Monthly Archives: September 2010

Juxtaposition & Perspectives

Interesting headlines today:

“[From NPR] U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, government data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.”

[From Forbes] Duarte, Calif., home to the 91008 ZIP code, is a small suburb northeast of downtown LA, near the Los Angeles national forest. The median cost of a house in this tony town is a whopping $4,276,462, making it the most expensive housing market in the country.”

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For perspectives, here is what 91008 looks like from above:

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Perspectives are important.

Case in point: The U of Chicago Law Professor who wrote a blog post complaining about being poor on an income of $250K and ignited a firestorm. What made me laugh out loud and cry inside at the same time was the fact that he was genuinely surprised that people were outraged. Much criticisms and analyses have been published over Professor Henderson and his irk vs. the “electronic lynch mob”. My favorite quote by a pundit came from Paul Krugman  (incidentally the 2008 Economics Nobel Prize winner) who penned in his blog post titled “Have you left no sense of decency?” (It’s a very short post. You should consider hopping over and read it in its brilliant entirety…)

“But 30 years ago people with high but not super-high incomes generally felt ashamed of themselves for griping — or at least, felt that they would be ridiculed if they gave voice to their gripes. Today, all restraints are off. The fuss over Messrs. Henderson and Stein is the exception that proves the rule: they wouldn’t be providing this spectacle if they didn’t normally swim in social circles where complaining that you only have 9 or 10 times median family income is considered totally acceptable.

Pretty soon, we’ll be having serious, completely un-self-conscious discussions in major magazines about the servant problem.”

“Which Sex and the City gal are you?”

I am going to bet that at one time or another 99% of the women were asked one or all of these questions:

“Which Sex and the City gal is your favorite?”

“Which Sex and the City gal do you want to be?”

“Which Sex and the City gal are you?”

I never knew how to respond. Because deep down in my heart, I know who I resemble the most, dread resembling the most even though I also know, deep down in my brains, that I am crazy (also self-presumptuous and self-delusional) for thinking so.

Laney Berlin.

Who?

Laney Berlin. From Episode 10, Season 1, originally aired on August 8, 1998. “The Baby Shower”.

It is no surprise you have no memory of her. My google search only came up with ONE picture of her:

Laney is the Fab Four’s former friend, or more accurately, frienemy and to Samantha, rival.

Laney Berlin. You can’t really describe her. You just had to know her. Chances are eight years ago you probably did.

Laney did A&R for a record label… Every time she went on a scouting trip, she came back with some hot new group… and a gynecological condition no one had ever heard of.

Those things make so many public appearances, they need a booking agent.

Disclaimer: Of course I am nothing like the above. I’ve never had a hot body for me to lament the loss over it. I’ve never had a wild, rebellious streak in my life, that is, until now… mostly inside my imaginary inner world, and even at that, with limitations. Tis sad that I channel Woody Allen even in my wildest fantasy.

In fact, Laney was another Samantha… until she found herself an investment banker, got married and moved to Connecticut. The Fab Four reluctantly went to Laney’s Baby Shower at her stereotypical suburban MacMansion surrounded by stereotypical suburban Stepford Wives. The gifts they brought? A fistful of cash. A bottle of Scotch. And pastel condoms.

Incidentally I gave birth to my first child in March 1998. I squirmed as I watched a dichotomy being artificially formed when the world of Sex and the City was split in two: Me and the pregnant, suburban Laney on one side; the gals on the other (And goddammit I want to be on that side with the Fab Four too!) and what happened when Laney tried to cross the bridge, back to the other side.

Laney, despite the outward appearances of marital bliss and contentment, felt regretful of her choices. Back  in the city, the gals found a pregnant Laney crashing Samantha’s party, demanding vodka (and attention naturally], offering to show her tits, and struggling on the stripper pole.

[Carrie] This is at once so sad…  and the most fabulous validation I’ve ever gotten in my life.

The image of Laney on the table surrounded by the party-goers who are obviously appalled has stayed with me since. I understand that 99% of the disapproval came from her being so “due any day now” pregnant and you simply DO NOT SHOULD NOT imbibe alcohol (and Vodka at that!) when a child’s life is at stake. However Laney on the table also symbolizes for me the attempt to grapple with the erasure of one’s (imagined or not) identity and the desperate attempt to retain/regain the last vestige of youth/freedom/autonomy/carefreeness/etc. It is that desperation that makes it so sad, that I respond to viscerally.

Every time when I behave like a wild child, act and dress against what I believe is age-appropriate and role-appropriate, flirt with strangers, skip down the sidewalk, party like it is 1999 (or 1997 aka 1 BC – “Before Child”), because this is who I am without thinking, I get a flashback of Laney on the table and I am immediately paralyzed by an onslaught of self-consciousness. I put myself in my place through the eyes of the others:

“Do I look like I am trying too hard? Too desperate? Do I look ridiculous? These people… What are they thinking of me? Are they laughing with me or at me?”

And the thought that I absolutely abhor:

“Do they feel sorry for me?”

I am desperate to not appear desperate. Insane? I know.

This is why every time when I am at a party I make a beeline to the bar and down 2 shots of vodka before the party starts for me. Because as it turns out, thank goodness, Laney Berlin can be warded off with alcohol.

Missing a hole here

I woke up to a bad allergy attack this morning:

runny nose
sneezing
itchy, watery eyes
itching of the nose or throat

p.s. I just copied that litany from the back of my bottle of Zyrtec.

I’ve got them all. As I was using up the last tissue from the giant Kleenex box, I was contemplating tweeting about it. (Yes, I do compose tweets in my head as I go about my daily business. Shut up! Don’t tell me you don’t. Liar!)

Something to the fact of:

Bad allergy! Every hole on my face has liquid coming out of it!

I slay myself sometimes.

This imaginary tweet reminded me of the common Chinese phrase for describing a brutal death (e.g. from poisoning or from a freakishly ginormous renegade Shaolin monk clapping his Thunderous Fists over your ears in a mortal combat) :

Bleeding from seven holes   七孔流血*

Here is an illustration:

This guy is dying from Psychic Powers.

PSA: Do NOT search for images with keywords “七孔流血” or worse, “nose bleed manga” at work.  It is like a codeword for “Show me pornographic images please”. Srly, people? The above is like the only image not involving a scantily-clad lass.

Since I am such a math geek (Har har) I automatically counted out the seven holes (and I swear I did not point my fingers to my body parts as I did this…)

My two eyes
My two ears.
My nose.
My mouth.

Hey, that’s only SIX. WTF? So I started thinking of other holes there could be…

Oh.
No.
Could it be that?
No…?
Or that?
Hmmmm.

Then it hit me. Of course! There are TWO nostrils. Duh.

As I opened up a new box of Kleenex, I thought to myself, “I am sucking more and more at being Chinese. And you people really have a bad influence on me!”

—The End—

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* Google Translate is so awesome! I typed in “Bleeding from seven holes” and it presented the exact phrase! I *heart* you Google Translate even though you say dumb things sometimes…

Moon Struck

I have witnessed history tonight (or last night). I reveled in the glory that was the Super Harvest Moon.

According to NASA, on September 22, 2010,

For the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a “Super Harvest Moon”…

Northern summer changes to fall on Sept. 22nd at 11:09 pm EDT. At that precise moment, called the autumnal equinox, the Harvest Moon can be found soaring high overhead with the planet Jupiter right beside it. The two brightest objects in the night sky will be in spectacular conjunction to mark the change in seasons.

.This also means that yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival for Chinese, the second most important holiday arguably after Chinese New Year. Did I remember it? Of course not. I really suck at being Chinese… So I made it up by trying to capture the image of Super Harvest Moon for posterity.

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This picture taken with my iPhod. Amazingly clear.

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Can you see the “spur” of light below the moon? That is Jupiter. Neither can I. Sorry. You just have to take my word for it: Jupiter was there. Right underneath the moon. It was so bright that I kept on asking Mr. Monk, “Are you sure it’s not an airplane? It is not moving?”

Sorry if it looks like a bullet hole on a piece of black canvas.

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This time I tried to take a picture with my Blackberry

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You can see why Blackberry is just not as sexy as iPhones…

This picture of the moon unfortunately reminds me of something that rhymes with one of the planets. Or it is calling my name to go through the tunnel. Maybe both at the same time. It is kind of disturbing to say the least…

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Since my Nikon failed me, I used my Flip video to capture the glory of the moon

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It annoyed me to no end that my Nikon completely failed me. Most likely user error but I am blaming it on the machine, like most callers to IT Help Lines.

When I remembered that I could use my video cameras for the job, the clouds came. So now Freddy Krueger can pop into the frame at any second. I get dizzy staring at this picture. Am I in a nightmare already? (3:41 am already? Yup. Better be in a nightmare otherwise I’ll have hell to pay tomorrow morning at 6 am when the alarm goes off…)

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A la Monet

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This one took the longest time to produce: I first used my Casio digital to capture a 7-second video of the night sky. I wanted to post it on my Facebook and be done with the whole thing but Facebook said it would take 76 hours to upload the file.

16.6 MB for 7 seconds of footage. Srly?

I ended up taking a screenshot of my laptop as the video was playing. Opened up Visio. Ctrl+V to paste the picture into Visio. Cropped the picture and saved it into a JPG file. Viola! Here you have a grainy picture of the moon, covered by dark clouds.

I expect either fiddlers to start showing up from the other side of the roof or the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw to materialize in this picture.

Super Harvest Moon has come and gone. The next one won’t be here till 2029. (The thought of how old I will be… STOP! BRAIN! Don’t even go there! Where was I?) Welcome Autumn because this means we can finally put up Halloween decorations and apple cider donuts are now officially in vogue.

I am going to bed. BUT not before I make it up to you by leaving you with this Harvest Moon in its finest…

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Eat Pray Love. Why not?

Now that the fever towards the book and the movie has died down, hopefully, I feel it is safe to explain why I cannot bring myself to pick up this ever-popular book. And really, it is not like there were not a pile of books in my house waiting for me to finish, and that War and Peace I for some inexplicable reason requested two Christmases ago is still staring at me accusingly every time I scurry past the bookshelf.

Simply stated: I am tired. How come the dark-skinned, exotic, “mystic” in the third world never spouts any wisdom for me? Or women who look like me? I want an easy piece of wisdom that would help me reach my A-HA moment at the snap of a finger. Or at least get me a hot piece of ass like Javier Bardem goddammit!

I’ll let someone a lot more eloquent summarize the inner struggle I feel whenever I come across scenarios as portrayed in Eat Pray Love.

[These movies that rely on such a trope] don’t teach you anything new about Asia or the Middle East. They rely instead on the stereotype that the East is someplace timeless, otherworldly, incomprehensible, waiting to be discovered by Westerners in search of self.

Now, nobody’s protesting Eat Pray Love, or saying that you should. After all, it’s kinder, gentler and subtler than Aladdin.

But it operates with the same Orientalist repertoire. It may not warrant protest, but its proximity to Orientalist tropes should make you think twice.

By Mia Mask on NPR

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There is also something quite personal: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Bali is different from the one I visited. In 1992. Or 1991. I’ve only retained very fuzzy memories of my trip to Bali. In all honesty, after all these years, they could only be fairly categorized as impressions by now.

I was very tanned and therefore I was constantly mistaken as one of the locals by the Western tourists (since NO locals would have mistaken me as one of their own. We don’t all look alike. By “we” I mean “Asians”…) The locals however did mistake me for someone from the Indonesian mainland since quite a significant* percentage of Indonesians were (are) of Chinese descent. My friend who has much paler complexion however was mistaken for Japanese. It suffices to say that all this made an excellent Comedy of Errors in which we were constantly propositioned by men of different races and national origins, and in which men, as I was surprised to find out, expected us to be grateful for the attention. Some more than the others…

Of course Bali was (is) gorgeous and spectacular as every single tourism brochure says it is. And I am not saying that it is different from any other region that relies  on tourism for the majority of its revenue. What I remember most, however, and you all know I am crazy so please feel free to ignore what I have to say and stay with the tourism brochures and/or Gilbert’s book, was…

Disclaimer: My father was a tour guide and a travel agent, my mother, a hotel maid. I have always felt ambivalent towards tourism and therefore my perspectives when traveling are always “unnecessarily” skewed.

My impressions from my trip probably had more to do with who I was than the actual locale. It is highly likely that I would have felt the same way towards some other popular tourist destination…

The vendors, mostly children, swarming the van our local tour guides drove us around in, calling out, “One dollar. One dollar.”

Our determination to bargain the price down as we were instructed so we were not taken for fools.

The shame I felt afterwards when I remembered how little one dollar meant to me in comparison.

The cottage we stayed in which was located in the midst of a local village an hour or so away from the main tourist area.

People’s stares and curious expressions because they could not easily identify me and thus conveniently label me when our local tour guides showed us around (and off?) to their friends and families.

One guy from the village decided to climb up the coconut tree to procure fresh coconuts for us and was ridiculed mercilessly by his friends for trying to impress the ladies. We all had a good laugh.

The sight of women bathing on the side of the road which was as natural as the stream that ran along the road.**

The disappearance of familiarity exhibited by our local tour guides with whom I thought we had become friends as soon as we arrived in the “city”.

The puzzlement at our friends’ refusal to join us for lunch in the city. And further puzzlement at their decision to say “Yes” to the same restaurant but “No” to the same table.

Their apparent discomfort when we were approaching the fancy upscale hotel in which a Taiwanese tour guide we met on our flight to Bali managed to finagle a room for us.

Their abrupt decision to not help us carry our suitcases into the hotel. Their sudden movement to take out our luggages and leave them by the van as the hotel bellboys materialized. Our failure to say a proper goodbye with our extended hands that were not taken as they quickly got into the van and drove off as if to say, “We don’t belong here.”

My inability to enjoy the fancy surroundings as what happened outside the hotel kept on being reenacted inside my overactive brains.

The casual comment by the Taiwanese tour guide about how easy it was to access the red light district: someone would come pick you up on a moped. My being surprised and immediately not-so-surprised. My sadness as I remembered what it was like in the village less than an hour away.

The two young Japanese men who offered to videotape my friend and me and focused the entire minute on breasts and asses.***

My much, much later realization that there was (is) a “myth” of the prevalence of gigolos in Bali. My remembering the smirks when we were paraded around, and my attempt to dismiss it.

My first encounter with Westerners (other than bars and pubs in Taipei) and my not-so-positive impressions of the loud, obnoxious, drunk males late at night on the “strip”.

My first experience of being mistaken for a “local” and the complexity it entailed when trying to get a vendor to serve us in a night market populated by Western tourists.

My first suspicion that there was something off about how I was treated by “foreigners” even before I learned of colonialism, globalization, Orientalism and the fact that “exotic” does not just apply to flowers and animals.

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It could be that I am simply jealous. I am jealous of Gilbert’s privileged freedom to be oblivious.

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* By “Significant” I mean the classic case of 1% of people controlling N% of the wealth which has resulted in conflicts and outright violence in the recent past.

** I struggled with whether to include this since I worry that this may further add to the stereotype of exoticism. But it serves as a stark contrast to what I witnessed later in the city and therefore I’ve made the conscious decision to include it, despite the potential downside.

*** Yes. We were naive idiots.

This is 100% innocent. I swear.

Dear Soren Lorensens,

I know I have not been a good blogger: for one, I haven’t managed to respond to the comments you kindly left me so I don’t go into yet another bout of depression thinking that nobody loves me. I have also not been leaving comments on your blogs. I am killing my Tamagotchi here.

I finally have some time now to surf the Interweb without people walking by seeing my monitor (which is conveniently facing the frigging door!!!!). The office is empty. Yes, between gallivanting around Boston as if I were single again and hanging out with you guys online, I CHOOSE YOU! (Take that, Pikachu!) However, I feel it is my duty to bring your attention to this commercial for a new fangled weight training product.

I saw it today at a sports bar (for a work function, I swear…) magnified manifold on multiple giant HD TV screens. I burst out laughing but then quickly caught myself.

Is it just me?

This is absolutely innocent. Really. Honest to god. I mean, they show this in prime time. On ESPN. In crowded bars. Frequented by manly men. But why do I feel dirty?

(Watch especially Sec. 35 and onward. Oh my lord)


Sundays in My City – Flying Over New York City

I love New York City. I truly do. I wish it were really my city.

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Flying into NYC this view caught my breath when I realized what I was (not) looking at...

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Could you see the patch of sunlight over NYC?

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Leaving on a jet plane...

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I took these pictures in August when I was there for BlogHer 2010. I was thinking of New York City more than usual because of the anniversary of September 11 which was the day before this post was published.

I am leaving for a business trip again. [ETA: Boston]. Somehow this time I am feeling a bit resentful towards having to get on a plane and leave my family behind, and not just because in order to catch the 6 am flight I’ll need to get up before 4 am… This is peculiar since usually by Sunday noon I am already tired of all the whining and ready to get back to work where ABSOLUTELY NO WHINING IS ALLOWED.

“All my bags are packed I’m ready to go
I’m standin’ here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin’ it’s early morn
The taxi’s waitin’ he’s blowin’ his horn
Already I’m so lonesome I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go
Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane…”

Unknown Mami

Remember where you were when you heard the news?

Remember where you were when you saw it? For the first time?

I am sure all of us (those old enough) do.

I was in Boise, Idaho then. I was working as a management consultant, traveling Monday through Thursday. By then, I have been on the project for almost half a year. I wanted to get ahead, to have a career. I was an over-achiever wannabe and, like everybody else on my team, I was almost ready to head over to the client’s office before 7 am.

I was not giving what’s on the TV news my full attention until all of a sudden, it turned into a special report and the image of  a skyscraper with ridiculous amount of smoke coming out of it came on the screen.

What’s that? It must be from a movie. They are doing a preview of some disaster movie.

I turned up the volume and it took me awhile to understand the words that were being said. But they did not make any sense at all.

How could it happen? What do they mean it’s a plane? No, it cannot be a plane. You can’t see anything. Just the smoke. How big is Word Trade Center anyway? Can an entire plane fit into it without us seeing a wing? What is going on? Something wrong with the plane? The engine stopped? The pilot had a heart attack? A hijacker? What exactly has happened?

We still did NOT know at this moment that this was still BEFORE, that a few minutes later most of us would catch one of the most horrifying images live on television. All the news cameras were pointing at the burning building as the reporters on TV and on the phone trying to carry on with a news story with little information coming through. And then we saw it…

This cannot be happening. It did not just happen. Oh my god.

I immediately called and woke up my husband, “Go turn on the TV, now!”. We watched the news together this way until our three-year-old son woke up and came to find husband in front of the television.

“I am not sure I know how to explain to him. But I think I am going to keep him at home with me today.”

Nobody was in the office when I walked in. We all gathered in the cafeteria where there were several television monitors. The entire day was filled with confusion, rumors, information and misinformation, news, more news, news that later was proven to be just rumors, and our efforts to make sense of what’s going on, and more immediately, when it was certain that the US airspace was closed indefinitely, to get ourselves home.

All of us wanted to be home. Everything else just seemed… trivial. Airports all over the country were closed. Unable to just sit and wait, several people , including one person who lived in New York City, rented cars and simply started driving. When all the rental cars were gone the next day, a fellow Chicagoan jumped on a Greyhound bus, similarly unable to just sit and wait, and started (as we found out later) a three-day journey home.

It was a surreal experience getting on a plane again on that Friday. I was of course excited to finally head home and yet, like every other air traveler in those weeks immediately afterwards, I was apprehensive, the images permanently seared in my mind. It felt like such a victory when I stepped into the house. I am finally home! I hugged my then three-year-old boy even tighter when he told me that he had been watching “the movie with a burning building and an airplane flying into another building” with daddy.

Like everybody else, we looked at our lives and looked them again really hard, felt grateful that we were able to hold each other in our arms, and saw and recognized for a brief moment what was truly important.

How old is our oldest now? Three and a half? Didn’t we say we would like another child at some point? What happened? Why did we overlook the fact that our oldest is now almost four?

…. …. …. …. …. ….

I have no idea what I am trying to say. I simply need to type my words out.

Remember where you were when you heard the news?

Sue did. She was right there. Sue was living in New York City then, only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Her post on her yearly remembrance of her personal 911 took my breath away.

…. …. …. …. …. ….

Last year I wrote about a couple who lost both of their sons on September 11, and how much the father’s words affected me:

“I don’t have any could’ve, should’ve or would’ves.  I wouldn’t have changed anything.  It’s not many people that the last words they said to their son or daughter was ‘I love you.'”

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from all the heart-breaks:

Remember to say I love you every time you say good-bye to your kids… (and all your other loved ones of course)

Somehow I have forgot already. I am glad I remembered today.