A little about me:

My name is Cyndy Chan 陳 and I live in Portland, OR. I’m 47 years old and work as a metal finisher for Schoolhouse Electric Co. I play bass and sing in some rock bands of the extremely local type. I was born in the U.S., as were both my parents, and grew up very American (in a U.S. military family) even though I came to realize over time that, for most of my life, “blending in” was not a real possibility in the places I lived (various small towns in Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois etc where I was one of the few kids of Chinese descent in whatever class or school i attended.) I still haven’t learned to speak any languages besides English, much less Chinese of any dialect (despite attempting to study Mandarin a.k.a. 普通话 pǔtōnghuà for almost 4 years in college), though this may change.