Category Archives: random

Katy Perry as “Geisha” at AMA sparks a serious discussion on multiculturalism, political correctness, authenticity and appropriation.

Only in my dream.

This post could also have been titled, “Why women of Asian descent, especially those with the ‘privilege’ of living in the West, are fucking tired of seeing images of Geisha representing US when so few of people that look like ME (if I were younger and needed a role model in pop culture, on the stage, in celeb magazines, in my formative years) are properly represented on TV shows, in the movies, on the stage, and heck yes, even in gossip magazines.”

Or simply, “That is not a fucking Kimono (& I’d have been less stabby if this many people were not calling it an ‘authentic’ performance)”

Or, how about this? “Dear stupid, cherry blossoms, rice paper screens and umbrellas do not ‘authentic’ Japan make”

Or, we could have gone with, “Stop saying it is AUTHENTIC when you clearly have no idea what the heck you are talking about.”

Or, “That is not a ‘traditional Japanese dress’, Stupid. Authenticity has nothing to do with it.”

Or, “Dear Katy Perry, thank you for giving the ‘traditional Asian’ dress a sexy high slit. Now it’s a lot easier for me to run to serve my masters.”

I chuckled at this one myself: “Katy Perry ventured into fashion design for hostesses at pretentious Asian fusion restaurants”

To be honest? I give up.

Let’s just stick with a caption contest, shall we?

I’ll go first.

Thank goodness my team did not make me tape my eyes.

Ok. Your turn.

Whoosh!

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Quick recap because I know the Internet is dying to know what’s happening in my neck of the woods.

Ok. Fine. Quick recap because I am sitting at the airport lounge waiting for my delayed flight to SFO, and I can’t think straight on less than 3-hour sleep.

1. I went to BlogHer. I went. I saw. I conquered.

Ok. Not really.

There’s so much I’d like to include in my trip report: the awesome people I met & even hung out for extended length of time, including Naptime (who kept me level and from going to the deep end) & Neil Kramer (now you all are jealous, ikr?!)

http://instagram.com/p/cZ7yJ-Qgwo/

(The Animated Woman & our new friend whose parents also came from Taiwan so who’s almost like my adopted daughter instantly)

http://instagram.com/p/cQqzORH0xy/

How three awesome ladies & myself managed to ~~steal~~ walk away with pieces of giant display boards. (Long story. Post later)

How I still hated moments of events such as this. (Hint: not anybody else’s fault but my own)

And more, including, identity crisis! Am I or am I not an introvert? Neil Kramer called me out because he witnessed my social-butterfly insanity at the exhibit hall. Neil, it’s because I felt bad for those people having to stand there and wait for people to come up and say hello! I was projecting and empathizing. I did forget that PR/Agency/marketing people tend to be extroverts so I didn’t have to feel bad for them. They were most likely not scared or embarrassed or wishing the world would suddenly come to an end.

I am of course assuming that no introvert would be masochistic enough to find a job that requires them to approach complete strangers out in the open and constantly.

2. I went to Lollapalooza.

http://instagram.com/p/cwdqbfn00K/

I went. I saw. I conquered.

Well, I went and I SAW.

Fortunately not THIS. [NSFW]

The Cure sang Friday I’m In Love LIVE.

I also would like the Internet to know that I was not the oldest person at Lolla despite what some people warned me. Nor was I the least hip. I did not feel any judging (a la bouncers outside trendy clubs) and was just happy to be amongst thousands of others who were also just happy being there. Clearly the naysayers have never been themselves. Hearsay.

Bucket list checked.

3. I learned that WEEDS & DRUGS still happen at musical festivals even though we’re not in the 1960s any more.

I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, There sure are a lot of dead skunks in the park.”

Duh? I know I know. I know now.

I did not know at first that’s what cheap weeds smell like. Dead skunks. Or those were not cigarettes that people kept on lighting up and held in a peculiar way.

I was amused (and perhaps I should have been alarmed?) when I noticed some guy sitting on the ground who casually took out a Ziploc bag and gingerly poured the content into a strip of paper, and then started rolling it…

Like it was the most natural thing to do in the world, just right there, out in the open, surrounded by thousands of people.

4. Camping trip this past weekend.

Yellowstone Lake State Park in Wisconsin is quite awesome especially for boating activities such as kayaking and canoeing. My choice for a boat was a paddle boat and I did not capsize! Granted the old man said, “I have never seen those suckers capsize in my life.” But I was skeptical.

GTG. Plane leaving. Catch you on the other side!

Hotels

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My co-worker once told me that my family should have a reality TV show because ridiculous things happen to us all the time. Actually, I admit: what he really meant was that we are a family of ridiculous inclination and we make ridiculous decisions and do ridiculous things.

“Hilarity ensued.”

I should have a plaque of these words hanging in our family room.

We are putting new floors in for the house this week. We did not realize that we had to completely vacate the first floor before the workers could start.

No problem. We all got a rude awakening early Tuesday morning. We moved everything (except the large pieces of furniture) off the floor, the china cabinet, the buffet table, the wine cabinet, bookcases and shelves in a record time of 3 hours. I was tearfully grateful to have a teenage son that morning.

Then I was told that starting today, we had to vacate the house because of the sanding and the staining.

THIS IS AWESOME.

I HAPPEN TO LOVE HOTELS!

I really do.

I love them so much that when I am on a business trip I often miss the chance to explore the city fully because I spend most of the time enjoying the hotel, that I used to bid on Priceline for $50 or less a night to stay in hotels, sometimes within 5 minutes drive from my house, just because.

I have fond childhood memories of my mom hiding me in the laundry cart or under the service cart to sneak me into the hotels that she worked at when she could not find somebody to watch me. Hotels to me at that time were fantastical places where super wealthy people stayed when they were not at home. I did not know the concept of vacation back then – I don’t remember my parents ever taking any “vacation”, and my family certainly had never taken trips together to faraway places for fun. The guests at the hotels always looked so grand and happy. Some frequent guests even brought me candy, and sometimes even chocolate truffles [worth their weight in gold to a child]! The ladies dressed beautifully and spoke in soft voices, and plus, they smelled nice, like flowers.

Hotels were where you were taken care of, where your towels and sheets smelled like sunshine, your bed was big and soft and bounced when you jumped on it. My mother was an expert bed maker (she kind of had to): she made beds with perfect “hotel corners”, and they looked like rectangular boxes with sheets pulled so tight that you could see the sharp angles at the foot of the bed.

Compared to the regular cramped apartments in Taipei, hotels seemed like palaces with modern amenities. The bathroom itself was a wonder – a toilet that worked perfectly, tiles with no dirt or moldy spots in between, and a bathtub so big and CLEAN that you could soak your entire body in.

NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ANTS OR COCKROACHES.

and the most wondrous thing of them all:

AIR CONDITIONING.

To this day my favorite thing about staying in a hotel is to sleep in a cool room with a soft comforter pulled over my face.

Thus began our adventure in three different hotels on three consecutive nights.

Renaissance/Marriott tonight.

Tomorrow onto Starwood.

On Friday, we are checking into an IHG hotel.

Collect all three!

I guess my co-worker was onto something.

“Hilarity ensued…”

I’ll cry if I want to…

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It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.

A is for Advil I have been taking for my pounding headaches and sore throat.

B is for Benadryl for watery eyes, sneezing and runny nose.

C is for COLD as in WHY DO I HAVE TO COME DOWN WITH A BAD COLD ON MY BIRTHDAY OF ALL DAYS?!

D is for Depression that I feel on every single one of my birthday since the third grade.

…

You get my drift.

On my birthday I have learned to keep my expectations extremely low. In fact, I’ve learned to go through life with no expectations from anybody. Probably due to the cold virus, I’ve lost my self-defense mechanism and failed to put up my mental wall and accidentally caused some accidental birthday expectations breach.

I have also been trying to be more grateful for what I am blessed with. So I will count my blessings on my birthday:

I am grateful that it rained today.

I am grateful for the perfect excuse to sleep through most of the day. Perhaps sleeping through the day is the way to go for the rest of my birthdays.

I am grateful that my youngest needed to wake me up from my slumber because he and his brother were hungry and I, it seemed, was the only person who knew how to cook for them. This was important because otherwise I would have missed dinner.

I am grateful for the excellent fish and shrimp tacos and the two big giant glasses of epic blueberry Mojitos for dinner in a nice cantina.

Do they grant do-overs for birthdays? I will take one when I turn 80.

Fifty Minutes

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The tornado touched down in Moore, OK on May 20. It stayed on the ground for approximately 50 minutes.

I get my daily doses of news from the radio & mobile news summary during my 1.5-hour commute, each way. When you were simply listening to a narrative of what happened, it was hard to grasp the severity of devastation in Moore at first. As my car inched along in highway traffic, I heard this apparently common practice described matter-of-factly,

They have to actually post street signs so people can recognize where the streets are.

The realization hit me so hard that I sucked in my breath.

FIFTY. MINUTES.

(Photo credit: Time.com)

This is what happened after a tornado cut through a 1.3-mile wide and 17-mile long destructive track.

I have not been able to look at the images and video footage until now. I still can’t look at the photos of children being carried out from the decimated schools with piles of unrecognizable debris in the background without suffering an attack of guilt + anxiety. It’s not that we live in Tornado Alley, of course. I hear these stories of how some parents had made the judgment (and which turned out to be right) call to pick their kids up from the schools that collapsed. I was happy for them, glad to hear the good news in the midst of everything, yet a voice says, “You would not have made it in time if it happened here.”

The first funeral for one of the 24 victims was held yesterday. Her name was Antonia Candelaria. She was 9. Antonia, or Tonie as she was called, was found in the rubble with her best friend, Emily Conatzer.

If you are thinking of making a (or more) donation, in addition to Red Cross, OK Governor has established the OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund, in coordination with the United Way of Central Oklahoma, to assist with the long-term needs of victims.

Fab, dahling.

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I really should be writing a post about my 8-day, 6-night, 3-country, 2-train-ride, 1000+-photo caper in Europe. For now though, I just want to give Fab.com a shoutout. You made my day. First with this real product called Ostrichpillow…

Then a great reminder for all…

Story of My Life

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One of my 10-year-old’s favorite conversation starters with me is the fact that I have a Ph.D. in theatre (and from a very prestigious program and school too. Please allow me to brag. I kind of need a little bit ego booster lately. In addition, I am reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In and felt vindicated when she said that women do not share with others our accomplishments often enough for fear of not being liked. But of course, I digress)

Perhaps because children are more honest and straightforward, they instinctively know the most vulnerable place to aim? Or perhaps my child, Mr. Monk, is a future David Frost in the making. Either way, he has a talent of asking me questions that make me feel cornered. I have no answer to any of them, or perhaps I simply don’t want to answer. Afraid to.

“And you are not using your degree at all? Then why did you get it?”

“Isn’t it a waste?”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Is anything that you learned useful?”

“What good is your Ph.D. degree then?”

“Why didn’t you do something with it? Why didn’t you fulfill your potential?” Yup, he said that.

We would be doomed if our kids ever turn the table and ask us to assess our lives with the encouraging words that we use to inspire them.

“Have you reached for the stars and followed your dreams?”

“Have you lived your life to the fullest?”

“Why not?”

And we’d have to bite our tongue.

Finally, after much pestering which at that moment felt more like missile attacks, I looked him in the eye and confessed, “The reason why I refrain from answering these questions of yours, about why I did not do more with my life, is because anything that I want to say, if I am being honest, may be misinterpreted as I regret having ‘this life’.”

How apropos then that soon after our unavoidable heart-to-heart, we moved everything out from the basement and I decided that it’s time I threw away the research material for my dissertation.

The box contains three years of my life and more than ten years of secret self-delusion that I am a research scholar/academic/intellectual at large.

Farewell to secret double life that never was. I only wish that I could have set it ablaze to send it off in style instead of unceremoniously dumping it into the recycling bin.

Story of my life.

“I have to tell you” & other poems

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I have been prowling the streets of Poetry Foundation late at night, identifying victims. You could see this as an easy way out for a severe case of blogger’s block if you wish. But sometimes, brevity is gold, and Ms. Grossman masters it like a badass patron goddess.

I have to tell you by Dorothea Grossman

I have to tell you,

there are times when

the sun strikes me

like a gong,

and I remember everything,

even your ears.

It is not so much that I miss you by Dorothea Grossman

It is not so much that I miss you

as the remembering

which I suppose is a form of missing

except more positive,

like the time of the blackout

when fear was my first response

followed by love of the dark.

I knew something was wrong by Dorothea Grossman

I knew something was wrong

the day I tried to pick up a

small piece of sunlight

and it slithered through my fingers,

not wanting to take shape.

Everything else stayed the same—

the chairs and the carpet

and all the corners

where the waiting continued.

I Hate Valentine’s Day

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Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 10.24.20 AM

As much as I hate Mother’s Day, my own birthday, I hate Valentine’s Day more. To be completely honest, it is because these holidays set up expectations despite my resistance and I inevitably am disappointed. I am a Cancer so my natural reaction is to set up walls around myself when these days come around. Call me passive aggressive if you wish but the defense mechanism has been keeping me sane for years. If I don’t acknowledge it, it ceases to exist and cannot hurt me.

I am not giving anybody any Valentine and therefore I am not expecting any. I am however going to see Die Hard 5. I am genuinely psyched. Can’t explain why. Yippe-ki–yay Motherf—! Also, I am buying shoes, and they will all be retroactively credited towards Valentine’s Day gifts.

I do however want to talk to you about love poems. Don’t fret. I am not going sentimental on you. I found a gem and want to share it with you. I guarantee it will make you smile especially if you hate Valentine’s Day as much as I do. Thank you so much. Oh, you are so welcome.

I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t by Richard Brautigan

I feel horrible. She doesn’t

love me and I wander around

the house like a sewing machine

that’s just finished sewing

a turd to a garbage can lid.

In all seriousness though, my favorite poem happens to be a love poem, albeit a sad one. Whenever I read it, I could see myself sitting in a departing taxi, speeding away, as I turn to look at the ever diminishing object of my affection. My eyes well up. For naught. Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all. Try anyway.

The Taxi by Amy Lowell

When I go away from you

The world beats dead

Like a slackened drum.

I call out for you against the jutted stars

And shout into the ridges of the wind.

Streets coming fast,

One after the other,

Wedge you away from me,

And the lamps of the city prick my eyes

So that I can no longer see your face.

Why should I leave you,

To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

Random Randomness

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I confess the reason why I took to Twitter so passionately was because I am the ultimate “idea man”. You know, like those people that go in front of movie studios execs to pitch movie ideas? (I learned of the movie industry from TV shows so YMMV) I have lots of one-liner ideas but that is the extent of my “genius”. Every day I walk through life making running commentaries on people I see, things I observe, news I hear, and [invisible] thought bubbles that pop up over my head. Not to mention the memes and quotes that make me laugh as I rapidly scroll through Facebook streams on my phone.

Oh, I should write about THAT.

I’d open my laptop, jotting a couple of lines down, and immediately running out of steam.

Dead. Nothing. Void. Hollow caverns echoing with the witty one-liners.

“There should never be a BUT following a true apology. Lance Armstrong apologizes like my husband.”

“Manti Te’o would have stood out like a sore thumb in NFL since he’d probably be the most faithful and gentlemanly boyfriend amongst all the NFL players.”

“Frankly I could care less that he lied. I am more concerned about the culture that forced Manti Te’o to fabricate a girlfriend who died of a [fake] tragic death.”

Echo. Echo. Echo.

I hope you will forgive me for the mental purge here. My brains are hurting with all the echo. Ok, smart ass. I know you can’t really get rid of echo by “purging” them. It’s just a figure of speech though I am definitely mixing analogies here.

I am sitting inside the train station again on a Saturday morning, waiting for Mr. Monk, my 10-year-old boy, to get out of the weekly religious class run by a Catholic Church that more than one Catholics have told me is TOO conservative even for them. There are reasons we are keeping him there and I will not get into them. Suffice it to say that my sons and I have had a lot of great discussions and I hope, we are “training” them to be critical thinkers.

What don’t kill you will only make you stronger.

What does it say about me that I love being in a crowd of strangers and feeling alive amongst the hustle and bustle? Invisible yet alive. This is the kind of crowd different from say, going to a conference or a party. There is no pressure, no obligation, no anticipation to socialize with each other. And absolutely no networking. I ABHOR the concept of “networking” by the way. I’d rather die. There I said it. Probably why I will never get ahead on the career ladder. I wish for my kids super-duper Google-Fiber-grade networking capability (ha ha I slay me). That’s all that matters nowadays isn’t it no matter what kind of job you are holding?

Got my new Kindle Paperwhite this week. I could not shut up about it, I know. I am sorry, ok? Leading to the moment before Marvin arrived (yes, I named my Kindle Marvin. 2 points if you guess Marvin who?) I had been restless, full of anticipation. I have never felt such excitement since… I can’t remember really. I lead a pathetic existence, yes. Now I curl up with Marvin in bed in the dark, caressing his comfortingly textured, paradoxically smooth skin (and promptly fall asleep. I like the concept of reading though). In the recess of my consciousness however I cry, “Traitor!” indignant for my deep love of rubbing my fingers with a book page in between, feeling the heft of somebody else’s words and thoughts in my palm.

Mr. Monk inherited the ex-Marvin now named Tardis. “Bigger on the inside”, get it? 10% into The Hobbit, he exclaimed, “I love Kindle!” he who previously had adamantly been on an anti-electronic-book tirade. “It is just so amazing. It’s like a book but more awe…” I held my tongue that wanted to argue as he curled up in bed with Tardis, so absorbed by what was happening in The Hobbit that he did not even bother to finish his sentence.

Facebook introduced GRAPH SEARCH this week. To me it boiled down to one thing: Discoverability. They are not changing their privacy policies per se and you continue to keep your privacy settings. The biggest (only?) difference now is that we can no longer afford to mindlessly LIKE or comment. Your friends will now see what you are liking and commenting on on their streams. We need to watch for WHAT we are liking, and if you are Interneting at work, WHEN you are liking because obviously when you are LIKING you are not WORKING.

I am not liking this.

A friend of mine noticed that I LIKED this article:

I Can’t Stop Looking at These South Korean Women Who’ve Had Plastic Surgery (thank goodness it is not something I’d be ashamed of when caught liking) and shared a piece of wisdom from Tina Fey with me. Of course a long tirade swirled inside my head that would have become an awesome blog post were I able to form cohesive sentences and string them together logically into paragraphs. Instead, Imma taking the easy way out. Ctrl C. Ctrl V. SHARE.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…