MY CONNECTION WITH LANGUAGES AND MUSIC • This might be a little ramble-y, but these questions come up a lot, so I’ll try my best to be thorough in answering them. ? • It all began with a lullaby. My siblings are 10 and 13 years older than me, so they played a huge role in my upbringing especially after I became a teenager. When I was a baby, my sister used to sing popular Cantonese songs as lullabies to sing me while I slept. There was always Chinese music playing in the house and we were no strangers to KTV (more commonly known as “karaoke”). • I learned to talk wh...Read more

HOW I GOT ON AMERICAN IDOL [final part] • Group rounds. This is where reality television gets real. Alessana, Joe, Jessica, and I were... The Good Vibes ? & we rehearsed all night to perform Me & My Broken Heart the next day. Alessana, Joe, and I were all rookies. This was our first time being part of this experience, and we all thought that group rounds were about showing the judges that you can work in a group setting... so that’s what we did. The three of us worked for hours on harmonies and different parts and extremely simple choreography to make sure we ...Read more

Look, mom! No hands! My phone is floating! ??‍♀️ Photographer: @redvisualmagazine •

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I love it when artists cross platforms. Here is a design collaboration of sunglasses, art, photography, and “model”. ? Have you seen these murals in Kaka’ako? They’re amazing. • SUNNIES | @dionspecs MURAL | @rickywatts and @james_bullough PHOTOGRAPHY | @redvisualmagazine

MODELING & THE WEIRD FEELINGS I ASSOCIATE WITH THAT WORD • I often hesitate when people ask me if I am a model or call me a model..... mainly because I don’t consider myself a model and I’m actually really awful at taking photos. However, it’s 2018, and Instagram is the most used social media platform of our time, so I better get better at this “modeling” situation. Instagram is not a music platform... as much as I try to turn my own page into one. ??‍♀️ • So I’ve learned to embrace photo shoots. This one in particular was one that I always thought would be really...Read more

HOW I GOT ON AMERICAN IDOL [Part 3] • ... so I showed up to the American Idol audition in an oversized sweater, leggings, combat boots, untamed hair, and no makeup. I didn’t even have a song prepared. I was on a songwriting kick all year, and didn’t sing a single cover song EXCEPT... it was @dantebasco’s birthday the week before, and @beausia had asked me to sing an acoustic version of, “Killing Me Softly”. I didn’t know that song. I actually don’t know a lot of songs. I live under a rock when it comes to pop culture. I grew up listening to Chinese KTV songs, French m...Read more

HOW I GOT ON AMERICAN IDOL [continuing from last post] • I stopped singing covers while I went on a songwriting rampage. I ended up writing over 200 original songs in two months in the process of rediscovering my voice. It was 2015, and by then, I had almost given up on the singing TV shows. I stood in lines with 10,000+ hopefuls for days at a time, flew across the country for a few of those auditions, and auditioned for them every year for ten years straight only to hear them tell me, “no” every time. At most of those auditions, they asked me to sing four songs befor...Read more

How I Got on American Idol • An ex used to tell me that I wasn’t a “real” musician because I didn’t write my own music. I agreed because I didn’t even believe I was good enough to have a supportive boyfriend - how could I possibly be confident enough to believe in my own music? Low self-confidence can be detrimental to anyone, especially if they’ve had a case of this since they were young. I still deal with the affects of having low self-confidence, but I’ve learned how to be less mean to myself. It took almost thirty years to get to a healthy state of mind. • When ...Read more

I started doing yoga when I was 15, and nothing was more difficult than doing poses on soft beach sand. ???‍♀️

INSTAGRAM | instagram.com/olivia.thai

This is a true story. [continuing from last eight or nine posts ??‍♀️]⠀ .⠀ I would classify my child-self as the perfect target for bullies - an aloof nerd with allergies, eczema, untamed hair, and terrible taste in fashion (oh wait, that still applies. ? My sister, cousins, and close friends still dress me... and I’m turning thirty this year). When our home was still a refugee house, it was actually really cool to live with cousins that were the same age since I didn’t have too many friends at school. My same-aged cousins lived with us, so despite my social awkwardne...Read more