Being Present to Life

As I get older I notice time going faster and faster. Like REALLY fast. Nowadays, 30 minutes seems like 5 minutes and 5 minutes seems like 1. And it’s not slowing down.

I first started noticing this in my 20s and 30s. It was a bit of a surprise. It’s like some hidden secret that older people know and younger people don’t.

On one level, it can be a little depressing. You realize how short life is and that oh no!– you’re gonna die at some point.

But there’s a real upside to this phenomenon and it’s that time and life become more precious because you realize you only have a limited amount of it. You can choose to use it more wisely and consciously, or not.

Some people get really busy and try to accomplish lots of things. They work harder at their career goals or set deadlines to get married and have kids.

Others slow down and really savor life. They get really present to each moment and learn to enjoy even the simple things in life. Like savoring a good meal, enjoying the endorphin rush after a good workout, spending quality time with friends. Even mundane tasks like doing the dishes or laundry can become enjoyable when you slow down and become present to life.

These approaches to life aren’t mutually exclusive and I find myself doing a little bit of both.

At any rate, at some point, you have to just say “Eh! That’s what it is” and just live each day to it fullest, whatever that means to you.

White Solipsism

Race does not exist for white people.  Not really, not as a daily reality.  They’re the majority, their values predominate and as a result, they don’t have to think about the subject very much.

If they’re liberal, a white person will engage in 5 minutes of conversation on the subject at a cocktail party and that’s it.  Many of us people of color can talk about race for hours on end and still not be done with the subject.

White people are almost always behind the ball when it comes to knowledge about race matters.  Many still conceive of race and racism in terms of the most obvious and overt examples of racism like racial slurs and open expressions of racial hostility.

The phenomenon of race today is a lot more subtle and ambiguous.  We people of color still notice when all the faces on a magazine rack are caucasian.  We notice when there’s only one minority face among 20 on some reality show.  We sit there deconstructing what all this means and doesn’t mean consciously and subconsciously.

I still have to think about whether I’m going to be dinged for being Asian when I go out on a date.  A white person might have one, maybe two experiences in their entire lives where they might have to think about whether they are being penalized for being white.  People of color, especially Black people, have to think about this a LOT more.

Talking to most white people about race is like talking to a kindergartener about Calculus.  Except for the exceptional white person, most of them just don’t “get it”.

Aware people of color, on the other hand, are subject matter experts on race and are always gleaning some new insight on the subject.  We create entire departments of academic study and write lengthy tomes on the subject.

I suppose it makes a lot of sense that white people don’t have huge insights on race.  Why would they?  It’s not in their experience.

I remember watching a documentary a couple of years ago on the experiences of little people aka dwarves.  I remember thinking, gosh, I never think about the world in terms of height.  Why would I?  I’m not short and it’s just not a daily issue for me.

That’s not to say I can’t learn something from a short person’s experience.  The same is true for a white person learning from the experiences of people of color or anyone who is part of some majority learning something from some minority.

Asian American Ambiguity vis a vis Public Displays of Racism- The Case of the Stupid Spanish Ad

Members of the Spanish Men's Basketball Team Mock Asians

We’ve seen it before.  A public figure makes some kind of racist comment or does something that’s racially offensive.  There’s a huge uproar about it.  The person at first tries to defend himself but ends up apologizing profusely.  Sometimes that person pays a price by either losing their job or resigning.  Remember Don Imus and his “Nappy Headed Ho’s” comment?  Or Michael Richards (“Kramer” from Seinfeld) and his racist rant during a stand up comedy routine?  There’s also Mel Gibson and his drunken anti-semitic tirade.

Occasionally, Asians are the object of the racist attack.  Some examples include Rosie O’Donnell’s ching-chong comments and Abercrombie & Fitch’s racist hiring and marketing practices.

The difference with Asians is that when we’re the object of derision, there seems to be less visibility in regards to the issue and less of a concerted response by the Asian community.  No one apologizes and certainly no one’s head rolls.

This is what seems to have happened in regards to the latest controversy regarding the Spanish Olympic Men’s Basketball team and their offensive mockery of Asians.

Compared to incidences that involve other communities, the story got relatively less coverage.  Just one Asian organization spoke out against it and the Spanish team was left pretty much unscathed from the incident.

Why is it that when it comes to public displays of racism against Asians, there is so much less controversy?

For one, it seems like many of the racist incidents that involve Asians seem a lot less explosive than when they happen to Black folks.  “Nappy Headed Ho’s” is obviously super offensive.  I can’t think of an equivalently harsh public incident involving Asians.  Is this reflective of the harsher racism our Black brothers and sisters face generally and historically?

A lot of times the racist incident against Asians is more ambiguous.  In the particular case of the Spanish Olympic team ad, it seems somewhat offensive but I’m not exactly sure how offensive it is.  The players are trying to mimic slanted Asian eyes but if you look carefully at the picture, they don’t seem to be doing that great of a job.  To me, it looks like they’re just pointing their index fingers towards their temples as if to say, “Look at my dumb round eyes.”

The response by the Spanish team, that they meant no malice and in fact, meant to express affection for the Chinese, reflects an ignorance separate from American PC culture.  From the picture, it doesn’t seem like they’re expressing malice- but expressing affection?  Huh?  I’m trying to fathom how that could be the case.

Maybe Asian Americans have just done a lousy job of portraying these kinds of incidents as being racist.  Again, this Spanish ad case is telling.  It took a largely non-Asian, international media to raise this issue.  And no Asian media or other organization is doing much to keep the issue alive.

It seems the Asian community apparatus for dealing with such incidents is quite underdeveloped.  It’s telling that we don’t have an equivalent Asian Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson who vociferously condemns this kind of racial insensitivity.

Are Asians just less angry about this stuff or are we more in denial about this stuff?  Except for a few bloggers on the internet (e.g., Angry Asian Man), a lot of us appear as if we don’t care.  At the least, we’re just so silent.  I hate to say this, but are we possibly being passive, in a stereotypically Asian way?

Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t get as riled up about these things.  Maybe we’re too busy studying or making money to get bothered by stupid racist stuff.  Maybe that’s a good strategy in the long run.  Get powerful and people won’t mess with you in these ways or better yet, it won’t even bug you.

Still, the Spanish ad seems to have stoked memories of racist schoolyard taunts that a lot of us Asian Americans had hoped were long gone.  My perusal of the Asian American blogosphere shows a relatively solid consensus that the ad was fucked up.  Some are pissed that yet again there’s no really organized and forceful response by the Asian community.  Ernie on 8Asians.com calls the response by the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) passive.

It’s also interesting to note the difference in reaction between the Chinese themselves and Asian Americans.  The Chinese seemed to shrug it off.  Asians who grew up in Asia have virtually no concept of what it’s like to be teased as a child for being Asian.  That’s a phenomenon Asian Americans experience.

Overall, I think it’s terrible that the Spanish Men’s Basketball team made the ad.  It was dumb and unnecessary.  I’m glad the issue got some attention though and I hope the Spanish team (and the rest of the world) learned something out of it.

Do I want to see heads roll?  Probably not.  But to the Spanish Men’s Olympic Basketball team, I say, “Don’t even think about doing this again.”

Profit Motive

How much money do you want to make in life? This is a question many of us ponder.

In some ways, the answer is easy. We all want to make bookoo bucks. Who wouldn’t? The problem is that it usually takes a lot to make a lot of money- including hard work, time and effort. Some brains and ingenuity doesn’t hurt either.

The better question is, what are you willing to do to make a lot of money.

There is a theory that says a certain percentage of the population will always be way richer than the rest of us no matter how we construct society. According to this theory, if you leveled society and brought everybody, rich or poor, back down to zero and made them start over, within 5 years the previous top 5% of society would be rich again.

The idea here is that there is a certain percentage of the population that is driven enough and has enough talent to make a lot of money. No matter what you do to them, they will always figure out a way to make money.

That’s what happened with China and Cuba in the 20th century. Communist revolutions in both countries only succeeded in driving out the bourgeoisie who went elsewhere and made a lot of money.

You don’t want to stigmatize profit motive as is done under Socialism because it merely drives it underground. It’s like sex. We all have some need for money. Better to admit it and find healthy ways to pursue it, as is done under Capitalism.

So in our post-Socialist world, each of us is faced with the question of how much money we want and what we’re willing to do to get it. I personally have not figured out the answer to this question for myself. Or maybe I have, by the actions I’ve taken, and I’m not willing to admit it.

For me as a single gay man, this question is highly individualistic. It’s centered around how much I need or want and no one else. If I were a married straight man, profit motive would be linked to the welfare of my wife and kids.

In Asian societies, profit motive is highly centered around the family unit. For example, in Korean society, people have a less pronounced individual identity when it comes to money-making and work towards profit that benefits the family unit. Personally, I feel money-making in this context is more meaningful because it’s linked to the welfare of the family and not just your individual self. The nuclear family and not the individual is the basic unit of economic production and need. Korean anthropologists call this phenomenon “family egotism”.

On a grand scale, this led to the development of “chaebols” or family conglomerates in South Korea. Some better known ones include Samsung, LG and Hyundai.

Some of my friends really love money and are willing to make the trade offs necessary to get it. They’re pretty rich. Others lack either the desire or the willingness to work for it and are not making as much.

There’s no right answer to this. Just the answer you ultimately find for yourself.

China’s Moment Under the Sun

Japan did it in 1964.  Mexico in 1968.  South Korea in 1988.  Now China is hosting the Olympics.  For a developing country, the significance is huge.  It means that your country has reached a certain mark of development.  In order to host an event on the scale of the Olympics, you need a certain amount of built-up infrastructure- sporting venues, transportation systems, decent accommodations- that a poor country cannot provide.

It’s a nice way for a country to assess its accomplishments and showcase it for the world.  For China, these accomplishments include lifting 255 million people out of poverty in the last 20 years and its massive ascendancy in the global economy.  It maintains a breakneck growth rate of 10% per year and there’s no signs of slowing down.  China is now the 3rd largest economy in the world.  We all know China is the wave of the future.

One thing that is different for China, as compared to Japan or South Korea, is the amount of political controversy associated with its hosting of the Olympics.  Tibetans’ worldwide protests have been well-publicized and everyone’s nervous about terrorist attacks.  Already, the separatist Turkistan Islamic Party has claimed responsibility for several attacks and explosions in the western province of Xinjiang and some deranged idiot has murdered an American.

What does this say about China?  Well, it probably means that there are a lot of dissident groups unsatisfied with China’s hegemonic domination and suppression of democracy and human rights- the Tibetans, Muslim separatist groups, the Falun gong, pro-democracy advocates to name a few.  It really doesn’t help that the Chinese government censors the internet.  Maybe some of this protest just comes along with being a big country.  South Korea didn’t have these problems because it doesn’t have sizable minorities to oppress.

Still, it seems that the Chinese are getting their moment under the sun.  The Chinese themselves are feeling extremely proud right now.  They probably deserve to feel this way given all their accomplishments in the last 25 years.

An Homage to New Wave

Picture it.  Southern California,  1982.  On a warm, balmy weekday afternoon, a junior high kid comes home from school and flips on the TV.  Richard Blade’s “VH1″ is on.  They play a video of “Love Plus One” by Haircut 100.

The song is catchy.  It has an uplifting beat.  It has a soothing tropical feel but the energetic pulsations make him want to jump off the couch and dance.  It is way cool.  The kid has never heard anything like it and is smitten.

With its mixture of African beats, interesting percussions, an energetic sax and cool synthesizer arrangements, ”Love Plus One” took disparate yet familiar musical elements and combined them into a new unique sound.

This new sound was called New Wave, which went on to become the greatest cultural legacy of the 1980s.  With its cool techno sounds and innovative use of synthesizers, New Wave definitely left its mark on musical history.

Who can forget bands like Duran Duran, the Culture Club, the B-52s, and the Cure?  If you’re between the ages of 35 and 45, there’s a very good chance that New Wave holds a special place in your heart.

New Wave made dance music popular again after disco died and rock resurfaced in the late 1970s.  A great deal of it came out of England.  LA produced its own share of cool bands like Berlin, the Go-Go’s, Missing Persons and X.  It seemed like LA was at the musical epicenter of the universe at the time.  LA people:  remember KROQ- “The Rock of the 80s”?

There were so many cool sub musical trends associated with New Wave- ska, rockabilly, new ro, mod.  The fashion and styles- Flock of Seagull haircuts, Devo hats, neon clothes- were truly unforgettable.  Some of the best dressed bands in history were New Wave bands,  e.g., ABC and Spandau Ballet.

With band names like Kajagoogoo, Oingo Boingo and BowWowWow, you couldn’t beat New Wave bands for cookiness.

Gay people really influenced New Wave.  The list of gay New Wave groups is long- Soft Cell, Erasure, The Communards, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, to name a few.  Many gay men my age remember the subconscious connections we felt to these gay artists and identify heavily with the music in this period.

In general there was a lot of androgyny, e.g., David Bowie.  Somehow, Adam Ant made make up on a guy look cool!

New Wave brought gays and straights together.  There were lots of mixed night clubs where gay and straight danced next to each other harmoniously.  For some reason, those clubs don’t exist anymore.

A lot of Asians love New Wave.  I think New Order was played at EVERY SINGLE Asian dance party I went to during college.

Hardcore New Wavers know that really good New Wave never went mainstream- Blancmange, OMD, early Tears for Fears, and early Simple Minds.  With its truly innovative use of computer synthesizers and prolific output, Depeche Mode was the godfather of New Wave.

I really miss New Wave.  I’ll never fully get it out of my system and I don’t want to.  Every time there’s some kind of 80s revival club or party, I go.  Perhaps every generation is nostalgic about the music they grew up with but it really seemed like New Wave was cutting edge, different, original, innovative.  That’s why we called it- New Wave.

A Strange & Tortured Relationship- Koreans and the English Language

Koreans have a strange and tortured relationship with the English language.  Many of them feel inferior and inadequate for not speaking it well.  They desperately want to learn it and they spend inordinate amounts of time and energy to that end.  They judge each other on how well they speak English but none are taught it very well in school.

As a nation, Koreans spend billions of dollars and millions of man hours trying to master the English language but so few ever really get good at it.  Why?

For one, Korean is just so different from the English language.  Try to imagine a language where the grammar is so different that all the sentences seem like they are in completely reverse order.  In Korean, the “to be” verb is at the end of the sentence.  As a result, Koreans structure their thinking and logic very differently from English speakers and they end up having enormous difficulty deciphering even slightly complex sentences in the English language.

For Koreans, English sounds are very alien.  This is difficult for me to say but the Korean accent has its own uniquely “fobby” sound and Koreans are self-conscious of this fact.  What’s more, even with a lot of strenuous effort, many Koreans cannot fully shake their accent.

For Koreans, it takes PhD-like, herculean efforts to master the English language.  Even after years of intense study, many are still not good at it.

Korea (and Japan) are the only countries in the world where the intelligentsia cannot speak English well.  You’ll never hear the President of Korea speaking English- because he can’t.

The educated classes in many other countries know English either due to the legacy of colonialism (e.g., India, the Phillippines) or due to their own language’s proximity to English (e.g., all the Indo-European languages).

The perception in Korea is that Koreans must learn English in order to survive in the global economy.  How true is this?

There is merit to this sentiment since the global economy is obviously dominated by the use of English.  However, Koreans might want to remember that South Korea is the 13th largest economy in the world today, an accomplishment they achieved without ever learning to speak English very well.

Also, 98% of Koreans will live out their entire lives on the Korean peninsula where Korean is spoken 98% of the time.  Given this, is English really THAT necessary to the average Korean?  It’s certainly not worth all the stress and anxiety that they put themselves through.

Lurking underneath this intense drive to learn English is still an underlying nationalistic resentment for having to learn English at all.  When I taught English at a language institute in Korea in the early 1990s, I always had one or two students who I could tell would never learn English well because they were so culturally rigid and narrow-minded.  Their resentment at having to learn this alien language was palpable.

Koreans learn English by rote and not as the breathing, living language that it is.  They learn the grammar and memorize words, resulting in a lot of people who can read and maybe write basic English, but can’t speak or really understand it.

Besides getting the Korean government to reform the way English is taught in Korea, I would tell Koreans who want to learn English to keep in mind and do the following:

1) Language is intimately intertwined with culture. It reflects the values, customs and sentiments of a people.  If you really want to learn English, make friends with native English speakers and engage them in conversation.  If you have the opportunity, live in America for a while and don’t hang around other Koreans when you’re there.  Be prepared for a lot of culture shock and living with a lot of “cultural and linguistic ambiguity.”

2) Language is also functional. Think of the ways and context in which you will use English and tailor your language learning around those things first.  For example, if you plan to become a nurse or something in the U.S. learn the English you’ll need to do that (e.g., medical terms, conversing with patients) and tailor your English learning around that first.

3) Know the animal you’re up against. You will have to expend A LOT more energy and effort than a European person learning English or if you were learning Japanese, which has a grammar structure similar to Korean.

4) Be ready to swallow your pride big time. You have to have thick skin when you learn a language because you will make many mistakes and embarrass yourself.  Lots of Koreans are unwilling to let go of their egos and then they never get better at English.

5) Don’t make language learning so loaded. Keep a healthy sense of self and perspective on this.  Americans who learn Korean should theoretically have as many difficulties as Koreans who learn English but they don’t because there isn’t as much at stake for them, economically or psychologically.

Geopolitical realities that favor Americans aren’t going to change anytime soon but in the meantime, you can maintain a healthy and reasonable sense of Korean pride and identity while you’re learning English.  It will make the process of learning English easier and you might even learn it faster.

Potato Queens

Potato queens are gay Asian men who are primarily attracted to white men.

There are two types of potato queens. The first type was raised in the U.S. and is assimilated into American culture. He usually doesn’t speak an Asian language and has little exposure to a dominant Asian-centered reality. He tends not to hang out with other Asians. His attraction to white guys may be linked to feelings of inferiority and self-hate as an Asian person.

The other type of potato queen comes directly from Asia. He was born and raised there and has no problems with his cultural identity. He is attracted to white men and western culture because of the glamorized images of westerners he sees in Asia and/or because he’s trying to escape the stifling repression of gays in his home country. The West represents freedom to him.

The etiology is different but the end result with both these types is a desire for white men.

To what extent does potato-queenism pervade the gay Asian male community in the U.S.? My perusal of Yahoo personals shows a spectrum of desire among gay Asian men. There are the hardcore potato queens but many of the ads of gay Asian men say they are open to both Asian and white men or all types. There are very few “sticky rice” (Asian men who prefer other Asian men) ads which seems to confirm what I stated in an earlier post “A Strangely Inverted Community”, that sticky rice are a minority among gay Asians in the U.S.

Overall, it seems that gay Asian men in the U.S. lean towards potato-queenism. This inures to the benefit of gay white men who can count on a large pool of ready and willing Asian men to service them. Oftentimes too an older white man can “cash in” his whiteness for a younger Asian man.

Here’s an excerpt from one blog describing a scene at Cafe’ Flore in the Castro in the Spring of 2007:

Indeed, almost half of the couples (if they were couples) were interracial-a white male and an Asian male. This trend prevails among large group of guys [sic] as well… I agree most of the GAM were young (20s) and most of the GWM were older (40s to 50s)… My friend Cary, who is now 40, 5′10, blue eyes, pure white skin, and a muscle jock, says that anytime he walks into a gay coffee shop, gay bar, or gay event, gay Asian men always stare. He recently traveled to Taiwan and every day in the gym, GAM offer themselves to him openly. But Ken said this is true for the older white men as well.

The Asian guy has to trade in his youth in order to get the whiteness, underscoring the notion that being Asian is a liability. Fortunately, nowadays it seems there are more and more white male-Asian male couples who seem more equivalent in age.

Also, nowadays in the Castro, there seems to be a lot more diversity in general with interracial couples of all types. Look carefully and you’ll notice that a lot of this diversity stems from the presence of a lot of Asians and a lot of these interracial couples are white male-Asian male couples. The heavy duty “lobbying” of potato queens to be included in the mainstream gay community is “paying off”. I don’t notice nearly as many Black men.