Monthly Archives: November 2010

The Faces of Those Who Were There

16 Replies

.

The project is a series of portraits of people who have gone on this journey. Each portrait is accompanied by words chosen by the person pictured. Posthumous portraits are included in this group and for these portraits the families have chosen the words which accompany the painting.

.

In 2005, as he watched the news of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Matthew Mitchell, a painter in Amherst, MA, felt disconnected and feared that the memories of the soldiers, like the news, would soon fade.

“The big danger that we have is that we can forget about war.”

He decided to do something about it. His project, 100 Faces of War Experience, is exactly that: he will paint the portraits of 100 veterans and each portrait will be accompanied by the personal statements of the soldier. So far Mr. Mitchell has completed 38 of the 100 portraits, and this project has turned into something that is a lot more powerful than he has anticipated.

Currently the portrait of Sgt. Rick Yarosh is in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Sgt. Yarosh suffered severe injury when his vehicle was hit by an IED with 60% of his body burned, including his whole face. Looking at his face, you would be surprised to hear him speak because he sounds upbeat and positive and proud.

I’m lucky and blessed to be here, I’m able to share my story with others.

That day started the same as every other day, but that day has never ended.

You could learn more about this from NPR’s program on the 100 Faces of War Experience project, Washington Post’s article on Sgt. Yarosh and his portrait, or this YouTube video from the U.S. Army.

.

.

We owe our freedom to the men and women in the military.

past. present. future.

Thank you.

WTF Wednesday: These boots are made for walking

32 Replies

These boots are nice, right? But I am not showing them because they are sexy. These boots were spotted 2 hours into a mountain climbing route...

This is what most of the paths on those mountains look like...

And this is what the mountain peak looks like...

Bring back Thanksgiving! Please, no Christmas decorations until Black Friday…

35 Replies

This is a post originally published last November. For some reason, ever since September, a lot of people have searched for “turkey” and landed on my post from last year, skewing my stat counts since I know all of them got the pictures of the turkey and left without even looking at my blog.

Tis unfortunate. Not because I am vain (well, I am) and I want to treat the increased page views as real numbers (well, I do) but because I really wish more people will heed the plea, not just by me but also by some other bloggers, for example, Midwestern Mama said, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… And frankly, its pissing me the fuck off!”

The following is my tirade against the demise of the significance of Thanksgiving in the face of overwhelming commercialism…

Yeah tirade! Aren’t you glad that I am back in more ways than one?!

.

.

I started campaigning for a forced postponement, a temporary deferral, of celebrating Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving Day four five years ago.  I even registered for the domain name: BringBackThanksgiving.com (which is still available… Any takers?)  I stopped paying for it after two years when I realized that with a full time job and three boys to take care of, I simply did not have the capacity to deal with Microsoft FrontPage. (Yikes. Do you remember the days, the days before Blogger, WordPress, etc. when one had to use a software such as FrontPage in order to have one’s own website? *shudder*)

“Curb your enthusiasm!” I beseech you.  “As you recover from the sugar high from all the Halloween candies.  As you dispose of the spider webs, the goblins, the mummy tombs, the rotten carved pumpkins.”

Please, oh, please don’t switch directly from Orange and Black to Red and Green.  However tempting it is when you move all the Halloween boxes down to your basement and see all the Christmas boxes beckoning at you. The smiling Santa with the chubby cheeks.  The snowman. The reindeer.  Resist the temptation: Didn’t Jesus die on the cross partly to teach us this lesson?  Be strong for the sake of your children.

The children need you to show them that, Yes, you believe in the meaning and significance of Thanksgiving Day. Yes, it is important that we take one day out to deliberately remember and show gratitude to all the people who add meanings to our lives, to all the material goods that we are blessed enough to own. To strangers who give you a smile in the street and thus brighten your day. To strangers who by merely doing their jobs are making the world a better, safer place.

My heart aches upon seeing houses adorned with Christmas lights right after, sometimes even before, Halloween.  Of course I am not intimating that the homeowners are therefore not thankful.  No siree.  I am simply dismayed that the significance of Thanksgiving, the arguably ONE holiday that we should all be able to agree on and celebrate, is undermined sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.

(I admit: I may be putting my foot in my mouth by saying this. I have no clear idea how the native Americans take this holiday though I suspect there must be a lot of conflicting feelings. Do they sometimes wish that Squanto were not so kind as to assist the pilgrims? FWIW, by reading “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” and “Teaching About Thanksgiving“, I am convinced that Thanksgiving is indeed deeper and bigger than just the Pilgrims and the Indians… I hope I do not offend should anyone of Native American descent stops by this post…)

I blame the turkey.

You heard me right. It is the turkey’s fault. In terms of merchandising, turkeys are just not as attractive as say, bunnies, chicks, Santa Clause, snowman, reindeer, and so on.  I have not seen any child hugging a plush Turkey toy lovingly.

turkey

To be honest, that red thing hanging down the throat freaks me out.  Pardon me for being crass, but it always reminds me of testicles. I don’t know why. But it does.

Many, especially Hallmark (bless their heart!), have tried to turn the turkey into an adorable icon:  but seriously, how adorable can you make a turkey?

Turkey for eating

Even more sickening is that in these cutesy depictions of turkeys, they are all forced to celebrate the event in which they will be slaughtered, cooked and eaten! The abomination!

No cute icons, no easy way for merchandising. No easy way for merchandising, no rampant commidification of Thanksgiving. No rampant commidification of Thanksgiving, no shelf space at your local drugstores and grocery stores.

(I am grateful for no longer being in the academia which affords me the opportunity to posit theories full of holes and preaches them on the Internet with no qualms… I am like Glenn Beck on an anti-Turkey path…)

But with your help, we can stem the tide.  We can start it from inside of our homes.

Perhaps we can all start a tradition of having each one of the family members mention one thing that they are grateful for, every day, in the month of November.  No matter how small or how trivial.

Perhaps we can start a quiet movement to resist the Red and Green color scheme from popping up inside of our own houses. Until the day after Thanksgiving.

On the morning of November 27 this year (because November 26, Black Friday, is reserved for Competitive Shopping, or most likely, nursing a stomach ache and hangover headache), I am moving up the Christmas Tree from our basement first thing in the morning.  I am really looking forward to it. And to optimize my effort of transforming my house into a winter wonderland for Christmas, I shall keep the decorations up until after Valentine’s day. Thank goodness for the lllloooonnnngggg winter here. That is, of course, until one of you starts a campaign for bringing back Valentine’s Day…


Meet Me Halfway. Cute vs. Puke

28 Replies

I am sitting in the United Airlines lounge, home for the famous automatic beer pouring machine, (not quite) halfway back to Chicago, but already I stop talking to people in Chinese, and I am transitioning to my American self again. (My apology for falsely reinforcing the dichotomy of East vs. West. This is strictly personal: I no longer feel the need to look smaller by haunching or sucking in my guts, or to look cute and agreeable, or to bat my eyelashes innocently. Feel free to expand. Take all the space you want. Of course, I will still complain about any non-Asian person trying to impose such a rigid contrast between East vs. West or subscribe to the idea that Asian women are oppressed. Bite my contradictory, non-consistent ass if you wish.)

First of all, I just want to thank all of you to continue to visit my blog even when I am not able to reciprocate. Sometimes I feel that blogging is ultimately a selfish act. Or rather, the reason why I blog. Or rather, the reason why I started blogging which has undergone some significant change over the course. It is selfish because when I have limited time and energy and am forced to choose, I almost always choose to post blogs rather than to read and comment. It is both selfish and self-indulgent and at the same time, an act of self-preservation as I need to jot down what’s swirling inside my head so I can clear it through the process.

When I hit the publish button, it is in the ether, in some sense, no longer my concern.

Of course, most of these are random things I found amusing of which I kept mental notes so I could regale an audience at a dinner party one day. Who am I kidding? I don’t think there is any dinner/cocktail party in my stars. So I put them out there. Voile! Carte blanche. ’cause my mental Post-It pad is as thin as the free ones you find on the desks in hotel rooms.

.

.

.

I was assaulted by a wall of pink cuteness at the airport, a place you kind of expected to be safe from a culture that encourages its womanfolks, young and old, to be cute and adorable.

.

.

Kawai. Japanese for cute, adorable. 可愛 in Chinese. It is a cultural obsession.

When I packed for this trip, I consciously left out tops that are too revealing, knowing that any indication of self-professed sexuality would be frowned upon. Unfortunately, I misjudged and two of my shirts, when I lean forward, reveal my cleavage, and this caused some visible discomfort in strangers, both male and female. At first it was quite puzzling to me: judging by the amount of advertisements devoted to breast augmentation, next only to those devoted to weight loss naturally, you’d think that people are at least used to the idea that boobs exist. Isn’t this contradictory?

Paradoxically, this actually falls in line with the schizophrenic idea of the female ideal: If you know Manga and Anime, you know we want our women to be Innocent + Sexy. Somewhat different from the Madonna + Whore paradox, we want our women to be CUTE. Juvenile. Forever 16 or 18. (Can you imagine La Madonna dressed in pink and adorned with Hello Kitty?)

I am pretty sure there is an entire dissertation worth of theorizing here but I am just going to do Stream-of-Consciousness which is to say, I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about and I am just going to type them up as thought clouds appear.

Someone asked me how much I drank when I was home. The answer is none. I do not drink when I am with my family because first of all they assume/prefer to think that I do not drink. Furthermore, the ability to hold your liquor is not something that will add to one’s desirability (not that I am looking to be desirable, being married and all, but you know what I mean…)

I am getting a clearer idea of why I always feel so out of place when I am home: I feel awkward, physically. Even if I were rail thin, Bulimia thin (which would be just about right according to the standards here. Ha!), I would still have been too tall. Cuteness and I simply do not mix. It was  already like this when I was in college: I tried to dress the part, cutesy prints, flowery adornments, frilly edges and all, but there was always this gnawing in the back of my head telling me how ridiculous I looked trying to look adorable when I was towering over 80%* of the female population, and probably the male too.

Puke.

I am so relieved now to be sitting here, sipping my Bloody Mary, showing my cleavage, surveying the world, narrowing my eyes and sitting in a manner that suggests Yes, I know I am sexy and you want a piece of this.

Incidentally, I was informed that in many restaurants and all self-respecting KTVs (Karaoke with all private party rooms) in Taiwan, you can find a mini version of the urinal in the men’s bathroom for puking. Ingenious, isn’t it? We should get these into the bars in the U.S., and of course, in both MEN’s and WOMEN’s Rooms.

.

.

* Number pulled out of my ass, in no way scientific.

To Buy a Fat Hog

14 Replies

Dear Costco,

I don’t know how you did it. But you won.

I shop at the Costco near our house in the Chicago suburbs right before every one of my trips home and throw money at you as if money were grown on trees: vitamins, vitamins, and more vitamins. These are popular items that will sure to please everybody back home. The tiny shelves in my parents’ already cramped bedroom proudly display the vitamins and nutritional supplements that promise to improve the condition of ailments from A to Z like a mini drugstore. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate your role in my parents’ happiness and pride as they tell their friends which one is for what and the fact they were all brought back from the USA by their wayward daughter. Something to show for.

Ever since your appearance in Taipei, you have become the new love of people here. They love you so much that there are now 3 of you. The one inside the city proper is so crowded that you need to station employees in the street, trying to entice people to drive to another Costco “8-minute drive away” with a coupon for a free drink. I rolled my eyes at the craziness of this all. It is ONLY Costco, people.

Yes, I will confess. I visit Costco every time when I am in Taipei: I go with my family so they can replenish their supplies. It is one of those regular mundane boring things I do not get to do with them. So yes I am paying my dues. When I walked in yesterday, I was at first floored by how exactly like my Costco it was. Eerie almost.

.

.

Everything looks the same at first but once I got into the thick of it, I noticed a lot of differences. Kudos really for finding the perfect formula to adapt a quintessential American warehouse shopping concept (and seriously, you really need massive pieces of land to support this concept, no?) to the small island of Taiwan. You started with smaller packages since people have not as much storage space, are accustomed to making more frequent shopping trips, and are in general more frugal. Instead of giant rolls of Bounce paper towels, the ones sold in Taiwan are half the size. I wonder whether you have heard stories of old folks washing, line drying, and reusing Bounce, driving their children in sane with a house full of sheets of Bounce in varying drying stages. Nevertheless, I was very impressed with the homework you have done and continue to do.

As I was rolling my eyes at the exuberant crowd and their shopping carts piled high with goods, I was at the same time WOWed by the unique items you have managed to source and stock in the store: Frozen, ready to heat, Chinese dishes. I believe you have single-handedly changed how Chinese women make dinners at home.

.

.

.

Whiskey Tasting in Costco. (And yes, sigh, Christmas stuff in Taiwan now too...)

I became dejected as I mentally calculated the pros and cons of smuggling some of these frozen dishes in my suitcase, esp. the “Buddha Jumping Over the Wall” which traditionally takes a lot of time and work to prepare and in no friggin’ way would I even attempt to make. But you cheered me up with tasting tables, esp. this one, that I KNOW will never be seen in my Costco.

I left with souvenirs for people back in the U.S. purchased from Costco. Don’t tell me you do not find it ironic.

Either way, I am not able to escape you. You got me in and out.

You won.

Sincerely,
A loyal Costco member

p.s. Would you ever consider REVERSE-import the Costcos in Taipei into the Chicago area?

To Market, To Market

26 Replies

It always feels kind of surreal when I am home. In fact, what I called “home” is an apartment I did not grow up in. It is home simply because my parents live here, with my nephew who, instead of my two elder brothers (long story…), takes care of them.

I am a different person when I am over here for many reasons. It is even stranger to come home by myself because I am all of a sudden the lone girl in the family who everybody wants/needs to take care of. My father keeps on asking me whether I am hungry even after I have been stuffing my face non-stop. My mother won’t stop asking me whether I am cold; she is wearing a thick jacket while I, a short-sleeved t-shirt. The night when I arrived, when I was not paying attention, she unpacked my suitcases, put away all my stuff, hung up all my clothes and even folded my underwear. My nephew and his fiancée will not let me lift a finger because, even though we are only 9 years apart, I am still his aunt. I am an elder and he has to be respectful. So the rules says. Sometimes it is simply AWESOME to be Chinese.

People often ask me what I do when I go home. Eh. Nothing exciting really. I am chaperoned around to eat, eat and eat some more. I also go to a lot of department stores because that is what my mother likes to do. Judging by the crowd and the lines outside of many popular restaurants, these are also activities enjoyed by 90% of the people in the city.

Just like every other big city around the world. Right?

.

uniqlo
bunny-in-the-glass-case
this-falls-fashion
btw-nice-legs-too
food-court
drool
matcha-ice-cream
hot-pot
sushi
there-i-fixed-it

Fly Me Home

36 Replies

I grew up in an area in Taipei right next to the then only airport. I have always been fascinated by and loved airports because to me back then, airports meant adventures and exotic places that I could only dream of, and more importantly, I only got to go there when my father came home from his stints abroad and we were there to welcome him.

Now that I travel for work on a regular basis, airports are now simply a transition place. They are simply some place I have to pass by, to tolerate, before I get to where I have to go.

Airports in general do not go through drastic changes. They stay the same for a long time. And that is why whenever I step into an airport that I have been to, even from a long time ago, I immediately get this sense of familiarity.

Yeah, I have been here. I am oriented. It is not scary at all…

Of all the airports I have been to, Narita outside of Tokyo occupies a special place in my heart.  Unlike the other airports, even O’hare my “home” airport, Narita is not simply a point of transition for me.  I must have come through here more than a couple of dozen times, half of the times on my way home. It is the same each time. As I step onto the wide walkway from the jetway, my heart starts pounding. It’s like before that I have been holding my breath, not sure that I would make it home. But now I am in Tokyo, I am only one 3-hour flight away from home. It’s real. I am going home. I get excited and emotional. And then quickly, my happiness takes a detour when I remember how soon I will have to go through this airport again.

It is a long walk of complex emotions as I move from the plane, through the security check point, and then to the gate for my flight to Taipei. Sometimes I dread saying goodbye so much that I have this irrational urge to turn back.

I want to show you the best thing at the Narita Airport: the automatic beer pouring machine. Look at the perfect foam on top! In order to make this video I had to have a second beer. Oh the sacrifice I made for you guys!

.

.

I have made it a habit to take pictures of the view outside the window as I fly. Today as the plane was approaching the airport, the view outside so mesmerized me that I forgot to put my iPhone away. I ended up with 82 photos. I strung together these and the other photos I took on my previous trips to New York and Boston and made a 30-second video:

.

.

As I was going through my photos on Picasa, I noticed the Geo tagging actually showed the landing path of the plane into Narita Airport. For a dork like me, it is beyond cool.

.

.

Here is one of the pictures I took to show you the reason why I was mesmerized as the plane descended into Tokyo today.

.

WTF Wednesday vs. The Silverlining Man

39 Replies

As predicted, the midterm election results painted the map red.

.

Bloody hell!

.

Yes, yes, we got bagged. It’s 5:30 am, and I haven’t slept. I have not packed for my trip overseas, nor have I finished getting the house ready for my absence. At a time like this, we need…


The Silverlining Man!

He will deliver a different, better, more comforting perspective so we can move on…

The Silverlining Man: At least none of the Trifecta of Teabagging Crazy was elected last night.

Sharron “I look like an Asian” Angle.

Christine “Masturbation = Adultery” O’Donnell

Carl “LOL Photoshop is awesome” “Imma gonna run on this anti-gay ticket because it seems promising” Paladino

All out. For now.

Do you feel better now? Good.

Thank you, Silverlining Man!

But wait. What is it Speedhag my trusted Invisible Unicorn?

.

.

Seriously. WTF? People?

ROCK THE VOTE!

22 Replies

.

This has been how I felt and what I feared until The Rally to Restore Sanity

.

'nuff said.

.

I know many will disagree: but for me, this election is all about a (not so covert any more) culture war. “Cutting taxes & Smaller Government” to me is another code for “Compassionate Conservatism”, i.e. “I feel sorry for you man but I am not gonna share with you. Sorry. It sucks to be you I know.” The economy? You cannot have years of wrongful financial practices, an entire Wall Street in cahoot, crazy housing market bubbles and scoundrels getting fat over “I Cannot Believe It’s NOT Illegal!” business models without suffering the consequences for a painfully long duration of time.

The economy, like the flu, simply has to run its course.

The irony is when the economy finally recovers, the GOP is going to take credit for having something to do with it now that all predictions point towards their taking over the house.

I am fully aware that I am in a blessed position to preach Patience because we all know that when you have to decide to pay for the utility bills or to pay for your children’s winter clothes Patience is overrated. However, do you really think that the GOP will be able to perform miracles? Their claim to have the exclusive direct line to GOD nonetheless? When all the big businesses and all the houses with 12 bathrooms support a certain group of candidates, shouldn’t we all be just a tad suspicious?

.

Click on the picture to find your polling place!