Comments, Forums, Entitlement, and Offense

It's be so long since I posted something on here.  I suppose it's a combination of being busy with work and mostly being actually old now - it's not really because I don't have thoughts I want to jot down, but mostly because I just don't have the time or the energy to sit down and put in a couple of hours to "think" about matters that are of no importance to life except a simple observation of the human condition.

Besides the fact that my workload has increased significantly and all I want to do when I get home is sit in bed and watch tv shows, I'm also spending a bit of time doing things like co-running a travel blog with a friend, shopping, and selling my handbags on ebay.

In fact, I spend way too much time on the Internet in general, reading news and analyses via fb and twitter, watch tv shows, curating my instagram and browsing aimlessly in general. The thing about Internet these days is that what drives content isn't just a writer on a keyboard publishing on a blog or a online news/magazines (although who can tell the difference at this point?), but also the comments and general opinion. Opinions are not just saved for forums anymore, but anyone can say anything when someone writes something.

For news sites like NPR with a very niched market whose makeup are those who are generally liberal and highly educated, the comments act as a dialogue where most of the time people are debating using very relevant data, stats, experience, and logic. I often find those dialogues enlightening and they sometimes change my opinion or widens my understanding of something after reading them through.

For news publications like NYT, you still have a pretty good base of educated, thoughtful, and caring people, but they have a much wider readership and often times you do have to sift through some garbage opinions.

For gossip columns like People magazine (which is now more similar to Apple Daily in HK & TW, posting a bunch of sensationalized crimes), a majority of the comments are pretty garbage, though entertaining, when not outright anger-inducing.

But in general, I think the intelligence of the comments don't always have anything to do with education and has everything to do with a culture of entitlement. For example, almost a year ago (I think) I read an opinion piece on the NYT that resonated with me pretty strongly. This woman was describing a day when a guy who refused to keep a door opened for her and her stroller  and she was not upset at the guy, but was upset at the culture of mothers who believe that their children, and what their children experiences should always come before other people.

I can no longer find this article, but what resonated with me was her point about mothers buying ginormous comfortable strollers in NYC where space is limited, and goes about ruining other people's day by hitting ppl with it and taking up too much space unabashedly.

I recall reading the article and nodding furiously because of my experiences with people who have children who they think they deserve to accommodated without having to even politely ask first (e.g., taking my seat on a flight and then tell me to sit elsewhere cuz they have a toddler, someone complaining no one in Toronto lets his child have a seat on the bus when he never asked anyone to get up)

The idea here is not that one does not want to be nicer to a person with a young child, but that the parents believe that they deserve it and expect it and get upset if they don't get their way.

Most of the comments in the article were so illogical that I can't even remember any of them, except for one, which really stuck with me because of its level of ridiculousness. This woman commented saying that she spent years trying to get pregnant and after she has finally succeeded, she will now buy whatever it is that she wants and as big and comfortable as she wants for her celebration, and she is offended that the author tried to take away from that experience.

WTF?

So because it took you five years to get pregnant, you "deserve" to buy a ginormous stroller and not be considerate of those people around you? Talk about false attributions! What does having a big stroller have anything to do with taking long to get knocked up? How does not having a big stroller take away your experience of raising a child???

Where do these entitlements come from?

When I am buying or selling items on ebay, I go to the the purse forum to read about people's experiences, and there's obviously multiple threads on the ebay sub-forums complaining about buyers on ebay. Some of them are legitimate complaints but some of them are pretty entitled.

When you sell something and you list a price for the item and enable "Best Offer," why would you complain about someone making an offer below your expectations? Why is it considered "rude" if someone offers you a price 50% off of your listed price? It's not personal, it's business!

If you don't want to sell it at the price, then reject it. "Oh what if i get a lot of bad offers and it's just a waste of my time to have to reject it" one might say. Well first of all, if you are getting a lot of low offers, maybe your price is much higher than demand. Second of all, eBay even allows you to set an auto-reject number, what exactly do you have to complain about???

What are you entitled to here, exactly? That the buyer can read your mind about your lowest price you are willing to sell your bag for? That you should be able to sell your USED item at a price you believe the item is worth without anyone suggesting otherwise?

At what point is someone being offended legitimately and at what point is someone just offended from a wrong sense of entitlement?

Am I being entitled because I'm complaining about all these people complaining? Wouldn't it just be easier not to read comments? Probably.

Btw, an unrelated thought from reading those terrible comments: I would never call my own child a miracle, unless the child becomes a quantum astrophysicist with a nobel peace price, because it would be a miracle for me to raise a child that brilliant and loving.

Also, quantum astrophysicist is probably not even a real thing, but I have no idea.

The Justification of Travelling

I'm really tired of reading posts and shares on my Facebook page exalting travelling, talking about  why it's important to travel and how great it is.

Maybe it's because I've already had my fill of travelling and I have the opportunity to travel that I think this way, but maybe it's because I find none of these posts understand how lucky people are to be able to travel.

Travelling is a Luxury.

Travelling is a Consumption.

Travelling is ALMOST ALWAYS Selfish
(unless you are a humanitarian doing work to help others)

I am not arguing that learning about different culture and adding to your life experience is a problem. But you can learn about cultures and add to your experience without travelling, just as you can travel and not learn about culture nor add value to your life experience beyond, "been there done that." 

What I really find problematic are the ways people travel, the reasoning behind people's travels and, most importantly, what I hate the most, is what people are adding to the propaganda of travelling.

No one can define for an individual how they should travel or how much they should travel. So before you start quitting your job or spend all your money so you can backpack across the world to learn about yourself, please consider the following:

1. How are you going to travel? via an airplane or a boat or a car? Because everything I just named means carbon footprints.
2. What are you giving back to society and what are you taking away from the society when you travel?
3. Who is benefitting from the travels? What is being lost?
4. What are your goals when you travel? Do you NEED to travel in order to achieve your goals? Did you actually achieve your goal after you travelled?

North Americans have this ridiculous notion of travelling: the more you travel the better you are as a person.
The reality? You can learn anywhere. You can widen your perspective through doing anything. If you are willing.

Again, I'm not saying don't travel. I'm not trying to be a hypocrite. I travel a lot and I'm extremely grateful for my ability to do this. I love travelling (most people do) but I understand that it's a consumption slightly better than buying expensive purses.  You don't HAVE TO travel.

Travel, if you want.

But don't go around telling people that it's more than what it really is: a vain and luxurious entertainment. There's no justification for consumption beyond personal gain.

In Pursuit of Un-Unhappiness

In a world where a person is not oppressed and abused by another power, where food, water, shelter are abundant, and quality of life is superb, why are there still unhappy people? Where does unhappiness stem from?

I have been thinking about this question a lot lately. Ironically it is not because I am unhappy; it is actually because I have currently found peace in my life. Beyond the mundane first world problems that I like to incessantly broadcast to my boyfriend and my best friends, I am beyond grateful for what I have and where I am in life, both physically and abstractly. But this is not a show-off post wherein I describe my insignificant personal achievements to make myself feel better about myself, because people who are happy and at peace don't need to be validated by others. What is this post about? I'm not sure yet, but I feel like I have something to say.

I have learned that happiness and unhappiness are not mutually exclusive. Either can be an emotion or a state of being. You can be in a state of unhappiness but feel momentarily happy about something (I am deeply unhappy with the way my life is, but I just bought a new car). Or you can be in a state of happiness but feel unhappy temporarily about something (I love everything about my life but oops I just crashed my new car).  

So yes, you can be happy and unhappy at the same time, but only if one is a state (I am, deep inside, always) and the other is an emotion (I feel, right now, and maybe for a little while longer).

But it is much easier to detect and understand your emotions, and harder to pinpoint your state.
Therefore it is easy to change your emotions, but it is difficult to change a state of being.

In the spectrum of the most unhappy state to the most happy state, most of us probably sit somewhere in between. And a lot of us have no idea where exactly we sit, especially when many people mistaken their emotion to be a state (I just bought a new car and a new house, I must be happy). On top of which, what makes up happiness for each individual is different and no one can actually tell you what will make you happy. So how does one know if you are happy or not happy, and if you don't know, do you need to bother to pursuit happiness?

Whoa - now things sound way more complex than it needs to be. Defining happiness is near impossible for most of us. We can list a million things that makes us happy, and if we did achieve those things, would we truly be happy? This self-awareness thing is way too complicated.

The way I see it, is that we gotta take baby steps.  The pursuit of happiness is too hard - who really knows what can make you happy?  But the pursuit of ensuring you are not unhappy or the pursuit of un-unhappiness: much easier. I am not talking sitting around refusing things that I think makes me feel unhappy (eating a celery stick, having conversations with French people), but I'm talking about taking action to change things. I did say it was a pursuit, did I not?

I don't know what makes me happy. But I will do things to change my unhappiness. And you know what, the more I think about it, the easier it seems to pinpoint the root of unhappiness stems from:

• Cowardice: fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good
• Greed: desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. It is applied to a markedly high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.
• Denial: when faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence
• Laziness: disinclination to activity or exertion (making changes) despite having the ability to do so
• Intolerance: unwillingness or refusal to consider, tolerate or respect contrary or different opinions or beliefs
• Lack of Introspection: the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings and trying to understand them

The above are all standard dictionary definitions and you can EASILY see why these characteristics could make a person be in a perpetual state of unhappiness. Next time if you are unhappy with your life, try asking yourself:

• What am I scared of? Should I be scared? Maybe I need to be brave and do what I believe is right. Be brave.
• Do I want too much? Do I have enough? Why don't I have enough? Be satisfied.
• Am I in denial? Be honest - with yourself and with others.
• What action can I take to change things? Am I making a change when I can because I am in denial or because I'm scared or just lazy? Be proactive.
• Does what I can't stand affect me negatively? Should allow it to affect me? Is it even in my control to change what is happening? Be accepting and try to change your own perspective.
• Why do I feel this way? Why do I think this way? Be critical of your thoughts

I'm not an expert in therapy and I don't expect anyone to do something just because I tell them to. I am not better than anyone else. And I am constantly working away these roots of unhappiness. My biggest problem is acceptance and tolerating thing when they don't agree with me. And it does make me unhappy.

But for the most part, because I am making an effort every day all the time, I have peace. And I deeply believe introspection, critical thinking, and most of all,  honesty has been the most rewarding for me - because they usually lead to action. Sometimes unnecessary honesty can bring unhappiness, but lying will always bring unhappiness. And if you are don't make an effort to be honest with yourself and with others, you will always be unhappy.

Objectification

Some people have asked me why I get so worked up when people are "fascinated" by my culture or background. What they clearly don't understand and are ignorant to is the difference between understanding and learning about another culture vs. objectifying another culture.

Hey world, I am not a "Chinese" "Girl" who cooks "exotic" "Chinese" food and speaks an "exotic" language.
Ethnicity and culture are not "cool" things you get to learn about but a strong part of of what makes up a person. I am no more defined by my skin colour as the hat I am wearing today as what my background culture is. Learning about a culture is more than saying shouting a couple of words of its language to a person walking by, liking some ethnic dish, or wearing a cultural clothing as a hallowe'en costume.

Learning about various cultures HELPS you understand A PART of what that person is made up of, it doesn't make the person who he or she is.

I am NOT an object that happens to be walking on the street or working next to you that you are "fascinated" with. I am a person just like you. Do you like Daft Punk BECAUSE YOU ARE FRENCH? Do you listen to the Beatles BECAUSE YOU ARE BRITISH? Do you dance to Elvis BECAUSE YOU ARE AMERICAN?

I like shopping as much as it's because I am Chinese as I am Canadian. No, I like shopping because my name is Lynn and I like to analyse things and i'm frugal and a minimalist, and my brain can't work in clutter mode and shopping allows me to look around, and analyse things and learn about culture and ensure i buy what works out for me price and practicality. Now if you had gotten to know me as a person, you might know that, but instead, you can just attribute it to the fact that I am "Chinese", whatever that means for you. In a similar vein, just because I grew up in Canada doesnt mean I love the cold.  Can you imagine a Canadian tell another Canadian "stop complaining, you're canadian, you should like the cold! You should be used to it!" Yeah clearly because i am from somewhere it makes me a super human who LOVES cold weather.

Next time when you make a comment based on someone's culture - think about what you are saying. No one is walking cultural artefact.

The Meaning of Gifting from Paris

Christmas shopping this year has been really difficult for many reasons, and mainly because I'm shopping for people I no longer see on a regular basis, so I have no idea what they want or what they need. A lot of people might just say, oh come on, you live in Paris, just bring back something Parisian...well here's what I found out over the last year and half i've been here - almost everything you can buy in Paris, you can buy in the US - and for a lot cheaper as well. Yes, even the stuff made in France.

Exhibit A: Nuxe Paris
Nuxe is a very popular skincare brand here and I have to admit, they have some really good stuff - and the smell is just wonderful. As this is a relatively unknown brand in North American (unlike Vichy, L'Occitane, Lancome, Yves Rocher, Sephora, I can go on...), generally this would be a great item to get for the women - "hey guys, this is the most popular moisturiser they use in the land of the glam!!"

Except, apparently you can simply get this stuff online on their US branded site, for CHEAPER.

Here is the body lotion on the US Nuxe website for $23 USD for approximate 400 mL

Here is the same one from the French website for 18.6 EUR for 200 ML - which is about $25 at current exchange rate. WTF would be the correct way to describe this....

Well, what about Macaroons, you ask, everyone LOVES macaroons. Well they don't really eat macaroons here...so i'm not sure what you mean....oh, unless you are talking about MacarOns...yes, people always think France = Eiffel Tower, perfume (I'll get to that later), and the land of the "Macaroons", so bringing back macarons must be easy! Well except there's a slight problem - actual good macarons, like baguettes have a life-expectancy of 3-4 days. So even if I were to run to L'aduree or Lenotre the day I leave the country (which is actually possible as there are l'adurees in the airport if i happen to be in the right terminal), there's still the issue of having to see everyone who wants them as soon as I get off the long-haul flight, which, even if I wanted to (and I might not), is almost impossible. Plus, let me show you:

Exhibit B: L'aduree Macarons around the world:

Yes, they even have stores in China. If you really wanted fresh, good macarons, do you really want them flown here in economy from an 8 hour flight from Paris or do you want fresh made ones that you can get from the various US locations? So as much as I'd love to bring everyone good macarons, it's really not possible. I could bring those ones they sell at the tourist stores that lasts up to a year, but I'd be a horrible friend and person if you are not my friend and I'm somehow obligated to bring you back something.

So what else...what else...?
Chocolate? Yea, I brought everyone chocolate last year...so I can't give chocolate every year. Perfume? I can bring perfume right? Sure, if you can't buy them in departments stores in North America already, then the fancy custom ones cost 50-200 EUR a bottle. I'm not made of money....Handbags and fashion accessories? Same story. Oh La Creuset! Same story, except also they are CAST IRON pots and pans so I'm afraid they might not meet flight restrictions. Fois Gras? Illegal, not to mention not very many people i know want to eat those things.

Look, besides the type of tourist garbage that no one wants to import from France (and even those you can get on ebay), thanks to our wonderful global village, nothing in France is special anymore.

I will bring back any of the above under special requests from people (I have had a friend that asked for cough syrup that had codeine in them), but I can't bring it back for everyone I need to buy something for.
Did I mention also that everything here is so goddamn expensive in comparison to Canada and the US? If I wanted to buy something not French, I am better off doing my christmas shopping onsite and not here, but also brings back the entire dilemma of not knowing what to buy for people you haven't seen for a long time...or have never met at all, in this case, Caleb's family in Nevada.

I went Christmas shopping yesterday and that was my divination based on my sore back and exhausted state of being. Perhaps I just need to realize that Christmas gifts are not about getting people what they WANT or NEED, but just buying something to show them that I bought something for you cuz I care?

I like the gifts I give to be meaningful and meaningful is harder and harder these days, with the world becoming one village. It's both a good and a bad thing. The bad thing is that buying something from afar or from somewhere "exotic" no longer counts as being meaningful, but the good thing from that I guess, is that for something to be meaningful, you would have to really know and care for the person, which is what it should be in the first place, no? I need to start calling people regularly on the phone to know their lives - that's what meaningful is - caring about them regularly and not just once a year.

Survival

I've seen in movies people who have been ravaged by war and hardship seek refuge in cities with food and humane conditions. I've read in books about people coming from poor areas going into big cities hoping to find a job and a better life. I've heard stories of people with nothing, migrate to places with something, only to find, still, nothing. But they were always stories from another time or another place, sometimes both, far far away from my reality. The very very limited number of beggars, homeless indivduals, and dumpster excavators I have seen, I've been told to stay away. There's no empathy - there's hardly sympathy.  It's not because I'm superior or haughty; it's because I've never understood and was never asked to understand. These people, by my education and by my instinct, are from a different universe, one impossible for me to relate to.

Moving to Paris has started to make me realized how privileged I am. No, not because I get to live in Paris. The grandma on the street looking through the garbage bin got to move to Paris too, but as a refugee from a war-torn country and living in a squalor home provided by the French government. She hasn't had the education to allow her to find a job. The only thing she knows how to do is to scavenge through the junk and debris in order to find something she understands to be useful and could help her family, even though her family no longer needs to do that. The near middle-aged woman who lives in the metro station with a baby in her hand begging for change or ticket restaurant was privileged enough to stumble across Europe to Paris too, but she doesn't know how to look for a job and she doesn't understand why anyone would need a job if there are people on the street who can give her money. You can't even tell if that baby is hers or even real. The young man whose ancestors have been colonized and exploited by the French Colonial Empire speaks French in a thick accent has managed to illegally but luckily sneak his way into the city of lights and glamour. But he has been shunned to the suburbs of Paris looking for odd-end jobs to tie him over until he falls into the economy of crime. Yet, they are still privileged in relations to what might have been otherwise if they didn't come here. This is not the privilege I talk about.

Where I grew up, the couple of beggars at the train station seems physically disabled and you wonder who's taking care of them; that one homeless teen who lives next to the beer store in the neighbourhood plaza is considered lazy; and few trash digger you sometimes see downtown are probably crazy. I understood that if you work hard, you will succeed. And anything outside, beyond what is comprehensible, is therefore flawed. Except none of this is true - or maybe some of it might be. But it doesn't matter, does it? As long as you stay away from the crazies, far enough that they can't steal, rob, or hurt you and you study hard and you work hard, you will be someone and even something; everyone else is simply not putting in enough effort.

The privilege I am talking about, is the privilege to have ever thought this way and that I can, if I choose to, continue to think this way.  Everyone is born with tabula rasa and despite that we all somehow ended up in Paris, there are those who grew up with less than nothing and their goal in Paris is to survive, while mine is to live magnificently. This city is full of people who are here to survive. And it makes those of us who has never had to fight for survival unbearably hard to breathe. And that, in and of itself, is a privilege. I get it now.

Stories

"It must have been in another lifetime..." she thought, maybe out loud.

She looked at the words, listening to them, even. Swirling, in her head, together and then apart, leading, following, swing and then turn...choreographed by wisps of desire. Hauntingly beautiful words, strung together by flurries of melancholy, creating perfectly sensible meaning. Their meaning seem captivating,  the stories they make...maybe even beautiful, too.

She doesn't need to come back to the words again. She can see them when she closes her eyes. And, for some reason, she can even recite the rest out loud. Without having seen them! No, she must have seen them before. She was the choreographer who had woven the steps together.  But she's having a hard time relating to those words.

She looked outside at the snow slowly accumulating from the pretty snowflakes. She can see two little toddlers all bundled up, excited about the lovely white fluffs falling from the grey sky. Their moms must be nearby. Do they remember what it was like before having children? Do they miss it? Was it also a different lifetime for them?

How many lifetimes does a person get to have? One stack here for one lifetime, and another there for a different one. Or are they organized that neatly? When did one lifetime end and another one begin?

The gaps. Must be the gaps.
Beautiful, heartfelt stories do not create the lives that lived. They are records of the lives that ended.
The gaps are where the living is found, where the lives are lived. Stories are the most beautiful at the expense of death. The irony isn't lost on her.  Suddenly she fears that the day will come when she will write beautifully again. Peace and bliss don't make good stories. But she doesn't want to write good stories anymore. She doesn't want another lifetime.

She puts away the stacks that she stumbled upon while looking for that vintage necklace her mom gave her. She wants to find it and give it to her daughter to wear for her wedding day. She chuckled to herself and thought about what her husband said to her before she ran up to the attic an hour ago, "what is a 1 month-old going to do with that?"

She'll look for it in a couple of decades. Sometimes, her imagination runs too far. But she's just that good at making stories, even if they're not beautifully written. Not yet anyway.

Grammar and Manner

It is okay to say:
"What is your background?"
"What is your heritage/race/ethnicity/ancestry/lineage?"

It is not okay to say:
"Where are you from?" if you want to ask someone for their ethnicity
"Where are you REALLY from?" after asking "where are you from?" and getting a literal answer
"Why is your English so good?" without asking for a person's background first
"Your English is perfect!" without knowing the person's background, unless you are editing a written piece of work.
"What is your REAL name?" after asking the person for their name.
"Are you Japanese? Are you Korean? Are you Chinese?" if you want to know what their background is. Why are you guessing and making assumptions based on your own silly stereotype????

It is also not okay to:

• Shout random asian languages to me as I'm walking down the street, such as "konnichiwa" or "ni hao"
• Attribute how i am or things i do to my race/ethnicity/ancestry/lineage, no i don't like shopping because I am Chinese, no the pasta im cooking is not chinese, no i don't like the cold even if i'm from canada, and no I don't speak French in Toronto even if I'm from Canada

Patterns

Have you ever felt like regardless of what you do, how hard you work, what choices you make, thoughtful or not, you end up just in some "category" of people in someone's eyes? Someone will know you and make predictions about you because you fit in with a "type" - and more often than not they are usually right.

"Oh I know people like him"
"Oh I've had people like her - she's good, but this isn't what she wants and she won't be around to stay"
"He's gonna want more money later, you will see"
etc., etc.

Sometimes they're right because they know who you are as a person after a long time, sure. But I'm talking about the people you are not up close and personal with - and after knowing you for a short time, they know the pattern. Yes, you fit into a pattern. I fit into a pattern. A pattern for every aspect of our lives. Sure we may be all made up of a mish mash of patterns and we are all a giant mosaic, each person a stain glass window that looks slightly different if you look hard. But from afar, everyone looks the same - just a giant palette of uncontrolled colours.

I've figured it out

I just need to find my voice again. I don't have one anymore.

Still About Shopping

I'm getting close to turning the big 3 OH.

When my I got my new job in Paris, I decided that for my first pay cheque, I should buy myself a nice legit high end handbag (about time right?). Well i kept procrastinating this task and doing other things that I just never got around to it. A couple of days ago, I pressed the mouse button and got myself a Nexus 7. Granted, the price is nowhere near the price of a nice bag - like 1/8th of the price, it made me wonder whether it would be easier for me to pull the trigger/press the mouse button on gadgets moreso than handbags. I think less guilt is involved with buying a gadget than a handbag. But then again, I don't think I've ever purchased anything over $300-$400 for myself before (The nexus 7 was $300 after tax, my marc by marc jacobs bag in 2012 was a little under $400 after tax and shipping, and my Asus Netbook in 2008 for just under $400 after tax).


Maybe about two years ago, I posted a conversation I had about actually just biting the bullet and getting myself something for my big 3 OH.

I have a few I have in mind - but am I gonna do it? I hope so...or not...AH.

Anyway, my posts are still about shopping. This is defeating the purpose...

A Response to Writing More

Caleb said I don't write enough. He seems to think it's a better past-time than shopping, which seems to be my #1 past-time on the weekends nowadays. Now, he's never directly said, "you should stop shopping and write" but I can read his sub-text.

It's true that in some regards, I haven't been doing very much brain-stimulating activities for a while now. I still read - quite a bit, but reading is a type of consumption, much like shopping, and it doesn't seem like anything substantial has been created out of my consumption.

Human beings are born to consume - it's so easy. We eat great food, we wear pretty clothes, we read interesting books, we drink in world events from newfeeds, we absorb useless information of other people's life on Facebook, even when we travel, we are simply consuming the views and the culture - but how much of what we consume is created by us, or becomes a creation as an output of our consumption?

I've been feeling a bit listless lately. I don't really know what to do with myself on weekends when I'm not travelling - not to say that I prefer travelling than having down time, but I just don't know what to do with my down time that one would consider "productive."

The truth is, outside of "producing" as a cog in a corporate office, most people have no creative/productive outlet for a hobby either. With the advent of Internet and blogging, a lot of people are able to transfer this need to create onto the www (world wide web). People write reviews for products they consume, they write travel blogs to detail they've learned, they write about the things you need to know to live abroad, they write about a new recipe they've just created (or simply that they made something from a new recipe they found), they post pictures taken with their new DSLR, or they simply post photos of the stuff they eat.

All of this is perhaps to say that now that everyone is writing, writing has really lost its glamour. I use the word "perhaps" as I'm now writing in a stream of consciousness - which I haven't done for a while, and I haven't come to a conclusion yet. I just wanted to post something, in response to Caleb's request of me writing more.

Writing used to be easy for me, but it's not any more.
My writing is often critical and can offend, so the fact that even writing about the fact that everyone writes nowadays can offend someone.  I've never been a non-fiction writer. I used to write in a stream of consciousness and then I edit and edit and edit until it becomes coherent. Or I don't, and write like a teenager in a journal.
My writing was never great. At best, someone might liked a piece or two. But those pieces took work. To sit here and write something either insightful or useful takes not just a lot of time (which it did), but a lot of brain power.

To come home from work at the end of a long day, and sit here and write something good, if even possible, would be exhausting. To do it on a weekend - well therein lies the dilemma.

What is considered productive? What should I do on the weekends?
A person who sits in his garage all weekend long putting together his model airplane or building a boat in a bottle - is that productive? He's creating something and he's enjoying it. That's important. What's not important is whether the work he's doing is either important or even good. If a dude spends 2 wknds a month in his garage building boats in a bottle that isn't good enough to sell - is that an act of consumption or creation?

The premise that we shouldn't just consume, but we need to create - must the creation involve giving something back to society? Or does the creation just has to be something that works our brain in such a way that it doesn't deteriorate?

If a person only takes pleasure in consumption, but never creation, it's probably not very attractive either.
Maybe fundamentally, what it really boils down to, is to be good at something that not many others are. That is what is attractive. A person building crappy boats in a bottle every day isn't attractive, but after a year of practicing, he builds brilliant boats in bottles might. One can never be better at consuming than others, but one can be better that creating.

If I spent at least one day a weekend writing a blog and practicing whatever it is writing a good piece requires, I might become a better writer. Or, I can spend at least one day a weekend cooking something different. Or, I can spend at least one day a weekend re-organizing an area of a house and then I will have the neatest most organized house. Or, I can spend at least one day a weekend, reading articles and learning about my industry or my job so I can be better at it.

And now we have come to the final conclusion - I need to become more attractive by being really really good at something, cuz right now, I feel like I'm not good at much any more.

Let me get back to you on this.
(Although if you start to see a lot of mundane posts, you might know why)

"Foodie" Rant

I think I will start out this entry, before I even put down any content, by apologizing. Generally when I begin a blog post, I don't actually plan out what I'm going to write. I have very specific stories I want to tell, but I never know how i'm going to tell it and i just write. It's the same for this post, but i'm still going to apologize, because I have a feeling whatever that comes out hereafter may sound haughty. So I apologize if I sound like a snob or have offended you.

The other night, while we were sitting at Figlmuller, a famous schnitzel restaurant in Vienna, I started to talk about the type of food I want to try in Vienna. Out of the left field, Caleb asked me why I hated the word "foodie."  I have mentioned to him here and there about how I don't want to be called a foodie when the word is being used on me, but latest event in which the word came up was not that long ago. About a week before we headed to Vienna, he and I were at a casual Yelp event in Paris. I met this pretty cool girl from California and we started chatting about living in Paris. And then we started to talk about restaurants and food in Paris, and she told me about the various places she likes. That got me pretty excited, which prompted her to ask me, "are you a foodie too?" I played it off casually and joked, "I don't like to use the word foodie, but I do like eating a little too much." Somehow she caught on to that, and consciously avoided using the word throughout the conversation.

"Why do you hate that word?" Caleb asked me, "You are clearly a definitive foodie."
I cringed. Hard. And then I gave him the two definitions of foodie for me and how I fall into neither of the categories. Now, there are many various definitions that are out there if you google the definition of the word foodie, but the following are the two that i subscribe to. The first being what I called the denotation of foodie (the definitive meaning of the word), the second being what I call the connotation of foodie (what the word means to the mass public).

Definition one and how I dispel my association:
The first definition is its original definition, as stated in Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodie),

"The word was coined in 1981 by Paul Levy and Ann Barr, who used it in the title of their 1984 book The Official Foodie Handbook. [...] Foodies are a distinct hobbyist group. Typical foodie interests and activities include the food industry, wineries and wine tasting, breweries and beer sampling, food science, following restaurant openings and closings and occasionally re-openings, food distribution, food fads, health and nutrition, cooking classes, culinary tourism, and restaurant management."

According to this definition, a true foodie is someone who enjoys food a lot so they study it, they learn to cook it, and they try restaurant that make good food. They try to figure out all science that surround food. That's not me at all. Yes I like cooking and yes I do sometimes read about food, restaurants, and cooking, and I like trying new things. I even  fall asleep reading menus because I like planning what I want to eat the next day or next time I'm craving a certain type of food. But I am not a connoisseur at anything, not even coffee, a topic in which I am quite interested. But I don't study anything like it's science and there's no bible for me on what good food is. I would never turn my nose up at something or tell someone they're doing something wrong when it comes to food, e.g., "oh, you should only drink your coffee black" or "you shouldn't eat at this restaurant because the chef uses Vietnamese basil instead of Italian basil."

For me, eating is personal. 

It's what I like and why and it's what you like and why. My opinion of a restaurant does not supersede another person's opinion of the same restaurant. I don't keep a food blog and I've never been to a culinary class (although i'd like to one day). I like flavour and I like spice. IMO, anything with a dash of garlic tastes better - in fact, the more the garlic and chili the happier I am (a big faux-pas in culinary etiquette). I don't really like lobster not because it's a poor man's dish but because i find it rubbery and I like yam leaves not because it's considered a poor man's dish and I need to be different, but because i like the flavour. If I don't like something, it's because it doesn't suit my personal palate, if i like something, it's because it does suit my personal palate. I will never like or dislike something because everyone else likes it or dislike it. I'm not too cool for popular dishes, nor am I going to like something because it's the current fad. In fact, most of the time, eating at a Fine Dining restaurant is like playing piano to a cow (a Chinese expression): I simply don't get it. I have no nose for refined flavour or subtle nuance of tastes. Most of the fine dining restaurants I've been to don't compare to anything from the street  (which I LOVE). In fact, I have an unhealthy obsession with street food, but that's probably not something that I'm going to get into today. So by this definition, I am not a foodie. I dont not analyze my food and try to figure out the science behind a great restaurant or a great dish and I do not go around telling people what I think about food unless the topic comes up naturally and it's a part of being in the conversation.

Definition 2 and how I dispel my association
This brings me to the second definition I provided for Caleb, the connotation of the word foodie, as verified in Merriam-Webster: "a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads." 

The thing is, I've met quite a number of people who call themselves "a self-proclaimed foodie." They posts pictures of food, calls trying new restaurants "food adventures", are always looking forward to trying out the latest restaurant in the scene, follow celebrity chefs because it's the untapped niche of cool, and/or posting every dish they cook or eaten at that new hip restaurant on Facebook into a "Food Album" just to show people how much they love food because that's the cool thing to love nowadays.

Look, the reality is, I do like food a lot and I spend a large amount of time reading about food and where to eat them (who doesn't like eating?!). I like cooking. I like trying new food, especially in different parts of the world, and I do want to try that restaurant everyone is raving about. But I don't do any of the things above because I want to be cool but because I derive pleasure from eating food I like and I want to know what in this world gives me pleasure so I can keep obtaining it. It's really quite simple. So, no. By this definition, I am also not a foodie. I do not have "Food adventures" - I don't like raw food, and I won't try things that I think are weird or disgusting. I like intestines, but I won't try deep fried insects. I'm only starting to know some celebrity chefs only because people around me talk about it, and I do not have a food album on facebook, or do i get food-gasms, whatever that means.

My disposition with and on Yelp
A lot of people know now that I am an avid Yelper, a site that allows you to review businesses, especially restaurants) although I don't really like to advertise that fact, which begs the question, "You claim that your opinion on a restaurant is not better than another person's, and you claim that you don't have food albums, but then why do you write so many reviews and posts so many picture for your reviews? Do you not advertise it because you'll sound like a hypocrite?" The short answer to the latter question is no, but I cannot expound on it without answering the first.

Here are the reasons why I like writing Yelp reviews:

• It's like a journal - I document all the places I've been to and all the food I've eaten, what I like and what I don't like, and I can often go back into it and remind myself of the day I ate at a specific restaurant in a specific city.
• I like writing and I like expressing myself. I don't think my opinions really matter, and I don't think anyone actually cares or should care about what I think, but I like doing it, and Yelp is the perfect medium.

My absolute favourite thing about Yelp is the sheer fact that each restaurant's rating is aggregated. On Yelp, my personal opinion matters and it doesn't matter.  I do not have to rate a restaurant 5 stars because they've done everything right and I think people will love it, even if I don't and vice versa. I can rate the restaurant on my personal preference and I can explain why. Yelp will take my opinion, mixes it up with everyone else's and form an average score. There can be hundreds of written reviews for a single restaurant and no one has to read mine. And if someone does read a review of mine, and find it helpful, they can just vote it up by electing it as useful. If they really enjoy reading my reviews in general, they can read all my reviews on my personal page and then subscribe to me by following me. The truth is, I don't even write very good reviews on the site. I write them with the understanding that i'll be the only one reading them. They're generally written quite quickly, unedited and full of grammatical mistakes, documenting what I think is interesting to me, because it's my freaking journal and it will just get submerged into everyone else's. This is also why I don't like advertising about my Yelp account - because my reviews are not written for you to enjoy. Just because I gave this restaurant a five star, does not mean you should try it. I am not an expert food critic and I have no ambition to be one. You could take my layman's opinion into consideration, but you should also go read more reviews on the restaurant and not just mine to get a better idea, like what I do when I research on what I'd like to eat next.

My philosophy on eating, travelling, and writing
Labels are stupid. You know it and I know it. So the label of a foodie need not to exist to begin with, but I can't control the fact that there are labels out there. I probably at times label myself various things, because I can be stupid (who isn't sometimes, or all the time?) But the label of foodie just doesn't jive with me and what I believe in.

Yesterday, I noticed that Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations is on Netflix, so I started watching the episodes of the places I've been to. I have no prior knowledge of this guy or what the show is about, but the more I watch it, the more I am enjoying his philosophy. He travels to various cities, finds a couple of locals to take him around, and tries whatever the locals tell him to try (not always just food!). Ever since I started to travel, I have started realize that you can never really fully know a city, no matter how long you visit, because everyone's perception of that city is always going to be different. There's always the tourist view of a city, which is sadly a similar experience in every city. And if you want to get to know the city from a local's perspective, then you may get a few perspective, but there is no one local perspective. As he says in his show on Vancouver, "it's not what you know about a place, it's who you know" and who you know will define what the place is for you.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd be writing blog entries on my travels so i can record my findings and my thoughts. But I am lazy, so my reviews of restaurants, local or international, is, in some way, serves as an attempt to capture what defines that city for me. These are the things I ate, here is what i like, here is what i dont like, here is what i learned.

To me, food is simply just food; eating is neither a science or a self-expression, it's an innate pleasure. I enjoy the context that surrounds it, including the cultural connotations, when it exists or is in my face, but I don't go looking for the cultural connotations. There's no doubt that food gives insight to a culture, and it's often a by-product for me when I want to try local food while I travel and thus i record it in my reviews. I like food, but I am not a foodie, just like I like travelling, but i am not a traveller. I also like writing, but I am not by any means a writer.  At the end of the day, I'm just another person who likes eating, writing, and seeing world to the best of my abilities. There are a ton of personal blogs out there based on eating and travelling, but i put mine on yelp with the half-hearted attempt at effacing some amount of that self-importance which comes from any form of self-expression.

Little Girl's Vanity

This was shared on my Facebook feed with a picture of Jada Pinkett-Smith and her daughter Willow Smith:

"Jada Pinkett-Smith is aware of the critics that stick up their noses at the way she raises her daughter, Willow. Willow cuts, dyes and styles her hair as she pleases, a fact that bothers many who feel girls shouldn’t have that much control over their appearance at such a young age.

Jada decided to address the criticism in a Facebook post:

“A letter to a friend…This subject is old but I have never answered it in its entirety. And even with this post it will remain incomplete. The question why I would LET Willow cut her hair. First the LET must be challenged. This is a world where women, girls are constantly reminded that they don’t belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and her mind are HER domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair. It’s also a statement that claims that even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother’s deepest insecurities, hopes and desires. Even little girls should not be a slave to the preconceived ideas of what a culture believes a little girl should be.”"

- Have a Gay Day

When I was growing up, my mom never let me do anything with my appearance because she said that I should not be so vain. Nevertheless after turning 16, I started to sneak things, like taking the bus to go dye my hair and then couldnt get back home. When I was 17, I got my cartilage pierced. By the time I was 22, I had four piercings on one ear, and one on the other. I didn't get my tattoo until I was 26. I can't tell whether or not I am what one would consider vain. I also cannot tell whether her prevention of my vanity made me less vain than I could have been. But either way, I did appreciate her for keeping my narcissism in check.

Provided that that the post is real, I think Jada Pinkett-Smith makes a valid point, but she doesn't actually address the point of whether or not she thinks it's important to keep her child's vanity in check. Perhaps when you let your child have control over everything, the child must also understand what type of responsibility comes with the control, which is often something a child is incapable of comprehending. I guess these type of things are contextual and the pull and release has to be different for every child. And in the case of Willow Smith, the understanding of vanity is likely more difficult. I mean how can you explain what vanity is to the child who is the product of  a superstar power couple and  who has made the billboards at age 9 (or however old she was)? On the other hand, maybe it's much easier for her to understand what vanity is because of that?

Toute Seule

Today marks the third week since I officially "moved" to Paris.
Funny in the last few weeks it never really felt like I left "home."
In some ways it just felt like another trip out - especially since the three weeks was broken up with a week in Stockholm so it didn't really feel like Paris is now my "home."

This morning, I received an Email from IT telling me my French mobile is "ready."
As soon as I went to pick it up from IT, I called Virgin Mobile to cancel my current month-to-month plan and switched it to the prepaid plan, rendering my old phone to be completely disconnected while I'm out of Canada.

I didn't really pay any attention to my new phone until I was off work, which was nearly 8pm. This was when I realized that data for my new phone was not working. At that moment, I felt a little hollow. I am now completely "disconnected" from Toronto.

And it's not as if my old cell phone was roaming the entire last three weeks (I only allowed data when I was desperate) or that I couldn't connect my old phone to WiFi - but the idea that my main French phone was not a window for me to connect to a life that i was so perfectly comfortable with, made that Canadian life feel officially out of reach.

I'm not entirely sure whether a part of this was due some disagreeable events with my relocation that transpired, or if the phone really was subconsciously symbolic to me, but, tonight, I am feeling homesick.

I feel pretty alone out here in a land where even the natural facility at which I am most apt--language--is foreign to me. Nevertheless, what is, perhaps, the most unfortunate, is that this must not come as a surprise to anyone, not even myself.

The Game of Life

I sometimes like playing spider solitaire with multiple suits on my computer while I watch t.v. (I always need to do something else while I watch TV).
The funny thing about Spider Solitaire is that there's always a solution - always a way out, but it just requires that you keep trying without giving up, and are willing to undo your moves until you figure it out. Even when  you are stuck all the way with the last deck out, the game will ask you if you want to continue and retry, or give up. You can click retry, and then press ctrl-z to undo every single move until you get to a place where you think you messed up, even if it's all the way back to the the beginning.

For those who don't approve of using the undo button to make a win, the reality is that the game is not pure strategy - luck is also involved. When there are multiple options for opening up a covered card, you don't know which column to pick. There are ones that will lead you to eventually finish, and then there are ones that will for sure cost your game. But you have no way of knowing until you get to the end.

If you picked the wrong column, should you just gave up because your luck ran out?

I don't. In those cases, I make use of the undo quite liberally. I open up a column and see if the card is useful, if not I click undo and test the next column. Sometimes if the card is useful, I play a few moves to see where it takes me, and then I click undo and test another column. At the end of the day, as long as you are willing to use the undo button, you could never lose.

For the most part, getting stuck in Spider Solitaire is due to lack of focus and concentration. You either didn't plan the moves in the right order, or you failed to see a move and just clicked on a new deck, causing everything to get stuck. Sometimes I seem to get all the easy games and can finish all my games without getting stuck once, sometimes it seems like I get all the hard games and must keep using undo. When the latter happens, I eventually realize that it's not the games, it's me. I'm likely tired and am not seeing the right moves. Sometimes I even get stuck several times and must restart the game from the beginning more than once.  And then sometimes you come to a game where you keep getting stuck and you have no way out, at all. That's when I put the games on hold, walk away for a bit, come back, and then, somehow the game got easier and I can finish it without a problem.

Sometimes I wish there's an undo button for life.

Happiness

They say that the only person who can consistently make you happy is yourself.
If your happiness is dependent on others, then you may lead a very tough life.
They say the same thing about unhappiness. You can't control what other people do.
You shouldn't let other people drag you down.
You shouldn't be unhappy over things or people you cannot control.

A solitary life one must lead, living this way - no?

Change

I like change--at least I thought I did. In fact, I have a fear of stagnation, which is probably one of the reasons why attaining stability is so tough for me; after all, don't the words "settle down" imply some form of life stagnation? As of late, whenever I see couples get engaged, or get married, or have children, it freaks me out. Normal, I think. But why do I feel the same way when couples break up?

And perhaps this is the psychology of one who craves change - you don't want things around you to change. You want the world to wait for you; to wait for you until you're ready to embrace settling down, so that the world will change for you while you stay put. In the meanwhile, you hope that the world will stay put while you change.

ABC

Two years ago, not too long after I moved to Boston, through some connection, Adam asked me if I was interested in going to an Ivy League game involving Harvard vs. Cornell. The tickets were going to be bought through a group of Taiwanese-Americans who are organizing the event to cheer on a Taiwanese-American player named Jeremy Lin, who has the potential to be drafted into the NBA. It was a fun event, and one of the girls made a large sign for JLin and as posers, we took pics with it. I have a whole facebook album of the event and some close-up pics of JLin on court, as well as me being interviewed by Taiwanese media on the JLin phenomenon. Even at that point, the Taiwanese media was on top of it, ready to claim him to be the pride and joy of our "country."

It actually occurred to me at that point, I can't remember whether it was a conversation of some sort or I read this somewhere, that a lot of the people that I went to the game with, and Jeremy Lin himself, would correct you when you call them Taiwanese. "Actually, my parents are Taiwanese. I was born in America." They never directly say that they are NOT Taiwanese, nor do they say that they are Taiwanese-American; rather, they point out simply that it is their parents who are Taiwanese. If you were to ask them what their background is, they'd say "well my parents are born in Taiwan, but I'm born in the U.S." --there is simply no label for them.

First, it's important to point out that they are not wrong. I mean, it's a fact that they are born in the U.S., therefore Americans--there's no dispute about it. The question is what it even means to be Taiwanese-American. When someone says a person is African-American, it doesn't mean that the person is from Africa, it simply indicates a race in a politically correct yet in a somewhat distorted way--if you're black and your parents are from Jamaica, are you African-American? But then you never hear people refer someone as "Jamaican-American", though you do hear things like Irish-American, and yet not "Italian-American" (politically anyway). I don't understand this hyphenate American thing enough to have an understanding of when does one get a alternate attachment because it's not just purely "continent-American", "country-American", or in the Chinese case, simply "race-American"---or is it? Does being Chinese-American imply that you're from China or does it imply that your parents are of the "Chinese" race? Is Chinese even a race? Wikipedia tells me that there is no real clear definition from a social construction of different Asian races (Indians are Asians too and Korean is not a race.) So is JLin Taiwanese-American or Chinese-American? Even ESPN couldn't figure it out. At the Vday game last night against the Raptors, the commentator said, "he is the first Taiwanese....er Chinese American...."

Taiwan is neither a race nor a UN recognized country, so Jlin, not having been born in Taiwan, never having visited Taiwan until last year, and not speaking Mandarin well, how can he identify with being "Taiwanese-American"? The easy way out is for him to say he's "Chinese-American" to identify his race as being simply not white or black because, you know, if you claim to be just plainly American, you get white people saying, well of Asian descent, and Chinese people saying, oh you're not proud of your ancestor. On the other hand, if you are anywhere beyond second generation American and white, then you have an easier time not to have to associate yourself with a culture and identity you simply don't identify with. Basically, the point is, if your skin looks anything Asian, to say you're simply "American" is ludicrous in everyone else's eyes.

Interestingly, if you look at all the Canadian-born Asians or whatever other race or country their parents are from, you have no identity problems. All my Canadian-born Chinese friends have no problems saying they're simply Chinese. If anyone I know are asked "what's your background?" It'd be quite simple--- "Chinese" "Korean" "Taiwanese" "Guyanese" "Ukrainian." So put simply, this identity issue is purely an American ideological and assimilation issue, details of which I simply don't have enough interest at the moment to get into.

The second, and probably most important thing I want to point out is the lack of understanding Taiwanese people, and even other Chinese people, seem to have about the American assimilation process. They feel like JLin is Taiwanese or Chinese and they boast about it. Sure you have people everywhere talking about JLin as a phenomenon no matter where you turn your head, but these Taiwanese and Chinese people take it a step further and say that he represents them(!) Let me tell you right here and right now, I've seen his interviews and he does not feel that he's representing anyone, especially not those living on this little island called Taiwan. Every time he gets asked questions like "how does it feel to represent such a large group of people" he skirts around the issue and says things like, well it's my parents who are Taiwanese and I'm just playing ball. The funniest thing is when the Taiwanese politicians want to recruit him to play for the Taiwanese national league--good luck with that. Will Lin's attitude change when he has more interactions with Asian/Chinese/Taiwanese culture and fans? Who knows, but to go around claiming that he's Taiwanese and the "Light of Taiwan" is almost embarrassing. Like one commentator said, you don't see Africans claiming Kobe is the "Light of Africa".

Personally, as someone who is Taiwan-born with a lot of Taiwanese influence as I grew up, my initial reaction to JLin's readiness to shake off his background was a bit of a disappointment. But then as I thought about it, I realized that if he was born and raised in the U.S., and he has never been to Taiwan, and his parents never enforced traditional Asian values on him, why should anyone expect him to be otherwise? Someone said to me that it's his parents' "fault" for the way he is...Why is it a fault to allow your children to live in an environment that's like everyone else's? This idea of having a responsibility to get to know your roots is antiquated and unfair. The more you understand about ANY culture will make you a better person. It is a humanistic responsibility to learn about other cultures, but it is not anyone's responsibility to zone in on a single culture because someone else tells you based on your parents' background and your skin colour that you should get to know something.

Most importantly, JLin's attitude is not disgust towards his background or that he's not proud. He makes very valid points about his background without looking down on anything. Had he went around saying he's Taiwanese, I guarantee you we'd get haters who say JLin is as Taiwanese as Kobe Bryant because he can barely even speak Mandarin and has never been to Taiwan. You can't win. On the other side of the same coin, people who go around saying "I'm proud to be Asian" "Asian Pride" blah blah blah, but know nothing about his or her culture is a lot more appalling to me. Do you even know what you're proud of?

Regardless of where you are born, where your parents are born,where you grew up, where they grew up, the most important thing is about your identity shouldn't be something as superficial as your skin colour and things you can't change, but about being honest with yourself and being a good human being. Be proud of the fact that you have done good things in your life, and not just tout that you're proud of something you can't even control or don't even understand.

Idealistic? Probably. But we gotta start somewhere.

Grammy 2012

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