We asked our amazing NWAW writers and contributors to help out with the holiday issue. We asked three questions:
What was your most memorable gift?
What is number one on your wish list?
What is your New Year’s resolution? (Yes, an annoying and obvious question.)
Rebecca Ip
Gift: A Christmas card with photos and message received from one of my cousins in 2012, updated me all of a sudden in a long message how she found out she had a very critical lymphoma cancer; she pictured her chemo process, her Christmas party with family, telling me she struggled to survive. Both sadness and happiness mixed feeling, blend in together.
Wish: Continue to lead a healthy lifestyle.
Resolution: Find out more ways to live happily.
Nina Huang
My most memorable gift was one of those first generation iPods. It was a nice surprise from my best friend because I thought I was getting a DVD player instead.
Number one on my wish list is for the Seahawks to make it to the Superbowl again.
And my 2015 New Year resolution is to cook more and eat out less.
Tiffany Ran
Gift: My first chef’s knife. More than just the gift, I appreciate the way the gift was delivered. My boyfriend planned a scavenger hunt by writing clues on sticky notes. I eventually had to hop on a bus to my favorite knife store, Epicurean Edge, where he was waiting with my new knife, a Kobayashi santoku. I’m glad he didn’t choose to say, hide the knife under my pillow. Execution is everything.
Wish: I just got back from Taiwan and I’m already itching to go again. It breaks my heart every time I leave. So number one on my wish list this year would be to be able go home again and really spend some quality time there. Then again, if I do, I may not come back!
Resolution: I probably should be, but I’m not a huge resolutions person. If there is anything I should work on this year, it’s to be more centered health and wellness-wise. A lot of my stress comes from being overworked, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to dial down my agenda and be more deliberate about the projects I work on in 2015.
Jason Cruz
1. Club seats to a Seahawks game back when they were bad. But still a great gift.
2. A runner’s watch to replace the one I lost this year.
3. Worry less. Enjoy more!
Vivian Nguyen
Gift: A Ken doll when I was 7-years-old. That was when I discovered that Santa wasn’t real.
Wish: More sleep!
Resolution: To master InDesign. To travel to one new country.
James Tabafunda
Gift: I received a very small black-and-white TV set. For over 25 years, I watched it almost every day.
Wish: Good health. Have you seen the price of health care lately?
Resolution: I will work smart and pay my taxes. I could make a different resolution, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Laura Ohata
Gift: My husband called to tell me he wanted to marry me.
Wish: Sony A7s camera with a 24-70mm F2.8 Carl Zeiss lens (We can wish, can’t we?)
Resolution: Work on my book 20 minutes per day.
John Liu
Gift: Tour of China
Wish: Good health for family and friends.
Resolution: To be there for family and friends.
Yoon Park
Gift: The first gift I received from my eldest child.
Wish: A running jacket I have had my eye on since it same out this season, which I tried on in front of my husband, who will hopefully have it wrapped and under the tree for me!
Resolution: Use said running jacket to get back into shape.
Truc Allen
One of the most memorable Christmas gifts I’ve ever received was the Star Wars Millennium Falcon toy space ship in 1982. More than just a huge gift in size, it was the fist time I could remember getting something that all the other American kids either wanted or had. A pretty big deal since my mother and I had immigrated from Vietnam to the United States just two years earlier.
Like most refugee stories, we had very little money. I couldn’t comprehend how fortunate I was that my mother, who as a single parent, worked so hard to get me the things that every kid dreamed about. At 8 years old, how could I? These days I often think about how she provided so much that I never felt deprived of the fun things.
I can only hope to provide as much happiness to my new son as we celebrate his first Christmas this year.
Daria Sergeyvna Kroupoderova
The most memorable gift I received was a promise ring from my first serious boyfriend.
My number one wish for this year is a new laptop because my old one finally gave up after 5 years.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to manage my time better between having a dog, going to school and having a job!
Minal Singh
The memorable gift was a pink Soundesign clock radio my parents gave me when I was young. My parents had extra money at the time, and the gift was unexpected.
Wish: A bigger bed
Resolution: Be more positive
Samantha Pak
Gift: My first cell phone my freshman year of college. I know it sounds a bit shallow, but up to that point, you could either reach me on my dorm phone when I was at school or my family’s home phone or my dad’s cell phone when I came home for the weekends. The cell phone represented independence for me and made me feel a bit more like a grown up.
Resolution: To find a place of my own. While getting my first cell phone in college got me starting to feel more grown up, finally being on my own will truly make me feel like an adult.
Assunta Ng
There is no such thing as the best gift because my gifts get better and better. I count my life experiences as gifts, including the worst events. When I reminiscence on bad days, it really was not that bad. How I can tackle my challenges and having fun solving them with the help of friends, family, and staff, truly enrich me to be the person I am today.
Wish : Make a difference in everything I do.
Resolution: Laugh more, find humor and joy in everybody and everything I interact.
Zachariah Bryan
Gift: For about a year, I wanted nothing more than a Sega Dreamcast, that video game console that no one’s ever heard of (except cool people).
I was obsessed, and on Christmas, I finally got it. It was everything I could ever want. I fell into this video game vortex for several months. All I could think about was absurd games that nobody else really cared that much about.
I survived the video game vortex. I went to college, I graduated, and I’m somehow making a living as a writer.
Wish: If I was asked this a week earlier, I would say a brewing kit for beer. My wife and I have been planning to get one.
But now, the answer would be good health for my father. He’s in the hospital again; I just hope he can see the silver linings in life, keep a chin up and pull through this difficult time. Love you, dude.
(We’re still getting the brewing kit though!)
Resolution: It’s a bit embarrassing, but my wife and I have been doing those workout videos. You know, the ones with the bad techno and the super athletic people. We might not get the gleaming abs or the boulder-like biceps, but we hope to look decent enough for our honeymoon in Hawaii this March.
Andrew Hamlin
Gift: I got a white plush Snoopy doll one Christmas, and Snoopy was my beloved companion for years afterward. There’s a picture of me holding him, and I’m not much bigger than him. I learned how to love in large part, from loving Snoopy. I last saw him down by the washing machine in the basement, some time before Dad sold the family house.
Wish: I have gift ideas for my family and my friends, but the late Ian Dury once said, “All I want for my birthday is another birthday.” So my main wish for Christmas is another Christmas.
Resolution: Sleep less. (end)