03.31.09

Taiwan trip 4/7 ~ 5/25 — Japan trip ~~8/1/2009

Posted in Uncategorized at 11:50 pm by kyrias

Further edited on 4-28-2009 in red, please read.

Edited 4-16-2009 in bold

I’m going to Taiwan/Shanghai/Japan for a month and a half.

I have no idea how often I’ll have access to the Internet, so posting will be sporadic at best, except for the posts that are being moved from the old blog.

No internets. Turns out that we’ll be living in a temple for most of this trip, so no internets. :(

Estyria, as a result of no electric all day when touristing, is currently not progressing. Very sad.

I’ll be retro-posting diary entries that I managed to scribble down. So scroll down a bit or go back a page to see if there’s anything new.

I think I’m going to be going to Japan with my brother to take Japanese lessons. Sadly, this will mean that I will miss the lovely opportunity to live with Riot if she decides to move in for a month and that I will miss Mr. P’s graduation party. That I will further miss all my housemates and the sanity of 136 Perkins is implicit. *sad face* However. Living in Japan for a month sounds like immense amounts of win with huge chances of large amounts of fail. The only good news is that I’ll be in Shanghai for about a month waiting for my brother to show up so we can head out to Japan together, which means more Internets for me. Not that I’ll be able to take advantage of about 80% of the internet, possibly including my own blog, because of the fucking firewall of China, but I’ll be on MSN and AIM. Yey. I tried to lobby for going back to the US and coming back, but the money gods say no. So.

03.30.09

Damn barbaric notions and globalism

Posted in life tagged at 12:03 am by kyrias

Lunch hour.

The other day I was complaining to a friend about the one hour lunch hour. In my opinion, the practice of the siesta should never have gone out of vogue.

There’s nothing better than to take a leisurely, savoury meal and then to unwind with a book or nap for 30 minutes afterwards. This, running off for a frappachino and croissant or power-juice drink and salad, hurriedly gulped down in 30 minutes or left dismantled in plates during a noon-meeting — barbarism, plain and simple.

I don’t see how they expect workers to be more productive with such practices in place. In my opinion, they’re lucky if people don’t out and out rebel in those countries where it used to be the norm to have an afternoon rest. Those European countries where they have lunch hours that span 3-4 hours have the right idea, IMO. Much, much better to have extended hours than to cram everything into one little section of time.

I’ve thought about it, and I reckon that I’d much rather have the option of going home, fixing myself a nice lunch, sit down with my family and chat for a bit over lunch and maybe taking a short nap with a longer work day rather than the slap-dash sandwich affairs hurriedly swallowed in a stairwell somewhere for fear of over-running the one-hour mark.

How one digests properly like that I’ll never know.

Blegh, pre-industrialization practices indeed. I’ve the idea that we need to keep at least some of ‘em around.

03.29.09

If you think you’ve seen it before…

Posted in Blog admin at 12:18 am by kyrias

Then you probably have.

I’m currently in the process of moving some of my posts over from my old blog. Specifically those which are more fit for public consumption.

Then I might or might not continue using the old blog as just a personal venting place.

I also might or might not go back and read through all of my own posts here and re-tag them, perhaps even try harder at categorizing them. Sometimes I’m not quite sure what I’ve posted before, and I think the tags will make it easier to figure out what’s already been flogged to death already.

Not that I really have many readers who’ve read back through the archives, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter. :P

03.28.09

Earth Hour — are you doing it?

Posted in Environment tagged at 12:01 am by kyrias

The World Wildlife Fund is asking everyone to turn off the lights from 8:30-9:30pm tonight to “cast a vote for Earth“.

JR Raphael is taking it one step further and saying to turn off everything that actively uses electricity. I wonder if he’s going to unplug his fridge too?

I think I’d be up for it if I were back in Somerville with my friends.

Hey, we could light some candles and play board games.

As it is, I’m going to be with my parents and I have a niggling suspicion that they’re not going to be up for it. Not to mention my brother.

Oh well. This is the sort of feel good, gimmicky thing that is really only fun with a group of friends.

I’m pretty positive that our government wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care exactly how many people turned off their lights for one hour. I’m also almost certain that doing this is just another sort of band-aid people who aren’t really living green slap on their conscience without actually bothering to do something more concrete on a daily basis — go sustainably, locovore-ally vegan, for example. :)

Although — if you want some impetus, abelle has a lovely success story of how Sydney cut its energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour.

And doesn’t getting married by candlelight sound romantic?

As for me, if I can’t convince my family, I guess I’ll wait for 2010.

03.27.09

Just a woman

Posted in life tagged , at 12:32 am by kyrias

I was watching Renovation Realities on HGTV and it was about this couple who wanted to build a deck in their yard. They had been overconfident and budgeted 6 days for the project. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except they had also invited their friends and family to a party on said deck on the day they decided they would be done.

Alright. It’s always entertaining to watch people fall to hubris.

What I didn’t expect was that the wife, Anna, was a whiny brat.

She sulked, she cried, she whined, she essentially just threw an endless tantrum on TV.

It honestly appeared like she wanted her husband to do all the work, and when he wanted her to help, she would throw a fit. When it finally appeared like they weren’t going to be able to do it on their own, she said: “I’m just a woman and I can’t do all that much.”

When the neighbor was helping, she chirped: “Now Anna doesn’t have to haul wood anymore!” I would have given a lot to have been able to know what the neighbor was thinking in response to that.

Then, when her husband was working late into the night to try and finish on time, she said, after complaining that he was working into the night and not stopping: “I don’t know many wives who would do this with their husbands.”

Excuse me?

First you essentially brat out of helping in any significant manner by pulling the sex card, but now you’re complaining that he’s trying to finish so you two can throw the party you invited all your friends to?

Wow. Real classy.

I get so frustrated when I see women like this. What is it about our society that teaches women that it’s ok to act like this? To behave like a spoiled child just because she happens to have a vagina? That it’s alright to not even try to help out with “masculine” tasks because of being “just a woman”?

Or screw it being a masculine task. She was part of wanting a deck, yet she wasn’t prepared to do anything to get it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I usually try to get Caesura to get the heavy stuff. I’m short and I’m a wimp in terms of upper arm strength.

However, I really don’t think that I would have thrown a hissy fit about being asked to shovel some cement debris in order to build a deck that I wanted. Or cried about having to help move some lumber.

Throwing feminism back some decades is srs bzness, kay?

03.26.09

Send ‘em both to the stocks.

Posted in life tagged , at 5:29 pm by kyrias

Assuming the article was accurate and Devin Alston-Smith didn’t lie, what I really don’t understand about the Devin Alston-Smith incident is:

  1. Why did the sorority continue the in-take process when he asked them to call him Devin instead of his given name, Chanise, and that he wanted to be referred to with male pronouns? It seems like they should have taken the time to figure out that there would have been real problems later on and they just proceeded blithely on.
  2. When he realized that they “didn’t get it” when a Zeta bought him a woman’s shoe instead of a man’s shoe — why didn’t he take the hint and not accepted the invitation? If it was clear only in retrospect, how did communication fail so spectacularly that his “sisters” didn’t realize he wouldn’t be willing to “pop it like a girl” and that he would fail to realize that being part of the sorority would mean doing compromises to fit in? After all, when you have the principles of “sisterly love” and “finer womanhood” — even if you can do the “sisterly” part when you identify as male, that “womanhood” part is going to be difficult because of societal expectations of what a “good woman” is like. How did that fail to be made clear?
  3. What was Vanessa White’s hangup that she would be incapable of referring to Devin as simply that? It seems deliberate that she would both refuse to refer to him with male pronouns and then also refuse to refer to him simply by name. The bit about the shoe really confused me also, because really, who cares about what sort of shoes he would be wearing if he were wearing something like a gender neutral pant suit? Just seems like an excuse to try to make him to conform.

I honestly don’t know where the blame is in this situation.

Especially in light of Devin’s final actions. Speaking from an objective point of view, destroying the paraphernalia and dumping it at White’s doorstep — I honestly do not think there’s any way to see that as anything other than some sort of statement.

What’s so problematic, is really that I think the article is poor journalism. Considering that the sorority isn’t willing to stand out and make any significant comment on the situation, we’re really just hearing Devin’s side of this.

He claims that he was clear from the start, yet often we can think that we’re being very clear in our communications when actually other people have no idea of the real situation.

I really would want the sorority’s take on this before even trying to decide the real issues in this situation. Unfortunately, as usual, it’s all about the SEKRETS.

03.25.09

It was just a wink, really!

Posted in life tagged , at 12:01 am by kyrias

Apparently Miley Cyrus didn’t quite get the memo that it’s not exactly appropriate to do the whole “pulling back your eyes so they look Asian” thing. Or that it’s even less appropriate to have it immortalized for posterity.

One could argue that Spain’s Olympic team didn’t quite realize just how racist their gesture was, and that it was no harm no foul because the Mainland Chinese have no experience with the “finger to eyes = slanty” thing and therefore weren’t offended.

But Cyrus really doesn’t have that excuse now, does she?

When I saw these articles, I said to Caesura that I wasn’t quite sure whether I should be offended or just “WTF” at what went on.

He said that considering I make racist jokes all the time, I should hardly be offended at something that was clearly done in a moment of stupidity by Cyrus. He teased that I call him “adoga” all the time, which is a Taiwanese phrase referring to Caucasian noses, specifically to how “knife like” they are.

However, I can’t just laugh it off.

There was a very visceral reaction to seeing that, one that I can’t quite explain.

My reasoning is that it’s different. It’s different, having a semi-derogatory phrase indicating your ethnicity applied to you when you’re usually seen as a superior race. Asian people have nose jobs to get noses that are closer to the Caucasian model. They have surgery to make their eyes look more like Caucasian eyes. Anything that claims to whiten the skin auto-sells in China, from food to cosmetics to clothing that keeps the sun off.

That is hardly the case as an Asian.

I don’t see any Westerners flocking in droves to get epicanthic folds. I don’t see Americans trying to go for the bulbous nose look. Nor do I see them trying to get that particular shade of skin tone that I possess.

It’s the sick feeling I get whenever it gets shoved in my face that regardless of how I think, how well I can speak the language, ultimately I’m other. It’s the ever present fear of being cast out simply because of pre-conceptions of what I am. I do not believe there is any significant number of people with Asian heritage who doesn’t have a similar reaction to that gesture.

It’s not the same; it’s not merely a referential gesture because whereas one facial feature is prized, the other is seen as unattractive and undesirable. That is what I would call a “fighting gesture”.

It’s the rage that fills me when I read about mothers saving up money for their daughters to have eye surgery from the day they’re born because having “small eyes that perpetually look tired” is damaging for their daughter’s financial and marital prospects. It’s the bile that threatens to spill over when people joke about how plastic surgery has become Korea’s new national hobby.

It is truly unfortunate that Cyrus is in a position where many little girls who idolize her who are Asian in heritage might be hurt by her actions. It’s even more tragic that many others might see this photo as sanctioning said action.

03.24.09

Thanks for disempowering women, namely me

Posted in Feminism tagged , at 12:29 am by kyrias

I’m just going to state here, once and for all: All of you who can’t understand that you can be a stay at home wife and be a feminist at the same time are currently engaged in disempowering women.

You got that?

When you’re lobbying for women’s choices, that involves respecting the decisions that they make; whether you agree with them or not.

If I state that I find it more fulfilling to stay at home, you are disrespecting my intelligence and insulting me to tell me that I am lazy and/or misguided. You are further disempowering me if you state that I’m a waste of the effort my foremothers expended to give me the choice to choose to stay at home.

Personally, if no one is hurt by my choices and it actually benefits myself and the person supporting me, the rest of you dissenters need to shut up.

I do not see the point of working a entry-level job that makes me miserable, involves 2 hours of travel a day, requires a expensive professional wardrobe, and which results in a worse standard of life.

When I was working fulltime, Caesura and I would end up eating less healthily because we would be too tired and unhappy to cook. Or clean. Or do laundry. Or do any sort of thing that results in a better quality of life.

Unless circumstances require a second income to keep up afloat, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a better deal for me to stay at home and make sure we’re not eating from the freezer every single night.

I’m currently still on-call for temp agencies, for the record. At this point, a second income would be preferable if not outright necessary.

As for those people who find fulfillment in having a job — good for you. I’m not one of you. It doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I’m just one more cog in the system. Nor does it fulfill any of my needs to be climbing the corporate ladder. Further, I’ve never had any sort of ambition towards monetizing myself. Y’all need to stop judging my life based on your perceptions of what is right, proper, and preferable.

So really, I appreciate your worries that I’m wasting my life or that I’ll feel bored eventually and then where would I be with a gap in my resume, but you really need to just STOW IT.

Thanks.

03.23.09

Insert witty title here

Posted in life tagged at 11:00 pm by kyrias

I’ve decided to apply to become a volunteer at as many places as I can.

As people who are close to me may know, I’m not the most overwhelmingly altruistic person in the world. They might be able to further testify that I’m something of a misanthrope.

Truly odd that the only vocation I find appealing is that of a mental health counselor, no?

Since I’m not positive that I will either make a good counselor or that I will not be so negatively impacted by interacting with humans who have nothing but darkness to give me — I’m going to try volunteering first and see how that goes.

If it goes well, then I will carry on with my plans to apply for a M.A in counseling.

If it goes poorly, at least my parents will know that I’m being “proactive” and “productive” and get off my case. Not to mention the big bucks I’d be saving them.

One key thing that I’m no longer worried about is that of my personal mental health and its ramifications should I attempt a career in counseling.

I suffer from depression, both clinical and chronic. I used to worry that not only would I not be helpful for other people, but I might be dragged down by their problems because I would be incapable of distancing myself enough.

I’ve since come to the conclusion that I’m not normally depressed except when the people around me are being dicks.

Of course, the unfortunate flip-side to this is that most people I know around me are frequently dicks.

Oh well, one problem down is one problem solved, no?

03.22.09

Rapunzel, Rapunzel…

Posted in life tagged , , at 11:34 pm by kyrias

It sometimes boggles my brain, just how complex the issue of hair is.

I was able to tie my hair in a knot at the back of my head to keep it away from my face today, and the odd weight and notion that nothing except friction is holding it up is so very novel I can’t help but dwell on it.

Hair, a body part with loaded issues second only to skin color. Asides from the predictable blond jokes, it’s interesting to see how certain hair colors are fetishized, seen as symbols of sub-culture, and even raised as demarcations of class.

I’m not even talking about back in the day, when married women and maids had different hairstyles or other such notions.

I’ve always had thick,  mostly straight hair that would slip out of any hair style it was put in. As a result, when I was about 6 years old, my mother cut off most of my hair in a fit of pique.

She would put my hair up everyday before school, and in order to keep it tamed for the entire day she would have to braid it back very tightly. The minute I got on the schoolbus, I would tear everything loose and go the rest of the day with my hair loose and parts of it crinkly from being braided so tightly.

We lived in Guam at the time, so it was extremely hot and humid for most of the year. I used to kid that I needed to make a science project querying at which ambient temperatures one could bake a cake in the car. It was that hot.

As can be imagined, I would come home hot, sweaty, hair damp with with the heat and sticking everywhere. Mom finally got sick of my “causing her to appear a poor mother who was too lazy to groom her own child” and had what was at least mid-back length hair all cut off to a boy’s cut.

I’m fairly convinced that the photos from that period in my life are arguably some of the worst ones I have.

I remember vaguely feeling out of place as a girl with such short hair. Odd how feminity is still so bound up with hair, and how good parenting is also inextricably linked there.

Remember, my hair was cut not out of that much regard for my comfort, but for my mother’s ideas of how she would be perceived as a parent. In literature, it seems that every orphan has dirty, matted hair and much emphasis is always placed on it. I can’t really decide if it’s just because it’s a key marker of parenthood or if it’s because hair is just one of those things that you really just can’t help but notice about someone.

Currently, I have hair that ends somewhere at the base of my spine. It’s mostly straight, black, and with its length I am often mistaken for someone fresh off the boat (FOB).

The entire situation between the FOBs and the American born Chinese (ABCs) is something for another post entirely. Suffice to say that there is no love for the FOBs by anyone. Not the Americans, not the ABCs, not anyone unless they’re sporting a rather big hardon for that sort of thing. On which note, I have to say that I find people with hair fetishes somewhat creepy. Not that I’m not one, but still. The idea of being found attractive based purely on the color or length of my hair is just repellant.

Asides from having people insta-assume that I can’t speak English because of the hair and dress, it’s also interesting how having long hair automatically somehow makes me less professional.

Then again, it’s a fine line to toe between being professional and a ball-buster.

So much depends on hair.

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