"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”.