Entries Tagged 'Writing' ↓

As a tax paying permanent resident of the United States with no right to vote, I am watching this election with a lot of disgust and a little bit of amusement. I think this election is really turning into a giant soap opera and I’m not sure how it will turn out, but the prevailing themes have been racism, sexism, and elitism. These are my opinions on what I have seen so far. Feel free to stop reading if you are not interested in my political commentary.

Now on the issue of racism, I’m pretty sick of hearing the rhetoric that if you don’t like Obama you are a racist. I was also pretty sickened by the fact that Obama and the democrats attempted to draw parallels between Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Historically, the Democratic party was the party of the slave owners and the Republican party was formed in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which would have expanded slavery into Kansas and expanded the power of the slave owners. Eventually, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president and the slaves were freed. During the Civil Rights Movement, the democrats were mostly against the desegregation and civil rights laws. It was Republicans who pushed through the The Civil Rights Act of 1964, a key piece of legislation that outlawed segregation and also created equal employment opportunities for women. One of the Democrats who voted against the Act is Senator Robert Byrd of West Virgina and he is still in office at the age of 91. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and said the following in a letter, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” He now says that he made a mistake by joining the Ku Klux Klan and endorses Barack Obama. He may be reformed, but it doesn’t change the fact that he supported racism for decades and the democrats have pursued racist agendas for hundreds of years. In a way, I feel that the Democrats are simply using Obama as a tool in the current moment. They are attempting to shed their racist past by using Obama as a symbol of change and I think it definitely worked. Apparently many people now believe that Republicans are the intolerant and racist party because they do not say nice things about Obama. I think that is pretty hypocritical because I am sure many of those old Democrats have nothing nice to say about Obama in their private letters.

The next big theme of this election is sexism. The hatred poured out against Hillary Clinton has pretty much divided the Democrats. There are allegations of caucus fraud by the Obama campaign and one female Clinton-supporting statistician has compiled a 98 page book about what happened during the caucuses. There are a lot of stories of fraud and intimidation conducted by the Obama campaign. The most serious and comical group that sprang out of the Hillary bashing by the Democrats is P.U.M.A, which stands for Party Unity My Ass. They are really serious about supporting Hillary, and there are hundreds of groups of these democrats who believe that the proverbial “old boys club” have shunned their candidate Hillary. Now McCain has picked Sarah Palin in response to the treatment Hillary received. I think it was a brilliant move even though Sarah Palin is the polar opposite of Hillary Clinton on pretty much every issue. Is Palin being used as a gimmick? I believe so, but the response of the Republican party towards Sarah Palin has been extremely enthusiastic, and in a way they are using the sexism of the Democrats against them. So far, the more liberal media has bashed Palin for having kids and having a high powered career at the same time. And just today I read a ridiculous comment by South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler that said Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” The funny thing about all of this is that the more they trash Sarah Palin, the more backlash they will receive. There are so many women in America that juggle being a mom and having a career, and I think when the media and rabid Democrats make comments that insinuate Palin isn’t qualified to do her job because she is a mom of five, they are inherently insulting many working woman across the nation.

The final -ism of the election is elitism. In the last election the Republicans painted John Kerry as an elitist that lived in a giant mansion with his ketchup heiress wife, and Kerry lost. This time, it is McCain who has the heiress wife and 8 or 10 homes, but somehow Obama is still more elitist. From where I am standing, both McCain and Obama are pretty far removed from the average American. However, Obama seems more elitist because he is a well spoken and well educated black man and Rev. Jesse Jackson actually said that Obama “talks down to black people” and that he wanted to “cut his nuts off”. Obama did make a lot of critical comments about the African American community including “I don’t know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was acting white, we’ve got to get over that mentality.” With these comments, it’s understandable that some people feel that Obama is elitist, but I think Obama is just being himself and being honest. Technically, you want to have the more educated and wise people in public office, but being humble and likable is also very important because the common man and woman do the voting. So in a way it makes sense that elitism is an undesirable trait, but I don’t think Obama or McCain should act dumb or poor just to be more likable. They are who they are, and there is nothing wrong with being well educated and wealthy as long as they govern with integrity and wisdom.

In the 16 years I have lived in America, it seems that Americans rarely vote on the important issues such as the economy and healthcare. Most of the time we have a personality contest filled with personal attacks. This election is definitely the most heated and divisive election I have seen thus far. It is also by far the most entertaining. I think whatever happens, this election will start a grand social experiment. We will either have the first African American president or the first female Vice President. As demonstrated by this election, racism and sexism are still alive and well in America and if either Palin or Obama fails miserably in their administration they could set back the group they represent. No matter what happens, I just hope things do not get worse than they already are. As the Chinese proverb says, “It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a human in a chaotic world”.

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The hubby and I have been married for almost one year and we celebrated early in the past weekend.  The hubby booked a full moon kayaking trip in at the Beach House and also reserved us spots for Sunday brunch at Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay.Since I planned his birthday weekend to Napa I let him plan this trip.  It is only fair.  This is my travelogue for this wonderful weekend.

Half Moon Bay is a coastal San Mateo city about 20 miles from where we live famous for the yearly Mavericks Surf Contest and the Pumpkin Festival where the worlds’ most enormous pumpkins compete.  We set out on Saturday morning and arrived in Half Moon Bay in about 30 minutes.  We stepped in a small local restaurnt called The Flying Fish Grill and got some lunch, and then we headed to our hotel.  Unfortunately, our room wasn’t ready yet so we went to Poplar Beach after checking out the kayaks at Pillar Point Harbor.  Poplar Beach is one of many public beaches along Half Moon Bay and it has a small free parking lot.  If you go to the main beach a block over it has a parking lot that charges a fee.  At Poplar Beach we spent about two hours looking for beach glass.  Before we got married we went to that beach once and I started looking for beach glass.  The hubby never heard of this before and said, “why are you picking up garbage?!” I explained to him that people collect beach glass for fun and make them into jewelry.  Then it turned into a bit of a competition and he helped me collect glass. Funnily enough we saw another couple collect glass, too, and the whole time the hubby was saying he couldn’t believe people liked garbage.   After we got home on that trip I made some of the glass into pendants and sold them for around $50 at a church craft fair.  So this time the hubby thought of looking for beach glass as a treasure hunt. After two hours of hunting, we found a small pocket full of browns, greens, and white pieces.  I also found a tiny cobalt blue piece and a quarter from 1965.

We returned to the hotel and took a bit of a nap since the kayaking event was at 7pm.  After waking up we walked down to Pillar Point Harbor again. Unfortunately, it was quite overcast so we were unable to see the full moon.   There were a group of about 10 people and we were instructed to put on many layers of stuff.  There is a jacket plus a skirt that stretches over the kayak and also a life jacket. The kayaks held two people and were a bit larger than the kayaks we used in Kauai.  The hubby sat in the back to steer and I was in front.  We paddled towards the breakwaters and we saw hundreds of pelicans and seagulls.  Some people paddled a bit too close to them and they flew towards us and plopped in the water.  Some of the pelicans were still shedding their baby furry feathers.  A couple harbor seals also popped out their heads above the water.

After paddling for more than an hour, we cleared the last breakwater and we were in the open ocean.  The sea was quite calm and the waves bobbed the kayaks slightly.  It was quite dark and the glow sticks on our paddles indicated where the other kayaks were.  It was very quiet and we could hear people speak quite clearly.  We were only in the open ocean for a little while and then we headed back into the harbor.  On the way back we made a stop at Mavericks Beach. This is the beach where the annual death-defying Mavericks Surf Contest is held.  The spot where landed had several giant carved pumice stones.  The guide explained that they were monuments in remembrance of those who died surfing there.  It was quite dark so we couldn’t see much, but the guide explained that this was a dangerous place to surf.  The waves could reach more than 25 feet during the winter and there are sharks in the waters.

We left the beach and headed towards the harbor.  It was getting quite dark, but with every paddle a plume of green light glowed in the water.  I have seen this before at Stinson Beach so I knew that it was a kind of microorganism that glows when you disturb them.  I tried to get the hubby to look at the glow but he thought that they were bubbles and I couldn’t quite convince him that something in the water is giving off light.  Finally one of the guides said, “I love this bioluminescent stuff!”  Then I said that my hubby doesn’t see it and other people started to paddle to show him.  Then he sort of believed that the green glow wasn’t just bubbles.  After three hours of paddling we landed back at the harbor and walked back to the hotel.  We were quite hungry and the hubby called the concierge to see if any restaurants were still open.  Apparently a Mexican place called Tres Amigos is open until midnight so we went there and filled our tummies.  Then we returned the hotel and fell asleep.

The next day, we ate a little bit of the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, and went back to our room to nap some more.  Finally we checked out and headed to Sunday brunch at the Ritz Carlton. The Sunday brunch at the Ritz Carlton’s Navio restaurant was beyond our expectations. First of all, we didn’t know that it was a buffet because the hubby booked it after seeing a review somewhere that said the Sunday brunch was good. I also didn’t know that the restaurant overlooked the greens of the golf course and the blue ocean.  There was a huge selection of foods all over the world including sushi, caviar, dimsum, and prime rib.  The  small appetizer sized dishes  were presented in the most delectable and appealing manner.  Our favorite was a small plate of roast duck breast served upon steamed bokchoy.  The dessert station was also amazing.  There were half a dozen types of chocolate truffles and fruits and many beautifully presented tiny desserts.  I heard one man there say, “I want to take this to our table and just look at it!”  There was also a dessert with gold flakes on it and I laughed a bit because the hubby joked about how pretentious people who eat gold are.  Anyway, I took about six or seven desserts and just indulged in the decadence.  After four plates of culinary delight, we couldn’t eat anymore, but we really wanted more.  The funny thing is that I had a dream a couple weeks prior about an extremely fancy buffet with chocolate truffles and meats.  I told the hubby, “this is the buffet of my dreams!” and we sat there laughing like idiots for a bit.

After the food we walked to the back of the hotel and followed a path down to the beach.  The beach is public so you don’t have to be a hotel guest to go there. The beach was extremely small and we combed it for about an hour for beach glass.  Unfortunately, all the pieces we found were quite small.  The hubby said to keep them anyway because he wants to fill a spaghetti jar with sea glass.  We were quite tired after that and walked back to the valet for our car.  This is where the hubby remarked, “why is every car here so expensive looking?”  Indeed, all the cars parked in front of the hotel were Mercedes, BMWs, and such.  Then we saw a Toyota van pull up and I realized that they park the cheaper cars at the larger parking lot.  So I said, “see not everyone here drives an expensive car, they just park the most expensive looking ones in front!”   I guess the Ritz needs to look ritzy, but we definitely had a great time there without the need to look rich.

So that’s my weekend of adventure and gluttony.  It’s great to get away from computers for a while to bond with the hubby and the great outdoors.  It certainly wasn’t cheap, but it was completely worth it and I hope we can do it more often.

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My friend the Retirement Hobo sent me this email from Asia and he wanted me to share it with you all. For more of his writing, check out his blog, and this post about a magical mountain. One day soon I will retire. For now, I can only enjoy my friend’s travels vicariously through his writing.

Quick “whats happening” update, then elaborate and pointless commentary in 5…4…3…2…

Since Bali, I’ve been bouncing around from Java to Lombok to Nusa Tenaggra, to Bali, to Java. These are all islands in Indonesia with their own culture and beauty and I was able to do many cool things and meet many cool folks.

Some points of interest include walking through the valley of the shadow of death to stare into a live volcano, surfing the crazy waves of Bali, going mano-a-komodo with a dragon, learning the ropes to breathe underwater and becoming a certified diver then having my first independent dive turn into a search-and-rescue mission. I am currently in a cute Java suburb of starfruit trees, green mountains, while teaching English to a local school. I leave for Singapore tomorrow, much to the chagrin of many lovable 10 year old kids.

Love works in funny ways. When seeking love, you look so hard that you seem to almost deceive yourself into falling for anyone. But then one day it happens. You just fall and you fall hard and it moves so quickly and works so beautifully you don’t have time to sit back and think about how it happened and take it all in.

I haven’t fallen in love, but that is how I imagine it to work. But I have taken to diving in a similar manner. The moment I stepped into the ocean water, I knew I loved her. When my tank ran out of air, it tore me up to leave her. When I got a new tank, I was jumping as fast as I can into the water to see her. And when I was with her, it was so much and so much more. It was beauty that I did not know existed, and it was always changing. Every time I think I scratched the surface to unraveling her, a new world of discovery opens up. Every moment was excitement, looking at her, around her, and in her. Is this not love?

I am a traveler at heart. Traveling is leaving a piece of your soul wherever you go. It is experiencing new things at a break-neck pace. At least thats what I think, I think. That is why diving is so amazing for us travelers. Most of our blue planet is covered with ocean. Most of the ocean is untouched and unknown to humans. There are new things and soul-receptories at every meter and every liter of the ocean.

When I breathed for the first time underwater, I was stepping onto a new planet, I was becoming a new species. And by doing so, a million curious eyes turned to me and said, “Hello, mister!” Clown fish looked up from their oceanic vegetation and did their “Finding Nemo” impression. Giant Turtles majestically soared above my head. Schools of Napoleon wrasses, the size of my torso swam in circles around me. Sharks zigzag around darting back and forth, making my heart skip a beat. Even an octopus decided to wriggle around on the floor and change colors before my very eyes. Schools of tiny fish swam in perfect synchronization. Seahorses jumped around. Tunas that could feed an army of sushi enthusiasts. Titan Trigger Fish, Stonefish, Lionfish, Scorpion fish, Bumphead Parrotfish. And the colors, just so many colors.

It’s just a different world. On land, humankind is at its apex. We’re basically reduced to two levels in the food chain: hairless apes, and everyone else. It’s a thrill to see one wild animal, even if we have to search for days. On the ocean floor, every species seem to be dealt a new hand. Everyone is equal, and we swim side by side along the coral reefs. I just cannot emphasize how teeming with life the ocean is. And the landscape of reefs, sandy dunes, ship wrecks, overgrown with underwater flower, seaweed forests hazed over by shimmering currents in the water – wow. Land just sucks in comparison. Oh, why am I forced to breathe oxygen?

Just about everything fits so well. When you are underwater, it is a relaxing venture – in fact overexertion causes you to lose oxygen. You’re required to relax! And then eating a lunch of fresh seafood that we bought in a boat-to-boat fisherman exchange, discussing what you saw – what a perfect complement to a dive day. Divers who meet other divers are instant friends. It only makes sense. You are required to dive with a buddy for safety. So, diving forces you to relax and make a new friend. I cannot think of what else actually forces you to do such a thing.

The ocean is sweet. You are looking not just to the left and right of you but above and below you. It seems like you are flying like Superman over an underwater Metropolis. There’s just nothing wrong with it at all. Except that it’s so damn expensive and you risk getting lost at sea fighting off sharks and Komodo Dragons.

The End, until my next update.

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I spent a lot of my time in college in the computer science and electrical engineering buildings of UC Berkeley -  Soda Hall and Cory Hall.  I preferred Cory Hall because the computer room actually had windows and it was just slightly less depressing than the dungeon in Soda Hall.  I also had a locker in Cory where I kept the textbooks I borrowed from the library.  Anyway, one day I overheard someone saying that Cory is where the Unabomber AKA Ted Kaczynski sent one of his bombs and once upon a time he was a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley.  It happened before I was  born, so I didn’t think much of it.  Recently while surfing Wikipedia I somehow landed on the page about the Unabomber, and I ended up reading his manifesto titled Industrial Society and Its Future.  I am not totally done reading it, but I find myself agreeing with many of his points.  It is tragic that he felt that he had to promote his work through cold blooded murder, but I really think that he said a lot of things people are afraid to admit. So today I shall highlight a few points  in his manifesto that really stuck in my mind.

The power process – Kaczynski lays down something he calls “the power process”, which has four elements: goal, effort, attainment of goal, and autonomy.  The problem he sees is that many people do not need to exert a lot of effort to attain their goals of physical needs these days, and that brings boredom, depression, and a variety of other problems.  Another point is that many people do not have autonomy to achieve their own goals so they align with a larger organization.  One passage that really hit me was this section of paragraph 73, “An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.”  I think this lack of autonomy or freedom is a big reason why so many people hate their jobs.  I don’t believe that my calling in life is to work for someone else for 40+ years, but many people think that is the correct and right path to take because they are indirectly forced to do so. Kaczynski goes on to explain how people attempt to go through the power process and why some people seem perfectly content, but I won’t discuss those details here.

We are always manipulated to want more than what we actually need – Kaczynski talks about “indirect coercion” by the media fairly early on.  He says that the advertising and marketing industries “make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of.”  In the footnote he writes, “Is the drive for endless material acquisition really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played an important role. So we can’t claim that today’s acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn’t be spending that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, ‘Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.’ He then described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into buying things they don’t really want.”  I think this is a point most personal finance bloggers try to preach, but I think the Unabomber is more eloquent than me in stating this observation.

The evils of technology – In a previous article about selling eggs, I expressed my fear of bioengineering, and Kazyncski shares that same concern.  He wrote in paragraph 123, “If you think that big government interferes in your life too much now, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.[19]“  This is just one detail in the many ways technology could potentially limit our freedom.  Kaczynski also made the point that in the past when people lived within a natural environment the environment did not change very much and thus it provided security, but our modern society is changing rapidly because of technology.  Older workers have to be retrained and this constant change brings more stress and despair to people.  Ultimately his conclusion is that we have to absorb all the good and bad things technology brings, and it is impossible to separate the benefits and detriments.  I agree with this hypothesis because I feel that technology is changing our lives so rapidly that sometimes it is hard to keep up. I also work in a software security firm and through the training/propaganda of my own employer I have a good idea of how technology can be misused to harm others.  It is much easier for an entity like the government or a ruthless criminal to control your life through technology in present times.  So in that aspect, technology does limit freedom.

Overall, it is a pretty depressing document because I can just feel helplessness and frustration ooze out of it, but its observations about our modern society  are not without merit.  I think anyone who works in science and technology should read it and truly examine why they are doing their work. Also, anyone who is confused about their direction in life should also read it to see if their problems are simply stemming from a lack of autonomy. Kaczynski’s choice to  bomb  his fellow scientists is definitely criminally insane, but he is also brilliant in his observations.  If he didn’t kill people, perhaps he could have been a respected philosopher and mathematician akin to a modern Henry Thoreau. Then again, we are in a society where people are more interested in  the breakdowns of Britney Spears than the presidential election and Kaczynski knew this as he wrote, “If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.” It is chilling to read these words, but I find it hard to argue with his logic. Would I be reading his essay if he weren’t the Unabomber?  Probably not.

Have you read the manifesto? What are your thoughts?

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I haved lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 11 years now, and the number one reason I hear from people as to why they love this place is “the weather”. The Bay Area does have a pretty unique weather profile that mirrors the mediterranean and it is usually fairly comfortable all year. However, I wonder if the weather is really what keeps people here, and if it’s really the foremost reason why they are willing to pay such a premium to live here. I think for me, weather is not the most important thing in the place I live, and here is why.

When I lived in China as a child I lived in Yangzhou. This was a city with very clearly marked seasons. Summers were scorching hot, and snow fell in the winters. I have pictures of a younger me in a thick winter coat and a stinky coon hat crouching proudly next to a snowman. In the summers I went out and captured tadpoles and butterflies for fun. I loved that place, and it didn’t matter that it was possible to get heat strokes in the summer and icicles as big as myself hung from the roofs in the winter.

Then I moved to Hawaii, and I got my first sunburn from the penetrating tropical rays. My hair was bleached by the sun to almost a light brown and most of the time it was 85 to 90 degrees. Sometimes there were monsoon like rains that triggered flash flood warnings and painted the sky with multiple rainbows in their aftermaths. I really enjoyed living there despite the fierce sun.

Finally I ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the first year of high school. At first I actually hated the weather here because it felt cold compared to Hawaii. I can only describe the weather here as muted as compared to the places I have been and that is probably why it is so attractive to many people. However, I think I still prefer Hawaii’s weather more.

Since I lived in these three distinct biomes, I can safely say that weather is really not the most important factor in how much I love living in a place. I think the main reason people move to the San Francisco Bay Area is simply money. This is a high paying area with many jobs, and the reason why we relocated here from Hawaii was just that. My parents were able to find employment here and build a financially stable life in the past decade. For me, the one thread that made me love and enjoy every place I lived is family. A stable family and support system could make any place bearable regardless of the weather. Ultimately, when you plug yourself into a community, it is harder to uproot yourself and move to another place. So even though I gripe about the expenses and traffic involved with living in the Bay Area, I know I have people who love me here, and that’s probably worth more than anything and could prevent me from leaving.

If beautiful weather is really the only thing that’s keeping you in a place you can’t afford, then perhaps it is not worth it. I really think that humans are highly adaptable and social creatures that could grow to love a place as long as they are not alone. Though I guess in casual conversation it is much easier and neutral to say, “I love this place because the weather is great”. So what do you think?  Is the weather the number one reason why you live where you live?

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