“I’m not really into [mainstream music],” she says. Instead, Olivia cites post-rock and progressive metal as her favorite types of music. Each genre’s sound is far from the norm — haunting, aggressive, futuristic, predominantly word-less — all adjectives that one would never think of using to describe Miss Leung, whose girly style and graceful mannerisms suggest the softness typically found in girls her age.
Olivia, however, is anything but typical. Aside her other-worldly taste in music, Olivia’s interests lie in subjects that many teenagers, let alone teenage girls, would probably overlook. She’s a lover of physics, software engineering, and theology, as well as an avid…vegetarian?
“I’m always at the table just watching my friends eat meat, and they’d ask me, ‘Oh, does this bother you?’ ” says the vegetarian of almost six years. Six years of no meat? Considering Saipan’s passionate love affair with barbecue ribs and crispy pata, that is one heck of an accomplishment.
As one digs deeper into Olivia’s mind, only a single question emerges: Where does she get this stuff? Olivia attributes the Internet with her discovery of post-rock (no surprise there), but what about her other interests?
Curiosity alone can be blamed. Throughout our interview, the statement “It was something new to me, and I just wanted to try it out,” left Olivia’s mouth at least five times. From her short stint in junior varsity basketball to her meatless streak of more than half a decade, almost everything Olivia has delved into was done for the mere sake of doing it. This unusual courage to test the waters, mainstream or not, has dominated her young life and molded her into the unique and open mind she is today. Whatever cat curiosity killed obviously needs a few lessons from Olivia.
Free-thinking and independent as Olivia is, however, she is still subject to her parents’ will. Her father insists that she attend college in a certain city, and, although she would prefer to travel, she’ll listen to him this time around.
But then again, who knows? Maybe Olivia has bigger plans for herself in mind. After all, you’d never guess what her curiosity will lead her to do next.
