Pasquale Jambon: He is the Ham
Peter told me that he took this photo as evidence of him saving those Thai soccer kids who got stuck in a cave.
Note: He didn’t tell me that, but the lie is a better caption than “Peter’s inside a cave!”
I hate cats. In fact, I wrote a poem to display my disdain for the feline species.
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I don’t like cats
I don’t like them with hats
I don’t like them on mats
I don’t like them when they’re fat.
I don’t like cats.
-
I don’t want them here.
I don’t want them near.
I don’t want them there.
I don’t want them anywhere.
I don’t like cats.
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I would ship them off on a boat.
I’d put them on a crocodile-infested moat.
I’d use them for my coats.
I’d replace them all with goats.
I don’t like cats.
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The fact that Peter loves cats only aches my brain. So much for building fine young men, am I right?
Peter Zhang, the Yale-bound scholar, is more than willing to rationalize the choice to not only love cats but to also allow one to invade his home. “They’re very cute,” Peter said. “They’re also very independent. It’s like having another person inside your house.” Ellie, the cat in question, is so independent that she’s not open to any affection at all. “Sometimes, you know, you go up and you're like, ‘Oh, I wanna pick you up. I wanna hug you.’ And she’s like, ‘No. Go away.’ She’s kind of an Ice Queen sometimes, and I think it’s adorable.”
It’s interesting to know that Peter is fine with sugar-coating the fact that his cat is an asshole. Ellie apparently also “eats” the laundry, which is further evidence of her maniac tendencies. But who cares what I think? My criticism towards Ellie can’t (and probably won’t) hinder Peter’s blind adoration of his cat.
I don’t like you, Ellie.
His worship of Ellie has eventually led to the point where he and his cat become one. The most significant similarity between the two is perhaps their love for tuna. He’s “actually known as ‘Tuna Boy,” a nickname based on his eating habits during his time writing college application essays. “Sometimes, when I was writing my college essays, I would go late into the night and I would be left hungry and kind of wanting a midnight snack. I didn’t want to order food because it was too expensive and the only place available was McDonald’s. I was like, ‘I don’t wanna eat unhealthy food, but I do wanna get something that’ll fill me.’”
The solution to his hunger woes? Initially, it was canned tuna.
Underneath his bed is his supply of canned tuna, which he proudly showcased for me. I wasn’t so much amazed; I was more so anxious that I was possibly speaking to the male version of a cat lady.
The canned tuna supply in his bedroom, however, was not the right solution. “The problem with [canned tuna] is that I’d need a can opener, so I would have to go downstairs. Ellie would smell the tuna and she would actually come over and start sniffing the tuna.”
His search for the perfect midnight snack continued. “I went to a store one night and went into the canned food section. Then they had these bags of peri-peri tuna. It’s very good. It’s surprisingly good.” He then told me that he pairs the fish with some salted crackers. This is more proof that he’s, to borrow a phrase my Filipino friends, “built differently”.
I don’t find Peter’s excessive affection for Ellie and his attempts to emulate her to be celebration-worthy, but it’s surely a part of him that merits some pondering. Instead of looking at Peter through rose-coloured glasses, I suggest that we all notice the parts of him that make him human, regardless of its impressiveness. In these times of murderous competition and superficiality, we tend to appreciate people not based on the core principles and essence that steer their life, but by the number of their accolades and the loftiness of their status.
If one knows a bit about Peter Zhang, one of the first things one will think of is the fact that he is this academic icon who’ll be studying at Yale. They might list the various activities and projects Peter has excelled at; his outstanding performances as a swimmer and debater instantly come to my mind. There is no question that Peter is a young man of a very high calibre. To define Peter in that specific, narrow frame, however, is limiting, to say the least. Only focusing on the highbrow aspects of Peter will not only create a slanted assessment of the person, but it’ll also compel people to concoct propaganda that portrays fascinating men and women into deities.
For Peter, the intense highlight of his achievements led him to notice the nervousness people feel when they’re around him; they become conscious of their every move. “People have been telling me that apparently, I’m intimidating,” Peter said. He’ll understand why they say that or feel intimidated around him, but he’s not comfortable with the idea. “For me to have people be cautious and not want to embarrass themselves makes me feel like I’m less approachable than I really am.”
The first time I met Peter was at PacificMUN 2019. We were both committee staff members who moderated the same debate room. I wasn’t able to interact with him so much since we weren’t in the same circles; he was in the elitist debate group, while I was anywhere but that group. Despite that, I was able to get a sense of who Peter is.
I wouldn’t say he’s intimidating. In my case, I think I found Peter to be rather hard to figure out. He physically sat next to me during the committee sessions, yet he and I were quite far apart from each other. We’d say our hellos and then went on with work. Figuring him out was like, to borrow a lyric, trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer. Maybe it wasn’t the feeling of intimidation. It was probably the uncertainty of how I should be whenever I’m around him.
Eventually, the uncertainty dissipated over time as I saw more clues of who he was. The most glaring clue, perhaps, was the fact that he changed his name on Facebook from ‘Peter Zhang’ to ‘Pasquale Jambon’. “So I did it out of tradition’s sake,” Peter explained. The tradition he was speaking about was related to the college application season. Every year, many Grade 12 students change their Facebook names as a way to hide their accounts from colleges. The typical change would be using a friend’s last name (which is rather anemic for my tastes).
Pasquale: I’m single and ready to mingle!
Peter, AKA Pasquale Jambon, had a different approach. He wanted his pseudonym to have the same initials as his real name. (His Chinese last name begins with a ‘J’ sound, hence the J.) “So I was trying to think of ‘P’ names. I literally searched on Google, ‘Names that start with P’, and then I picked the most outlandish one. I picked the Spanish or the Italian spelling of ‘Pascal’, so it has a sound. So it’s Pasquale, or Pas-ka-leh,” said Peter in the stupidest Mediterranean accent.
He originally wanted his last name as Jamiroquai (as in the band), an idea he got from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “It’s probably my favourite show. It probably got me through the [college application] season,” Peter professed. In one of the show’s episodes, the cast tries to decipher what one of the character’s (Raymond Holt) middle ‘J’ initial stands for. “Jake Peralta — the main character — starts guessing, and one of the guesses he makes is ‘Jamiroquai’. And so, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do Pasquale Jamiroquai.’” Unfortunately, since his last name was also a band’s name, Facebook wouldn’t allow him to use that on his profile.
So to anyone who has the name ‘Timothy Aerosmith’ or ‘Joe Sex Pistols’, then you sadly can’t have a Facebook account…but I digress.
“I was like, ‘Well, we’re on the Brooklyn Nine-Nine train already. Why don’t I keep going with it?’” He then continued, “In the first or second episode of the show, they had to investigate the murder of a luxury food importer who had a $6000 Jamón Ibérico in his fridge. I could go with Jamón, but I already had the first part in Spanish. I was like, ‘Let’s go with French.’ So that’s how Jambon got into the name.”
Anecdotes like these are the ones that Peter wants you to remember him by. “The way I like to think about it is that people remember the feelings that they had when they talk to you and interact with you, rather than any particular thing that you said. So I think, above all, I just want people to think, ‘Oh, Peter!’ and smile and kind of laugh a little bit or chuckle. Remember me fondly. I don’t want them to remember me for one instance. I just want them to smile. So I hope that people who’ll meet me will take the time to talk about funny things with me.”
Even if we want to associate him with his achievements, we have to do so in a more thought-provoking way. We don’t need to ask how he got into Yale. The answer’s easy: he works extremely hard. A better method of inquiry is to pinpoint fragments of his life that could partially tell us why he does work hard.
One of those fragments is that he’s quite obedient, I’ve realized. He “doesn’t like causing trouble or likes making waves, so to speak.” He has never felt obliged to be, feel or look like an accident waiting to happen since others were willing to fill those roles.
“Back in Grade 6, our teacher asked us to write all of our agenda notes in cursive. She taught us cursive at the start of the year.” Peter “genuinely thought cursive was cool. It was super cool that [one] could write without having to lift the pen off the paper.” So he did write in cursive for agenda notes. “It wasn’t pretty, but I did it,” he joked. “There were other kids who were like, ‘No! I refuse to!’ And then she would have then rewrite it. I was like, ‘Why bother? Just write it in cursive the first time, then you can go home.’”
He now writes in “modified cursive”, which is code for fancy writing that sucks ass. With such horrible handwriting comparable to chicken scratches, he’d be perfect as a doctor.
Peter told me that when this photo was taken, he was thinking about how many cows are there in Canada.
Note: He didn’t tell me that either, but isn’t it better than “Peter’s sitting and blanking out”?
Peter’s obedience may have also developed his thick skin. He described himself as an “amicable person — you can even say docile,” which is exemplified by the way he drives. He doesn’t get road rage; the most aggressive thing he’ll do when his car gets sideswiped is to have his thumb down and give the other person a “wilting glare”. He might “tap on the horn, but it’s too much effort [for him] to get angry.” When I asked him about the last time he got angry, he couldn’t think of any occurrence. Hey may have been “miffed” in rare instances, but the extent of his anger was limited.
The obedience also comes with the refrain from taking chances, which Peter is now trying to wind down. While guys his age are attempting to curb their immaturity, he’s going against the grain, testing the boundaries he made for himself. “I think I’m trying to be less risk-averse. I’ve noticed that I’m a lot less likely to do things that make me go, ‘That’s stupid. That’s dangerous.’ But at the same time, I think part of me is [saying], ‘Well, it’s not that dangerous. Let’s do it anyway.’”
I’ve got two differing sentiments about Peter’s new approach of being a tad headless — and I’m more comfortable with accepting one of them as my true view. The first sentiment, which is the more comfortable opinion for me to take, revolves around the idea that it’s too late to start taking risks. Given his acumen and the path he’s taking, there must be little room for error at this stage. No one expects Peter to make the hastiest calculations and decisions (such as buying the world’s supply of Po-Go sticks or investing in Sears stocks), but to have an increasingly blasé mindset is to take an unworthy gamble. I don’t see the point in rolling any dice since it’ll only lead him to roads less travelled by.
The second (and more optimistic) sentiment is the idea that his newfound fearlessness will be the guiding light to realizing his goals. Currently, his trajectory includes law school and eventually practicing law (the type of law he’ll practice is TBD) in hopes of making any form of impact. He’s not keen on finding the most lucrative opportunity, making sure that he doesn’t have his conscience to be wrapped up in guilt. “I don’t want to deal with my own morality,” Peter joked.
Instead, he “wants to see the change” he can make, regardless of the size. He hopes that his impact, which will likely involve law or public service, is going to be meaningful and perhaps world-encompassing too. “I think everybody changes some part of the world,” Peter said. “I think that I would want to work for the UN. What kind of work would that be? I’m not sure. I don’t really know what the UN does despite doing Model United Nations for so long. But I’m quite internationally-minded. I don’t want my operating sphere, so to speak, to be confined to one space. I guess it’s because I don’t really specifically have a route. I was born in China, then lived in Vancouver for so long, and now I’m moving out and I don’t know where I’ll end up. I think that will lend itself to me travelling the world a bit more and seeing where I’ll touch down.
When I asked if he fears making his own path as he prepares for college. “I am religious and Christian, and so I kind of believe in this idea that God will make my paths straight. Sometimes, there will be challenges, but challenges serve to build us up. So wherever I end up, I’m confident in my own belief and ability to be able to be okay. I think any sort of change is a little scary, but we also have to think about what we can benefit from that change.”
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