Legend of Korra thoughts

Because I'm an academic, I ruin everything good. But I'll try not to do it too much in this post.

But first, the cool stuff. The end of the series finale of Korra:

Vanity Fair has an awesome article about it too. For people who aren't entirely straight, this is a huge deal. This is NICKELODEON, for crying out loud. This isn't an adult show where sexuality has been much more explored. This is a CARTOON. The Korrasami subreddit is going crazy.

Avatar and Korra have toed the line in terms of portraying characters that do not look like the typical Hollywood white-washed protagonist. However, if you look at their cast and creator, you'll notice that it's a bit lacking in... diversity:

On some level, this bothers me a bit, since people of color need these jobs too. But then again, the impact of having the visual representation of characters as diverse as Avatar and Korra show, I feel, is greater than who is behind the voice. Racebending has a short thread about this that I feel explains this a lot - the fact that the voice industry is quite small, and there simply aren't that many good voice actors available. The nice thing is, unless you are a HUGE fan, you probably won't look into the voice actors all that much, so the means to an end, in this case, one could argue, may be ok.

Just something I wanted to voice (heh heh heh). I was also surprised that there weren't that many articles about this topic. It was something I thought Angry Asian Man or Jezebel would be all over...

Advantages of Dog

Having a dog gets you in touch with 1) your neighborhood and 2) the wonderful world of podcasts.

Let's be honest here. Walking your dog is boring. It's a chore. I love my dog, but walking around in circles while she sniffs and pees and marks territory (I know, I should not let her do that...working on it) is...boring.

And then we have the occasional squirrel incident:

But otherwise, it's a bit boring. This is where I discovered the wonderful world of NPR's Serial (if you haven't heard it yet, you are missing out). But you also get to know your neighborhood in ways that you wouldn't otherwise. I mean, how many other people spend upwards of an hour a day walking circles around the neighborhood?

Here are a few things that I realize you discover:

• Where the non-locked trashcans are -- for easy poopy bag disposal.
• Which lawns have been fertilized in the last day or so. Of course, your dog will insist upon spending the most time sniffing around these lawns, even rubbing her face in it, much to your horror.
• Where the lowest points (literally) in the neighborhood are, accentuated most wonderfully on days it rains.
• Where squirrels hang out (which is, apparently, right in front of our complex).
• An unprecedented number of combinations to weave in and out of blocks just to ease the boredom.
• Which front doors and fences are the most interesting to a dog, probably meaning they are saturated with doggy pee.
• What time the local schools let out, because you have to navigate high school students waiting for the bus with your dog, who insists on sniffing everything everyone is holding.
• A really good way to debrief the day with your partner. While getting in your daily exercise. Provided you both are home at the right time (this is often a bit of a challenge with us)
• There is also a pleasantly plump woman with a pleasantly plump shepherd mix (ok, the dog in question is morbidly obese -- I mean, seriously. It looks like a giant ball with fur, and is absolutely the cutest thing in the world -- I will try to get a picture next time)...except I can't seem to remember where they live since I, uh, weave in and out of the blocks too much. Le sigh.

I have, as a plus, seem to have lost 5-7 pounds since getting dog (especially since she will steal my croissants and cupcakes). Dog ROI is very high.

A messy post about a cultural/critical perspective

So, as most people who know me know, I come from a cultural studies and critical theory perspective, which continues to be one of the greatest influences in how I view the world. I also firmly believe that a critical perspective, one that deconstructs the normative frameworks of different individuals who are differently positioned within society (usually by gender, race, and/or sexuality) is a crucial foundation that should be taught in, erm, kindergarten.

That being said, my current work, while informed by a critical/cultural perspective, deviates from said perspective. This happened for a few different reasons. I want to outline the frustrations I have with how I have seen research and issues approached from this perspective, which are admittedly more deconstructive in itself than constructive, but here goes. We can also call this, giving credit to straight white men who deserve it. I'm also giving fair warning that this is a bit brain vomity.

The biggest value that I feel a critical/cultural perspective provides is teaching people/students to think about the world in a different way. I feel this is the singular most valuable thing that this perspective brings, and it is one of the most valuable things I feel a member of any given society should be equipped with (which is so not the case). Beyond that, however, it seems like this particular perspective finds mostly flaws and lacks. When my work was firmly rooted in cultural studies, I found it hard to answer the question, "So you have all these problems. We have a patriarchal society, and even women in powerful positions still fall victim to normalized gender roles. What is your solution and how can you realistically get there?" And I often was unable to provide a satisfactory answer. Satisfactory even to myself.

And a bit part of the problem is a temporal one (of course, I would think this way). Because of a certain, um, lack in our primary education system to effectively and adequately teach us about difference and about how "normal" is a constantly moving target, and the hegemonically patriarchal and white and heteronormative world in which we live, we carry this patriarchal, heteronormative, white-normative world view for the first several years, if not decades of life, until we decide to start the journey toward educating ourselves.

This process of education often happens in college, and if, like myself, you make bad life decisions, continues in graduate school. Herein lies the problem. College is a temporally restricted period in one's life. One class on cultural studies may not completely change the world view. There seems to be an expectation of cultural studies folks (and I am guilty of this myself) of wanting quick change, of a sincere hope of, "if I just explain this to a person, they will understand and change their behaviors and their attitudes in their life, diminish actions and words that will reinforce differences in power between different groups of people - women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, immigrants, etc etc etc." I find this very idealistic. It is one thing to lay out facts, it is quite another to tell someone that their world view thus far is lacking. It's not surprising that accepting that the world view one grew up with (especially if one is of a privileged group or class) is deeply flawed takes time. That's step one - an acceptance that one's world view is flawed. And this, admittedly is probably the most important step. I mean, if everyone could *poof* suddenly become aware and realize that these differences in power exist, that if you are a white, male, you move through the world very differently than a woman of color, we'd be in great shape. But the first step takes time. Often more time than people spend in college, so that we are hard pressed to educate people as to the next step, which is translating that knowledge into action. This already does happen to an extent - many activist movements, protests, discussions and discourse, happen on college campuses. Many activists who are working for social change are right out of college, before they get sucked back into the capitalist machine, or just realize that an apartment, food, pets, and babies can be really expensive. I hate the disillusionment that, in a sad way, seems almost inevitable for the vast majority of people, yet this seems to be the reality of the world we live in. Provided these educated people don't stop being educated and being sucked back into a normative world view, the next step is to moderate the conversations, to take a more nuanced look at the rupturing of that world view. Because, at the end of the day (and this is where I get frustrated with cultural studies), we live in a real world, and these power dynamics are real. It is one thing to sit around with others who share your world view and gripe about how awful patriarchy is, how awful white superiority and normalcy is, how awful heteronormativism is, and how the world should be such and such way, how men shouldn't want to go to strip clubs for bachelor parties because that act objectifies women, how awful it is that men catcall women on the street, how black men shouldn't be incarcerated at an astronomically higher rate than white men (more here on white privilege), how LGBTQ individuals shouldn't have to hide their sexual orientation or avoid the topic of their love life at work. Of course, of course, and absolutely of course. And yet, I can't help but feel like there's no roadmap to get there...and that's disheartening for me. And, I have also talked to friends who recognize just how difficult it is to get to where we want to go, who just want to give up, to stop engaging with people who have not quite stepped out of a normalized viewpoint, or who are utterly unwilling to entertain the thought that the cultural structures that frame their world might be flawed.

Does this mean we stop fighting? Of course not. The cyclical process of educating the next incoming batch of college freshmen, changing their hearts and minds, and having them graduate into the world with the hopes of translating education into behavioral changes on a micro level is imperative. It keeps us from not regressing as a society, hopefully. It keeps us treading water. But how do we move things forward?

I find the recent LGBTQ movement a useful example of how something does move forward, even though legislation can be surprisingly easy to influence in comparison to massive cultural shifts in framing. If it were up to LGBTQ people, and only LGBTQ people to vote for marriage equality, it would never have passed. The reason why marriage equality passed is because we had allies. Tons of allies. Straight allies who were part of the discourse of power, who had the numbers to sway votes, to influence what I hope is a fundamental cultural shift in attitudes toward LGBTQ individuals. I don't want to disregard the very real issue within the LGBTQ community itself in which much of the power within these communities lie in the hands of white men, but to recognize that allies are important.

As someone who is a triple minority (gay, Asian, female), I feel it is important to recognize that someone like me is NOT part of the discourse of power. Not naturally. My words and my voice will always be quieter, less heard, less authoritative than someone who is white and male.

And this is why I so appreciate my white male friends who recognize their privilege and make the effort to understand stories and experiences that they don't have to face. For me, my lack, my difference from being white, male, straight is something that I experience every single day. I can't escape it because I have to confront it every day. For me, it's a process of making more allies, for making the people who easily enter the discourse of power understand my experiences so they might speak for me when I can't speak for myself. Obviously the ideal situation is to have people like me in situations where we can reach large masses of people directly, yet the reality of the situation is that we can't. We simply aren't in the discourse of power. That doesn't mean we don't try though, but perhaps it does mean that in the meantime, we amplify our voices by making allies in high(er) places....

I will probably want to edit this later, but it's late right now and I'm tired, and I also highly doubt anyone will read this.

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here is a cool site


inserting an image.

Testing the blog

My class's final project is doing either blogs or vlogs. Here are some of the things I want them to do.

Embed a video:

Insert an image (an excuse to post a picture of Pepper):

Make a hyperlink. For some sophomoric humor, click here.

I made a pretty chart!

It describes the basic transmission model of communication. Sort of. It's a bit more than that. And includes a bit of Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding model.

non-linear LGBT experiences

I'm starting to realize that LGBT media often has to be taken in context of a fast and ever-changing historical landscape. Just this week, I read Larry Gross's "Contested Closets" in which he talks about the complex dynamics and motivations for outing famous and influential public figures. The book was published in 1993. In it, he describes the struggles that LGBT communities endure and the reasons why outing visible figures would help the overall LGBT cause. Who would have known that less than 2 decades after the book came out, we are at a tipping point for marriage equality with more visibility in the mainstream than ever before.

Similarly, I am watching the Birdcage in honor of Robin Williams' life, and I had to check on IMDB when it was made (1996). I wonder if the conflicts the characters encounter and the ensuing antics in the movie are still as relevant today. I'm not saying that they are not, as there are certainly segments in society that are still less accepting of LGBT people and communities than popular opinion would have us believe.

Hence, the media made is much more short-lived in terms of relevancy than possibly other narratives, as many struggles that are portrayed, especially when it comes to things of a legal nature. Such a good thing, but when retroactively consuming media from even a few years ago, harder to contextualize.

Summer updates

This summer has been....interesting. Not as productive (at least strictly on the dissertation front) as I would like, but at least my IRB has been approved (last week), and I have Jenny starting to fill out her time budget. Of course, today, Sunday, and her day off, her time budget is filled mostly with "played video games".

We've been trying to save money, so, cooking a lot. I've found that cooking for more than one person is awesome. First of all, we're both motivated to do it. Secondly, you have the satisfaction of hearing someone go "Mmmm! That's really good!" (even if she might be stretching the truth just a little sometimes...or a lot). We made 紅燒雞 tonight. 紅燒ing something is the best way to get meat REALLY tender. Amazing.

Finally, I've been working on two non-academic projects, which has given me flashbacks to indie filmmaking, but these are web-based and mobile-based applications. A bit different. Perhaps more later, as I am off to bed. G'nite y'all.

A nice weekend assault

I was assaulted this weekend in Venice, crossing the street. The perp was a crazy guy. And I mean this quite literally. We think he might have been schizophrenic (our armchair diagnosis, given that he was talking to himself and cussing very loudly and aggressively at cars). While we were standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light to turn green, we heard him walking from a block down, cussing up a storm for no apparent reason. Jenny, being the smart cookie she is, suggested we figure out some other way to cross the street to get out of his way. Me, being kind of stupid and not willing to stereotype crazy people as violent, shook that suggestion off.

Anyway, we were both at the crosswalk, and it looked like he was going to cross over to our side. Fine, shouldn't be a problem, right? The light turns green, and as we walked toward Crazy, I did the whole swerve to the left, then right, to try to avoid bumping into him, as normal humans do. But every time I adjusted my x-axis, he would follow me. Uh oh. As I got near him, he swung his foot at my ankle and caught me a good one. I lost some flesh and some blood. And as he walked away, he turned and yelled, "Motherfucking Chinks!" and some other colorful and inappropriate language. So we called 911 and filed a police report. The police were nice, but not too helpful. After all, they came 10-15 minutes after the incident, after Crazy was long gone. They offered to arrest him if they found him, but we told them that we mainly wanted someone to be keeping an eye out for him, since he's clearly aggressive and can be violent. I got off easy, but what if it were a kid.

The thing that struck me about this was, I wasn't even that mad. Just really spooked. And pissed that for all of my resistance to stereotyping mental illness and conflating it with violence, I had to be proven anecdotally wrong. Let me reiterate that the vast majority of people with mental illness are NOT violent. It was really unfortunate that the guy I encountered happened to be really aggressive. But he was not homeless. He looked well-groomed, with clean clothes.

But it does bring up questions about people who are mentally unstable or ill. What if they ARE violent and refuse to take meds? What if they continue to be a menace to society, even on a micro scale? What responsibilities do their families have? What choices do they have?

Road Trip

My road trip came to a conclusion on Monday night, where I got back just in time to stop by a Memorial Day BBQ that Jenny's co-resident hosted.

Two days driving through the Redwoods was pretty spectacular. Sunday, the other Cynthia threw a small dinner party in honor of the fact that I was in town, and we looked through her boudoir photos - basically glamour shots for adults. Stephanie and I were reduced to 12 year old boys. But, it did make me consider getting it done too. After all, when you're 80, and you pull out these scantily-clad pictures of you posing sexily for the camera... that's got to be a hoot. 

My cousin, who I met up with in Sacramento for a 3-hour brunch, asked if driving by myself was boring. No, I responded. It gives me time to think. You aren't obligated to answer emails, phone calls, texts. After all, getting to your destination alive is much more important. Or so we should hope.

Memorial Day traffic was at its ragiest though. So much traffic. It took a long time to get out of the SF vicinity, and the rest stops and gas stations on the way down were chock full of families with the need to relinquish liquids. I waited 20 minutes in 100 degree temperature to use a bathroom outside a gas station. This has never happened before. Note to self: Avoid roadtripping long weekends.

Otherwise, it was a relatively painless drive down. Taking four days to drive from Seattle is definitely a good amount of time - just enough so that you can take your time a bit, make some stops, see the scenery. We often forget that Sacramento is really in the middle of California, and Northern California is covered with forest and very big trees. And some lagoons. Highly recommend it. And don't forget to stop by Enchanted Forest, the weird theme part in Oregon.

Roadtripping: Portland to Salem

ICA is in Seattle this year. Naturally, I decided to road trip up and down. Chi drove up with me, and I'm driving back down by myself, taking in sites, and making random stops. It has been really fun. Oh yea, I had also lugged a payphone that was part of the Leimert Phone Project up to Seattle for Francois and Andrew.
The LA to Seattle roadtrip I had made once before, and I remember it being very beautiful. My memory did not disappoint me. We even re-found the weird mosaic dragon just south of the CA/Oregon border, and took in Mt. Shasta looking all pretty in the windshield.

I also somehow forgot that it's Memorial Day weekend. Which means that traffic from Seattle to Portland was HORRIBLE. But, seeing Lauren and Alexei totally made up for it and exceeded! And we met Alexei's friend, Erin, who's an aquatic scientist. We played shuffleboard, drank, had chili cheese tater tots. Thai food. Then home to play Origins (a game where you have to guess the origin of different sayings).

Then, this morning, I left Portland rather early, because on the way up, we passed this theme park called the Enchanted Forest, and given my recent obsession with Once Upon a Time, I just had to stop by.

The Enchanted Forest

(this is my yelp review)

Roadtripping means you find little gems like this super random, vaguely creepy, and totally charming little family-run theme park.I don't know why it's being called the PNW's Disneyland. This place is so different than Disneyland. Sure, there are similarities, but...it feels just.....creepier somehow.

Entrance fee is $10.75, which is totally worth it even if you don't go on any rides. You follow a trail (Which I like, so I didn't have to make a decision on what to see first), and can partake in the various structures (Indian caves, Pinocchio's house, mazes, many others...I really wanted to try crawling through the rabbit hole, but was afraid I would get, uh, stuck) which takes you all around the park, and pops you back at the entrance.

If you want to do rides, there are tickets. Each ticket is 95 cents. Rides take 2-4 tickets. Or you can get a rides pass for $25 more. I didn't think this was worth it.

I only went on two "rides" -- the Haunted House, and the Challenge of Mondor, as suggested by another yelp reviewer. The Haunted House isn't a ride - you just walk through. As I walked up to the entrance, there was a mother with two young children with her. Good, I thought. I wasn't going to be alone. But after they took our tickets, and the kids took two steps into the house, they started crying, so they just turned and left! Leaving me alone. Man. That was not cool. Yes, I got scared. Yes, I totally screamed like a girl at times. Alone. Heart pounding, palms sweaty. Afraid that someone -- like, a live someone, was going to jump out at me at any moment. It was pretty awesome.

The Challenge of Mondor is really charming. That is actually a ride, and they give you a laser gun to shoot at things.


And I got a hotdog ($2.35), a tea ($1.95)  and refunded my unused tickets to get some souvenirs. All in all, I spent less than $25, and about an hour of my time, this morning. (yea, it doesn't take all day - a perfect short detour for a roadtrip).

Grant's Pass/Redwoods

There is an amazing little place called Infuzed Xpress in Grants Pass. They have healthy stuff! I picked up some food, sat outside and scarfed it down, and set out on a very windy road between Grants Pass and Eureka (where I am currently writing this from). This path, incidentally, takes one right through Redwoods National Park. Beautiful. Took a break at the foot of giants.

Passed through Humboldt too, and made a quick trip around Humboldt University. Humboldt County has LAGOONS. I wish I knew what to do with lagoons other than take pictures of them, but they were very pretty. And, I think they are freshwater lagoons. Crazy. Who knew there were both lagoons and giant redwoods so close to the coast.

I'm bumming it up in Eureka now. In a sketchy hotel. Econo Lodge. But, I will say, they have free wifi, and SHAMPOO (something Motel 6 didn't provide). Hah. Good to know in the future.

Talk about temporal capital

...literally! Brookings Institute economist, Barry Bosworth, found a direct correlation between life expectancy and mid-career income. Absolute amount of time at one's disposal...

Temporal capital based on medium and activity

Temporal capital may not just apply to individual's control over their time on some abstract, macro level (based on sociocultural differentiating features), but can also be isolated in the activity itself. In this case, temporal capital would apply to the individual's control, but within the context of a particular activity.

I outlined a useful example of this in the Gnovis article, between images and video/audio. This is worth repeating. You can look at the Mona Lisa for however long you wish - 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days. The image will not change. Your understanding of the image may change, but how long you choose to consume that medium, that image, is up to you. The image yields higher levels of temporal capital in the process of its consumption. In contrast, take Beethoven's 5th symphony. The first 6 seconds yields 8 notes - G G G Eb, F F F D... From these notes, we know next to nothing about the piece itself (assuming one is hearing this very famous opening for the first time). You have no control over the experience itself -- it's controlled by the conductor, by the producer. You're along for the ride. You don't dictate when the piece ends, when this experience is over, or how long it lasts. Hence, listening to music or audio (without technologically fast-forwarding or whatnot) is an act of low temporal capital, or high temporal investment. What's key here seem to be the "revealing" of the content. With an image or a text, the content in its entirety is revealed before more detailed consumption. With the Mona Lisa, one can see the entirety of the piece even before one begins to appreciate the finer details of it. With Beethoven, however, every moment that passes reveals more of the piece to the audience. The audience does not consume the piece in its entirety in a moment, but the act of revealing the piece is quite out of the audience member's control.

Presence, and an expectation of response in communication, tends to be correlated negatively with temporal capital. On the phone and in person, the person you are having a conversation with expects a response immediately. In contrast, with email and IM and text, you don't have to respond right away, and that's ok. Moreover, the difference in medium - text (a non-temporally binding medium, like images or pictures) versus a temporally binding medium (video or audio) becomes a factor here as well. Although William Mitchell in his 1999 book E-topia, and Jack Petranker, in his article, "The Presence of Others" in a collection of articles about time both address presence as a synchronous way to be together, the different mediums that are present during these conversations are also important to think about. Of course, one can have an IM conversation, and if one goes AFK (away from keyboard), one will likely tell the conversation partner, "brb" (be right back) or something to that effect to manage expectations in the conversation. But, the micro act of reading the text will be variable between different people. Some people may read faster than others, some may read slower. With audio and video, you will invest as much time as it takes for the audio or video clip to play. No more, no less (unless artificially and technologically altered). The temporal investment in the consumption of the content is exact, unlike a text.

That's all for now. Next time, maybe we'll talk about transportation, or maybe we'll talk about temporal capital in the workplace. After all, while there are segments of time, like work, leisure, personal time, transit time, etc, it is easy to think of temporal capital as the amount of time when one is not at work, or "free" time. Well, apparently there are subcategories of "free" and leisure time, as Sebastian De Grazia and Robert Stebbins point out very eloquently. Hence, temporal capital cuts across and is applicable to all segments of time, and is variable given an individual's position in the relevant hierarchy, or an individual's circumstance.

An instant brightening of the day

Have you ever seen a person who's just walking along, or (in today's case) biking along and just has the biggest smile on their face? That makes me happy.

I dropped by Union Station a couple weeks ago to do some fieldwork, doing some analysis of spaces of waiting. Union Station's an interesting spot. You can only sit and relax if you bought a ticket. You wait in comfort at an economic investment.

No plugs though. Or, rather, none that I could see in the sitting areas. And no one was plugged in. This indicates a couple possible of things to me. First of all it may be that the architecture of the place does not assume that people will need to use tech devices, and by assuming that, the place also indirectly assumes that the people who will be waiting there are not people who need to use tech devices - in other words, people who either cannot afford it, or whose time is not valuable enough to have to use technology to be productive. A stretch of the imagination? Maybe. Intentional? Maybe not. Perhaps this is the problem with interpretive analysis of spaces - we don't know for sure. But what I do know is, for the most part, trains in LA are not something people of a wide range of social classes take regularly. After all, a car gives one better control over one's time, and a plane is faster - both indicating higher temporal capital for those who choose (and can afford) to take these types of transportation. And while airports are scrambling to install more plugs, we shall see if the new renovations that Union Station is doing will take passengers' needs to be constantly connected into account.

Uses of Temporal Capital: Domestic Workers and Scheduling

Let me reiterate that temporal capital is the amount of time one has under one's control. It is not the amount of time one ostensibly has in any given amount of time, or the rate at which time passes in an objective and absolute fashion (24 hours per day). That being said, the concept of temporal capital to help us understand our experience of time can be used in a broad number of ways.

Indeed, the correlation between socioeconomic class and temporal capital is not straightforward at all. Other scholars the likes of David Harvey (1989), Robert Levine (1997), Ida Sabelis (2007), Pierre Bourdieu (1984), and Edward Hall (in the Silent Language) allude to the idea time is variable between individuals based on how much power they have, their position within the social stratum, their occupation, or their culture. While control over time correlated with class holds true some of the time, consider the following anecdote. A family friend whose elderly father is in the hospital told me that they hired two domestic workers to take care of her father. The domestic workers do not have to do much in the way of active care, as the father is bed-bound and the hospital takes care of most of his needs. The domestic workers spend a lot of their shift watching movies or messaging friends on the iPad that the family has purchased. In this case, these domestic workers experience rather high levels of temporal capital in a micro-level, as their time and physical location is controlled by the conditions of their employment, yet they are free to do what they wish on the mobile device.

Amy Jordan (1992) found that higher SES families tend to me monochronistic, meaning they have a set schedule - do homework from 5-6pm, watch TV from 8-9pm, go to bed at 9:30pm, whereas lower SES families tend to be polychronistic - there is more multitasking, and not everything has its own temporal spot or allocation. Families of lower SES, Jordan found, are more concerned with completing the task at hand, no matter how long it took. For example, they will finish a movie rather than cutting off the movie at a certain time in order to do the next thing. Jordan's main argument is that the value of time is perceived and felt differently given a family's SES, and is passed down and cultivated within the children. Temporal capital can be used to think about scheduling of time as well. There is a certain privilege attached to be able to control one's future, that is tied to a monochronistic way of scheduling. For example, if I am able to schedule my life next week, it means I retain control over my time as projected into the future - I am allowed temporal capital on a larger scale - one that spans days and weeks, as opposed to just minutes and hours. Ironically, if I choose to follow that schedule, my micro temporal capital disappears - I MUST be at a meeting for an hour next Tuesday, and then I must be at my computer finishing an article. Yet, within a broader perspective of temporal capital, I took control over my life by allowing myself to schedule in times to be productive and keeping to that schedule. In contrast, if I had less control over my own future, I may not be as concerned with scheduling far into the future, as I may not know if I will have next Tuesday from 3-4pm free to do as I please. So the "temporal orientation," as Jordan calls it, of monochronicity is not inculcated within me, and my value of time is not tied directly to productivity. Indeed, I may not be as concerned with making sure my temporal investment yields some form of productivity - I may write a paper for however long it takes me, taking YouTube breaks as often as I like. In this way, during that process of paper writing, I have more temporal capital, as I am free to do what I please.

License Plate Frames

For a society obsessed with projecting a self-image, I'm surprised by the number of people who don't have a license plate frame that portrays some sort of affiliation. I drive around LA, and most of the license plate frames that I see are the generic frames one gets with a new car - usually the name of the car company or the dealership.

Short one today. Yesterday, I spent some time on the MTR here in HK listing out people on the train, and whether they are using their mobile phone. I don't know if I'll be able to use any of this for my dissertation, but it was a fun exercise. If I were to use it for my dissertation, I would say, for sampling, something along the lines of, it was a random sample of a random part of the train. Perhaps that will work.

Waiting is such an interesting moment. Or series of moments. It's frustrating too, because by definition, waiting is when the person who waits is waiting for something... and he or she is at the lowest point of control over his or her time. After all, one cannot absolutely predict when the waiting time will be over, unless, of course, the waiting is scheduled. And even then, one is at the mercy of the ticking of the clock to determine when the waiting is over. There is an element of expectation here too - the more one can expect, and trust that expectation, the less frustrating the waiting is? This will be interesting to test...

A platform to practice writing

In an attempt to try and write a bit more, and coherently (as much of my ramblings in private spaces don't translate well to anyone other than me understanding it), I'm going to try and blog a bit more. Francesca and I were talking about how, after quals, it's hard to have a constant writing schedule (since one is presumably also not in class anymore at this point), and it's easy to get caught up in a plethora of other projects, as I have, that don't necessarily require constant writing.

There are actually a few sites that I use to help me get into a writing groove. One that I have used pretty extensively to brain vomit is 750words.com, a site inspired by a program (?) or process called The Artist's Way (which I have actually undertaken years ago, when I was writing a lot of music). In The Artist's Way, one of the activities that you do every day is what is called "Morning Papers," in which you write stream of consciousness 3 pages handwritten, just to get any "gunk" out of your system before you do actual writing. Hence the brain vomit.

Whenever I need a quick fix, I will head over the writtenkitten.net, where the site gives you a picture of a kitten every 100 words you write. It's quite the motivator. You just have to remember to cut and paste everything you write back into a word document, or you'll lose it.

Winmar has told me about a program called Write or Die which sounds seriously ominous. I haven't personally used this, but apparently you have to keep writing, or it will start (egads) DELETING what you write! If that's not a motivation to keep writing, I don't know what is.

So there you go. Happy writing!