. that second part is obviously a complete lie (i played the tuba in the band. enough said.). seriously, though, i was the pianist in a jazz band in high school, and we beat her in the talent show my senior year.

i cannot believe you beat jessica simpson!! well, i mean, i can but THAT IS THE BEST STORY EVER!

winston, you truly ARE a superstar. thanks so much for letting me interview you… and thanks for being my friend! yay!

as usually, folks, free free to ask winston questions in the comments section.

winston and me at sxsw. squee!

LINKS

the poster for the new x-files movie is out! and while i’m still not a fan of the movie title (ehh), i can’t help but feel TOTALLY EXCITED OMGGG MULDER AND SCULLY!!!

john sent me this super neat graffiti, excuse me, “wall painting” animation video.

matt wrote a blurb today about lucy and bart, an artist couple who create amazing, bizarre and even whimsical photographs using their bodies and a range of materials. check ‘em out!

erin sent me the website of the most delightful cake-maker in all the world! i want to be her! and then i want to eat all of those lovely cakes!!

© 2008 Poshdeluxe.