Top 5 things NOT to say to someone who is biracial, or of ambiguous race (such as myself):

1) "What are you?"
I always hate hearing this question when the questioner is actually asking about my race, especially when it's the first or second thing that (s)he wants to know after meeting me. To properly answer the question: I'm female, I'm an art lover, I'm a bitch at times, I'm neurotic, I'm excessively verbose, I'm wacky, I'm uncertain about my future, I'm a dedicated listener, I'm a daydream believer, I'm an introvert, I'm a huge fan of R.E.M., I'm someone who suffers from inner turmoil regarding the meaning of my existence. Oh, and my mother is Asian, and my father is Caucasian, and thus I am half of each. If you want to know my ethnicity, then ask specifically about my ethnicity. Don't assume that my ethnicity is the totality of my existence and my identity, because you'd be wrong.

I often respond to this question by asking the person to guess, and I've heard everything from Native American to East Indian to Italian to Mexican to Egyptian to Filipino to Jewish. In my numerous travels around the world, people have come up to me and spoken to me in their native language, often assuming that I work at the store or restaurant where we happen to coexist. Here in the States, Latinos often approach me with a question in Spanish which I regretfully cannot answer. Strangely enough, my racial identity is so ambiguous that I am treated like a universal native...except in my own country, where I am called things like "exotic." See example #3.

2) "Wow, that's so cool of your parents!"
Yes. Back in the 70's, my parents looked at each other, realized that they were of different races, and decided to fuck the whole racist interracial taboo bullshit by literally fucking each other. Their copulation, and thus their creation of me, was all in the name of political correctness, which warms your fuzzy nonracist heart.

3) The word "exotic." e.g. "You look like an exotic Egyptian princess!" or "Oh, so that's why you look so exotic" (upon learning the components of my ethnicity).
OK, so you're saying that I'm the "other," that I'm a foreigner to you, even though I was born in New York City and raised in New Jersey and as American as any other kid. And you use a word that brings to mind Gauguin's Tahitian mistresses and Delacroix's Arabian prostitutes who offer the European man respite from the confines of his own culture via their savage mindless lusty bodies and their feathers and jewels and spices. A guy used this line on me, and it was an immediate dealbreaker. "Exotic" is not a compliment.

4) "Does your brother look more or less Asian [or insert other race here] than you do?"
A female physician actually asked me this during an interview for a NY medical school, after she took off her glasses and peered at me for a few minutes, presumably to determine how "Asian" I looked to her. How the hell am I supposed to make this sort of judgment to answer this question? Am I supposed to measure the size of his eyes compared to mine? Measure the degree that his eyes tilt compared to mine? The relative flatness of our noses? The relative yellowness of our skins? Examine the configuration of his features and determine how it much it deviates from what is stereotypically Asian, compared to mine? This was one question that rendered me absolutely speechless.

5) "If you had to choose one, would you say that you're Caucasian or Asian? [or insert two races here]"
I'm half of each. One parent is one, and another parent is the other. Hence I'm biracial. Don't ask me to choose one, because I won't. Maybe in your little world (or the world of the writers of demographic questions for the census, SAT's, whatever), a person can only identify with one race. That's not my world, where duality and plurality are quite acceptible, thanks.

Also, pick-up lines not to use on Asian chicks (these are real examples):
-Hey, I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
-Your hairstyle really goes well with your ethnicity.
-You speak English really good! No really, you don't have an accent at all!