Henry (cheekyboy) wrote in deviantstrain, @ 2008-07-18 22:22:00 |
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Current mood: | cheerful |
CLAIM: Henry Lau
Player's Name: Zakje
Character's Name: Henry
Character's IJ: cheekyboy
Nationality: Chinese-Canadian?
What are they from? Shupah Jooniyah Em!
Human/Mutant/Vampire: Humanoid
Background:
19 (turning 20 this October) year old Henry has recently moved to New York from Taiwan. Life in Taiwan was pretty normal for Henry. He's the only child of a pretty normal family, and he was an average student with normal interests and a pretty normal social life despite being fairly quiet and shy. There was really nothing remarkable about his life at all.
Until the night two years ago when it call came tumbling down, his parents' little business finding itself bankrupt after an unfortunate chain of events. They tried their best to turn things around, they even borrowed money to try to find a way to salvage what was left of their livelihoood, but it was all to no avail. Drowning in debt, and with collectors on their back because they had borrowed money from the wrong type of people, the type of people who like to charge more interest than the amount you borrowed and threaten to chop off fingers if you don't meet your repayments on time, Henry's family found themselves in a position that they saw no way out of.
Henry's father decided that since it couldn't get much worse than this, he would take one big final risk - he obtained forged immigration papers, sold what little his family had left to buy 3 one-way tickets to New York, and took his family to what they hoped would be a new start. Henry's grandmother from his mother's side had moved to New York's Chinatown several years previously, so at the very least the little family would have a place to live once they arrived.
The moment the plane set down in New York, Henry felt like he really was starting fresh, that he really was starting a new life. Although his parents had tried to keep him out of their problems, Henry had spent the better part of the past two years seeing his family sinking further and further into trouble and debt, problems that he could do absolutely nothing about even though he wanted to. He had done what he could, focused on school and graduated with decent enough marks, finding a job for himself as quickly as his could, but although what he had earned had been enough to contributing to keeping his family clothed and fed and a roof over their heads, it hadn't been enough to make their problems go away.
But here he was, in New York, starting a new life, and although they had no more than a few hundred dollars to their name, they also had no debts hanging over their heads anymore. There was freedom in that. Like someone had come along and painted a whole big patch of messy canvas white - it didn't make what had been there before not exist, but it did make it not matter anymore, and left you able to paint over it.
There was a problem, though. And namely that problem was English. Neither of his parents could speak it, and Henry himself had only an incredibly limited grasp on it. This left their possibilities drastically limited, it meant that really the only places they could hope to work were places inside of Chinatown. In some ways his parents were content with that - perhaps they thought it was their atonement for the mess they had gotten themselves into, and were grateful simply that they had been able to make a new start.
His father found a job as a taxi driver, and his mother found work as a cleaner. Henry got himself a job as a kitchen hand in a Chinese resturant. Definitely not his dream job, but he was very aware of the fact that if he wanted to be part of the world outside of Chinatown, then he was going to need English, and English lessons cost money. He knew that his parents would have paid if he had asked, but he wanted to do this on his own.
Henry has been in New York for a month now, and he's managed to teach himself a little bit of English. Not much, but it's a start, though he is still looking for an English teacher.
Two of the few things Henry was able to keep when they moved from Taiwan is his laptop and his digi cam. He loves online gaming, mostly fantasy MMORPG, and even more than that he loves to take random little videos with his digi cam. Other than that, he's still a normal kinda guy, with pretty normal interests - video games, comic books, soccer, music, clubbing (not that he gets to do that often, and never since he came to New York). And motorbikes. He really, really like motorbikes, and hopes to one day have one of his own, because motorbikes are cool and awesome. And to earn a little bit of money on the side, he bootlegs the odd game or cd or two.
And most importantly of all, although he might be pretty normal, he's definitely not boring. He's cute and shy and has the cutest fat little cheeks in the world, and is really easy to get along with once you overcome his shyness.
Preferred RP Style: PARAGRAPH UND IJ!
Anything Else: You need to put it in your zakje.