Weekend in Taiwan

7/10-7/12

Kenneth and I slipped off to Taipei for the day yesterday. We arrived in Taoyuan after what felt like a really long day of travel. Dawen was saying how the location of HKG, while good for landings and such (the airport used to be in Kowloon – much more accessible for everyone involved), makes a short hop across the pond to Taiwan into an all-day ordeal. Plus, there was a typhoon a-brewin' yesterday.

We saw Baba's new place in Hsinchu, which has 4 bedrooms and two stories. The place is huge. And now, between Mama and Baba, they have three primary places of residence – Hsinchu, Kaohsiung, and Hong Kong. The joke is Mama has enough tea sets for all of those places, and she's always wondering which residence she will leave tea sets. Ok, that's probably funnier in my head.

Anyway. Kenneth and I got into Taipei via HSR around 6pm last night, and went to the Landis Hotel, checked in (you actually sit down at the check-in desk to check in – I very rarely, if ever, see hotels like this – the Landis is very hoity toity. There is a doorman who is in – I'm not kidding – a gray top hat and tux). Barry sent me some almost-final mixes for the EP, so I listened quickly, then ran off to dinner with Nancy and Grace – we had shabu-shabu at this place called Green and Safe – except Nancy and I had a really hard time finding it in the rain from the street.

We went to this beer place after, where everything is on tap, and the bartenders come out from behind to counter to mingle and ask customers what they want.

Then this morning, I got up early and went to get some egg pancake and soy milk – my breakfast date with John Grisham. Went back to hotel – Kenneth was still sleeping – and I had a few hours to kill before meeting up with Dawen. So I headed to the Taipei Museum of Fine Art (Top Hat Tuxedo guy told me that might be a good place). Found some U-Bikes on the way, rented one, and was off!

The Museum of Fine Art was very interesting – western style painting, but Taiwan content – of Taiwan families, farmers, streets – it was really cool seeing that impressionist style of painting, but have the content matter be not European. There was also an exhibit on environmentalism upstairs. Oh, and because it was Saturday, it was free for students. Booyah!

Lunch with Dawen and Chris, then a cat cafe. Now on HSR back to Kaohsiung. Which is a lot more expensive than I remember, but I guess that makes sense.

Day 2 in Puerto Rico! #ICA15

Yea yea, so there was no Day 1.

My flight from LAX to FLL left on Thursday evening, and got into FLL at 4:30am on Friday morning. I then proceeded to have a 6 hour layover, during which I waited in the wrong terminal, and did not realize until half an hour before boarding for the flight to San Juan.... at which point, I had to exit Terminal 3 (where I was cooling my heels) and rush over to Terminal 4, and go through security again. Thankfully, Fort Lauderdale has fast security. Or just less people.

I should mention that I flew Spirit Airlines, which apparently is the worst rated airline for customer service (the Atlantic has a fairly fair assessment of the situation). My expectations for the flight were...low. Maybe that's the trick. You have really low expectations for the flight, you end up pleasantly surprised. Spirit "unbundles" services, so the base fare you pay is very low (for my flights to Puerto Rico, most other airlines were asking in the neighborhood of $1000 for roundtrip fare - my flight, including the $45 I had to pay for my one carry-on, cost me a little over $600). The claim they make is that other airlines bundle in the complimentary drink, the checked luggage, the carry-on luggage, etc etc.

So, for this flight, my expectations were exceeded. The flight attendants were super nice and pleasant. I paid $2 for a tea, and they have a "combo" deal - two hot drinks for the price of one. So I got two teas. And a cup of instant noodle (going for a whopping $3.50) but all and all told, for a cheap flight, not bad. And it's true that the seats don't recline. And that if you don't spend $18 reserving a seat during online booking, your seating is randomized. When I first got to the airport, I had middle seats for both flights. At the gate, I asked if they had an aisle, and the agent told me the only aisle seat was the very back row, and if that was ok. Sure, I said. The back of the plane never bothered me. Turns out, my aisle seat was an entire empty row! Fine, maybe I got really lucky on this flight. But overall, not the worst experience.

The 6 hour layover, though...that was painful. Because of my two teas, I found myself hopped up on caffeine and unable to sleep. When I finally reached FLL, I was wiped. And hungry. And we got in so early that the amenities at FLL weren't open yet. What's a girl to do? Thankfully, FLL has free wifi (at the price of pushing an "agree" to terms button, rather than the downloading of an app or watching of a video required at LAX), so I finished my ICA conference presentation. At that point, Chili's finally opened, so I had breakfast while mooching off the FLL wifi and watching Law & Order: SVU on Hulu.

The flight over to San Juan was very uneventful. By that point, the lack of sleep caught up to me, and I completely conked out.

I'm still not sure what to think of Puerto Rico. It's not part of the US, but it's not really another country either. We don't need our passports to enter the territory. The official language is Spanish, although most people speak English very well. There are a lot of stray animals. We are staying on the west end of Condado, while the east end seems to have a larger homeless population. What is striking about the homeless population is that they all have dogs. Sometimes more than one. And in old San Juan today, when Ioana, Nancy, Theo, and I went and walked around, we ran into a number of stray cats...

And tonight, walking home from the conference, we encountered a stray dog that was following up. He passed us, then looped back around, and passed us a few more times.

It is humid here. Feels like Southeast Asia. The intermittent lack of hot water also reminds me of Southeast Asia....but, very beautiful.

We (Francesca, Nancy, and I) are staying in an Airbnb, which is essentially a studio with three beds in it, and the proprietor only gave us one key, so it has been a full-on scheduling operation to make sure the person who needs the key has the key when needed...

But it is still quite nice. And has AC, so I can't complain.

Oh, and here we are taking a picture with my selfie stick.

I did my presentation earlier today, then Ioana, Nancy, Theo, and I hit up old San Juan -- a mere $12 taxi ride from the Caribe Hilton Hotel - the conference hotel. We walked to the two forts (and didn't know that a $5 ticket pays for admission to both), and checked out (aka entered) the second fort (El Morro - the bigger, more famous one).

After the fort, we were hot, sticky (sweaty), and dehydrated, so we hit up a place with drinks. And live music! I couldn't tell you what the name of this place is... but it was very lovely.

Tonight was the Annenberg party, and the Northwestern party. The Annenberg party probably had around 300 or 400 people there (just...guesstimating from my days in band, remembering how big a 250-piece band is.... there were definitely more people at the party tonight) - it was outdoors, and very overwhelming. A few of us hopped between the Annenberg party and the Northwestern party. Northwestern had rented out the entire Rosa Mexicano restaurant, and were offering tacos and guacamole all night. It was very lovely. 

Ok, that was Day 2. I'm tired, and ready for bed.

Deconstructing HIPAA (very briefly)

So, Jenny and I had an interesting discussion about HIPAA tonight, which started as a question of how I was going to anonymize all of my lovely field data.

HIPAA, which stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which is a regulation that dictates certain personal health information should not be communicated or otherwise disclosed. In layman's terms, this is the rule that says doctors and nurses can't talk about you or your condition outside of the immediate sphere of your care.

So let's deconstruct HIPAA and the idea of privacy for a sec, keeping in mind that all of this is an intellectual exercise. What if health information wasn't private? Well, if your boss found out that you're pregnant, or have HIV, or some other health issue, they *may* find any excuse to fire you. Does this mean that they should? Does HIPAA, in this case, reinforce harmful social norms and assumptions?

Then again, we live in the real world. We necessarily need HIPAA to protect us against the discrimination and prejudices that exist. But it's important to be aware of the norms HIPAA maintains and furthers, while also accepting it as a necessary tool to protect vulnerable individuals within the reality in which we live.

Ruminations and stuff.

Rejection never gets easier. I got another rejection of my temporal capital paper (I think this makes it the third one). Most of the reviewers' comments revolve around "What's the point" and "others have talked about time in this way before". Maybe trying to make in-roads for groundbreaking theories isn't the point. Maybe the point is to demonstrate how something that we feel and know work in the real world, and talk about those dynamics within that particular situation. Maybe there will be theory-building, maybe it'll be theory affirming, or maybe there doesn't need to be theory at all. Maybe it could just be another way to understand this crazy world we live in.

The revelation that the temporal capital theoretical framework development may totally be a "duh" sort of thing, and maybe doesn't need a paper to explain it, is liberating. Maybe what I need to do is not make new theory (because the more I think about it, the more I don't think temporal capital, differentiation of temporal autonomy and temporal control across different groups and individuals, is really groundbreaking. It's assumed), but rather familiarize myself in studies of temporality and power. After all, my dissertation really looks at power dynamics through the lens of temporality in the health care system. It doesn't have that much to do with this esoteric term, temporal capital, and more to do with people's lives and real situation. It is a more grounded approach.

Another brain vomit...

5 Stages of rupturing a normative world view (mostly relevant for people in positions of relative privilege, who have a dominant reading of normative framework).

disclaimer - I went through these 5 stages, not everyone would have, but hey, this is a brain vomit, for now.

1) Ignorance. This is when one is completely embedded in normative structures and mentality.

2) Rupture. The process of educating and questioning. Realizing that one's world view only represents one tiny portion of the world. Also, realizing that structures of power and privilege are ever present and real, despite the idealistic bubble one may have grown up in.

3) Ideal Expectation. When one tries to live one's life by taking an oppositional reading to everything, making the personal political and the political personal. When one holds individuals and society to unrealistically high expectations to function as an ideal society (ie: one where racism, sexism, homophobia, etc doesn't exist at all). There also is this expectation that things should change right away. This is also the stage in which a lot of discourses get stuck...

4) Re-evaluating. Realizing that the ideal image of society that one wishes for is not grounded in reality, and that most people still exist in normative frameworks (stuck in Stage 1). Trying to figure out how to reach people in that first stage effectively without rupturing their world view too quickly at once.

5) Acceptance. The personal does not always have to be political, and vice versa. An ideal world is something to strive for, but recognizing that a grounded approach that acknowledges normative frameworks and people's comfort in them, and seeking ways to gently scrape away at that framework. Realizing that this takes time, and won't happen overnight, and that it is a constant uphill battle.

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.