"Teenage Girls Stand by Their Man"

In the midst of prolonged wars and economic collapse, one of the most depressing news was an article in The New York Times, published on March 18, 2009, reporting the reactions of teenage girls to the Chris Brown Rihanna incident. The reactions ranged from speculating the tabloids were false to forgiving Chris Brown because he had witnessed his mother being abused to completely excusing his reaction because “she probably made him mad”. The saddest part of the article was when students nodded in agreement that Rihanna “deserves it for being so jealous”.

I am sorry, but NO ONE deserves being repeatedly beaten, bitten, and choked so severely that they had to be hospitalized. I don’t care how jealous they are. Even if a girl was off her rockers and attacked a guy, more often than not he could restrain her. If he could not, run away. I will even understand hitting back once to get away but beating a girl is utterly unacceptable. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE.

It saddens me to see that there are girls out there that would tolerate physical abuse. Any form of abuse is not acceptable. Mental and emotional are often hard to identify. Physical is obvious. RUN AND DON’T EVEN LOOK BACK. The article tried to explain the girls’ lenient reactions with restraint of judgments, “learned social signals”, aggression of the commercial hip-pop culture, “parity”… There is nothing fair about a much stronger person beating the pooh out of someone that does not have a chance of fighting back (guy or girl). Yes, maybe we need to understand where these girls are coming from to change their minds. At the same time, social norms are powerful and effective in altering opinions and behaviors. We need to all stand up and SCREAM, “NO MORE VIOLENCE, please”. That should be our new norm and we will not accept anything less. We can talk with people around world with only seconds in delay. We can put people in orbit around the earth. Put down the clubs. The era of the caveman is over.

Viet Fever

I like cute things.

There was a lady in the elevator with these awesome double hearts earrings.

I also have conspicuous facial expressions. Thus it was only too obvious that I was staring at her. I decided to compliment her on her earrings, which her husband got her for Valentine’s. We got chatting at bit. She asked, “Are you Vietnamese?” I was kind of amazed that she got it partially right. I get a lot of staring at me blankly trying to figure it out, Korea, Japanese (perhaps due to my Japanese street style), Native American… “I am half Viet half Chinese.”

It turned out that she is too. Her mother is Viet. It got me thinking a bit. All the half Viet half Chinese people I know are results of Chinese fathers Viet mothers. An obvious answer for this is the immigrants from China that settled in Vietnam were predominantly men. There are, however, women. All the Chinese women I know in Vietnam married Chinese men. Even couples in the States were Chinese men Viet women… I am sure there are exceptions to this rule. It just got me giggling a bit. It is almost like the white men Asianie women phenomenon. I henceforth coin this “Viet Fever”.

He's Just Not That Into You

So Kim… you are not going to like what I have to tell you.

What?

Have you seen the preview for He’s Just Not That Into You?

What? As in Sex and the City?

Same writers. It’s a about a bunch of girls running around trying to figure out why it did not work out.

OH POOOOOHHHHH!!!!

My friend was right. I did not like what he had to say. For weeks, I was worried that this movie is going to scoop my book idea. I was so excited about writing, especially with this blog.

I had plans to see the movie the first day it came out. That some how did not happen. Then I had plans to see it the next weekend. That some how did not happen… oh I remember, we went to the theater but it was sold out (we saw Slumdog Millionaire instead. LOVED IT!!! I might or might not have shed a tear or two at the end). I finally saw He’s Just Not That Into You a couple of weeks ago.

The movie of course was a total chick-flick. I heart chick-flicks. This one, however, I did not enjoy. There were some funny parts, e.g. when Gigi stayed in the bathroom and made her date wait. The accumulation of dysfunctional relationships and female insecurities/paranoia overwhelmed me, making me sad and agitated. The happy endings failed to cheer me up. Of course happy endings are expected in chic-flicks, but these ones felt forced. One thing that I was certainly happy about was that this movie did not scoop me. I was extremely relieved. I began “Chapter One”.

Finding Love

Over delish smoked salmon capers sandwiches, my friend and I do what girls love to do. We chit chat about life and love. She says, “You are young, running around looking [for love]. I am old (which she is not, only 28), I will sit here and wait for it.” This makes me wonder if finding love would be like trying find your friend after you somehow got separated at the mall or concert. I am talking about pre cell phones days.

You just wander around and around, searching - me being small with small friends, the challenge is greater - and getting frustrated. It sort of reminds me of those butterflies fluttering around in crazy loops and zigzags. Well, actually, two butterflies fluttering around, their paths crossing but not at the same time. The magic happens when they finally meet.

I have actually figured out that if I just stay in the same spot my friends will find me much faster. AND I would exert minimal energy. So perhaps, my “old” friend might be a bit wiser and there is efficiency to her strategy for finding love. On the other hand, isn’t the fun in the journey? And I have always liked fun and flutter…

The First Approach

Or better yet, “My Attempt At The First Approach”.

Running through the list of guys I dated, I knew exactly who should be the first person I ask to write his side of the story. The choice is rather obvious. Our brief encounter was confusing - who has not been through one of those! Actually, I hesitate to use the word “dated” at the beginning of this paragraph because I am not sure if that ever did happen. Anyways whatever the weird mixed-signals, head-scratching experience was, we are friends now.

His name, if you were an inhabitant of my LaLa Land that is filled with rainbows and ponies, would be Cupcake Boy. We have hung out a bit since then. Our conversations more often than not comprise of little sense and lots of giggles. We even joke about our romantic incident, but that does not mean that I am going to randomly throw this project at him. I have been telling him about a blog that I am working on and would like his help. It has been three weekends now: 1) Just did not feel like it was the right time and I did not even have the blog up 2) Both of us were out of town and 3) Both are now infected with germs. Could this be the universe’s way to telling me that he might not be the right first approach? Or is it appropriate considering the nature of our confusing start?

T-shirt

My favourite keyboard command is ctrl + z (apple + z for macs) to undo mistakes. How great would it be if this function works for heart breaks!

I am going to print t-shirts with this design on it. Let me know if you want one =)

Who should receive life support when not all can?

A respiratory epidemic has occurred. People are rushing to hospitals and only the mechanical help of respirators could keep them alive. There are of course not enough respirators for everyone. Who should have priorities?

This is the scenario presented by Dr. Douglas White in his seminar at University of California, San Francisco. This is a problem of how to allocate limited resources with a giant red tag for violation of personal and medical ethics. In these situations, there are only losses. All we could hope for is to maximize what could be retained. Which criteria should be used to rank these patients?

Under the egalitarian principles, everyone is viewed to have the same worth. Determining who should be treated is simple. Either a lottery based system or a first come first served approach would suffice. Critics of the egalitarian approach argue that the random selection does not ensure the best results. Resources could be wasted on lost costs. Rebuilding/recovering normal society is not ensured. It is when the utilitarian approach is adopted, however, that ethics would most likely be breached.

Yes, the greatest goods for the greatest number of people sound fantastic. Except for those left with out of those benefits.

If people do not have the same worth, who should receive treatment:

A. 35yrs old mother of 3 children with breast cancer. 50% chance of survival.
B. 85yrs old pastor. 80% chance of survival.
C. 16yrs old boy. 20% chance of survival.
D. 20yrs old ex-convict. 70% chance of survival.

These are just simple representations of the factors that are at play when a person’s worth is calculated. Humans are creatures of foresight, but we use our past to help us predict our future. These predictions might or might not be accurate. What are the chances of the 16yrs old turning criminal or the ex-convict turning a new leaf (both examples could be seen with single example of Frank Abagnale Jr. - popularized by his life story adapted to the movie “Catch Me If You Can”)? What are the chances that the mother would recover from her cancer? These are the probabilities we simply do not know, especially with the occurrence of a significant event. A person’s narrow social value - the function the person could provide to help society get out of the crisis - has not even been discussed. Dr. White advocated for an integration many different criteria instead of single criterion of social values, the number of lives saved, or the number of years saved…

The most provoking part of this seminar for me is during questions and discussions. The example used is a shortage of respirators. People with pulmonary failures do have personal respirators at home. As a matter of fact, those patients often have two: main and back-up. These patients also have poor prognosis. The question is would we cease those respirators to treat those affected by the epidemic with better prognosis. I would say the collection of the back-up respirator is reasonable. Yes, there is an intrusion of personal rights but I think this violation is minimal if those respirators could keep many alive. The collection of the main respirator, however, would be utterly unacceptable. The oath to do no harm would be completely violated. When we are robbing life from the weak even with the intentions to help many others, we are taking away what is worth more than a live. We are taking away our humanity. That would be too great of a loss.

The Book

My To-Do list is getting quite extensive. Top three would have to be:

     1.  Advance medical techniques/technology
     2.  Be invited to talk at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
     3.  Author a book…

At the moment, let’s focus on number three.

“You are a baby, what are you going to write about?”
At 24yrs old, I am hardly a baby and I know exactly what I am going to write about. Dating.

Dating is mostly fun but at times, frustrating, puzzling, and even strange. I plan to assemble a collection of short stories about my encounters. These stories will be told from two different perspectives, mine and theirs. First, I write my version and then I get the boys to write theirs. A comparison of where these stories meet and diverge is the rub.

The biggest challenge of this project? Coercing the boys into writing their side of the story. Somehow, I don’t think “hello ex-lover, could you please write about what went on between us and how you felt? And please make sure that the analysis is enlightening, honest, and entertaining,” would provide the best results. The approach must be delicate hence this blog.

A part of this blog will document the process of assembling the book and the stories that will undoubtedly arise.

Another part will be video shorts, products of the randomness of my mind. The remaining portion will be thoughts on the topics that moved me during the day.