What we can't see

So, it seems like Facebook is engineering the whole "x number of friends talking about so and so topic" on the newsfeed. Clearly, no one was talking about Christmas yesterday. And clearly, no one's talking about Thanksgiving today. #whatwecantsee #blackboxalgorithm

(oh yea, the hashtags were because this was originally conceived of as a tweet, but is clearly too long to be one)

Also, has anyone else noticed that the first thing on your mobile FB app newsfeed is almost always your friend "liking" some corporation or company? Like "So and So likes Samsung Mobile" or "So and So likes Target," followed by a HUGE screen-sized ad for said company?

Consumer capitalism at its finest. Right to hear? How about power to be seen?

And yes, I sort of feel like these are very "duh" things to say...

My problem with the Gangnam Style Phenomenon

I take issue with the popularity of Psy and the Gangnam Style video. I love the video itself. It's a great parody of the problematics with materialism within Korean pop culture. However, I feel like the many people who love it don't get that it's a parody. That they are laughing AT Psy, and not WITH him, as he intended. Psy, in his Asianness and his non-"hotness" in socially constructed masculine terms, is not a threat to American/Western masculinity. And hence, is more accepting - popular even. Like how William Hung was popular.

Helen Lee talks of it through the lens of what we're doing with our time, what's worth watching. As happy as I was to see a critical perspective on this, I sort of wish she went more into the idea that the hysteria over Gangnam Style has some deep implications about our conceptions of racialized masculinity and femininity, rather than simply taking mainly the perspective on mass consumption (although, that seems to just be her point). I mean, she's SO close in taking it to that greater depth and giving it a closer, more critical reading. Historically, Asian American men have been effeminized in mainstream culture. The Gangnam Style phenomenon, without the understanding that it is, in fact, a parody, allows uninformed viewers to perpetuate the stereotype of the laughable, clown-like caricature of the Asian man. It seems a disheartening step back in the progress we've made, especially given how incredibly popular this phenomenon has become. 

There's a difference between learning a dance out of admiration (as in the case of Britney Spears), and learning a dance in order to mock it. I can't help but feel that the Gangnam Style phenomenon is the latter.

(Thanks to Francesca for the Unimpressed McKayla meme)

To avoid the chiropractor...

****A post for my class on hacking. The assignment this week was to hack something. I was having technical difficulties, so had to post it here too.

This is a hack that I have been thinking about for a few years, but never got around to doing it. And…I hope that this counts as a hack.

My guitar case is really heavy. This is not so much a problem in Los Angeles, where I can drive and park relatively close to the venue at which I have a show or a performance. However, when I was living in New York, I didn’t have a car, and spent a lot of sweat and muscle (or lack thereof) lugging my guitar up and down the subways, often walking up to several blocks at a time to get to different venues. During these times of sweat (literally, in the summer) and tears, I thought about how great it would be if my guitar case had wheels. I’m a rather wimpy person, and having a heavy guitar case that I have to carry is just…not fun. Showing up to a show sweaty and out of breath doesn’t lead to a good show.

Of course, there are sites that sell guitar cases with wheels for $250-$300, here and here. That’s a lot to spend. My guitar case came with my guitar, and it is a nice, hardshell case. If I were really cynical or really paranoid and suspicious, I would say that companies are doing this to get guitar players to buy an additional case with wheels, but I don’t really think that’s the case (no pun intended). I think putting wheels on a guitar case just isn’t a top priority for case makers. After all, not everyone is as wimpy as I am. But there clearly are economic implications here, however slight they are.

Moreover, guitars come in different shapes and sizes. Even if you were to buy a case with wheels, there is no guarantee that your guitar will fit into it. Different guitar models have different styles of bodies. My first guitar had a jumbo body, and did not fit into standard guitar cases. The guitar case that I did this hack on is specific to the body shape and size of my Taylor 312CE, which has what is called a Grand Concert body, not a very popular body style/size for any guitar.

So, I figured, with the excuse of this class assignment to hack something, I would try to solve this problem that has been plaguing me for over 3 years, by adding wheels to my case.

I have recently learned to skateboard (or, longboard, really), and a skateboard has parts that can be taken apart – namely, wheels. While I did not take apart my board, I purchased trucks and wheels, but stupidly forgot to get bearings, and didn’t want to spend more money buying them. I just took some painter’s tape and made bearings (that work!) to make sure the wheels didn’t slip off.

Painting tape to the rescue!

Because I don’t want to do too much modification to my actual case, and because I didn’t want to spend too much time doing carpentry or welding work, I merely used mounting tape to attach the wheely contraption to my guitar case…

And voila! Wheels!

The trucks, tape, and wheels altogether cost $30 seems like a paltry amount to spend on this hack to give my case wheels than dealing with all these other factors. Plus, the wheels stay out of the way of the case opening and closing and laying on its side.

Thoughts on guys

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a gender studies expert, so if there are readings that answer some of these questions that I'm asking, please point me in the right direction.

My friend mentioned to me today that out of all of the places she's lived, Hong Kong is the single place in which she feels sexually safe, meaning she doesn't feel like the object of the male gaze while walking on the streets. Masculinity, and the performance of such. Interesting thing. Comparatively.

I wonder if guys in Asia are just more secure with their masculinity that they don't feel the need to perform it all the time.

Aihwa Ong had said something in her book, "Neoliberalism as Exception," to the effect of, middle class (mostly white) American men have always been able to make a living - that was sort of a given - to be able to raise their family by earning a living wage. However, with the outsourcing of tech jobs, and the influx of engineers from Asia into Silicon Valley (the site of inquiry Ong uses), this taken-for-granted ability to make a living is threatened - the masculinity of the American man is threatened.

I see this potentially manifested a way I find rather amusing, which I'll attempt to illustrate here. 

There are a LOT of Samsung Galaxy Notes here. A lot. Everywhere you turn, there's another person using it. The consensus on the Internet (from English sites) seems to be that the device is too big. But they are everywhere here in HK. I have a theory (other than the fact that Samsung seems to be vastly more popular here than in the States). Murses. Man purses. Possibly the least macho thing a guy can carry around. But, convenient enough to carry around a 5.3-inch screen device that won't fit in your pocket.

So why is it that the assessment that the Note is too big not a problem in Asia? Is it because guys here are ok carrying around a bag, even though that may not be the macho thing to do? I don't know much about fashion, but I'm sure there's a statement about fashion that can be made here...

But, ultimately, are guys in Asia just more secure in their manliness that they'll readily carry around a man purse? And not be afraid that they'll be seen as effeminate? And does this have anything to do with the earning potential of men in Asia as compared to men in the US?

Across the Universe

Not the movie. 航宇天地 is what it's called.

My cousin, Yurong, is building this village. It has residential units (free-standing homes, townhouses, and apartments), three shopping malls (one for furnitures, one for interior decorating, and one for regular fashion-type stuff including a movie theatre), and a hotel. 

They had built the residential free-standing houses back in 2004/2005. 4 phases. The furniture shopping mall is built and open. Not all stores have been taken in there yet. Most of the furniture is local, and some of it is being sold by my cousin's company. Yurong, though, would like to include "higher class" furniture stores in there - 2nd tier, he calls it - he has no illusion that Huang Shi (the city in which this is being built) is that much of a cosmopolitan city as to attract stores like West Elm, but seems to be hoping to change the entire culture of the area by getting people to buy nicer things (what I found also really interesting is that their architectural mockups include a lot of white customers, in order to give off an air of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, in order to attract investors). It's not like the people there don't have the money to. However, many customers who buy houses there have the mentality of, well, I've already spent a bunch of money buying this house, I don't want to spend more buying furniture. This mentality is what they want to change - you just bought a really nice house. Buy some really nice furniture to go with it too!

The challenge is not with selling the houses - it's getting investors to rent stores in the malls. They're only working on the furniture mall right now, as the interior decorating one and the general one are still under construction. They're also dealing with the challenges of getting foot traffic (and car traffic, since none of these areas are actually that walkable) to the area, and want to make that are THE go-to place for furniture and home design.

All of this is still in progress. At this stage, only time will tell how successful this endeavor will be.

Of high speeds, large tombs, and software

I decided to take a last minute trip to Wuhan last weekend, partly to visit my family there, and partly as a self-imposed field trip for a class on globalization, culture, and capitalism that I'm taking. Note: it is a lot easier if you had a visa to China before (which I had, but they were in my other passport). So, a rainy Monday saw us at the Chinese embassy to apply for a visa. The process itself was very simple and takes about 4 business days (they'll rush it for you if you pay more), and costs $1,100HKD, more than what the website says. This is for a single-entry visa. Of course, I'm not Bulgarian, so maybe the posted fees didn't apply to me...

The high speed rail, which connects Shenzhen to Guangzhou, then to Wuhan, travels at over 300km/hr.

Being that this is in China, land of cutting corners to maximize profits, I was, needless to say, a little bit apprehensive about zipping along at that speed. But it was super comfortable. I got into an engaging conversation with the two women sitting on either side of me about pregnancies and "yuezi," which is a process of recuperating the woman's health and strength during the month after birth. One of the women was blaming all of her health problems on the fact that she didn't do a good "yuezi" after the birth of her first child. I refrained from telling her that this tradition is virtually unheard of in Western culture...

Oh yea, here's a picture of the station at Shenzhen. It is huge.

Upon reaching Wuhan, the crap phone my family uses when we're in China, well, crapped out. Completely. And this is when I made an inconvenient realization - this station did not have outlets just lying around for anyone to walk up and use. I ascertained that there were outlets in the passenger waiting area on the arrival deck, and trekked (and trek indeed -- do you see the Shenzhen railway station? Wuhan's railway is LARGER) there. To my dismay, there were only TWO outlets available. Two. Now think about how many people there are in China...

I finally found my cousin, who was waiting for nearly an hour at the station, wondering if I had gotten kidnapped or murdered en route to Wuhan, after I gave the woman at the information desk my best hapless puppy dog impression and she let me use her landline (at first, she suggested I walk out of the station and two blocks down to a market to find a public phone). People are much less helpful here - actually, I think people here are more helpful to their families than we are in the West, but much more dismissive of strangers. Like, the Gini ratio for interpersonal helpfulness is very high.

For the next 36 hours or so, we were tourists. My cousin dragged along two of his friends to keep me company (and help carry my stuff, really). We visited the Hubei Provincial Museum, which had exhibits with artifacts dating to before dynastic China, more than 4,000 years ago. And these artifacts were in pristine condition.

One of the coolest exhibits was the bells found in the tomb of Marquis Yi, who was, apparently, a music lover and had a really really large coffin.

The bells were the highlight of the place.

Couple hundred pieces, all in good condition, and still playable, I think. What I found amazing is that these bells, made thousands of years ago, not only showed an understanding of the structures of music as they are still used today (halftones and diatonic scales), but were constructed in a way that displayed this understanding of music, that back then, they had the technology to be that precise - to not only make bells that played the one they wanted, but two-tone bells, wherein each bell, when struck differently, would play two different tones.

Speaking of being really modern, China's technological explosion seems to have happened during the Tang dynasty. Or somewhere like that. Then stopped sometime in the 18th century. Check out this bowl.

I'm pretty sure the date on that says early 1700's. Dude. That looks like something I have in my cupboard right now. Looks like culinary technology hasn't changed much for the Chinese in the last 300 years or so. So either that means that Chinese culture was really advanced hundreds of years ago - so advanced that we still use that technology today....or that Chinese culture today is just backwards and stuck 300 years ago. I'd be more hopeful and say it's the former.

Time is a funny thing. All of these things in museums were everyday objects of people who lived a long time ago. Who knows, maybe in 200 years, the cup I used to drink my tea this morning may be in a museum case somewhere...

One more quick note. My cousin describes development and buildings in China as a matter of "hardware" and "software." Let me give an example, and this analogy isn't parallel to our understanding of computer hardware and software. The Hubei Museum of Art is beautiful on the outside, airy and spacious. But the bathrooms are...icky. There is much in the way of showing how beautiful and grand you can make something on the outside, but the inside rots. No attention to software. All attention on the hardware. HK and Taiwan, on the other hand, are really good at the software part. The crappiest, dirtiest little storefront will have the absolutely best food in town. With a clean bathroom and ample toilet paper. It was a lack in the attention of software that caused the massive destruction of buildings in Sichuan, the cutting of corners, the rampant corruption and mining of maximum profits. I had labeled it under a different name - systems and cultures. The system can change, the buildings can be pretty, there can be a set of building codes and rules, but until the culture changes and more attention is paid to the software, everything is just going to be an empty shell.

And another quick note. Food is good in Hubei. I've been to China several times, and felt the food was always hit or miss. For breakfast one morning, we had "hot, dry noodles." In Wuhan, you don't say you "have breakfast" - you say "guo zao" or "pass the morning meal." Meaning, you eat breakfast so quickly that it simply passes you by.

But seriously, this you should savor. They even come in pre-packaged packages that you can take home to make your very own hot, dry noodles.

Accessorizing galaxy

Accessories are telling. In the states, the only device you can be creative (for covers) with is the iPhone. Here, the new Samsung galaxy s3 is king.


************
CW
DROID.

No apples here (in hk)

Of course there are iPhones here. But doesn't seem to have nearly the market dominance that it does in the US. 

Electronic stores mainly focus on Samsung (galaxy and note are particularly ubiquitous). HTCs are popular, and Sony and LGs are around. I even saw some Motorola phones.


************
CW
DROID.

In Taiwan

I'm not even sure if this is a potent and controversial topic anymore, but about a decade ago (during the era of 阿編), the taiwanese identity as discrete from Chinese was a topic of much frustration and heartache for me, as I frequently heard "I'm Taiwanese, not Chinese."

My parents were both born in Taiwan, but my family is originally from 浙江, a province in the south of china. We still have family there. But I grew up going to Taiwan, grew up with Taiwanese Chinese culture (which is unique unto Taiwan), grew up with Taiwanese Chinese language (which i consider mandarin tinged with taiwan - very distinctive accent and inflection, only found in Taiwan and those families originating from).

Being in Taiwan for the first time without my family here gave me a strange sense of homecoming, even though I had never lived here. And I know exactly why. It's the way people talk. I find taiwanese Chinese the easiest to understand. And no wonder - its what I've been hearing my whole life. I've missed it. In the last decade, I've mostly heard either mainland chinese or Cantonese Chinese spoken around me by strangers and people I have passing interactions with. Here in Taiwan, the dialogue around me is spoken in a way that feels very familiar (to a point where I'm not even raging mad that I got ripped off in the night market for a bag of fruit).

This is why I get frustrated with people who want to make being Taiwanese and being Chinese distinctive. I have no formal claim to Taiwan. I'm not Taiwanese. And yet, I am culturally more connected to Taiwan than I will ever be to the mainland. It boils down to semantics, which ultimately only really matters to the extent that we imbue meanings to words, which is ultimately what the Taiwanese Chinese debate does.

************
Sent from Cynthia Wang's iPad
cynthiawang@nyu.edu

Authenticity

I've been watching a lot of Pawn Stars lately (the History Channel) - had never seen it before, but it's fun!

It's interesting, they're so obsessed with authenticity, that authenticity itself is tied to monetary value. Is this signature from Winston Churchill real? If it is, it's worth thousands. But it needs to be authenticated by an expert. Not all of us are experts. So, what's on the line if the store says it's real and it's not? Who would know? What would get hurt? Reputation? Legitimacy?

Interesting framework to think about - the framework of realness, of valuing certain individuals and certain narratives in our history, and translating that to actual monetary value, into capital.

I'd like to see a show about who they sell all this stuff to.

Sickiness

Being sick constitutes a really particular form of temporary social exclusion. There's a social stigma in interacting with normal society when one is in a state of sickiness. People even deny that they are sick by saying things like "oh, I have really bad allergies" or something to that effect in order to be able to continue participating in society.

When one admits that one is sick, it involves telling people around them to excuse them from social niceties like giving hugs and shaking hands. Indeed, in order to not make others around feel too uncomfortable, one must also excuse oneself from social gatherings, furthering the point of social isolation due to sickness. There are also only certain people one can be exposed to while sick, and those usually don't involve the very young (ie: infants) or the very elderly and frail.

It's a bit like coming out of the closet. It's not something you can help, but if you admit to it, you have to face the social stigmas that come along with it...along with being treated a little bit like a freak. I guess the good thing about having a cold is that it's temporary.

That time of year...

It's that time of year when soon-to-be graduates roam campus in their caps and gowns, posing for pictures in the oddest positions (the one in particular I saw was holding the globe on top of the Von Kleinsmid Center at USC). And whereas you look hilariously silly at the moment of the picture being taken, that picture will be pretty cool for the rest of your life. So the next time you hesitate taking a picture because you don't want other people around you thinking you look silly, just think - none of them know you, and the picture you take are going to be with you and bring you (hopefully joyful) memories for the rest of your life.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/advocates-ask-why-do-asian-americans-go-uncast-in-new-york-theater/?pagemode=print

I'll address this, but I'll do it later.

High and Low Cultures

Thinking about high and low cultures...why is it that things that are considered high culture are always older? Opera, Shakespeare, classical music, Renaissance art? Is there an ageism thing going on here?

The problem with Race, and other controversies in my head

Another platform for me to spew out thoughts.

I got into an interesting conversation about race the other day. Actually, it was a series of conversations with various different people, and these conversations, frankly, have been ongoing for well over a decade for me now. But that aside...

I've been thinking about race. In ways that I think will make me immensely unpopular in any sort of ethnic minority group of which I am a part, or purport to be a part, or seen by members of which to be a part (whatever). I've been thinking about race and human dignity. In particular, I've been thinking about the ethnic minority to which I most closely identify -- Asian American. And for the first time in a very long time, I'm having a problem identifying using the term "Asian American."

What is Asian? Why can't I be American? These questions aren't new. What is new, though, is WHY we want to feel like we "belong" in America. We get so offended when someone asks where we're from, assuming we are foreign. Take a look around, folks. A lot of people with Asian descent ARE foreign - they were born in not-America...yes, we can make the argument that no one would assume a Black/African American (choose your poison) person would speak Swahili. But if you're walking on the street, and you encounter an Asian person, chances are high that person 1) knows how to speak or understand some form of Asian language, 2) was born in an Asian country, and 3) does not consider English their native language. For this particular stereotype, it is based a lot on the truth of the situation. And for this particular situation, it will most likely be ameliorated through time. In a few generations, people with Asian face will likely all speak English (provided they stay in this country and populate it and make lots of babies), and people will stop assuming people with Asian faces are foreign.

And then, there's the question of...why do we feel like we want to "belong"? I think it boils down to the question of human dignity. The question here, though, is, who's the authority on this dignity?

When I say human dignity, I'm not talking about the material or physical. I'm not saying that we should question the atrocities that befell likes of Vincent Chin and others who are physically assaulted for being not-White. I'm not defending the difference in the pay scale for African Americans (or Black Americans) and Latino Americans (or Chicano or whatever words you want to use to identify) - those, under the ideologies of equality in this country, are wrong. I'm also not disregarding the history of colonialism and imperialism and the wrongs the West (and White) have done to Asian countries and societies, nor am I excusing the past grievances of genocide, torture, murder, death, maiming, and other forms of badness that came from White interaction (or, sometimes Japanese) with Asia. I'm questioning human dignity on that transcendant level - the level on which we often speak of love and art, the one with which we can only be concerned with if we have enough food to eat, clothes on our back, and a roof over our heads.

A few more points - let's be Marxist for a sec and boil everything down to the material. Are Asian Americans as a group really economically disenfranchised? No. What's so bad about being the model minority? People think we're smart. Why is this a bad thing? What of the medical field, which is teeming with folks of Asian descent making a great living? How about the fields of engineering? What is it that makes an individual happy? Really happy? Is it some transcendental idea of "belonging" and "equality"? Or is it being able to provide a comfortable life for oneself and one's family?

The argument comes in where people complain about lack of representation in the media. And yes, I agree that in some forms of media and representation, like Broadway, Asians are sorely underrepresented. For the record, the article says Asian Americans make up 12% of the NYC population. Keep in mind that the population of Asian Americans in America is roughly 4-6%. So, what is adequate representation? I would like to conduct a study to see what percentage of characters in commercials, TV shows, films, are of Asian descent. I would venture to guess that we are hovering around 4-6%, if not greater.

Finally, think about it. The desire for racial equality would not be significant if it weren't for a Western ideological, neoliberalist framework. So, is our dignity defined and authorized by the big bad White man?