Sangha Crossing

This Blog Has Moved!

2008-03-16T09:21:00.001-07:00

Because of a restructuring of my personal blogosphere, Sangha Crossing has been moved to this blogger URL:

http://sanghacrossing.blogspot.com/

Check out my other site as well: http://tungchoistreet.blogspot.com/
Old entries will be kept as an archive here.

The US and China's semiotic politics

2008-03-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

I get my news from online sources and word of mouth, so I definitely don't know what's currently the buzz in American news, aside from of course the Democratic primaries, which even makes the news here in Hong Kong consistently.

But what about the violence in Tibet? Here's my take.

Recently, Chinese news media revealed that they had foiled a "terrorist" plot to sabotage the Olympics. They are specifically referring to the Eastern Turkistan Independence Movement (ETIM), which is a movement fighting for the independence of Xinjiang province, the Muslim Uighur territory that I backpacked to a couple years ago. Similar to Tibet, the territory has got its own cultural, political, and historical realities that, in my opinion and in the opinion of many Uighurs, should make it its own nation independent from China. Unfortunately, the Chinese government has flooded the region with Han Chinese, and also strategically take advantage of the oil sources in the Taklamakan dessert.

But why is this movement being labeled

terrorism

when the Tibetan movement is not? Is it because Uighurs are brown, and Muslim, while Tibetans are not?

My point is not that Tibetans should be labeled terrorists, but that this fact exposes how events are co-opted by governments to represent "reality" the way they want it represented - that news is a semiotic tool. Beijing after all didn't label ETIM a terrorist organization until after 9/11, when the US really started circulating a vocabulary of anti-Muslim ideology - embodied by the word "terrorist".

But while China jumps on the US bandwagon and uses their political vocabulary for its own interests, the US simultaneously circulates anti-Chinese ideology epitomized by the phrase "human rights abuses." Let me get it straight that the Free Tibet groups and activists, as well as the Tibetans themselves who are leading an inspirational struggle, I think they are commendable, their hearts are true, compassionate, and just. The way that the US media and government piggy-backs off of this to deal with its fear that China is challenging its dominance is what's unjust. We have to ask, after all, why didn't the US get as much Olympics criticism for its own baggage of indigenous rights issues - in regards to Puerto Rico, or Pacific islands like Guam or Hawaii? Human rights abuses? What about Guantanamo Bay? Iraq? Afghanistan? And immigrant detainees in the US after 9/11? The US has got a lot of human rights baggage...where were the Steven Spielbergs of other countries boycotting the US?

The West should support Tibet with a true rather than corrupted heart; Tibet should continue its struggle; and China should respect Tibetan and Uighur sovereignty.

Jackie Chan Mario

2008-03-14T01:01:00.001-07:00

sunset in Phuket

2008-03-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

I found this photo in my friend Siti's facebook account. Wow! I miss Thailand. This was taken in Phuket. Wow.

the things our bodies can do

2008-03-10T04:30:00.000-07:00

my own column - on combatting laziness and self-motivation

2008-03-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

The ideal job I've always wanted to have was to write a column either for a magazine or for a newspaper. It could be any subject matter, as long as I'm given a degree of freedom in expressing my ideas.

Unfortunately, I can fall into an attitude of laziness quite easily, even with things that I enjoy doing, which is what has prevented me from being active - doing what I love before I base a career on it. Instead, I've been passive - waiting to be given a career opportunity in order to begin doing what I love. Having a good fit between passion and career only happens if you're active about it.

So here's my beginning - a food column: Tung Choi St.

I'm not a gourmand or anything. Ironically, I've often found eating to be a chore throughout my whole life, but as with all things in life, I'm slowly learning to appreciate it. Plus it's probably the simplest thing to write a column about, and plus it's extremely practical. I always forget what good places I've been to in the countries I've travelled in...so this will be documentation for myself. Plus, I can refer to friends who're looking for travel advice!

Capoeira is life

2008-03-06T02:31:00.000-08:00

Capoeira is a dialogue between two people. I say something to you, you say something back to me. We have to flow together to make it look beautiful, and that's the hardest part, flowing together, just like how in life communication is difficult, but when done right, it's beautiful.

There are those who think that there is winning and losing in life. These people chase their dreams of getting rich, a beautiful spouse, a green suburban yard underneath a big American house. How to be successful is their concern. Sometimes it's the same in Capoeira, some people think there's winning and losing, so they get all aggressive, get violent, pissed off, and beat each other up. Blood gets spilled.

But those who truly understand capoeira, they know that the kicks and take downs are playful, no harm intended. Let's make it a beautiful dance. And even if we're not the center of attention in a social situation, or in the Capoeira roda, then we're at least in the circle, giving our energy to the center by singing, clapping, being present.

Hong Kong Mourns "Happy Fruit"

2008-03-02T07:35:00.001-08:00

Lydia Shum, also known as 肥肥 (literal translation: fat fat. Of course this sounds horrible in English, but in Chinese it's taken as a term of endearment), is also known as 開心果: Happy Fruit, because she was known for her radiant and contagious smile. She was an actor, a singer, and a game show host (Hong Kong celebrities tend to do absolutely everything), but of course, she was much more than that to Hong Kong people. A woman interviewed on the street on TV put it poetically: "If we were never graced by her legacy, the sun wouldn't be shining as brightly as it does today in Hong Kong." Even I grew up with her presence on my family room TV in Massachusetts, even though I rarely watched the Chinese programming. She passed away about 2 weeks ago of liver cancer, an all too common disease in China (and which nearly claimed the life of my mother if not for the successful surgery).

I've come to realize what people mean when they say that loved ones, although passed away, are still with us as long as we keep them in our hearts. A person is a stream of consciousness, taken individually, but is a thread in the web of a flowing silk cloth. Lydia might be an example of this. She has touched the lives of all Hong Kong people - she is Hong Kong, Hong Kong is her. It is inseparable. Especially for celebrities, who are icons of our culture and our society. But really, this is true for everybody. The more love one affects in society, the stronger and more beautiful the cloth. This is karma.

She will always be with us.

Back into Blogging

2008-02-26T07:41:00.000-08:00

The month of February has been slow in the blogging realm for me, but I sense an increase in activity here, as I should be finally starting my YouTube research really soon, really soon.

For now, I guess the easiest is to throw a bunch of pictures up and talk about them!

This is a picture of something I got from an outlying Island called Cheung Jau. The lady cuts the potato into a spiraling potato "chip" on a stick, deep fries it, and then you can throw on any spices you want on it. Here are a few other photos:

1) This is taken from a very Hong Kong style bar. At these kinds of bars you never see any white people. Here, HK'ers play all sorts of great fun drinking games. These are fast games, creative, and really test your reaction time and cognition, your reflexes. They can get pretty silly, the sillier the more fun! Plus, there's Karaoke - which is more fun than private boxes because you end up singing with other patrons at the bar, quite communal, but it's not as intimidating as Karaoke bars in the states, where you get up on stage and get all nervous.
2) Victoria Peak at night. Breath-taking.
3) Artistic shot
4) I've been meaning to put this up since I've gotten to HK, but never did...lazy me. My living room.

Voting from Abroad and Chinese New Year

2008-02-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

I could have sworn that I posted this news article up days ago, and here I find on my page that it isn't up. Anyway, I voted for the US democratic primaries a couple days ago...in Hong Kong! That's a first for me, and expats the world over: In an Internet First, Americans Abroad Cast E-Votes in Democratic Primary

We are basically adding another "state" to the primaries, electing 22 delegates, weighing in as much as states like Montana or South Dakota.

Anyway, Chinese New Year was last week. It's hard to really understand the significance of this holiday without being in the heart of the action. When I was young, Chinese New Year usually amounted to the question of whether to take the day off or not from school, and a dinner on the weekend when relatives would give me the lai si (red packets of money given by those who are already married - this really points to the nuclear and economic qualities of a Chinese family I think...the idea that once you're married, you become an economic unit that is producing wealth, so that wealth should be shared with those in the family who aren't at the head of an economic unit yet). Here in Hong Kong though, for the past month they've been playing Chinese New Year music in the subway stations, in supermarkets, on TV, everywhere, it's ubiquitous. The week leading up to New Year day there are flower markets all around Hong Kong where you can buy flowers right for the festive occassion. And then a rare thing happens in Hong Kong on New Year day 1, and day 2, and to some extent day 3 and 4. Everything is closed! I hear things are even more deserted in the Mainland. Traditionally, Hong Kongers visit all their relatives door to door, bringing some gifts, accepting the lai si money, and chatting for a bit. My relatives every year do it much more efficient here, and just have one big gathering to take care of it all at once. Most lai si givers prepare a huge stack that they carry around with them for about a week, to give out to relatives.

There was a parade on New Year day 1, and then Fireworks New Year day 2. As this New Year is the year of the rat, a lot of things have had rat themes, including fireworks in the shape of the Chinese character for rat, swarms of children in rat costume at the parade, rats everywhere!

Pictures in order below:

1 - The flowers (and gourds) most associated with Chinese New Year.
2 - New Year Flower Markets are also the grounds upon which business students try their hand at selling stuff. These wind-wheels (is that what they're called?) are shaped as Mickey, who must be getting a boost in business 'cause its his lunar year.
3 - One of the many rats enjoying advertising fame these past few weeks.

I vote in Hong Kong tomorrow!

2008-02-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

- Taken from: http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/02/primary_evote

In an Internet First, Americans Abroad Cast E-Votes in Democratic Primary
By Nicole Martinelli Email 02.05.08 | 4:00 PM

MILAN, Italy -- For the first time, Democrats living abroad from Auckland to Ontario are voting over the internet in a global primary. And a few states may allow expatriate voters to vote online in the general election come November.

For now, expat voters will, in effect, add an extra state to this year's Democratic National Convention. These voters without borders will elect 22 delegates, weighing in with about as much influence as Montana or South Dakota.

Voting is currently open only to Democrats. Republicans Abroad split off from the Republican National Committee and can hold neither in-person nor internet votes in the primaries.

Democrats Abroad declined to reveal how many voters registered for the global primary or the exact cost of the online system (somewhere "under $100,000"), but Meredith Gowan Le Goff, vice chairwoman of Democrats Abroad for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that membership doubled in the two weeks before the primaries.

The online voting process, explained in a user-friendly cartoon, takes about 10 minutes.

Party members outside the United States who registered for the service through Democrats Abroad by Feb. 1 received an unencrypted e-mail with a 10-digit ballot number and an eight-digit PIN. Latecomers can still vote in person at specified times and places in 34 countries from Feb. 5 to Feb. 12.

After logging on with the ballot number to a secure server at the Democrats Abroad website, users are asked for additional personal information as a security measure, before receiving a certified Java applet.

Once the applet is accepted, the PIN is requested and if correct, the ballot is loaded. After the voter clicks "X" for a candidate, a summary screen pops up asking for confirmation. That's followed by a receipt with the ballot number, while the actual vote speeds back encrypted.

San Diego firm Everyone Counts, which runs the process, said its security procedures are tighter than those at ordinary polling stations.

"We have three forms of information: a piece of personal data, a ballot number and a PIN," said Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele. "Nothing is hack-proof, but we monitor voting as it happens for breaches. So far, so good." The voting system was also used by the Australian military in 2007.

This isn't the first attempt to expand the franchise to overseas U.S. citizens on the internet. After pilot programs, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) scrapped plans for e-voting in general elections, concluding that "no internet voting system could be 100 percent secure."

Still, imperfect may be good enough for citizens who want to participate in elections far from home.

For the estimated 6 million Americans who live overseas, red tape and the vagaries of far-flung postal systems leave traditional paper absentee ballots with all the accuracy of a message in a bottle.

Americans abroad requested nearly a million ballots in 2006 elections, but only about a third were cast or counted, according to a government report.

Tara Kelly, an American who has lived in Rome since 1996, attempted to vote from the Eternal City exactly once: "The ballot came about three days before the election," she said. "Sending it back would have been useless. It never would have gotten there on time. I never tried again."

The weakest link in today's e-vote? Probably the security requirement to enter additional personal information, which, at least in three cases, wasn't more than what a friend or partner would know.

"For electronic voting to become reliable, you'd need other types of verification," said Francesco Sullo, Kelly's husband and a software architect for online-password-storage tool PassPack. "For instance, a private, personal key not generated by the same system that collects the vote. You've got to be able to be sure it was really me -- and not my neighbor -- voting."

Peripatetic voters have a better chance of casting a ballot online, nonetheless. Deirdré Straughan, a resident of northern Italy since 1991, voted online in the global primary while visiting California.

With online voting, "more people will be able to vote,” she said. “It's been so difficult to do, you had to be very motivated to actually accomplish it."

For those abroad who favor e-voting, returning to the paper-ballot-and-a-prayer system for the November presidential elections may be difficult.

"I do think that's going to change, and it may start changing after this week," Lori Steele said. In fact, her company is in talks with "half a dozen" states that want to make online voting a possibility for overseas voters in time for the general election.

1 billion people playing musical chairs in a foot of snow

2008-01-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is the most festive time of year in Hong Kong, and in China. Cherry blossoms and other colorful flowers are going up in malls, on streets, in apartment buildings, and all sorts of places here in Hong Kong. Red is the auspicious color, Christmas lights are everywhere bright, and facades of buildings on both sides of the famous Victoria Harbor are lit.

Chinese New Year takes on more sociological interest in Guangdong province, which is called the factory floor of the world because that's probably where 90% of what you're wearing and using and blogging on were manufactured. Mountains and seas of rural migrants work in Guangdong, and this is the busiest time of year for them, because they all crowd the train stations to go home.

What horrible timing!

80,000 people are stuck at Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong. That's like the size of a city! China is practically paralyzed because of a blizzard that swept through and continues to sweep through China...storms that haven't been seen in 50 years. And these are storms in the South, which are ill-prepared for these things. Think of a foot of snow in Virginia and the Carolinas. They have no equipment for this...they're sweeping the snow away with brooms.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jvk7Cm_LiUKmk09LgSM7wXayDzlwD8UG5MJG1

What is Language?

2008-01-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

I remember watching a movie called Waking Life (2001) several years back, and feeling enlightened by the fact that words are just symbols that signify the ideas in our mind, they aren't the ideas themselves. Whether others pick up the ideas we mean to communicate depends on how they interpret our words. Since they're just symbols, miscommunication and different interpretations are possible.

Since then I've realized that it goes deeper than this simplistic idea. In my masters thesis, I'm making use of Jacques Derrida's idea of differance, which in French can mean "to differ" and it can mean "to defer" (postpone). It's a linguistic theory that argues signifiers (ie words) are not simply static signs that immutably point to static signified meanings (ie words' meanings). On the contrary, signifiers are always interpreted and reinterpreted in meaning by their positioning with other signifiers in the web of semiotic signification. Meaning depends on how the signifier (ie word) differs from other signifiers (ie other words) around it. Meaning is therefere always deffered (postponed) in an endless play of signification.

More concretely, this means that history is never a static given set of events that have definite uncontestable (objective) meanings. Instead, it means that history is always interpreted and reinterpreted, consisting of meanings always in an endless 'play' of differance with the present and the future.

Cultural identity is about "becoming" rather than "being" - it's a process, a production, rather than something to be archaeologically dug up.

Anyway, back to the question, what is language...it is a system of symbolisms and signification, but it's more complicated by that. And that's why words in one language can almost never have exact translations in other languages that capture fully their spectrum of meaning. Depending on how words have been used, developed, and "played" in fields of differance, they take on a whole spectrum of implied meanings. Which is why, for example, I had to give 4 different English words to my language exchange partner for translating the Cantonese wai daai - (偉大) - compassionate, selfless, considerate - which are all words that overlap with wai daai. And then this other Cantonese word (I forget what) that overlaps with aspects of being a good friend, a close friend, considerate, and always there to help in a very practical way (as in lending money in times of need, or talking and being a listener in times of emotional distress), but not necessarily including what the English "close friend" implies - such as talking about everything and anything (no matter if there is emotional distress or not). Closeness and being a good friend in HK culture then seems to differ from America in that it's much more practical-focused, and functional, whereas in US culture it's more emotional and romantic.

Cantonese - Cultural Observations: Lesson One

2008-01-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

Preface
"Can you speak Cantonese?" is a frequent question I get here in Hong Kong. Do these people realize the difficulty of answering this question? Do only multilingual people understand what language really is? The answer fits somewhere outside of "yes" and somewhere outside of "no." My sister has talked about Chinese professors hearing her Canto and telling her she speaks with all the common slang of the 60s and 70s, when our parents immigrated to the US. This "cultural petrification" is common for immigrants.

So I grew up with their Cantonese. "But if you speak Canto with your parents, why does your Canto suck!?" Think about all the vocabulary that you would ever use with your parents, especially parents typical of Hong Kong Chinese culture. Some Hong Kongers I talk to do get it: "Oh...because all you really talked to them about as a kid was 'are you full? Go brush your teeth, go take a bath'"

"Yep," I'd respond. "Plus there are whole subject matters that you'd never discuss with your parents, I've never learned that!"

It all becomes so obvious in Capoeira class, when I show up to the beginners' lesson and I want to give them some pointers. I've never taken a PE class or learned to play sports in Cantonese. The ideas are in my head, and the vocabulary for "turn" "way" "kick" "put your hand like this," I have all that vocabulary, but which ones do I use cause there are so many synonyms...how do I link them together? Cantonese becomes a foreign language to me as soon as I enter the Capoeira lesson. Just imagine my advice coming out something like this in its English equivalent "incorrect turn that way don't be th- this way here put and kick this"

January 14th, 2008
"How do you say haahm sap" in English?" she asked me. I told her "horny", although I footnoted to her that the difference between "horny" and "haahm sap" is that "haahm sap" is always negative, while "horny" can be neutral or negative. I proceeded to demonstrate that you'd never hear someone in that romantic mood say in Chinese to their partner "hey baby...I'm really haahm sap!" Through our language exchange, I've learned that there are all sorts of ways to say "horny" in Cantonese - gum yu lou (金魚佬, mui so, and one other one I forget - all negative. Does this say something about Chinese culture and sex? And Anglo culture and sex? "That's it?" she asked. "Only 'horny', no other words to express that?"

Daily Routine

2008-01-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

Back in my idealist-thinking days, routine was a bad thing. What a boring thing to have the same patterns and things to do every day. Even eating was something I did only when I had the mood to.

But routine is about holding myself accountable, self-discipline, to make sure I make the best use of my time during the day, and that I'm thinking about the trajectory I'm taking during the day, not just this very minute. So for example even if I'm lazy to do it, I still gotta eat a fruitful breakfast...and ever since I've added breakfast to my life I've stopped sleep-walking through my days :)

My routine in Hong Kong ideally begins with a morning jog, from my apartment, through the famous (in China) Avenue of the Stars to the clock tower by the Star Ferry in TST, and back. Dodging the Mainland Chinese tourists who come by the tourbus-loads - bending over to fit their hands with the hand-prints of Andy Lau, Jet Li, and others on the promenade - and running around the Sikh men who like to stop random pedestrians and talk really friendly to them (about religion I think?), the Mandarin chatter filling the air is punctuating by occasional English, Korean, Japanese, and Cantonese. Running fills my lungs with 'fresh' air so that I have enough energy to carry through my day. But as you might be able to see from this video of my leisurely stroll, the air isn't so fresh!

After my jog, I get ready to take the train up to the City University of Hong Kong, which prides itself on being ranked the 149th best University in the world. Usually you cut through the Festival Walk mall there, which, until last week, had this huge XMas tree shooting through several levels.

This is what one section of the library looks like. It looks like the bridge of a starship, especially because of the futuristic incandescent blue lighting they use, which doesn't show too well in the picture.

I usually have lunch in the canteen (dining hall for American English), and after another several hours at the library, I head back home by train.

Sharing my nightly dinner with my mother, I'll usually go for Capoeira across the harbor by taking the Star Ferry, which I'm really impressed by just because it's not just a tourist ride, but a cheap way of commuting to and from work...another part of the matrix of efficient transportation in HK. The rest of my night is usually spent self-studying Chinese, and going online. My weekends tend to be more open and flexible, although I do go to church on Sunday mornings, which I must admit, is a great way to learn and practice Cantonese!

Here are some pictures taken from my time in HK so far. My professional quality camera is dead on batteries, and my charger is back in the states :( so I have to settle for showing these first. The first album has people pictures, and the second has interesting sites in Hong Kong!

Hong Kong 2008 people pictures

Hong Kong culture

On the Silencing Effect of "Getting It" and the Domination in “The Social Justice Movement” (and other personal and critical feelings)

2008-01-04T03:16:00.000-08:00

…(got to thinking about this stuff from reading Asian Am studies stuff for my thesis. I feel that I’m coming full circle in my relation with social justice)…

After the past several years, after taking a much needed breather, a hiatus, from so-called “social justice work” and the ambiguously defined “interest in Asian American ‘issues’,” I’ve finally come to realize what was so alienating and undemocratic about “the community,” and what caused me to distance myself so far away from it for years. It was because even though these counter communities were meant to act as safe havens from the white/male/hetero mainstream society, as well as points from which to resist and counter the dominant discourses in mainstream society, they in fact were very stifling of difference, and simply reproduced the same structure of dominance. For example, there was emphasis on whether he or she “gets it” or not. Saying that someone doesn’t “get it” was the most damning insult you could say behind someone’s back. On the other hand, admitting in emotional outburst that “I finally get it!” (as happened at the leadership training I was a counselor for in Boston over the summer) was a way to valorize yourself by evoking reflectiveness and being a part of the in-group. There was this overall atmosphere and culture of “I’m holier than thou” or “we’re holier than them,” from which I or we are supposed to preach and convert others, almost religiously, to “get it.” But this implicitly controls and stifles anyone who disagrees or sees it differently, since they were excluded for not “getting it.”

Equally problematic and stifling was how stereotypes and positive/negative media representations were understood. According to many Asian American student activists, to counteract stereotypes meant having representations that were just the opposite of Hollywood stereotypes. Hence, you have companies like Black Lava with T-shirts reading “I suck at math” or “I can’t speak Chinese.” I always felt uncomfortable with these, but never understood how to articulate my discomfort. The problem with these is that by taking Hollywood stereotypes as reference points in constructing our own identities, we’re not really challenging the stereotypes, we simply reaffirm them because we’re reinforcing binary possibilities: you’re either the conformist Asian who is really good at math, speaks Chinese, is passive and reserved (read “FOB”) or you’re the “political” Asian who “gets it” and proclaims loud and proud that you suck at math, you suck at Chinese, you’re loud and you’re damned angry. Unfortunately, those who take on the latter identity are still letting stereotypes define and limit who they can be. Not only this, but other problems arise such as being sexist against Asian Am women in order to “counter” stereotypes of Asian Am masculinity; or antagonism against “Asian-Asians” who “don’t get it” and are too FOB-ie, and ignorantly perpetuate stereotypes. And then there’s the incredibly denigrating feeling of being criticized for “being the stereotype” just because I like to teach Chinese (for example tell some white guy that the tattoo on his arm means ‘loyalty’ 忠, and is amazingly poetic because it’s the “center character” 中 above the “heart” character 心 – meaning your heart is centered, hence loyal), or because I see the relative value in non-confrontation when it comes to personal interaction. Restricting the possibility to being someone who “is the stereotype” to someone who is “counter-stereotype” is repressive, and conservative. But these problems aren’t unique to Asian Americans of course, I just reference them because of my familiarity, and out of genuine care for Asian American identities.

On a public level then, it seems to me that the definition of “social justice” in America has been too rigidly defined, and therefore is an exclusive community with low tolerance for conflicting views. In my opinion, any organization that labels itself as a general “social justice” organization has to be inherently open and allowing of multiple conflicting views. A commitment for a more just society that seeks to resist dominant systems should be the only unifying principle. Anything more specific should have their own interest group (which of course would always interact with the broader social justice public). Social justice, then, would be a “movement of movements,” rather than “the movement,” which is too homogenizing and silencing of difference. A “movement of movements” in the Asian American communities would cause less alienation against Asian adoptees, GLBT Asian Ams, Hapas, Asian Ams with disabilities, South Asian Americans, even Asian Am women who date white men, and all sorts of outsiders of the outsiders. Not only would people feel more included, but the movement of movements would be fuller; the process of understanding systems of oppression would never stop (since the moment it does stop, the radical political nature of the movement ceases in my opinion). So instead of thinking of a pan-ethnic umbrella, we should think of pan-ethnic umbrellas.

On a more personal level, I think it’s more radical to simply be yourself (taking influence from all and everyone that is around you), without regard to what the stereotypes are, or how to be their opposites. Being yourself might overlap with Hollywood stereotypes, it might overlap with their opposites, in the end, your identity should overlap with several commons (Asian, women, Asian women, women of color, lesbian, classical music enthusiasts, salsa dancers, social justice agitators, educators, student), but taken as a whole is also uniquely you. This is the only way to truly resist the violence of stereotypes, cultural oppression, and domination.

Unique New Year 2008 Hong Kong Fireworks (and the scholar ship)

2008-01-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

So for New Year Eve yesterday, I met up with Nancy who's working as a counselor for the scholar ship. What an amazing experience, a semester at sea (almost) circumnavigating the globe! This is their route map starting in Hong Kong and ending in Amsterdam 4 months later:

In September they go from Amsterdam back to Hong Kong via the Panama canal.

As appealing as a position on this boat for the Sep 08 voyage is to me, I really feel like it's not right for me at this stage of my life. No more uprootedness for me, thankyou.

So, after hotpot, some great local desserts, then walking around massive flows of pedestrians, the closest view of the fireworks we could get was unfortunately in between big high-rises, offering just a tiny window to the fireworks. The whole time we were like "is this it?" "This must only be the introduction, the warmup." But then it ended, with an air of dissapointment surrounding us and the hundreds of thousand other revelers around us.

Then I checked out Youtube, from where you can get several different perspectives of Dec 31st, from several different cameras of ordinary HK citizens. Talk about postmodernist pluralism. Turns out this was what we missed!

The past 5 New Years in Review

2007-12-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

Again comes another end of the year, and while celestially speaking this is quite an arbitrary moment in time to break one year from the next, it's cultural rituals like this that get us to look back, reflect, and remember. Living in the past isn't the way to live life though. The past doesn't exist any more, and it can never exist again. Every moment that we pass through is like this. But the past leads us to now, and into the future, so to guide us forward, we need to understand the past.

I don't know why I've always liked to use intervals of 5, but today I decided to recall where I was each of the new years these past 5 years. I'll start with the 2003 new year.

2003

In 2002 I was a sophomore at UMass. In September I had just come back from an internship in DC, and I was mentally burning out. Probably one of the most confusing times of my life, my newfound "passion" of activism was burning me up with disillusionment, and I just wanted to run far far away.

My family decided that for the winter break, we should all go to Hong Kong, and that's what we did. On New Year Eve my Auntie Chan Tai and family and Auntie Winnie and Family shared a dinner with us in TST 尖沙咀. From the window we could see the reflection of fireworks in the glass building across from us. My brother and I wanted to go to Lan Kwai Fong for the countdown. Turned out we did nothing but stand in a line, zig-zagging the blocks. Ever since about 15 years ago when several people died and many were injured when people fell and caused a domino effect (Lan Kwai Fong is a nightlife center on an incline) police in HK have strictly controlled and directed the crowd. We never got to Lan Kwai Fong. Oh well. This picture was probably taken a few days before that.

Also memorable from the trip was going to our uncle's fish farm near the border with China (Shenzhen). It was the first time ever in my life being in a rural area, although you can see the advance of urbanity in the hazy horizon.

My friend Melissa was in Hong Kong at this time, on exchange at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Maybe it was her that gave me the idea, but when I got back to the US, I applied for exchange at CUHK, as well as for transfer to various UC schools (anywhere I could escape to).

2004
I didn't learn my lesson from New Year 2003. Back to Lan Kwai Fong for New Year 2004!

So I ended up going to CUHK, where I started my self-prescribed psychological healing process by bringing chaos to my soul. Not only did I have other-worldly energy for learning Chinese, but I did a 180 on most of my beliefs (from gender roles, to globalization, culture, etc), or just dropped my beliefs altogether as if trying to start anew.

So during winter break after my first semester at CUHK, most of my exchange friends left, except for Amy and Kar Wai. My uncle who lived at the Chinese border was soon to be forced off his fish farm because the land was bought up by some real estate developer. I brought Amy and Kar Wai there to check it out on the 31st. At night we walked around TST, and then to Lan Kwai Fong. Amy is entertaining herself in the above picture with the cap of a Watson's bottled water, as we stand in line. The same thing happened as the previous year with my brother, we never got there on time, and we didn't even hear any countdown.

A bit before New Year I went on my first backpacking trip in China, and has been one of my most memorable travel experiences. This picture is taken in Yangshuo China, near Guilin.

2005
What can I say, I don't remember what I did for this New Year (probably stayed at home in Wilbraham, MA). After my 2 semesters at CUHK '03-'04, an internship at a non-profit in HK in May, and then Beijing for language courses and homestay in the summer, I came back to UMass for fall '04. Throughout that time I had my first relationship, quite a rocky one, but one that I've learned a lot from. Probably because I brought chaos to my soul, but never restored peace, I felt that my time wasn't over yet abroad. I hurried through my semester to graduate early, and left for Taiwan in January (via Hong Kong for some more rockiness in my relationship which continued on and off). But just like my disillusionment with fighting the good fight, my otherworldly energy for learning Chinese dropped to hell, and my project of bringing chaos to my soul had left me numb already in 2004, and thus into 2005. Here's a picture from UMass.

2006
Returning to the US from Taiwan, I largely thought my living abroad days were over, and feeling pretty empty and purposeless, I was hoping my PhD program at SUNY Albany would bring me back on track...any track would do.

For New Year Eve, I did the countdown thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is a college town with Smith nearby. But despite its small town center and mostly suburban housing, it's got a sort of mini-urban feel in the center. Plus, it's not unusual to see same-sex couples holding hands, as its a very queer-friendly place. This second picture is taken of me and Beverly at Frog Pond at Boston. We did a road trip from Albany, to Amherst and Northampton (countdown pic), to Wilbraham (my home), to Boston, to Salem (nice witch museum), to Providence, and finally to New York city to drop Beverly off at Columbia. We started the trip as good (flirtatious) friends. We ended the trip as boyfriend and girlfriend.

2007
And I thought my living abroad days were over! Through all my globe-trotting, the only reason why I went back to live in the US was because my family is there. Otherwise, I probably would have just stayed in Asia, straight out, working and living. As a compromise and balance, I wanted to take all my summer opportunities to live that different life. But a summer in Thailand teaching English turned into a year.

This is a video taken in Phuket on the 31st. It's the first time I've spent my birthday (yes, Jan 1st is my birthday), and New Year Eve with a girlfriend (and thus my first New Year kiss). The motorcycle is a taxi motorcycle. In Thailand usually you can fit 2 passengers behind the driver (in Cambodia you'll see up to 5 or 6!) We'd just got to Phuket from the airport, and after checking into the hotel, took the moto down to the beach. Fireworks were going off in the front while we sped down the yellow Xmas lit street (Thailand loves the color yellow as it represents the king). The night was spent in classic romantic movie style, at an amusement park where I won a cute (as in Japanese hello-kitty cute) tea-set by winning a darts game (pop a balloon with every dart you throw), and going on the ferris-wheel.

From Phuket, we took a boat to PiPi island, which was one of the places devastated by the '05 Tsunami. But the island has recovered nicely for the most part. And the fish look really nice in the beautifully blue water.

As for my personal development? Let's just say that I got a caustically bitter email in the early part of my time in Thailand, 'causing me to really dig deeper, and think back to my 2 relationships to realize I needed to change. My time in Thailand was the year things began to snap into place.

2008

And now, here I am in Hong Kong, at least until April. My plan for New Year Eve is to meet in TST with my friend Nancy, whom I met this past summer in Boston through BCCJ.

So that's the past 5 years in review. Let's see what the next 5 bring.

Christmas in Hong Kong (and layers of technology)

2007-12-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

"Kev Jumba," the fan asked in his video response to the number 1 most subscribed comedian on Youtube. "Speaking of names, and race, you're Chinese right? Why is your name Kev? It makes no sense to me...you're Chinese!" (not an actual quote...just an approximation pieced from my memory)

Mark Poster in his book Information Please thinks of the internet as a way to bring chaos to your soul. Bringing chaos to your soul was conceived by Nietzsche, basically as an exploration of self-identity, putting yourself out of your comfort zone, out of your familiar world-view, almost to the point of a masochistic psychology, all in order to emerge out of this interior battle with a new cultural innovation. "One must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star." Poster thinks that the internet is a system that brings all sorts of individuals into exposure to other unfamiliar individuals, bringing the whole global society into chaos, producing cultural innovation in the end.

That's the abstract theoretical background I provide for now. If somebody can't conceive of an Asian person having an English name, then they'll have to learn to conceive of an Asian person with an english name. Likewise, Christianity, Christmas, and Christmas caroling all find their origins in the west, and sure, we could link it to the evils of European imperialism - but we shouldn't think of it as globalization as much as we should think of it as glocalization.

In Hong Kong, Christmas time is not time for family, but time to go out with friends, walk amongst the crowds, get drunk, party, etc.. That's how Western-imported holidays are like (esp. Haloween and Xmas), family-centered holidays are of course the traditional Chinese ones.

During Xmas, unlike for New Year and Chinese New Year, there are no fireworks, people are just walking around on the streets. But since Christians in Hong Kong are more firm believers than your average Christian in the US, you get caroling with strong religious overtones ('caroling' in Cantonese, bouh gaai yam, translates as spread the great gospel)
[please bear through the beginning...I walk around later]

And finally, I end with video of an event taken a couple weeks back. The layers of technology involved here are a bit much! There's my camera which is recording video of my nieces and nephews in Hong Kong webcamming with their cousins (my nieces and nephews) in America who are playing videos from their camera of sledding into their webcamera. Did you get that? Video from their camera->their webcam->our computer screen->my camera->youtube video about transnationalism and childhood friends reuniting through webcams and cameras.

The Three Styles of World Salsa (that I know of), and other social commentary mixed in...

2007-12-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

...this is a long entry, but I think it's a really interesting one (of course...I wrote it). If you really don't have the attention span, at least scroll down and watch the youtube video to get a small glimpse into my life here!

I've danced Salsa in three parts of the world - Thailand, Hong Kong, and Albany New York, and I've come to a conclusion about regional cultures (call it race or ethnicity if you really want) and styles of dancing salsa.

Now, most people already know this, but Latin Americans in general dance very naturally, and haven't taken any lessons (not I say "in general"...I'm not making essentializations or stereotyping here). They've picked it up since childhood, and tend to dance much more naturally, less for show, less ball-roomy, but more expressive, more in the moment, more intuitively. And I'm not basing this on what I've heard, but from seeing Latin Americans who came later to the club in Bangkok, or from those I saw in Albany.

The polar opposite to this is the showy, ball-roomy style, that's less improvisational, but much more flashy, and definitely requires at least some lessons in the beginning to pick up the basics of the language. Most of the world wouldn't know this, but I think cultures of East Asia are exemplary soil for producing some incredible dancers. It comes with a very structured and ordered culture that you can see expressed in all corners of Hong Kong, from the extensive underground passages and tunnels, which are protected from stale air by jet-like fans at entrances and exits; an incredibly planned out subway system that rarely requires you to go further than a leisurely stroll across the platform when you need to change lines, and an employee who goes around the library with a clipboard, marking down desk id numbers in order to strictly reinforce the rule that if your belongings are at a desk and you're not physically present there for 30 minutes then this constitutes a 'reservation' and your things will be removed.

This is the kind of structure ideal for flashy ball-room moves. Of course you always need some improv skill to make your dance organic and not mechanical. But my point is relative to the other style.

And then you have the middle of nowhere, neither-nor style exemplified by Albany Salsa...which unfortunately corroborates the stereotype that white people can't dance. White America has a culture definitely less structured than say Hong Kong's - just look at the stale greasy and rusting subways of New York or Boston, or the fact that McDonald's in Hong Kong has a button at the cash-register you can push that counts down 1 minute - if you don't have your food in that time, your meal is free (or something like that...I don't know if they still have this though). I'm not saying that this kind of thing is good...it's quite horrid for the workers actually (today at KFC I saw big black letters painted on the wall behind the counter a bit out of sight from customers but clearly staring the employee in the face: "Yes! I Will". Such an obvious sign of exploitative control; so impressive how fast they can pull things off). Anyway, this is all just a tangent to my point I was trying to make, that Albany dancers don't have the structure to dance flashy and ball-roomy, BUT they don't have the natural improvisational skills either! There dancing style is horrid in my opinion, and I only wonder and hope it isn't so that this is what the general scene looks like in America.

And the community! Is so much stronger in Bangkok and Hong Kong than it is in Albany. In Albany it's horrid! Every ten girls/women I asked to dance, nine of them said no. It seemed like most of them were kind of tribalistic, sticking with their group of friends, or their significant other the whole night and never intermingling with anybody else. In Bangkok and in Hong Kong, everyone who dances Salsa in the city knows everybody else who dances Salsa in the city. I don't have to ask girls/women to dance, they come right up to me and ask, I barely get any time to rest. I just stand around and they'll come up to me. I don't even know them! They're total strangers! Now, I'm not saying that this happens automatically. It happens only because I ask one girl to dance with me in the beginning, and others see. If a girl/woman is a member of a small salsa community in Bangkok or Thailand, she tends to be a more open person, and has less regard for gender roles. So they like what they saw, so they want the same thing and so approach me. It's a highly consumerist society here...get what you want and consume its use value.

So I leave you with a microcosm of a glance into HK salsa. This is a birthday dance. I got one in Bangkok too. See! That's how strong the community is in these cities...we all know each others birthdays! and sing the birthday song and eat cake with the birthday girl/boy too!

2007-12-18T02:37:00.000-08:00

I will now post Youtube videos every day as I super-familiarize myself with the Youtube public.

2007-12-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

I've deleted my new Youtube vlog account because I've realized that I need to do my fieldwork in a much more systematized way - like, logging every one of my actions online and on youtube. I need to have my methodology written up and approved by my advisers before I dive into things. Originally I had thought about this before I put up my first video, actually, but decided to jump the gun anyways because I thought I could just change my identity and start making new videos pretending I was new to the scene...but what about people that might recognize me?

Felix Poon productions will have to wait until I have a substantial literature review, and a methodology approved (and possibly even IRB! - for my non-academic readers, IRB stands for institutional review board, which approves or rejects research proposals depending on whether they could potentially harm the research subjects. For example, in the old days there was a researcher named Milgrim who wanted to study authoritarianism in its micro psychological aspect. So the subjects sat with the researcher and could see into this other room where another guy was. This other guy was actually working for the researcher, but pretended to be another subject. So the real subject was told to shock the faux subject every time he answered a question wrong by pushing a button. In some cases, the faux subject was going to convulsions or passed out, but the subjects were told to continue shocking. Some of them continued to shock them. They were all told in the end that the faux subject was just acting, but it turned out that some of the subjects came out of the experience psychologically scarred. Because of these kinds of ethical breaches, now everyone needs to go through irb even if it is as harmless as setting up a youtube account.)

Anyway, my Youtube videos will have to wait until January or February.

First Video Blog -->

2007-12-15T06:29:00.000-08:00

The more I do this, the more natural I want to get at expression and articulation. What's great is that this will be my "fieldwork" for my masters thesis =)

2007-12-14T05:25:00.000-08:00

I really just want to settle down somewhere and stop moving around so much, but once you start something, I guess it gets the ball rolling, and sometimes you can't turn the momentum around so easily. Actually, all I need is a home base, somewhere to return to, somewhere to feel anchored or rooted even if I am half-way across the world.

My first week in Hong Kong has been spent doing 應酬 things for the most part, visiting aunts and uncles I haven't seen in a while, relatives such as cousins and nieces and nephews. That stuff will take up a lot of time. Otherwise, I've been trying to do my thesis work, trying to get into the groove of a self-imposed work schedule.

What probably harkens me back to my nostalgic study abroad here in '03-'04 is that I've started up my Cantonese notepad again. Back then my energy and determination to learn Cantonese was so through-the-sky intense, I kept a pocket notepad to write down every single word or phrase I heard throughout the day, and would study it. I'd accumulate maybe 20 terms a day. The scariest part of course is using the new vocab. What's funny is that it turned my Cantonese into a half-fluent half-horribly accented combination. It was as if I was stitching up a totally foreign language onto an already very familiar language, and hoping that it would organically combine into one eventually. My new notepad continues the operation!

Today for lunch I walked with my mother to pizza hut. "Pizza hut here isn't like Pizza hut back in the US. It's much better here! Not like that fast food greasy stuff back in the US!" She agreed to try it out, and liked it very much (mostly because it was really Chinese-ified). A lot of so-labeled "Western" food here consists of rice dishes topped with cheese and some sort of meat, like dark-meat chicken or ham, baked. I guess if it's baked, it makes it "Western."

This entry is just a warming up of my blogging. My video blog is under production, as I experiment and toy with ideas in my head. The main reason I want to do it is self-improvement: working on my presentation, articulation, spontaneity.

My jetlag is almost totally gone. Next week I hope to get into my routine here in Hong Kong: Thesis work in the daytime, studying Chinese in the night time, Capoeira Tuesdays and Thursdays, Salsa once a week.

請你記住留下給我這位置

2007-12-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

In my rush and furor to finish my chopping and slabbing of beta coefficients and standard errors into tables with *'s for my final multivariate paper, and throwing the artifacts of my Albany life into my car so that I could get back home and attend to another onslaught of preparations for my flight away from this part of the world, an unexpected thing happened to me as I pulled onto the highway in my C220 1994 Benz. For the first time ever in my life, I thought to myself "I'm so blessed." How far I have truly traveled from the Felix I was 5 years ago, when Stephen Bor in Washington DC knew me as a tortured soul, and the only reprieve I could find from misery and hell on earth was by consuming others like a hungry ghost.

Reading a sincerely heartfelt and compassionate card before I got in my car was the set, and since I've lately been growing into the belief that life can be as riveting as the movies, I turned on my mp3 player from my cell-phone, and naturally the Cantonese songs came on - such tear-jerking ballads demanding dramatic plucking of heart-strings. I didn't even know the meaning of the song so well at the time, but it was the rhythm and melody that chimed my tear ducts:

無論你喜歡誰
請你記住留下給我這位置
時常在內心一隅
空出幾吋為我堅持

I recalled a conversation with Salvatore, my housemate and classmate, and Terrence, my upstairs housemate as well as fellow Capoeirista, where we came to the stoic conclusion that those people who aren't happy in Albany probably won't be happy anywhere else. It isn't 100% true, but there is a logic to it, and I've challenged myself this semester to force this yoga on myself that happiness comes from within, and so I should be able to adapt to any environment.

So the tears strewed down my face, shooting the lights of downtown Albany in every which way like the streaks of star-lights, and I looked back, knowing I would probably never live here ever again, but just as any material thing even as basic as a piece of cloth carries with it the ability to evoke neurochemical/spiritual reactions in the mind, so it is the case with the concrete/wood/glass/natural composition and imaginary of Albany, and the few, yet significant, special people I met and knew there who will also always be a part of me.

best way to grow up

2007-11-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

So I put up an ad on Craigslist last week to find somebody to sublet from me starting in December. I got a few responses reading something like this:

"Hi, my name is --- ---, and I'm looking for an apartment for my son. He's a college student at SUNY....His living situation is horrible!"

When I ask this mother about his financial situation...

"Don't worry about payment, we're going to take care of that. We'll send the checks up regularly and on time to the landlord."

Seriously, teach the kid some responsibilities. AT LEAST open up a bank account for him, deposit the money there, and get him to write his own damn rental checks.

I've been developing my philosophies for how to raise children, since lately I've been an elementary school teacher, and my cousins' kids in HK and in Massachusetts are giving me more and more exposure. On top of this, I'm noticing what happens to me when I take on more responsibilities for myself an others - this is LIFE! I'm coming to the conclusion that a lot of high-schoolers are depressed because they're alienated. They're experiencing anomie (for you sociologists out there). Of course, you do get kids who are busy and are responsible for themselves, and even others too. And they complain "I wish I had a normal kid life." But they don't realize how good they have it. They'll understand when they grow up.

This is crazy week for me now, as I prepare to fly to Hong Kong in less than a week. I've already been formulating my ideas for my new YouTube personality. I just need a name! And then I'll be public within a couple weeks or so =)

Exterminators?

2007-11-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

Dan, a SUNY sociology student, opens his email box to find an ad by one of his fellow sociology graduate students that reads the following:

Due to a family emergency, I will be moving to Hong Kong in December for an as of yet indeterminate amount of time, leaving my nice cozy room in ideally situated 808 Washington Ave. Apt 1 vacant. Fellow sociology students Jeff and Salvatore occupy the other two rooms in the apartment. Take a look at the details below if you're interested, or if you know of anybody who would be!

Some other details listed in the email made it seem like quite an attractive place to live, a steal at only $300 a month, ideally situation on the bus line and only a pleasant 5 minute walk from all sorts of shops, restaurants, grocery markets, and a small movie theater. Now, Dan, a married man who is in the final stages of his dissertation, soon to get his PhD, doesn't need an apartment, he's just curious as to what kind of a place I live. Getting a glimpse into someone's personal space is somehow like taking a glimpse into their psyche after all. "Wow, these pictures aren't bad either," Dan exclaims to himself.

He turns his head sideways to get a look at the picture of my room.

"A bit small, but cozy. Felix is a pretty neat guy. Oh look at that, he's even got a little teddy polar bear on his bed." What he doesn't know is that when I sleep, I put the bear on the meditation cushions facing my Buddha statue, and when I wake up and start my day, I sit him on my pillow on my bed.

Dan looks at the final picture. "The outside looks a bit dull, but let me click to enlarge this photo..."
And lo and behold, he sees the enlarged photo:
"Wait a sec..." he says to himself. "Is that?..." He gives the picture another careful look to confirm his suspicion. Confirmed, he chuckles to himself.

Dan sees me later in the day in the corridor, after I've spent a good chunk of time putting sublet fliers around. "So you're lookin' to get rid of your place huh Felix?" I make small talk with him about it. "By the way," he started abruptly, "were those exterminators going into your house? Or somebody else's?"
"Exterminators? What exterminators?"
No calls about the apartment yet...

2007-11-11T13:45:00.001-08:00

Boston on hold again, Hong Kong part deux

2007-11-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

[last Friday]
"So you're saying that I myself can schedule an appointment for my mother to see the specialist?" I ask.
"Yes, sure, would you like to do that?" she asks.
"When's the next available appointment?"
"March, of next year."
"No, we can't do that, if we wait that long she could be...gone by then. Is there any way we can get an expedited appointment?"
"You'll have to have your doctor speak directly with Dr Curry to get an expedited appointment."
"My doctor said he already called your office and couldn't get a hold of him..."

Talking on the phone with another secretary at a different hospital the next day, I explained to her our situation and frustration. As soon as I uttered the words "bureaucracy" and "red tape," she said "I know exactly where you're coming from. My father had the same thing, a liver tumor, and we kept pushing and pushing and it was just frustrating. Join the club. You're not going to like the club very much, but you're gonna have to get used to it."
After we discussed a bit about her past experience with her father, I asked her, "how is he today?"
"He passed away in a few months," she said, "I'm sorry, I know that's not what you wanted to hear."

We're flying our mother out to Hong Kong for the surgery. The fact that so many Americans these days fly overseas for their health care, for example to Thailand, shows just how inefficient the US health care system and insurance system is. Interestingly, Blue Cross Blue Shield has a whole department for insuring overseas medical procedures; they'll even help us look for housing in Hong Kong (even though they won't pay for it). Maybe they're trying to tap into the new trend and the new demands by the middle class for better health care.

She'll be there anywhere from half a year to two years, depending if she needs chemo and if there are any complications.

This means I won't be moving out to Boston as I planned; I'll be moving out to Hong Kong in December, which will be the second time I'll be living there. I have a thesis topic to study globalization of higher education, and I'll try to make CUHK a case study, since I studied abroad there. Depending on what happens with my mother, I might look for a job there and settle down for a bit after I finish my thesis and get my masters.

Putting life on the market, Book Review - Multitude

2007-11-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most celebrated and controversial new example of bioproperty is OncoMouse, the only animal type to date that has been patented. Du Pont laboratories together with Harvard University created OncoMouse by transplanting a human cancer-producing gene into a mouse. The mouse is predisposed to developing cancerous tumors and is thus useful for oncological research. Du Pont sells individual mice as research tools, but the novel aspect here is that Du Pont does not merely own individual mice but the type of mouse as a whole.

- Multitude, 181

In 1976 a patient at the University of California medical center began treatment for hairy-cell leukemia. The doctors recognized that his blood might have special properties for the treatment of leukemia and, in 1981, they were granted a patent in the name of the University of California on a T-cell line - that is, a sequence of genetic information - developed from the patent's blood; the potental value of the products derived for it was estimated at three billion dollars. The patient sued the university for ownership of the T cells and the genetic information, but the California Supreme Court ruled against him. The court reasoned that the Unversity of California was the rightful owner of the cell line because a naturally occuring organism (on which his claim rests) is not patentable, whereas the information scientists derive from it is patentable because it is the result of human ingenuity.

- Multitude, 183

These days a lot of graduates coming out of school, unlike their parents, aren't expecting to find a big company to be loyal to and work long-term, with all those pension and retirement benefits. Instead, they work at this company for a year, and then that one for a year. Our generation in our current economy is increasingly mobile.

So what does this have to do with the above quote about Oncomouse and patenting somebody's T-cell sequence? They're both part of a similar global trend towards the hegemony of immateriality: technology, informationalization, and globalization.

"Immaterial" production such as music, stories, services (such as retail or medical care), and knowledge, have always been a part of the societal commons. But because technology has made these things so easily reproducible and transferable (think mp3s or bit torrents, google books, financial networks, on-line higher ed., etc.) immaterial production has become hegemonic, displacing industrial production as the former hegemonic mode. Huge sums of money can disappear and reappear across the globe, the separation between work and private life is becoming blurred in postmodernizing societies, and information transfers in literally zero-time. Castells theorizing network society calls this timeless time.

In other words, the postmodern era is one of networks. Even US military ideology recognizes this, and instead of the old model of war where the objective was to destroy the enemy, now the objective of war is to "create" the enemy, in other words to maintain the global capitalist network and create the global geopolitical body that most privileges the US and the West.

So, back to my point about the labor market...
In the modern, Fordist era, businesses were built on the idea of economies of scale. In other words, armies of laborers for mass production. You keep your laborers long-term, attracting them with benefits like healthcare and pensions etc. But this Fordist mode of production couldn't compete with the Toyotaist mode of production. The problem with economies of scale was that all these products were produced, and sat on lots waiting to be sold. Not all of them got sold. Meanwhile the company had large workforces to pay. It was too inefficient to remain competitive, and so would get debunked by Toyotaism, which took advantage of computer technology and the ability to rapidly transfer knowledge and information across networks. Large work forces were no longer needed, nor the imprecision of blind mass production. Production is now done in timeless time as a rapid response to demand. How much of this car is demanded in the market? Okay, produce that much now and put it out there.

The type of workers in demand in this kind of economy are the highly educated, with general knowledge and skills in many areas, so they can fill different responsibilities when forming different teams to do different projects. So then, there's been a "shift from an economy characterized by the stable long-term employment typical of factory workers to one marked by flexible, mobile, and precarious labor relations: flexible because workers have to adapt to different tasks, mobile because workers have to move frequently between jobs, and precarious because no contracts guarantee stable, long-term employment" (Multitude, Hardt and Negri, 112).

The hegemony of immaterial forms of labor doesn't mean that industrial production is gone. It just means that immaterial production is hegemonic, just as industrial production used to dominate even though it was in the minority and greatly outnumbered by agricultural production. The hegemony of immaterial production simply means that it dominates the economy, and its characters spills over to other sectors of economy, like the agri-businesses that are patenting the genetics of crop-seeds. In order for capitalism to continue to exploit, it more and more focuses on exploiting "surplus value" (a Marxist term) not from the factory laborer, but from the creative, immaterial commons of the multitude. The global south, for example, is much wealthier in terms of the biodiversity of plant life. But it's companies of the global north that own the rights to the knowledge of the plants' genetics, which makes the north wealthier in the capitalist system. That primary issue is "that nature is ceasing to be common, that it is becoming private property and exclusively controlled by its new owners" (184).

Capoeira Roda, Mong Kok, Hong Kong - April 2007 (again)

2007-10-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

I got a hold of a much better quality video of the roda I was in this past April in HK (as opposed to the video in my right sidebar at the bottom). It's almost 40 minutes long, so if you want an abbreviated version, just watch video 2, cause that's the most impressive. A fight almost broke out in video 3. I play once in vid2 and once in vid3.

Video1 - Takes us a while to setup, warmup, get started...

Video2 - most impressive

Video3 - most dramatic

Video4 - everyone's tired, let the beginners play

BCCJ Leadership Initiative

2007-10-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

A Boston Globe article on the social justice leadership initiative week I counseled for:

Hurt feelings, and then hugs

Retreat puts students on path to leadership

By Leslie Talmadge, Globe Correspondent | October 14, 2007

It was a temperate week in mid-August but inside the Rolling Ridge Conference Center, things were getting hot. Ugly words were exchanged; feelings were hurt.

From the pain, the city's next generation of leaders may emerge.

At least that's the hope of the Boston Center for Community and Justice. The organization, which aims to develop student leaders who will promote social justice in their schools and communities, brought together a diverse group of about 50 students from Boston public and private high schools for a retreat at the North Andover center.

But to develop the leadership skills that will help them advocate for change, the teenagers first needed to open their minds.

"We start with the self," said Todd Fry, executive director of the Boston organization. "Our approach hinges on the belief that if we want to breed a deep commitment to socially responsible leadership, we have to give people the opportunity to look pretty deeply at themselves."

The Leadership Initiative program "is not a moral reasoning symposium," said Peter McCaffery, head of student support at Boston Arts Academy, which sends students there each year. Instead, he said, it resembles "a marriage between political science and sociology with therapy."

Students grapple with issues such as race, sexual orientation, and stereotypes, and are asked questions such as, "If you feel empowered, are you aware of how power is misused? If you don't feel empowered, talk about your personal experience about that," McCaffery said.

"By Wednesday, they're ready to melt down," McCaffrey said. "By Thursday and Friday, they've found some common ground, resolved major issues and divisions between them, and developed friendships as a result."

The training is paying off already for participants in last summer's session.

As part of a project they developed at the Leadership Initiative, Jay Cottle and two others at the Boston Arts Academy, Darnell Hardin and George Om, plan to start an after-school program at the academy. They want to provide tutoring and offer student clubs such as a poetry group, improvisation and dance troupes, and social justice and environmental clubs.

But first, the young men want to train about 15 peer leaders to advise students on academic and emotional issues and help with the after-school initiative, said Cottle, whose parents were born in Barbados. The school's Leadership and Student Support teams and the Boston Center for Community and Justice will help them launch the programs.

"My esteem before" the summer program, Cottle said, "was never constant and never matched those around me." He added that he now feels more relaxed and poised. "I'm really taking the initiative to become a leader."

The program, McCaffery said, is effective not only for students who have already demonstrated leadership skills, it can also be "transformative" for students who are struggling or feel isolated.

Sixteen-year-old Jamesha Stokes, a popular African-American sophomore at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, "was at the border of going one direction or another, depending on her environment and the kids she was hanging out with," according to an assistant headmaster, Amilcar Silva.

Since September 2006, Stokes said, her attitude - and her grades - have improved. Now, she said, she wants to stay on top of her "p's and q's in school" and become a social worker or a psychologist.

Stokes and two other Burke students, junior Yong Young, 16, and senior Jose Machado, 18, each received $1,000 scholarships to attend the leadership training. The scholarships were given in honor of Ernesto "Tito" Whittington, a Boston police detective who "epitomized public service," in the words of his colleagues.

Whittington, who died of liver disease last year, spent his career trying to combat youth violence. He worked on the Youth Violence Strike Force and in the Police Department's school unit. (In the 1990s, he was assigned as a police officer at Burke, according to school officials.)

The Tito Whittington Leadership Scholars Award was started by graduates who attended the justice center's adult leadership program with Whittington in 1998.

Three students from Burke will continue to receive scholarships to attend the high school program into the future.

"Teenagers are grappling with their place in the world, their mission," said Alexander Phillips, a former Burke assistant headmaster who helped select the scholarship recipients.

"There's this powerful moral core that exists in our kids," he added. "If we can figure out more ways to tap into that moral core, we can keep more kids in schools and do better in the long run."

Machado, who moved to Dorchester from Cape Verde six years ago and works at a Stop & Shop 20 hours a week, wants to "help prevent people from going to the streets and doing drugs." He said the weeklong retreat changed him.

"I learned we shouldn't judge people by what we see, but the way they act." He also said he has become more respectful toward young women.

Young, whose parents escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, said he was the only Asian-American student in his middle school. "The one thing I've experienced is racism," said Young, who wants to join the Marines.

Young said he feels "pretty lonely" at Burke, while at the leadership program in North Andover "within two days everyone was so friendly with each other. It was as if we'd known each other for years."

Cottle, recently elected to serve as program manager of the justice center's Youth Council, cautioned that the name of the program, the Leadership Initiative, "sounds daunting, stuffy and conference-y." But, he said, "It's really a spellbinding experience that opens you up to the world around you, and to people you've never met that you'll love for a lifetime. It helps you become a better person, a better leader."

To find out more about the Leadership Initiative, contact Nancy Tom at the Boston Center for Community and Justice at ntom@bostonccj.org. To contribute to the Tito Whittington Leadership Scholars Fund, contact Ruben Orduna at the Boston Foundation at ruben.orduna@tbf.org.

The Breakup

2007-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

In my office...

"Man, I don't want to hurt her feelings. What's she gonna say? How's she gonna react? It's not her really, it's me," I say to my friend.

"Nice Seinfeld quote. Whadya mean it's you?" he asks.

"I mean, I'm just not ready for this commitment. I feel like I could keep going if I really wanted to. But if I do, I really should give it my all, and I don't have my all to give now," I say.

"Yo, that's deep..." he says.

"That's it, I've decided to do it!" I say, slamming my fist to the desk causing my friend to jump out of his seat. "I have to break it to her! Now!"

Several moments pass...I'm pacing around in my office.

"Where is she? I'm getting so nervous. She was supposed to be in her office half an hour ago!" I exclaim.

"Calm down, jeez. Why do you worry so much?!" my friend says.

"Ohh...damn it. Maybe I should just suck it up and keep going. She's not that bad, I can stay with her. I dunno man. I just can never make a decision. Oh wait, there she is! She just got into her office! Oh no man!" I say, pulling hair out of both sides of my head pacing ever more frantically in my office. "Never mind, I'm going home! Forget this!"

"No man, c'mon! It's not that big a deal, just go and tell her!" my friend says. "You're done with her, through! That's it! Go tell her."

"You're right," I say. "Here I go!" I walk over to her office and sit down across from her. "Um...how exactly should I put this," I say. She gives me a quizzical look. "Well, I remember from one of your emails you sent to me while I was in Thailand, um...yeah, about the PhD program, that the PhD program requires a...a umm...a single-pointed concentration, to get thr-, to uh, to succeed."

Her expression is blank, but I know there's more going on beneath her facade.

"Well, I'm just not at that point," I continue. "I don't have that concentration. So I wanted to discuss with you my options for just getting the masters degree and dropping out of the PhD program." I sense some disappointment from her, and an obligation welling up in me to console her. "It's not that the program isn't good or anything," I stress to her, "or that I don't want to be an academic in the future. Actually, I think I do want to, eventually, just not now. I'm just not at that point in my life yet to make that commitment. Maybe if we're really meant to be, then some day I can apply for the program again, and come back."

Several moments later back in my office...

"So how was the breakup?" my friend asks.

"Meh, not bad. She took it a lot better than I thought. No begging for me to stay at all. Hey, that Boston University sociology program looks pretty hot huh? What's their number?"

"Dude, you just broke up! Man, you're such a PhD whore!"

2007-10-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Thing to do before I die: Someday, I'd like to backpack from Xi'An China to Egypt, or Italy, tracing various silk routes and taking notice of cultural borderlands and cultural hybridity in countries such as Kazakstan which is where my youtube music video originates from ->

socialism just another version of servitude

2007-10-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

A forcing-up of wages... would therefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not conquer either for the worker or for labour their human status and dignity.

...the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and every relation of servitude is but a modification and consequence of this relation.

- Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

And this was confirmed for me when I saw mass production of shoes in China - it dawned on me that even if these workers were given a "fair living wage", even if their working hours and other working conditions were ideal, it still wouldn't change the fact that the work they did was the most extremely redundant and reducing of human status and dignity that any job could ever be. Just imagine having to push a machine lever or other part back and forth 20 million times a day, in the same direction and manner every single time.

It's not a question of Capitalism vs Socialism then when talking about exploitation. If we wanted to eliminate exploitation, then we'd have to get rid of the division of labor. It's the division of labor that forces some people to have to churn out millions of completely identical shoes, robbing them of their creativity and the embodiment of their work and their selves in the thing they produce. But there's no going back to that kind of a society, so why continue down this road of thought? There are no simple answers :-/

Kite Runner (movie)

2007-10-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

Speak of globalization, not only is most of our clothes (China is the #1 manufacturer of bras) being produced in China...our movies are being produced there too. Kite Runner was shot in my favorite province of China: Xinjiang. Can you believe that!? Not only is Kite Runner my favorite book, but the movie was shot in my favorite part of the world! This makes me doubly high in expectation!

"We had four languages on set. It's difficult because you have the Uyghurs that live in that area and the Uyghurs speak Uyghur, the Chinese speak Mandarin, and then you have English, and then you have the cast that speaks Dari. You're constantly around translators from all languages because the Chinese can't speak Uyghur, the Uyghur can't speak Chinese. Some of them couldn't speak any English, so I always had a translator."

That's globalization for ya. For the rest of the article:

"Life isn't about finding your self. Life is about creating your self."

2007-10-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

In response to comments on my last blog:

What I meant about being a good actor was a part of a philosophy of life. On the inside I want to be calm and peaceful, purposeful and content. But this would just let others roll over me and take advantage of my kindness or passivity. That's why I have to have an external persona that can be aggressive when it needs to be aggressive. I was calling this "acting." It's something I need a lot of work on.

About choosing sociology over English, I naively thought that English was about reading fiction and doing creative writing. I didn't realize that there's theorizing, there's Marxism, there's cultural studies, there's all sorts of other components in it. Now that you mention my essay, I'll have to dig it up and read it again.

And yes, I'd be excited to be in Boston. It's not just a 'push' that's making me drop the program, it's also the pull of being in a quaint, large-sized yet manageable city. It's also a city that my family has had roots in ever since my father immigrated there almost 4 decades ago. A handfull of uncles and aunts always make a monthly ritual outing to Boston for Dim Sum and grocery shopping, and my cousin and her three children live in the 'burbs over there. There's stronger family presence in Boston, more diversity, and plenty of things going on there.

And so I think I'd only partially agree with the title quote. Life was about 'finding my self' as soon as I was given the analytical tools to do so (mostly in college). In other words, it was about understanding my present by analyzing my past (and societal influences). But now that I've more or less 'found my self' and also 'found the global' (if I can say that this world has an identity of its own), it's time to take control of my self, and start creating my self.

The Harsh Real World - thoughts on the practicality of Buddhism, and thoughts on Capoeiristic 'buy da game'

2007-10-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a nice guy. Too much of a nice guy, and so people roll over me. Is it relevant to subscribe to the Buddhist belief that: it's okay, they'll get their come-uppings...and be nice to everyone? Is it that only love and compassion can pacify those who are angry and hateful?

(I've made up my mind to start a you-tube video blog in the near future)

I still subscribe to this. Hating others who hate you is simply like holding hot coal to throw at somebody. But what I need to learn is to become a good actor. Paradoxically, being self-less and considering the well-being of others can sometimes mean being firm, or being outspoken, or vocally shooting others down.

"Your car has 150,625 miles on it Mr. Poon" she said with a firm unwavering voice. "Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I understand what you're saying," I said.

"I mean, I have pictures of your car here. Does your car have a spoiler, alloy wheels or something? No. You haven't even looked at the market have you? You haven't even looked to see if our offer can buy you a car of similar quality as yours? You just want more money because you want more money."

I'm speechless. Silent.

When I looked at cars with my father over the weekend, and test drove a manual Toyota Corolla, and then an automatic Hyundai Accent at another dealership, my father kept saying to the dealer agent (who was a really nice friendly guy), "yeah, the Corolla was better, less noisy." "Yeah, the Corolla was cheaper. Their rebate was more"

"Jeez," I said to my dad after Mike, the agent, left us in the room. "You notice that? He's all down-beaten and unhappy now because you said all those things!"

"You gotta do that," he said to me. "How else are we gonna get a good deal?"

The insurance companies are unfair. Their employees get promotions and pats on the back if they can minimize claims, give 1000$ for cars worth 2000$, 3000$ for those worth 5000$. In the end, they go home happy that they'll be promoted, and be able to put the kids through college and buy that nice boat. Why don't they go home with a guilty conscience? Is it good if I stand up to them and stop being nice, try to make them see me as a person, as a human? Maybe that way she'd reconsider the ethical nature of her job?

The point is to stay peaceful, compassionate, and joyful on the inside, but to act/perform/pretend/bluff/dance/exaggerate/flare/'buy da game(in Brazilian accent).

Future plans：
I've made up my mind. I really have. This is my last semester at Albany. I'm moving to Boston around January. Academia prevents me from reading fiction, and prevents me from writing. I already have ideas for 2 books, 1 of which I've been working on for most of the year. Academia also prevents me from interacting in the 'real world', the world of "real men" as Marx puts it, with real social interactions, real activities, not just ideas and thoughts conjured in the minds of idealists. My Capoeira Batizado on November 17th will mark my graduation, even if Batizado technically means baptizing, a sort of beginning, and this works, because every day, every second, every karmic moment is a beginning.

Peaceful Uprising and Violent Repression in Burma

2007-09-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard, there have been massive peaceful uprisings in Burma against the dictatorial government, which has responded with violence and repression resulting in 9 killed thus far. What interests me the most is that the Buddhism monks are at the forefront of the uprisings. This is really interesting, especially in contrast to my previous blog entry linking to an article by Zizek (a renowned cultural studies academic with Marxist persuasion) who critiques Buddhism for being passive and complacent and going hand-in-hand with exploitative Capitalism. Here are some quotes I've taken from this BBC article:

"monks in Pakokku briefly took government officials hostage"

"Tens of thousands of monks are now involved."

"A group called the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks has emerged to co-ordinate the protests, and on 21 September it issued a statement describing the military government as "the enemy of the people".
They pledged to continue their protests until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma", and they have called on people across Burma to join them."

Wow. It'll be exciting to see if anything progressive comes out of this.

Slavoj Zizek's Critique of Star Wars and (Western) Buddhism

2007-09-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Revenge of Global Finance

An interesting article criticizing the pop-buddhism in Star Wars Episode III, and how Buddhism, according to Zizek, goes hand in hand with neo-liberal Capitalism.

Thoughts?

Smell of Trash at the Muddy Cup

2007-09-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

"Albany is a great place to be bored," Aranha said with his Brazilian accent. His voice is low and monotone, as if he were all bass, no treble. "If you want to be bored, come to Albany."

Poor guy. Poor Albanians. My friend Ilir is Albanian (as in from the country Albania), and Professor South beats a dead horse with his joke that Ilir is the only true "Albanian" in Albany. I sit here in this coffee shop called the Muddy Cup, which has postmodernist persuasion radiating through its red-painted walls and oddly matching furniture that all appear as if picked up off of street curbs thrown out by graduate students moving out of the city and gettin' the hell out. It's open mic night tonight, and some English masters student is chanting some bizarre incantations into the mic.

For some reason I smell the rotten smell of trash from somewhere...and this isn't usual. No, definitely not usual. And now comes the last song.

I run into people often here at the Muddy Cup. Lately the small talk I've been having with the people I run into has often been "man, that was such a great idea to take a year off and go to Thailand! I wish I'd done that." We then go on to complain about Albany and how much we want to leave before all this Imperial architecture and rhetoric (Empire commons, the empire region, empire plaza, the empire state...okay okay, we get it we get it, major superiority complex okay) consumes us and we become robotic-like Imperial guards. "I think I'll just finish this year with a masters degree and then bail." Yeah, no kidding they'll often respond. Get out of here while you can!

Maybe I can make it out of Albany at least treating my time here as ascetic practice. In other words, as long as I go through the suffering with purpose, purpose inscribed into every moment, every decision made, from whether I hit the snooze button or not, to the way I cross the street, to the way I complain about the smell of garbage at the coffee shop on my blog, it's like we are our own directors of our own movie that we are living and 'acting' every day. Tragedies can be good movies too.

Hudson and W Lawrence

2007-09-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

It was Friday night and he just got out of work, a ritzy restaurant where he's required to wear a tux. Nobody really cares much for him, he's just a bus-boy, not that customers have any interest to talk to the hostesses or waiters, but at least they had more standing than a lowly busboy. On top of that, nobody pronounces his last name right, which starts with two jarring consonants and finds its origins from Russia. His parents immigrated from there.

As soon as it was midnight and his shift was over, he untied his bow-tie leaving it dangling at his neck, got into the driver's seat of his 2002 gold-colored Honda Accord, and called his girlfriend. "Hey, I just got out of work. I'm driving over."

"Okay," she responded. "See ya soon Chris."

He drove quick, popped in a CD that blared fast rock music - a screaming lead singer soaring his voice over a hyper drum-beat and spastic guitar chord. For Chris, this was like putting his life on fast forward so he could pickup his girlfriend and be at the party faster than his car or even his rock track.

And when he was going the wrong way down a one way, he sped up as if that made it okay, as if going fast as a blur would allow him to allude the cops. It was a residential side street. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, creating a narrow gauntlet for him to run. That's why he didn't see the stop sign, because there wasn't meant to be any cars driving this way, because the stop sign was at the other side of the intersection. It was a small intersection, one that looked like any other middle-of-nowhere tiny side-street intersection stranded in American suburbia. Who would have known that my car would drive right into his path as he darted into the intersection?

The whole of his car crushed towards him as his air-bag blew out. My car's passenger side door was completely collapsed inward, and my front-right tire skewed, my car began humming an eerily low grumble, as if pained and weeping over the realization that this could be it - its 12-year life was coming to an end and this was as far as it could keep my company.

And I find myself wishing: "if only I had gone to the bathroom before I left the coffee shop, or if only I had talked to Lai Ying 1 minute longer on the phone before I left, or if only I had woken up 10 second earlier in the morning, or if only I'd decided to get gas before driving back home, then maybe Chris would have darted past me, in front of me or behind me, but at least not into me, then our lives never would have collided at the intersection of space and time merely labeled as Hudson and West Lawrence.

2007-09-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've always looked to others for direction, to wind me up and set me in the right trajectory. Like a child's wooden toy, which goes a certain length before losing its mechanic potential, slows, and stops, waiting only for another wind up before continuing on its way.

Like this toy, however, we can never know where we end up. We can only set ourselves in a certain direction. The bumps in the floor, the initial positioning of its feet and distribution of its weight, perhaps a pebble or a crack on the path are the 'random' things that steer us.

And given the infinite possibilities of the future, realities that could be this could be that, here or there, up or down, it overloads my decision making faculty and paralyzes me.

Movie Review - No End in Sight

2007-09-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Documentary "No End in Sight" exposes the lack of planning and downright ridiculous screw-ups of the top engineers of the Iraq war. It was a pretty interesting movie that I learned some things from that I didn't think about before. Like the fact that American soldiers were told to ignore the chaotic lootings that ensued immediately after the toppling of Saddam's government. This wasn't just petty stealing of "vases" as Rumsfeld purported in a press conference. This included breaking off of whole chunks of concrete from major buildings. The most heart-wrenching of it all was the destruction of the museum and the library, and in the documentary a man poignantly weeps that his country no longer has a heritage. Those artifacts and books were records of thousands of years of civilization. US troops did nothing to protect things of value to the Iraqi people, while the oil facilities were the most heavily guarded in all the country.

This was big mistake number 1. Big mistake number 2 was the blacklisting of all those civil officials who worked under Sadaam's regime. But a lot of these people were simply bureaucrats who had no ideological alliances with Sadaam. They became jobless, and humiliated. Big mistake number 3 was to disband the Iraqi army, hundreds of thousands of individuals who literally went to the US army and volunteered to fight with them, but no, they were disbanded, and became unemployed. These breadwinners trained with military skills, frustrated and down-trodden, and the only organizations willing to take them in were insurgent groups.

And so the movie is a great almost exhaustive look at all the mistakes made in the managing of the war. But conspicuously absent from the documentary was a discussion about the biggest mistake of the war, one that trumped the three I summarized above. And that is the war itself. A critic quoted on rotten-tomatoes puts it perfectly: "A documentary that rues the fact that the US was not able to impose its will on the Iraqi people, but never questions the right to do so."

I also found myself towards the end of the film hoping to see some sort of discussion about "okay, we fucked up. Now what? Where do we go from here?" But this issue never surfaced.

Indeed, I did feel a bit uncomfortable by the film's contribution and partaking in Orientalism. Orientalism facilitates the idea that Arabs are irrational and can't govern themselves. According to the Orientalist psyche, it is the duty and responsibility of the West, because the West is rational and scientifically advanced, to impose its will on Oriental peoples. The film then is Orientalist in that it looks at where and how we went wrong and failed in this Orientalist project, not so much lamenting the oppressive actions we took against Iraqi people, but lamenting that we, the West, could fail, and not questioning the "civilizing mission" itself. And that's the problematic thorn in the side of this otherwise good and informative documentary.

2007-09-09T19:15:00.001-07:00

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Personal Update

2007-09-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

We can plan the direction we go in life, but we can never know where it'll bring us. I haven't been updating frequently lately because I've been steeping my mind in contemplation over my direction in life. I know that this can be try to fall into - thinking too much, so much that you withdraw yourself from actually living. That's a factor why depressed people stay depressed - they devote so much energy towards trying to find happiness, that they become insular, self-centered, and continue their depression. I can spot that now, so I know when to pull up from that.

New Youtube video, new photo album, new post. New energy.

Thought itself is the thinker.

2007-09-03T20:11:00.000-07:00

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this Buddhist view is diametrically opposed to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: 'I think, therefore I am.'

This quote is taken from What The Buddha Taught, an excellent book on Buddhism that tells it straight up what Buddhism is really about, without all the self-helpy-ness, without all the new-agey feel good stuff. It's straight up history, it's straight up philosophy. It's good.

We are merely the wholeness of our stream of thoughts and actions, and this philosophy which Gatama taught 2000 years ago is confirmed by the recent cutting edge technology of neuroscience, and neuroscientists are saying the same thing: we have no soul or consciousness per se. There is no pilot behind the helm in our brain. Our consciousness IS our thoughts.

Okay, so what? What practical use does this have? It means don't get worked up about things or people that piss you off. They shouldn't piss you off, because you shouldn't take it personal. It's just the conditions and causes and effects that has led this person to be annoying. Take it with a grain of salt, and instead of yelling back, judge the situation objectively and act in the best way for the offender. As for good joyous occasions, enjoy them, but don't grasp onto them like they're the key to happiness.

I write this not only for others, but for myself. This stuff is tough to do in real life, and it helps to get it on paper, or more accurately, get it into the network system of information known as the internet.

BCCJ InIt - secrecy and ambiguity

2007-08-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

I would talk about what happened during the Boston Center for Community Justice (BCCJ) Leadership Initiative (InIt), but I can't, because that would ruin it for any future youth who want to take part in it and stumble across this. Each of us staff members was given a schedule as well as outlines of the workshops we were to run. When I told the executive director that I couldn't find it, it suddenly became top priority to find it and make sure it didn't fall into the hands of the students. That's how serious BCCJ is about keeping this stuff, secret. It's for effect. How else could we have evoked so much pain and anger? Tears and suffering? Reflection and healing? If the students knew what was up? That's BCCJ's stance. I personally don't know much about that. Needless to say, the students left transformed, and that is my only fear about this program. It takes them for a week, exposes their own internalized oppressive modes of thought in relation to society, and then throws them back out hoping to make change in their communities. A beautiful and positive way to describe it is that we planted seeds of positive change in their minds, and hopefully this will spread to their communities, and cultivate a more socially just society.

What I wonder is, was it a good thing to affect such huge dramatic change in each individual? Built off the ashes of trauma? Did it have to be so rapid and emotional? Will there be psychological damage? But perhaps the psychological damage can be weighed against the psychological healing?

I'm back at UAlbany now, back into the soul-less jargon of academia, and I'm feeling really stale about it.

Retreat - off for a week

2007-08-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Anna is 7 years old, grew up in Fan Ling, Hong Kong, and has great English for somebody who's never lived outside of Hong Kong. She's my niece, and she's fabulous, she went to the YMCA swimming pool with her two brothers and my mother, the "chaperone." While her two brothers were off wacking other kids with foam spaghettis, Anna was making friends with another kid. When they were leaving the swimming pool, Anna said to my mother, "why can't we live here in Wilbraham, why can't my mom find a job around here? That way I could come swim here every day and make more friends!"

She'll be great in school I think. Her younger brother (the middle one) may have some more culture shock issues.

I'm now in Rolling Ridge, a retreat facility in Northeast Massachusetts, where I'm counselling for a program for high school students developing their leadership in social justice. Mostly, it's about experiential learning, helping them learn about issues of race, class, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality, by expression and deep introspective self-examination and sharing. So I won't be updating for the next week. Check back in next time!

Childhood, Immigration, Assimilation, Language

2007-08-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

On Thursday night I got back home from work at Friendly's after a usual night's closing shift at about 1am to see 3 little pairs of sandals by the front door, one baby blue in color, another pink with girly flower patterns on it. In the morning, the sound of 3 children running, laughing, and screaming sounded throughout the house waking me up at 6am. My cousin's family had immigrated here from Hong Kong.

My cousin Stanley has been speaking English to the three kids, Brian, Alex, and Anna oldest to youngest, to prepare them for the abrupt culture shock they're to face in September, when kids will look at them funny and think they're stupid because their English is non-native. I argued him and said they'll pick up English naturally when they go to school...and it's important to focus on Chinese, to keep up and maintain the momentum of Chinese language development. I think our respective position's reflected our own immigrant experiences - Stan came here when he was 13 and surely was harassed about language, and I was born in the US and lament my inability to speak my ancestral tongue.

Over the first few days I put down my own insecurities over Cantonese (which includes embarrassment over not understanding Anna asking me for an eraser), and began speaking more English to them, which I decided to do only partially to transition them into an English language environment, and partially also because I don't want them to pickup my incorrect Cantonese.

And so as I've followed the family around helping them buy stuff, move stuff, and babysit the kids, I've played hangman, 21 questions, and "opposite day" in English with the oldest, Anna. The more I speak English to her though, the more English she's beginning to use with her little brothers and others in her family, which worries me about how my actions have ripple effects on the whole family's English and Chinese acquirement and retainment.

Other happenings:
1. Today, Alex said: "Why are there are so many supermarkets here but none of them are Park N Shop?" (that's the top supermarket in Hong Kong).
2. We've dragged out 3 big boxes of Lego's and other toys, bats, and balls to give them something to do other than watching Power Rangers non-stop on Toon Disney.
3. Today Anna asked, "What's 'Chinatown'?"

Harry Potter - book review

2007-08-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

Swarms of people camped outside bookstores quite literally all over the world, awaiting the 7th Harry Potter book in languages from English to Chinese to braille, all reaching the simultaneous release date. A month ago when I revisited Thailand for two days, my friends suggested we go see "Harry Potter" (spoken with signature Thai accent which drops the final tone by about 2 octaves), and solo customers at Friendly's read them with their meals as the cooks and the ice-cream scoopers discussed the plot over the smell of burnt bacon and the syrupy stickiness of caramel and hot fudge.

Harry Potter is obviously well embedded into the global culture by now, but I've never read a book because I've always been skeptical of popular things...especially those that seem cultishly popular. But my attitude is changing, and I've just finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first book.

The original title outside of the US is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Besides the title, I'm certain that every occurrence of the word "football" was changed to "soccer" (Which isn't unique to the Harry Potter series - I just read Gweilo as it is known in international versions, Golden Boy in the American; there's The Year China Discovered the World which in the US is called The Year China Discovered America).

Here's my favorite quote in the book, which I think echoes some Buddhist philosophy. (Do I even need to give a spoiler warning? This is the first Harry Potter Book, more likely than not, you've read it already!) ***Spoilers rest of blog entry***

'But that means [Nicolas Flamel] and his wife will die, won't they?'
'They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die.' Dumbledore smiled at the look of amazement on Harry's face.
'To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things at are worst for them.' (297)

Like these deep philosophical lines, Harry Potter seems to have some lessons for adults too. But great ones for kids, and here are three great messages for kids:

(1) Kids really need space to experiment with what their learning, in practical and meaningful ways in which they care about. Dumbeldore does a great job setting up Harry in the book to protect the stone, even though in the process many rules are broken. And this is the second point. (2) Kids need to learn that rules set by authority are not perfect, and sometimes should be bent. The good, and right thing to do is not necessarily in line with society's rules. (3) And it follows that if rules are not necessarily good, authority is not necessarily good. I remember when I was a little kid, there was a couple continued Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers cartoon episodes, and there was a cop that was "the bad guy." When I told my brother this, he said "that can't be! He's a cop!" I felt my brother was onto something, and began to doubt that I'd remembered the episode right. Nonetheless, it's good to teach children that authority that is supposed to be good, is not always good.

More on Harry Potter as I read more!

Photos from around the world

2007-08-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

Culture of Blaming

2007-08-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

1) "Who's to blame?"

I've noticed that the culture in America (perhaps elsewhere as well), is that if anything goes wrong, there must be individuals or a groups of individuals who can be solely blamed. That is what is being determined now about the Minnesota bridge collapse...they're investigating the reason 'why?', not just so that they can ensure something like this doesn't happen again, but for most people the overriding reason is who can we sue? Who can I direct my anger towards for the loss of my truck? Or my loved one.

The blame game is played in everyday small events too...and I see it everyday as a waiter at Friendly's...a customer is frustrated that her fries aren't hot enough, a table is pissed off their food is taking too long, and if venting upon their server doesn't satisfy their anger, they want to see the manager. What they want seems to be a validation that they are right. They are right to blame us for doing something wrong. But life is never a smooth road, and I've noticed that those customers who take the bumps in stride are so much happier. I noticed that the impatient table complained because they weren't talking or socializing with each other, while another table I had was having a grand old time even though their food took even longer. Food takes too long only if you look at it in that way.

Yesterday night I had an especially difficult table of two. They ordered a sandwich each, and a cup of chowder each. When I went back to the kitchen, the chowder was out, a new batch was thawing. I went to tell them that if they wanted chowder, they'd have to wait a while, maybe ten minutes. As soon as I said that to them, they complained, so I said we'd rush them some chowders. We managed to get chowder out to them quicker, but it was "too white," and they didn't want it, even though they didn't even taste it. What they were actually adverse to wasn't the chowder, but that I said "rush"...from that word even if it was the best chowder in the world they would have thought it looked disgusting because it turned them off. At this moment, one of them says she changes her mind and wants mozzarella sticks instead of the sandwich. But a few minutes later, the other woman's sandwich is done, which we leave on a heated surface waiting for the mozzarella sticks. A few minutes later they complain their food is taking too long, at which point I ask if she wants her sandwich first, and then she says "so you mean it's been sitting back there getting cold all this time?"

I say "no, it's only been a minute or two, not long, we're just waiting for her mozzarella sticks". So I bring the sandwich out which, surprise surprise, looks disgusting to her based on the expression on her face, but looks absolutely normal to me. While they sit, complain, and frustrate themselves a fly buzzes around them and an uncleaned table in the other row pisses them off even more.

I've discovered that adults aren't much different from children. We all expect and want certain things and when we don't get them, we blame others. But what we should look at is ourselves, our society. The fact that a bridge fell even though it passed inspections either means it was an unavoidable accident, or our society fails at instilling discipline and responsibility into our citizens, as the inspectors are a product of ourselves. Sometimes it's baffling to see somebody's day ruined by a cup of chowder when there are others who lose loved ones. But in either case, no amount of complaining, no amount of demanding a free meal, and no amount of suing can fix your day, or bring your loved one back.

It may sound messed up that I'm implying victim's families to not get angry about their loved one's death, I do in fact think they should be angry, and should be compensated as a symbolic apology. But if you hold the anger in your heart for all your life, it's only eating up at yourself.

2) In other news, a family's year without 'Made in China':
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2007/07/19/my_year_without_made_in_china/

The Assault on Reason

2007-07-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

"Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving senator, Rober Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: "This Chamber is, for the most part, silent - ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."

This is the opening of Al Gore's book "The Assault on Reason." He goes on to explain that the US made the mistake of invading Iraq not entirely because of George W. Bush, but because the American public sphere has changed. TV no longer broadcasts congressional debates about important policy decisions like it used to in order to inform, debate, and make the right decisions. Instead, to win the votes of the American public a politician needs to be rich (ie donations from special interest groups), and buy precisely crafted TV ads:

"I vividly remember a turning point in that Senate campaign when my opponent...was narrowing the lead I had in the polls. After a long and detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent's campaign and the planned response to the response, my campaign advisers made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specificity: "If you run this ad at this many 'points' [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we perchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5 percent in your lead in the polls." I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5 percent."

Democracy is failing because, according to Al Gore and I would agree with him, because of the dominance of television in the way our society thinks. It's a one-way medium, there is no involvement by the audience in the "exchange" of information, which means that whoever is in control is free to put their ideas in the sphere, and this is mostly determined by who's got the most money. In fact, watching TV stimulates a certain section of the brain, whereas reading stimulates a different section that is more involved with reasoning and logic. People who watch several hours of TV in a day have fundamentally different brain processes than those who read several hours a day because they're exercising different parts of the brain. When reading, words are merely symbols with no inherent meaning...as readers we take part in the creation process when we string together the symbols and make meaning out of them. Our TV generation of people have brains hardwired with different thought processes. And it's for this reason that the majority of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and the reason why democracy does not exist in America.

2007-07-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

Where do your shoes come from?

Stories that connect us.

2007-07-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

In January of 2004, I conducted some research in shoe and garment factories in China. As I'm now writing my travel memoirs, I've been thumbing through anything to jot my memory - photos, old blog entries, and other writings. This was something I wrote back then after my factory research experience. I post it because I like the theme about knowing people's stories, even though I don't agree with the way I wrote about sweatshops and exploitation.

Imagine a gated campus of 10,000. There’s a pond with a quaint bridge across it, perfect for romantic walks for two. The pond is circled by restaurants and shops. A group of people gather at the corner of the walkway as they take turns singing karaoke songs. The campus is complete with a library, dance studio, basketball courts, a ping pong room, karaoke room, computer room, and enough dorms to house all 10,000. There are various clubs, events like monthly birthday parties, and even a newsletter complete with news items and personal ads. It all sounds like the quintessential traits of a university, right?
Well apparently the quintessential traits of a university can also be shared by a factory in China that manufactures shoes for a big brand-name American corporation. Surprised? Were you expecting a dimly lit room where there are no windows, where the walls and floors have worn or crumbling paint, and the bathroom is a tiny one-stall room in the corner of the factory floor obstructed by broken chairs and tables, and loose trash on the floor? This dismally painted image is what most Americans think a Chinese factory looks like; not surprising, given all the anti-sweatshop fliers, documentaries, and other forms of media I’ve come across depicting horrible pay statistics, desperate work conditions, and extreme cases of worker abuse. But this is not what I saw when I was in China. I don’t mean to say that these kinds of factories don’t exist; what I mean to say is that there’s more to this than the story of the “sweatshop.” My point is that we can’t just take to the streets and yell out profanities against the WTO with our arms up in the air clenched in fists. It’s not enough. Sometimes it can even hurt those we claim to fight for. We need to also understand the unique local context of what we’re protesting about. We need to know the story.
I was just that kind of protester before I went to China and saw for the very first time with my own eyes what it was I used to protest about. Within the short period of a couple days I began to realize that it was not my purpose to search in every nook and cranny for proof of worker exploitation and say “ah hah!” with an accusatory finger. Instead, it was to see the human face behind the worker; it was to learn about the “floating population” of migrants finding jobs in the city and sending their hard-earned money back to their rural families; it was to hear the stories – the heart and soul – that is too often untold and forgotten underneath the debate about capitalist production as worker exploitation or economic success. Don’t get me wrong, it is exploitative, extremely exploitative. I got a glimpse of huge halls of workers doing the most boring repetitive tasks, sometimes working with potentially dangerous machinery or toxic chemicals. Hours were long, vacations almost non-existent. And another consideration was that this 10,000 worker factory I’m describing was the best of the best. Of course! What sweatshop would let in a bunch of US students to take a tour of their factory?
So I admit that my cheery portrayal of a Chinese factory at the beginning of this article was a bit of a selective choice, and admittedly, such conditions are not representative of the average. Yet I also had the privilege of seeing an “average” Chinese factory which, although it lacked the birthday parties, dance studios, and campus pond, still didn’t fit the stereotypical image of sweatshop. As a side-note I should mention that we worked with a non-profit labor rights group called Verite that worked with many different factories with conditions ranging from “sweatshop” to cream of the crop like the one we saw. It is according to their standards that I refer to this factory as “average.”
So what is the story I found left untold amongst the debate about exploitation? It seemed that the workers accepted the difficult working conditions because it was still better than the monotony of their old rural lifestyles. A job in the city was their ticket to the outside world, a wonderland to them in many ways. A young woman new to the city is amazed by the choice and vast quantity of foods at a supermarket: fruits and vegetables that would have taken a season to grow and harvest are lying there in the supermarket for just anybody to pick up and buy. The newest and most advanced commodity items like computers, TVs, cell phones, and mp3 players are available. But the story is not just about new material commodities; it’s also about an urban culture and lifestyle. Among the workers, the most popular Verite training classes are not the labor rights classes, it’s the social etiquette class. Workers learn how to walk, like how much space there should be in between steps; how to sit, should you cross your legs? Sit up straight and keep your feet flat on the floor. When you meet people, shake their hands, not too lightly, but not too strongly. It’s all a part of presenting a civilized urban individual, and the workers loved it. But culture and lifestyle in the city is not just about professional presentation, bars and clubs offer social spaces for urban fun and/or sexual intrigue. And in the city one can encounter not just people from other villages, but from other provinces from all over the country, and even foreigners from all over the world. In the end, the point I mean to stress here is that a factory job is exploitative yes, but in the Chinese context it can also be liberating. One of the workers I interviewed said that her experience at the factory and in the city provided her with an opportunity to explore her identity and grow personally. I wouldn’t be surprised if many other workers felt this way as well.
So who are we to decide what’s exploitative for Chinese factory workers? They have stories to tell. We should listen. Some of those stories speak of exploitation, so yes, we should stand in solidarity with them fighting for better wages and conditions. In fact, according to Verite, the non-profit group we worked with, the better factories in China tend to be the ones working for big multi-national corporations (Walmart being the exception). This was due largely in part because of anti-sweatshop activists in the West putting pressure on their country’s companies. But behind the fight for better wages and conditions is a story of excitement as well as pain, intrigue as well as exploitation, personal growth, and liberation in addition to the anxiety, and fear. If we listen, we can hear their stories and see their faces behind all the chatter and debate.

Pictures of Old Hong Kong

2007-07-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

Sha Tin train station. Nowadays at Sha Tin train station is a multi-story mall, an Ikea, and several high-rises

This is the inside of a train, this picture featuring a hawker. This is still a common sight in India.

Old Kowloon.

An old train schedule, written in Chinese.

Victoria harbor a couple decades ago.

2007-07-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Most of the acquaintances from the small salsa community and Capoeira community in Bangkok had the same reactions when they saw me: "Ow! I thought you left!?"

"Ow," said with a sharp raise in tone, is a common Thai expression that doesn't quite have an English equivalent. Perhaps a mix of "huh?" or "hey!" together, you'd usually say it if someone did something that confused you, or surprised you, or both. Just picture both eyebrows raising up as one says "Ow!?"

One of my Farang friends (Farang is equivalent to the Cantonese "Gwailo," - white foreigner) said to me "I thought you'd died from a Motorcycle accident or something!" He was a friend from the salsa scene I ran into a lot, and it was our running joke that we'd always greet each other with "so you're still alive!" because we were both motorcycle drivers in the chaotic streets of Bangkok. I guess he never got a farewell from me, and not having seen me for 3 months, assumed the worst.

I ran into him at the new salsa club, Dream. Fogo Vigo has been closed to dancing! Apparently the Brazillian club did not have a "dancing license," and was thus forced to close by the police. I think what this really means is that they refused to pay a bribe demanded by the corrupt police force.

And at the school I used to teach at, I just popped in to say hello. Children can be intensely boisterous and mischeivous in one situation, but totally shy and irresponsive in another. Most of them exclaimed a "teacher Felix!" when they saw me, but got quiet and mumbly when I asked how they were doing, how they liked the new English teacher, and if such and such a student was still around. As always, the fifth-grade girls were most talkative (now sixth-grade!)

"Teacher, you come back to teach?" Amy asks.
"No, I've come back just to say hello. How do you like your new teacher?"
"Uh, good." Cream says not so enthusiastically.
"Teacher, you come back to teach!" Amy says.
"Really? You want me to come back and teach?"
"Yes!" Amy and Cream say simultaneously.
"You liked my teaching?"
"Yes!" Amy and Cream say simultaneously. I puzzle over this a moment.
"So does the new teacher ever play games with you?"
"No, teacher," Amy says to me with excited dissaproval. "Never! And so much homework!" I quickly realized that they missed me not because I was a good teacher, but in fact because I was a bad teacher. They missed me because I was an entertainer. But that's all in the past.

Strangely, walking around Bangkok, it felt as if I'd never left. But now that I've come back to the US, it's like everything in Bangkok was a dream. Memories from distant places always seem to end up that way - like dreams that one day you yourself begin to doubt whether they ever really happened.

10th Anniversary of Hong Kong handover

2007-07-19T06:47:00.000-07:00

It wasn't quite independence, it was a handover, from British rule to Chinese rule. But my impression was that a lot of Hong Kongers liked British rule, some of them so reluctant to be under China's political administration as to migrate to other countries. But after the economic downturn, things have looked up in the city, and I sense that for Hong Kongers, as long as there's a means of living, and nobody much bothers your way of life, then they couldn't much care for who was in charge, nor whether they've got a vote or not. Fireworks and theme songs turned out to be what they are - performances, just for show.

This is the view I got from TST East, too far away to hear them play Andy Lau's “中國人” Sorry for the poor quality! But at least I went, whereas most HK'ers don't bother, saying "it's too crowded...what's so great about it anyway?" People made a big deal that they made the shape of some fireworks into the characters for Chinese people "中國人" ...which you can see from 3:17-3:27. But I get the biggest kick from the non-stop steady "WAA!" throughout the whole video.

My friends' and my rendition of the 10th anniversary song, which they play over and over again in the MTR stations, "香港此總有你" - translated "Hong Kong has you in the end." The Karaoke video shows various scenes like horse-racing and the HK-stock exchange, while I sang the corny Mandarin one-line response "because you are here!"

"Yeuhng Ga"

2007-07-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

After having a curry dinner in Mong Kok with Irene, Kar Wai, and Agnus, I hurried over to Prince Edward to the Sports Facility no.2, walked late into the squash court turned-into G. Capoeira Brazil Hong Kong beginner lesson floor. After a few jengas and other basic moves, Squirrel and Mona Lisa (these are their Capo nicknames) gave me gifts of black sesame-themed snacks. "I was the one that went travelling, I thought I was supposed to give the gifts!" I said.

"We remembered how much you like black sesame!" they said to me, referring to an inside joke from the dinner of my last night in HK a couple months ago. "Thanks!" I said to them, "I got you gifts too, from Japan, but I forgot to bring them out today!" After the lesson I went with the two of them along with the Mask (another Capo name inspired by the fact that Mestre thought he looked like Jim Carrey from The Mask) for singing Karaoke. We sang until 2 in the morning, me trying to pull out every single Chinese song I could sing, since the English songs I sang didn't seem to inspire any sense of fun from them. The Mask said he'd call in sick the next morning, while Squirrel sent me a text in all capital letters when I was at the airport, telling me she was really happy so she wasn't tired and work was OK. Before I went to the airport, I had lunch with Mona Lisa so that I could give her the gift I'd intended for her and Squirrel. She was the only one out of them all who wasn't working, since she'd just graduated from City U. Of course, I asked the standard question of what she wanted to do next.

I was struck by the importance of "Yeuhng Ga" in her job-search...which literally translates to "raise/support family." It's the standard custom in Hong Kong to financially support your parents as soon as you graduate and get a job. This isn't a secondary consideration, it's a guiding and principle factor. New grads choose their jobs and direction in life based on the necessity to pay up to their parents; interest and "calling" don't seem to factor as much into it as it does for new grads in the US. Yet, the HKers I've talked to seem to accept this responsibility of "yeuhng ga" without reluctance...without taking it up as if it were some burdensome chore their parents pushed them to do. Even if the parents have enough money, my friends give them money just out of symbollic gratitude.

Mona Lisa wants to be a school teacher. I, on the other hand, have no idea what I want to be...which is an attitude that seems to plague many American new grads. After our lunch, I flew to Bangkok, where I'd indulge in nostalgic reveries and nighttime licentiousness for the next 4 days and 4 nights.

Hong Kong

2007-07-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

I spent both my nights in Hong Kong in the rural hills and sparsely populated area called Yuen Long. Most tourists who visit Hong Kong see the uber modern and newly built dimension of the city. Even the Po Lin monastery big buddha, which didn't exist over a decade ago, can now be reached by aerial cable cars from Tung Chung, one can now see at the transfer subway station for the newly opened Disneyland there is a special line where the subway cars have mickey-mouse shaped windows, and the Victoria peak has been topped with a brand-name shopping complex.

But as I have a penchant for old things and history, I like to look underneath that all and see what once was. For example, Kowloon Walled City. "Originally established in the eighteenth century as a far-flung outpost of the Chinese empire..." it was never really a city. When the British took Hong Kong island and Kowloon, China kept the walled area to keep a military presence there to guard against England. But when the New Territories were ceded over, Kowloon Walled City became a political no-mans land, neither China nor England owning it. Squatters took up residence there, but there was no rule of law, no police, no garbage collectors, no sewage. Electricity was illegaly and slyly tapped from the main grid. Some of this information I garnered from a book I just finished called Gweilo, memoirs of a British boy's childhood in Hong Kong. I found myself in Mong Kok two days ago, drinking Pacific Coffee coffee, reading his book, and then walking over to his urban "playground", especially touched when I went to the spot of my favorite anecdote from his book. There was a "Plink Plonk man" who played the Xylephone on the streets and his pet monkey dressed in traditional Chinese mandarin uniform danced mechanically to his music.

All went well until one day when, halfway through 'Marching through Georgia', the monkey finally managed to bite through its leash. I was on the opposite side of the road and watched the whole drama unfold.
In a flash, the monkey was up the nearest tree. The music stopped abruptly and the plink-plonk man stood up to survey the situation. The monkey was out of reach, the tree too stout to bend and the remnant of the leash too short to be grabbed.
At first, the musician tried to sweet-talk the monkey down, holding up a piece of a bun. The monkey just peered down through the branches. Not to be hoodwinked by this, it then slowly, strip-tease fashion, divested itself of its ludicrous costume, letting each piece drift to the ground where the musician collected them up, folding them as he might those of a child. His attention taken by this task, the plink-plonk man's eye was briefly off the monkey which, holding on to its little cock, gave it a few masturbatory tugs before proceeding to urinate upon its erstwhile master.
It was a moment or two before the musician realized what was happening. He unwisely looked up to be hit in the face by the full stream. This not surprisingly drove him into an irate frenzy, cursing the monkey at the top of his voice, throwing the clothing at it and then pelting the monkey with unripe olives, some of which it caught and returned with considerable accuracy, the hard fruit bouncing off the musician's head.
Tiring of this game, the monkey headed off down the street, swinging Tarzan-like from tree to tree, always keeping just out of reach of the musician who ran below, jumping up to attempt to grab the dangling leash.
It was pure pantomime and, by now, had gathered a crowd far greater than any the plink-plonk man could ever have hoped to collect through is music. He ran along behind the escaping monkey, his face wet with urine, his fists clenched, pleading, cussing, cajoling and threatening the creature by turns. His swelling audience, meanwhile, hooted with laughter, shouted spurious advice and encouragement to the escapee.
At the junction of Emma Avenue and Soares Avenue, a network of electricity wires spanned out from a junction box. The monkey, blithely swinging through the foliage, was unaware of the danger. The plink-plonk man saw it and tried in desperation to turn the monkey back. Enjoying its liberty, it ignored him. There was a violent blue flash accompanied by an equally brief high-pitched squeak. The lights in the shops flickered. A few bulbs exploded. The monkey was instatnly immolated. All that was left was a charred corpse stretched between two wires, adrift of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt hair.
The plink-plonk man sat on the curb, his feet in the gutter, and broke into tears. The crowd, now subdued, dispersed.
I never saw him again.

I went to the junction of Emma Avenue and Soeares Avenue. There was no more network of electiricity wires spanning out from a junction box.

2007-07-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

The more I travel, the more I realize that I don't like taking short touristy trips, and that I'd rather go places with a purpose. If it is a totally new and foreign place for me, staying there a year should be the minimum prescription...so that I can wholly immerse into the fabric of the social and cultural web of the place. This I like to call "travel." If you're not a traveler, you're a tourist, and the tourist is easy to spot. Usually the tourist carries a camera and a guidebook, like the lonely planet, buys a copious amount of tickets to historical sights, cultural shows, or goes often for massages, spas or beaches...and does not meet many, if any, local people. If I'm to be a tourist, I've decided it's best to bring parts of "home" with me, since I won't have the time and resources to make the country a part of my web of homes... I'd bring maybe some friends or family I'd like to get closer with, otherwise if travelling alone I'd jump into the Capoeira or Salsa scenes.

Capoeira and Salsa, I've especially discovered, are the languages I'm somewhat fluent in, and that are more universal in communication than English or Chinese in my travels. Nowhere have I gone where I couldn't find a group speaking them.

These days I'm reading several memoirs to see how I can write my own. I highly recommend From Heaven Lake.

human waves

2007-07-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

We took the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka at a speed that blended all the colors outside the window into long flowing lines of light. Osaka was the capital of Tokyo right after an emperor united all of Japan, and built the famous Osaka Castle, and merchants and others sprang up their homes in the surroundings. All traces of that were bombed into nothingness, turned into a thing of the past, and all have been reconstructed with fake models as reminders of what once was, and concrete buildings of shopping and flashy neon lights of red-light and other entertainment districts.

After visiting the castle and walking down the shopping streets, we did karaoke last night, my sister, brother and I. I thought it was a significant moment that the three of us were together, singing The Little Mermaid:s Under the Sea...which was a song we all sang to watching the movie for the hundredth time and the hundred-and-first time. My brother gets crazy when he sings K, curling up and sticking his feet in his sky, screaming into the Mic.

Today we went to an Onsen - Japanese for Hot Springs. They separate the areas for Men and Women. Everybody is naked. This is a scene that one would never see in the US. Other things you would never see in the US is the formality and upbeatness of employees here, like the girl who passed flyers out to us today, if she were American she probably would have had *blah* and *boring* circulating through her blood in all her actions, passing things out meekly. Everybody gets really close and squished together in the Subway as well, when it:s rush hour and people need to squeeze in like clothes in an overpacked suitcase. New Yorkers would yell back and scream if they ever got pushed like that. America seems to have a culture of *personal spaces* and *personal bubbles* that are never to be violated or penetrated. It:s unfortunate, because riding that train, being encircled by hundreds of bodies was a heart-warming experience, like being enclosed in a protective womb, I didn:t have to hold onto anything because there was nowhere to fall too...the human waves of the train would catch me.

July 1st - 10th Anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China

2007-06-30T15:49:00.001-07:00

Landing at Hong Kong International Airport, I looked in my passport to see that it was only 2 months ago, exactly, that I left. Two of my cousins, Jing and Cheung, came to pick the three of us up - my mother, my father, and I. As we walked out into the sauna-humid Hong Kong air, I noted the lack of any sensationalist feelings in myself over being here, which means this place just feels like another city that I go to, like Boston, New York, or Albany...and it feels just as close, in some ways closer to me than it is closer to my mother, whom has never been to Temple Street - a narrow street surrounded by an eclectic mix of daaih paaih dohng outdoor eateries, stalls of cheap plastic toys for sale, palm-readers who mystify their appearance to increase business, and sex stalls that include dildos, whips, and other such toys. Our hotel is just blocks away from here.

Red and green auras of light hovered in the cloudy night sky as we drove there, perhaps remnants of fireworks and lazer shows commemorating the handover. Two couples, friends of my parents, surprised us at our hotel and brought us down to eat at a restaurant. As they jabbered away, Jing and Cheung sat in awkward silence, evincing to me one of the pitfalls of Hong Kong culture - strangers don't know how to talk to one another. The most that was spoken between them was "M hou haak hei, sihk la!" Don't be formal/courteous, eat up! So my parents and their four friends caught up over life, as I watched the dancing and singing on the TV overhead, an uninterrupted commemoration program, as we all chowed down various parts of pig, the fat, the meat, and the intestines, served over rice.

Catcam

2007-06-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

I was randomly stumbling around the internet when I found this interesting project someone did. They attached a high-tech camera to their cat's neck-collar, and programmed it so that the cam would take a picture periodically. His objective was to take a glimpse into his cat's life, and find out what exactly he does wandering the neighborhood everyday.

It turned out that his cat's life mostly revolved around other cats. This makes sense, as humans' lives revolve around other humans, but we usually wouldn't think of this because of self-centeredness.

Meditation - Death Awareness

2007-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

"If you were to fall from an airplane without a parachute you would be fully aware of death's approach. Imagine this is actually happening to you, and check what thoughts and feelings pass through your mind. The reality of your situation in life is not so different." (73)

"Think of the people you know who are still alive. Contemplate that every one of these people will die. And so will you. There are several billion people on the planet right now, but one hundred years from now, all these people will be gone. You yourself will be dead. Try to experience this fact with your entire being." (72)

"Why are we unable to accept death as calmly as we accept yesterday's fresh flowers wilting today?" (69)

"The principle benefit of practicing this meditation is that it forces us to decide what attitudes and activities are truly worthwhile." (70)

- How to Meditate, Kathleen McDonald

There have been many HIV-infected people who, of course were devastated and suicidally depressed at first, but later became happier and lived more fulfilling lives than before they were infected. Suddenly every little moment of the day became so much more important, so they treated each little moment as if it were the most important.

All of us, not just the terminally ill, should live life with death in mind. We need to prepare for death. A nurse I met who sees many people in her hospital pass away, said that those who died the most peacefully were those who held no grudges, took care of their wills and stuff way beforehand, and didn't have any other baggage hanging over their heads. Those who weren't prepared died in despair. Also, living life with death in mind avoids the problem of when our loved ones die, having regretful thoughts of "I wish I had...if only I told him/her that...now it's too late."

But more importantly, living life with death in mind makes us think twice about being lazy, makes us think twice about holding onto grudges, makes us think twice about putting off dues that we owe to others.

To the skies again...

2007-06-20T20:22:00.001-07:00

When my friends in Thailand asked me if I'd come back and visit, I said "sure!" When they asked me "when? In a couple months? At least within the next year?" I had to be down to earth and tell them the truth "It probably won't be for another several years. Sorry...I don't have any plans to be back in the near future. I won't have the money!" Well, I was wrong! I'm gonna have to tell Friendly's tomorrow that I'm taking off three weeks!

Jun 27 - Jun 29 Los Angeles [to visit my sister]
Jun 30 - Jul 02 Hong Kong [Jul 01 there will be a democracy demonstration and fireworks to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong handover to China]
Jul 02 - Jul 10 Japan
Jul 10 - Jul 12 Hong Kong [to meet my HK Capoeira buddies in the Roda!]
Jul 12 - Jul 16 Bangkok [to meet my Salsa lady-friends on the dance floor, and my Capoeira buddies in the Roda!]

News, Social Issues (1)

2007-06-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

A photojournalism article on the threat big business poses towards historic livelihoods of Hong Kong.

Memoirs (2)

2007-06-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

I've begun work on my travel memoirs. As I'm digging through my old blogs photos, and videos to jot my memory, I've found these videos.

This is on our trainride in Southern China. It gives us a short glimpse into rural China...dirt roads, almost no cars, and just these sparse small villages.

Here's a bar with ethnic minorities singing folk songs, and Cantonese and Beijing tourists (and me) relaxing with some bottles of beer and consuming their culture. My other 2 friends were sick and resting at the guesthouse. The language isn't Mandarin or Cantonese, but a local Lijiang dialect.

Philosophical Thoughts (1) - Jabbering Neurons

2007-06-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

Each one of us has tons of neurostransmitters jabbering nonstop in our brains, communicating whether or not we're thinking about it or not. Because of this, there's a little imagination game I like to play every now and then. When I talk to someone, instead of thinking "I' talk to "you", I think of all those jabbering neurons extending their connections to your jabbering neurons. When you have a meeting, it's a group of people's jabbering neurons pooled together. Writing a book or making a movie is like writing code that can be read by the masses' jabbering neurons.

I think this helps me to realize my role in certain situations...like waiting tables. With my "jabbering neurons" concept, I'm basically the connection between the customer and the kitchen, so I imagine - with Matrix kind of special effects - these magnetic forces connecting through me, extending from customers to the cooks. So instead of seeing bodies in a restaurant, I see flows of information. It's quite cool really, a play of the imagination and philosophy.

BBC's day in pictures

2007-06-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

Memoirs

2007-06-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

I've began work on my travel memoirs, which is my real full-time job now, and I'm going through old photos and old blog posts to jot my memory. This photo is of the inside of a sleeper-bus in China. You can see my foot at the bottom, and the aisle that is obviously filled with boxes heavier than I. The sheets they gave us made our hands black, and I could smell some exhaust leaked into the bus, which combined with the chain-smokers' smoke must have taken years off our lives considering that nobody opened a window.

Roslyn...

2007-06-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

I walked in through the front door, the fifth restaurant I stopped by on Boston Road, where all the restaurants are located in town. "Hi welcome to Friendly's!" a white teenaged girl said perkily with a forced smile that betrayed her boredom.

"Hi, are you hiring?" I asked her.

"Hold on, let me get you a manager," she said.

"How old are you?" asked a 40-something black woman who was sitting down on a bench on the side. She looked tired, almost exausted. "Are you over eighteen?"

"Yeah." This excited her, and it seemed to give her some unseen energy into her limbs, because she straightened up her whole body and spoke faster.

"Oh, a male and over 18! You gotta apply, they'll definitely give you a job. Just put down you wanna be a closer, and you'll get a job for sure! Especially 'cause your male...AND you're over 18. We don't get too many of those," and at this she expressed a genuine but tired chuckle.

It turned out that she was right. Two weeks later I went in to Friendly's and began hosting. A different hostess who was showing me the ropes was going through the list of servers with me. "...and Roslyn, she's awesome, really friendly, really natural. She was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but she does this all the time, 'cause she's been working here forever!" That must have been her, I thought.

When she came in I greeted her, "hey Roslyn, do you remember me?"

She tilted her head as if a different angle would help her recognize me. "Have I met you before?"

"Yeah!" I said. "Remember, you told me to apply to be a closer, 'cause I'm over 18 and a male?"

"Oh, that's right," she said with a big pleasant smile coming over her face. "And you got the job!"

And soon enough I began training with her. She was really friendly with the customers, had tons of regulars. She got along so well with them that they let her pick up and play with their babies. We had a nice friendly chat one time too when I told her that I was actually a 24-year-old graduate student who had just been in Thailand to teach English. She showed me a picture of her high-school aged daughter that I would guess she's supporting on her own, since she works a day job and then Friendly's at night. That explained why she always looked so exhausted.

But just two nights ago I came in for my third or so night training with her. She was moody. Sometimes she gets that way. But as always, she was open-hearted with customers. "No, where are you taking them?" she asked the hostess who was bringing a dad and 2 girls to a table. "They're with me, they're always with me. You just bring them right over..." and one of the girls just ran right into Roslyn's arms, getting picked up into her big hug.

Later on, I got the feeling what it was that Roslyn was upset about. She didn't like the way the new manager was running things, since the new manager was letting basically anybody be a trainer, and when you're a trainer you get time-and-a-half. There were 2 others training that night, but it used to always be only Roslyn who got to train. I didn't fully catch or understand what happened, but Roslyn called one of the other trainers a bitch...in the dining room none the less.

The new manager, Lou-Ann who had already gotten a reputation for stubbornly running a tough and mean floor, came up to her angrily and said "Did you say 'bitch'?"

"No, I didn't say nothin'," Roslyn said. She had the straightest face on, that maybe she should consider acting as a career.

"Cause I heard the word 'bitch'. Now where did that come from?" She said, with stern voice, chin pointed down slightly. Roslyn said she didn't hear anyone say 'bitch'. "Felix, did you hear anything?" she said to me. I felt her eyes drilling into mine, perhaps trying to mine out the truth, or maybe a "who's side are you on?"

I shrugged my shoulders and said "I dunno, I didn't hear anything." Lou-Ann walked away visibly aggravated. About 5 minutes later, she caught me in the kitchen. "Now Felix, I don't mean to put you in the middle of all this, but she said 'bitch', didn't she?" I paused, thinking about how Roslyn told me to keep my mouth shut about this with Lou-Ann; I thought about lying to my manager; morals, ideologies of truth, right, and wrong, shades of gray? what should I say?!

"Uh...yeah," I said, feeling defeated. "Yeah, she did. But you know, she's my trainer you know? I -"

"I know," she said with a tone of conviction. "And she won't be anymore," she said as she walked away. My trainer was fired. She'd worked there for 10 years already and without even a warning, Lou-Ann fired her. I was given another trainer who had only worked there for 2 months, meaning that she too would get time-and-a-half, and was taking over some of Roslyn's hours. I couldn't help but think that she was moving up because Roslyn was moved out.

We got swamped with a party of 60 that night, all middle-school children who had just had their graduation. In the chaos of it all, I felt like I was learning things so fast because I was taking my own tables, and had to work fast, on my toes...so I was moving on up too, becoming more and more ready to be a server and no longer a trainer. But my achievements didn't give me any good feeling inside at all. Just ambivalence, served up with a side of dismay.

The Consciousness (part 4) - the heart of Buddhism is not reincarnation, nor karma

2007-06-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

When people think Buddhism, they think karma and reincarnation. But it is actually a different lesson that is much more at the heart of Buddhist thinking than karma and reincarnation is in my opinion. That’s emptiness.
Emptiness is the true nature of all things, but most of us are deluded with the illusion that things are inherent and exist in and of themselves, independently of causes and conditions. This isn’t true of anything. “A car, for example, is a collection of pieces of steel, glass, plastic, rubber, and engine, etc., put together by people in a factory. We give the name ‘car’ to this collection, but if we look for a real, concrete, independently existing car, it cannot be found” (McDonald, How to Meditate, 57). Not only is this car made up of these parts, but of actions and reactions that led to the creation of it, and that will eventually lead to the ‘death’ of it when it deteriorates and separates. The same goes for people; people exist only “in dependence upon skin, blood, bones, legs, arms, organs and so forth…in dependence upon thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations…in turn, each of these exists in dependence upon the previous conscious experiences that gave rise to it” (ibid 57). Imagine taking all these pieces apart and look for the "I". Where is "I"? In the heart? In the brain? In the eyes? "I" does not exist concretely. Think of taking apart a bike...you got wheels, a chain, some nuts and bolts. Where is the bike? Start to put it back together again? At what point does it become a bike? Just think of a person as a product in the moment within the process of actions and reactions that create and disintegrate the body, and the process of actions and reactions that create and disintegrate they mind (because I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if you do, then the mind is not created or disintegrated, but an ever-changing flow).
So? What’s the point? The point is that ignorance breeds unhappiness. When we find a partner to “love” we think we love them because they are this quality and that, and we like those qualities so we like the person. But those qualities are empty…they don’t exist independently and concretely, they’re dependent on actions and reactions, causes and conditions…they will change. Will you still love them when they change? Another lesson to take away from this, if someone hurt us in the past, is there any reason to hold a grudge against them?

Thoughts on Al Gore

2007-06-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

"If I do my job right, all the candidates will be talking about the climate crisis. And I'm not convinced the presidency is the highest and best role I could play. The path I see is a path that builds a consensus - to the point where it doesn't matter as much who's running." - Gore, cited in Time magazine issue May 28th, 2007

Gore, scathed after his year-2000 defeat which he seems internally embittered by, has turned away from politics, which is why he refuses to run, and has become a man trying to work the public sphere. The public sphere was a term introduced to me by a theorist in the canon of sociology, Jurgen Habermas, who says that the public sphere is that part of public life that is the inter-flow of ideas, thoughts, and opinions, especially for political policy. In Europe, the printing press as well as coffee-shop-type establishments - where the educated could gather over a cup of coffee or tea and read newspapers and discuss current events - were things that supported a stronger public sphere. But Gore, in his recently published book, The Assault on Reason, blames television for the decline of the public sphere: "The world of television...makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation." He puts hope in the internet to strengthen the public sphere.

Apparently, many are trying to pursuade Gore to return to politics and run for president next year, but the confident charismatic Al Gore that we now know is only possible because he didn't become president in 2000. It was politics that stifled who he really was. Apparently his global warming slideshow was something he'd already put together in 1989, but tv-media never reported on his environmental side. Gore expresses in his interviews with Time that being out of politics lets him be more free and true to himself, and thus has made a big impact on the minds of many.

Ron Paul

2007-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of hum and buzz about Democratic candidates Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, but surprisingly it's a Texan Republican candidate that caught my attention back about a month ago at the Republican debate. He was the only one at that debate who had anything intelligent to say while idiots like Gulliani and Romney were the epitome of American arrogance. He was the only one there who had any idea about American foreign policy and how it's created anti-American "terrorism".

Now this is a guy who's actually got any character and intelligence, unlike most one-dimensional ignorant politicians.

Movie Review - Shrek 1

2007-05-30T19:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm a little slow on picking up on a good thing, and Shrek was one of those. It had a fame of the same sort as Harry Potter. Okay, so it might not have such a cultish following as Harry Potter, but none-the-less, it was really popular, and as with all things really popular, I'm skeptical.

But Shrek is a good movie, and instead of go over why it's a good movie, I think I'd rather talk about the issue of race in the movie. The old children's classics that Shrek sattires, like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella, all perpetuated racialized and gender normalized norms...damsels in distress were always fair, and helpless of course, and knights in shining armor were the defenders of these damsels as well as defenders against dragons, evil witches or ogres, all racial others. But in Shrek, the knight in shining armor is not this idealized white man, but it's in fact the ostracized racial other, an ogre, and in the end we even find out that the damsel in distress is also an ogre.

But what's most interesting to me is Shrek himself, and not the system of oppression...but maybe this system deserves a word or two. The "perfect kingdom", Dulock, symbolizes white suburbia. This is very easily interpretted from the film - the parking lot in front of the castle, the artificiality of the landscaping, the deadness but artificially-created 'perfection' of the castle inside, and especially the policy of keeping non-whites, such as ogres, out...because non-whites are scary...and eat weird things like slugs and eyeballs. But back to Shrek. He's a hardened guy, much like an "angry asian man", but only because everyone never accepted him. But when we close ourselves up and become angry, that anger consumes us, and racism wins in my opinion. Anyway, in the end, when Shrek said "you are beautiful," is when he begins to resolve his racial identity, because the "you are beautiful" statement also implied a "green is beautiful," echoing similar self-affirmations such as "black is beautiful," "yellow is beautiful," or "brown is beautiful.

Progress is slow, but it is there. After all, change, ironically enough, is one of the only constants in this universe.

Friendly's (entry 1)

2007-05-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

At Friendly's, the restaurant where I've begun training to become a waiter for the summer, whenever I meet another employee, the get-to-know-you question seems to revolve around high school.

"So, is this your first day?" I ask.

"Yeah, I'm hosting for three days," she says to me. "Then I'm beginning training to become a waitress."

"Really? That's what they had me do too! I started hosting last Thursday and today's my first day of training" I say. "You'll probably be training with Roslyn, she's training me tonight."

"Okay," she says, "I'm sure you'll turn out to be a great waitress...uhh, I mean, waiter...yeah."

"Yeah, I don't plan on getting a sex-change anytime soon. So is this your full time job or are you just doing this on the side?" I ask.

"Uh...what do you mean?" she asks.

"I mean, are you still in high school?" I ask.

"Yeah, I'm still in high school."

"Where do you go to school? Minnechaug?" I ask.

"Yep, Minnechaug."

"Ah, I knew it! Practically everyone here's going to Minnechaug. I graduated from Minnechaug."

"Oh yeah?" she asks, intrigued. "When?"

"Oh, a while back, '01."

"Wow! How old are you!?"

"I'm 24," I say.

"Wow!"

This is pretty much the conversation I have with a lot of my coworkers, except switch the generic "I'm a hostess" stuff with generic "I'm a server, wow you're 24!" stuff or "I'm fountain [codeword meaning I scoop icecream], wow you're 24!" and you have me getting to know the entire staff.

And that was a snippet of my experience training to be a server at Friendly's. Note: the above dialogue was not made up, and was modified to a bare minimum.

Three Summers Abroad

2007-05-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

It was four years ago that I last spent a summer in the US, summer of 2003. At the end of that summer I went to Hong Kong, the next summer(2004) I was in Beijing, the next summer(2005) I was in Xinjiang, and the next summer(2006) I was in Thailand.

After being geographically the furthest away possible from where I grew up, now I'm the closest possible to where I grew up, in Wilbraham Massachusetts, waiting tables at a chain restaurant that is the most engrained-into my childhood memories of eating out. The most symbolic difference is perhaps the fact that I serve these now instead of eat them:

The Consciousness (part 3)

2007-05-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

"Mind is not a physical thing that has thoughts and feelings; it is those very experiences."
(This and all the following is taken from how to meditate by Kathleen McDonald

Everyone wants happiness yet few of us seem to find it. In our search for satisfaction we go from one relationship to another, one job to another, one country to another. We study art and medicine, train to be tennis players and typists; have babies, race cars, write books, and grow flowers. We spend our money on home entertainment systems, mobile phones, iPods, handheld computers, comfortable furniture, and vacations in the sun...

There is nothing wrong with wanting happiness; there is nothing wrong with any of these attempts to find it. The problem is that we see things like relationships, possessions, and adventures as having some intrinsic ability to satisfy us, as being the cause of happiness. But they cannot be - simply because they do not last. Everything by nature constantly changes and eventually disappears: our body, our friends, all our belongings, the environment. Our dependence on impermanent things and our clinging to the rainbow-like happiness they bring cause only disappointment and grief, not satisfaction and contentment.

We do experience happiness with things outside ourselves, but it doesn't truly satisfy us or free us from our problems. It is poor-quality happiness, unreliable and short-lived. This does not mean that we should give up our friends and possessions in order to be happy. Rather, what we need to give up are our misconceptions about them and our unrealistic expectations of what they can do for us.

Not only do we see them as permanent and able to satisfy us; at the root of our problems is our fundamentally mistaken view of reality. We believe instinctively that people and things exist in and of themselves, from their own side; that they have an inherent nature, an inherent thing-ness. This means that we see things as having certain qualities abiding naturally within them; we think that they are, from their own side, good or bad, attractive or unattractive. These qualities seem to be out there, in the objects themselves, quite independent of our viewpoint and everything else. We think for example, that chocolate is inherently delicious or that success is inherently satisfying. But surely, if they were, they would never fail to give pleasure or to satisfy, and everyone would experience them in the same way.

Our mistaken idea is deeply ingrained and habitual; it colors all our relationships and dealings with the world. We probably rarely question whether the way we see things is the way they actually exist, but once we do it will be obvious that our picture of reality is exaggerated and one-sided; that the good and bad qualities we see in things are actually created and projected by our own mind.

According to Buddhism there is lasting, stable happiness, and everyone has the potential to experience it. The causes of happiness lie within our own mind, and methods for achiving it can be practiced by anyone, anywhere, in any lifestyle - living in the city, working an eight-hour job, raising a family, playing on weekends.

By practicing these methods - meditation - we can learn to be happy at any time, in any situation, even difficult and painful ones. Eventually we can free ourselves of problems like dissatisfaction, anger, and anxiety and, finally, by realizing the actual way that things exist, we will eliminate completely the very source of all disturbing states of mind so that they will never arise again.

The mind is a nonphysical kind of energy, and its function is to know, to experience. It is awareness itself. It is clear in nature and reflects everything that it experiences, just as a still lake reflects the surrounding mountains and forests.

Mind changes from moment to momnent. It is a beginningless continuum, like an ever-flowing stream: the previous mind-moment gave rise to this mind-moment, which gives rise to the next mind-moment, and so on. It is the general name given to the totality of our conscious and unconscious experiences: each of us is the center of a world of thoughts, perceptions, feelings, memories, and dreams - all of these are mind.

Mind is not a physical thing that has thoughts and feelings; it is those very experiences. Being nonphysical, it is different from the body, although mind and body are interconnected and interdependent. mind - consciousness - is carried through our body by subtle physical energies, which also control our movement and vital functions. This relationship explains why, for example, physical sickness and discomfort can affect our state of mind and why, in turn, mental attitudes can both give rise to and heal physical problems.

Mind can be compared to an ocean, and momentary mental events such as happiness, irritation, fantasies, and boredom to the waves that ise and fall on its surface. Just as the waves can subside to reveal the stillness of the ocean's depths, so too is it possible to calm the turbulence of our mind to reveal its natural pristine clarity.

The ability to do this lies within the mind itself, and the key to the mind is meditation.

2007-05-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

One of my capoeira fans sent me this video she took of me at the Roda last month in Hong Kong. I have admirers!

Just kidding, she's my frind Jessie and I'm not even in these movies, but it's the same roda as the one that I'm in the movie to the right -->

The Consciousness (part 2) - You can shape your own brain!

2007-05-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

These quotes pretty much speak for themselves. They can be found on pp72-79 (Times Magazine "Mind and Body Special Issue" Jan 29, 2007):

Neuroscientist Pascual instructed the members of one group to play [the piano] as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome's 60 beats per minute. Every day for five days, the volunteers practiced for two hours...At the end of each day's practice session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain...In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn. The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it...He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise...when the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups...they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the pysical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in the brains of volunteers who imagined playing the music - just as it had in those who actually played it...the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.

For decades, the prevailing dogma in neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have...But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of 'neuroplasticity' - the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience....Even when the brain suffers a trauma late in life, it can rezone itself like a city in a frenzy of urban renewal. If a stroke knocks out, say, the neighborhood of motor cortext that moves the right arm, a new...therapy can coax next-door regions to take over the function of the damaged area. The brain can be rewired.
...
Something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought can affect the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can treat mental illness or, perhaps, lead to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion. It may even dial up the supposedly immovable happiness set point.
...
Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles...had become intrigued with the therapeutic potential of [the Buddhist practice] of mindfulness meditation...After 10 weeks of mindfulness-based therapy, 12 out of 18 patients improved significantly. Before-and-after brain scans showed that activity in the orbital frontal cortex, the core of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) circuit, had fallen dramatically and in exactly the way that drugs effective against OCD affect the brain...concluding that "the mind can change the brain."...For the monks as well as the patients with depression or OCD, the conscious act of thinking about their thoughts in a particular way rearranged the brain.

[emphasii are mine]

My conclusion: If the average American would be as concerned about working out and conditioning the mind for greater compassion, and less self-cherishing ego, as much as they were concerned about working out and conditioning their bodies for greater abs, biceps, and triceps, we would be a much much happier nation, as well as a much much less superficial one too. Although the psychiatric practice of Cognitive Behavior Therapy is one way to condition the mind, it's very expensive. Meditation is free. You just have to learn how to do it.

Geekiest Entry Ever

2007-05-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

Aside from being an entry about a computer game, this entry is also about popular culture, society, and a foreign country, specifically Korea.

Now...I've known that Starcraft (a computer game where you build and control vast armies in an attempt to demolish others') has been a major part of Korean popular culture. But to the extent of broadcasted, live-audience VS battles? Tournaments! Woah! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_professional_competition

Starcraft was a game I was quite obsessed about in High School. I actually had lofty dreams of playing in tournaments some day and making a career winning prize money. Now my geeky-ness is aroused by the announcement of a Starcraft2! What's even more telling about Starcraft in popular Korean culture is that Blizzard first publicly announced the game in Korea (see 2nd vid below) even before making that preview available on its website.

For those who want more geeky trailers.

The Consciousness (part 1)

2007-05-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

"Neuroscientists find least controversial...the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain...; consciousness is the activity of the brain." - Time Magazine Mind and Body Special Issue (Jan 29, 2007)

I found some really amazing articles with profound meanings in this Time issue that I think everyone should read! So I'm going to give a little teaser here by quoting some really interesting stuff about the mind, and giving my own comments. First, let me preface by saying that science can be a precise tool to understand the universe, while spirituality can be an approximate one. I don't see how we can consider science and spirituality as irreconcilable. Some religious explanations have already understood these things that science is only beginning to scrape the surface of. The thing is just that religion usually understands these things by use of metaphors and analogies.

The Illusion of Control

Using functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), cognitive neuroscientists can almost read people's thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance, whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe.
...
Surgery that severs the corpus callosum, separating the two hemispheres, spawns two consciousnesses within the same skull, as if the soul could be cleaved in two with a knife.
...
And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence.

If we have machines that can somewhat read our minds, how hard is it to believe that people with genetic mutations can too? I've had someone "read my mind" before. What he did was he would ask me to think of and focus on my mom's maiden name, and he would write it down on a pad. He did the same telling me to think of my high school's name, city I was born in, a random word, and other things. He got them all right. I think those who can't believe this are close minded. Think: there are tons of waves and things flying around us everyday - light waves, sound waves, microwaves, electro-magnetic waves, radio waves, whatever waves that are used for phones or wireless. Our human body can only detect light and sound waves. Some animals can't even detect light and sound! We had the fortune to evolve from amoebas and develop organic sensors for light and sound. How hard is it to believe that some, through genetic mutation, have developed sensors for mind waves? Our machines can do it already.

Grupo Capoeira Brasil Hong Kong Batizado 2007...

2007-05-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

...is over :_( I learned a lot, and made a lot of friends. This is really the way to do things when travelling. If you want to make friends, join the local capoeira group =)

Grupo Capoeira Brasil Hong Kong Batizado 2007

Now I'm back home, engaged in my various projects: looking for a summer job, learning Chinese, capoeira, and miscellaneous.

2007-05-07T20:17:00.001-07:00

2007-05-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'll have a real update for you all by tomorrow. Here are some pictures to tide you over until then!

New Look!

2007-04-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

Changes...
- First) Notice the lovely picture at the top, and click on it to follow a link to all my recent photos. The picture was taken while I was in India in March this year, right outside Mahabodhi temple (where Sakyamuni Buddha meditated under a tree and reached Nirvana)
- Second) I put up a video of my Capoeira King of the Hill roda in Bangkok, at the very very bottom of this page. It's about 12 minutes of me playing nonstop!
- Third) ...there is no Third!

Look for me at 1:32 in the video (that is...1 minute and 32 seconds in)

The above video was taken smack in the middle of Mong Kok, a busy shopping area and one of the most densely peopled areas in Hong Kong.

Some highlights(good and bad) of my week of Capoeira workshops:
1.) I took a video of all of us Capoeiristas singing in the MTR - the subway system in Hong Kong. If you know HK, then you would know that that would be a very peculiar and rare thing to see...a bunch of folks singing call-n-response in Portuguese interspersed by British-accented: "Please stand back from the doors". Unfortunately my phone has issues, so sorry, don't have the video!
2.) I kicked a beginner in the head really hard (with a mealua decompasso). He said he was fine that night, but the next day he got dizziness and a headache, and took off work to go to the hospital. Turned out he was OK!
3.) The night after that, playing with a guest instructor in the roda, I was taken down really really hard, and on hard wooden floor too. For some reason I'm really easy to take down. Actually, go to about 7:30 in the Capoeira video at the bottom of this page, and you'll see me get taken down really bad...but at least it was on grass.

2007-04-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date

...a world which could have water running on its surface.

Day in Pictures - from BBC.com

2007-04-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

2007-04-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

For the rest of the time I'm in Hong Kong (1.5 weeks) I'll be occupied with this:

Pictures of my wonderful friend Hang

2007-04-23T03:33:00.000-07:00

Picture Album

By the Pearl River - that unmoving stale and brown body of water that was to become the reason for the city's relative wealth.

Hang's cat

"We can never fully understand"...

2007-04-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

...said Bush. That is the attitude in the US over the question of how such a thing as the Virginia Tech incident could happen. Unfortunately this attitude just perpetuates inaction, perpetuates gun culture, and perpetuates mental unhealthiness.

Everything has a reason...nothing is purely coincidental...especially when it comes to human action. When we can own up to our society's flaws, and admit that 33 people died that day on that campus because of ourselves and our own faults, then we can start to change things. Otherwise guns will continue to be easily and readily available, and adolescents continue to feel rejected by society, and psychologically desperate...and the latter will sometimes take advantage of the former.

More guns will solve the problem!
"All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen - a potential victim - had a gun," said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. "The latest school shooting at Virginia Tech demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen."

So these guys are suggesting that in order to solve the problem, we should all start carrying guns around? Yeah...smart...

"Two can play at this game!" China says

2007-04-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

There is a special place in my heart for the Uighur people, ever since I travelled there on my most memorable trip of my life. Their state is called Xinjiang, being a part of China, it is composed of the ethnic group that is Muslim and speaks a dialect of Turkish.

Apparently China has picked up America's use of racist rhetoric against people with brown skin...from CNN news:

A Canadian activist jailed in China for alleged terrorist links was sentenced Thursday to life in prison, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Huseyin Celil was sentenced for "taking part in terrorist activities and plotting to split the country," Xinhua said. The brief report did not give any other details.

Celil, a member of the Uighur minority group from China's western Xinjiang region, was born and raised in China and drew the attention of authorities because of his involvement in a campaign for the rights of his people.

He was arrested in China and tortured, but escaped from prison in 2000 and fled to Uzbekistan and Turkey before reaching Canada, where he was given citizenship.

He was arrested in Uzbekistan in March 2006 while visiting his wife's relatives, and extradited to China in June.

Final Days in Thailand - Tribute to various Thai-isms

2007-04-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've made it to Hong Kong, and I've been spending my days taking Capoeira lessons, visiting relatives and friends, and getting ready for my trip to Guangzhou. But here's a wrap-up overview of the two and a half weeks that I spent in Thailand after India:

PHOTOS!
1. Bidding farewell to my Capoeira Thailand group with a King of the Hill roda and dinner and drinks

2. Various photos taken throughout the year I haven't yet shown

Personal Reflections
In a lot of ways, leaving Thailand was more heart-breaking than leaving Hong Kong or Taiwan was, but in a very good way. When someone is lost in the world and doesn't know his/her place in it, s/he easily grasps and gets attached to familiar things out of an unconscious desperation, and doesn't wish to let go, which were my feelings for Hong Kong. But once we know who we are and start to live with purpose, then we develop a love for a place in an unattached way, like I did for Thailand. No matter how silly some different cultural customs may have seemed to me at first, I knew I would miss them when I left....here is a tribute to the special aspects of Thailand that I will miss:

Tribute to Various Thai-isms
1. Weaving and threading through Bangkok traffic (comparable to LA traffic) on my motorbike.

2. Dim Sum! People will laugh at me for this: Can you guess what my final meal was in Bangkok, at the airport? Pad Thai perhaps? Tom Yum Gong? Papaya Salad? Nope! Dim Sum! I like it in Bangkok (BKK) better than Dim Sum even in Hong Kong. I like it in BKK because the food is bitesized (HK dim sum is collossal compared to BKK dim sum), they have dim sum I haven't seen in HK, and I have to admit, I think they put more MSG in dim sum in BKK, very tasty =) (but unhealthy, I know). Most of all it's the atmosphere: it's a small shop unlike the huge cafeteria style places in HK. Plus, you pick from several raw dim sums on display that they then steam there for you.

3. Lady-boys: being gay is almost synonymous with being transexual

4. Pointing the soles of your feet at people is disrespectful. I read in the newspaper that Thailand has banned YouTube.com because they would not remove a video that shows a pair of feet above the king's head.

5. Speaking of banning websites, pornsites are blocked in Thailand, but brothels are as common on the streets of Bangkok as bars and clubs are in any American city (partnership between government and brothel owners?). They even have brothels the size of big hotels. Yet, prostitution is technically illegal. Talk about unenforcement.

6. Public parks are much livlier in BKK than in any other city I've seen. Usually in other cities, you'll only see couples sitting on benches, kids chasing pigeons, some people taking naps or reading on the grass, and roller-blading or jogging. But in Bangkok parks I see all that and badminton, jugglers, break-dancing, large groups of middle-aged folks dancing arobics to techno music, and at one specific park capoeiristas and traditional Thai instrumental music.

7. When you buy a bottle of water or a coke at a convenience store, they put it in a small plastic bag and throw in a straw so quickly that you have no time to say "no thanks". Buy the tiniest thing, and they still stuff it in a plastic bag for you. Plenty of times I see the customer take the item out of the bag as soon as they step out, throwing the bag and straw right away. Thailand is the most plastic-wasting country I've ever been to.

8. Prices! A movie ticket normally doesn't cost more than 4US$, and sometimes just 3US$ if you buy tickets in bulk!

9. Nose-picking scenarios:
On a date...talking romantic things and flirting...suddenly while she's talking she's picking her nose...
Or...in class, after asking a question, boy raises his hand yelling 'I know! I know!' all the while digging into his nostril with pinky finger.

10. Many things to tribute na! No room here. You go see for yourself na!

Sometimes we need songs or other forms of artwork and expression to remind us of the places we've been. I have the Thai national anthem memorized, as well as the popular Pali Buddhist chant. There's also the melody of Sasern Pra Baramee - the tributary song for the King.

And thus ends my time in Thailand. Overall, I'd say that it was a chapter of my life where I seriously slowed down the pace of my life, looked around, and really tried to see things that my eyes had forgotten how to perceive. It was a time that I really owned up to my faults and genuinely looked for a way to change. I also learned the true meaning of love. Well, a lot of this was possible because of my trip to India, but still, Thailand was important nonetheless. And plus, I got a whole lot better at interacting with little kids. I may visit the country again in the future from time to time to visit people.

Next travelog: Hong Kong

Update March 30th, 2007

2007-03-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

1. Fixed "Top 10 Favorite Songs" list to have the correct links to lyrics.
2. Blog entry "Trajectory"
3. Blog entry "Daily Life Lesson 1"

Daily Life Lesson 1

2007-03-30T04:05:00.000-07:00

I never understood why it was that those who are most egotistical and arrogant are the ones with the least confidence. Today I learned one reason why.

People with no confidence in themselves think they cannot help others. "I'm useless, what can I do for others?" So they naturally only think about how to make themselves happy, they become selfish, only thinking about their needs, and what others can do for them. It's a cycle. They can't even make themselves happy, which reinforces the idea that they can't help others, so this lowers their confidence even more, which makes them unhappy for feeling useless.

But as soon as you start helping others, then you begin to see where your strengths are. Everyone has some sort of expertise that they can offer in service to their communities, in service to people. The people we help benefit from this, and this boosts our confidence, making ourselves happier, and giving us the drive we need to continue helping others in the way that we know how to.

Confidence is not the same as arrogance. A confident person is humble, and doesn't see the need to boast his/her strengths. His/her actions can speak for themselves, and the main purpose is to help others. An arrogant person boasts about his/her strengths. The intentions are not to help others, but to show off. People will resent this, and the arrogant person will not feel happy.

Trajectory

2007-03-30T03:21:00.000-07:00

For some reason, some have doubts that I'm ever returning to the US. Don't be silly now! Everything in life is transient, and so is my stay in Bangkok. The reasons for me to be here are wrapping themselves up and I have family and friends to return to. Here are my plans for the next month.

I have one week to say goodbye to my Capoeira group, to my Salsa community, and all others who are a part of my life now, as I fly to Hong Kong next Friday, the 6th. I'm going to visit my friend Hang in Guangzhou, China. Guangdong is a region that claims the record for having the most factories (density) in the world. The area is so dense with factories that Hong Kong's skies, far far away, have turned hazy as if forest fires were raging all day and all night on the hillsides of Lion Rock and Victoria Mountain. Recently elected Tsang, the first to be elected rather than appointed since the Chinese turnover, has promised to clear up Hong Kong's skies. Empty political promises I think.

After my time in Guangzhou, I'll fly to Taiwan where I'll observe my father doing consulting work. I should have been interested in his work a long time ago, for without it, I would not have such a lucky life as I have today. "It's never too late," is a saying that doesn't work here. What about when he passes away? If I wait and wait, it could be too late.

Finally, I should be arriving back in the US, taking care of some business in Albany before May roles around.

flirt with materialism, and shared photo albums

2007-03-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

After nearly a month of no blogging, I'm back! Please note that this is 1 out of 3 new entries.

Since my camera died (see next blog entry), and since my Thailand phone has also died, and since my US phone has become obsolete, and since I've always wanted a camcorder, I've indulged myself and bought this:

2GB for MP3s, photos, and over 1 hour of video-recording. It hooks up with my Mac through a wireless connection (bluetooth) for uploads and downloads. Plus, if I sign up for the services I can go on the internet with it.

Yes, I do realize the irony of me flaunting my new phone after talking Buddhist philosophy. I appreciate this phone for what it is, it collapses many of my modern tech needs into one device, but it is impermanent, and thus cannot bring me satisfaction or happiness.

Here are some photo album links:
(1) General India Photos. Here are only the best. I have more on my computer.
(2) Retreat photos. These are only taken during the 9th and 10th days. The first 8 I was too busy being in deep introspection to have time for photos

In India, things that... / RIP Canon Digital Ixus V2

2007-03-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

Things That Surprised Me
The non-existence of toilet paper.

Things That Interested Me
Trucks requesting, sometimes begging, for you to honk your horn.

Things That Frustrated Me
1. People stared at me so much that I started staring back at them. Imagine what it's like to play several staring contests with complete strangers in a foreign country.
2. Transportation is regularly late, beit train or bus, expect 1-5 hour delays on departure.

Things I Liked
1. Children - These two posed, and then ran back after every flash to see themselves on the camera, then ran back in front of it for another. This went on for about 15 pictures.

Things I Never Figured Out
1. STDs...if anyone can clarify what it stands for, please do come foreward and enlighten me!

AND finally, it is official. My 4 and a half years companion of a digital camera took it's last picture on March 6th, of this Cricket match in Bodh Gaya.

While bribing the train attendant to let me stay in the sleeper car instead of the overflowing sitter ("stander" is more like it), I dropped my camera on the floor. I thought nothing of it, since I've dropped it many times before. I put it back in my pocket, only later to feel an incredible heat. The battery must have exploded or something. I only managed to salvage the memory card.

:_(