After having gotten through a pretty major project at the office which took up a significant amount of time for the last month, I am back to a more "relaxing" schedule of just 8-9 hours a day, not to mention the near hour's worth of driving back and forth (about 20-30 minutes each way). I almost find myself wondering how I should be spending my time. Oh, wait, I know! I should spend it WRITING!
Yes, and I have been trying to do a little bit more of that. I am currently working on a nice little story for my better half along with a variety of posts here on this blog that I have been saving up over the last few weeks. Yep, getting those creative juices flowing...
It also helps that I've gotten my laptop back from visiting family who had been using it to watch movies online. Now I've gotten them setup with another machine and they're harassing the living daylights out of me and my better half because they are completely computer illiterate. But, hey, it gives us a little bit of time while they're occupied with the movies so it's all good in the end.
In the meantime, I've been able to spend some time writing a wee bit along with some reading (working on a history of China from the end of the Ming dynasty to the present after having finished Dumas' The Three Musketeers earlier this week) and now watching the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament. If it hasn't been pointed out before, I am a huge football (or soccer) fan and really enjoy watching the matches. So, for this past weekend, I watched the US in a rather desultory match against Antigua & Barbuda in a World Cup qualifier on Friday evening, Holland lose in a disappointing match against Denmark and Germany barely get past Portugal (and they were very lucky to do so). Then I watched the second half of the Spain/Italy match (was a pretty exciting second half for a while, too) and now the Ireland/Croatia match. Yes, I can list this as a rather enjoyable weekend. If only they were all this way.
Maybe I should spend some time before the weekend is out fixing the website that I created a few years ago so that the admins of the site can make their own changes rather than emailing me all the time when they type something in wrong... Yeah, I think that may be my task for the next week or two as I get free time... I haven't written any code in almost a year now and don't want to lose all of those skills...
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
China-related thoughts
It would seem that history never really goes away. Just ask the Chinese censors on the Great Firewall (GFW) who spent a good part of June 4, 2012 trying to erase the anomaly from the Chinese stock exchange that dropped 64.89 points on that particular day. For those who are unaware, June 4, 1989 was the date of the violent crackdown by the Chinese government on (largely peaceful) protesters in Tiananmen Square. And it's often referred to as 6 4 in Chinese so the numbers hold some significance. So, when the Shanghai stock exchange dropped 64.89 points exactly 23 years after 6/4/89, it certainly prompted some effort on the part of the GFW to ensure that people would not be disharmonized (and yes, I use that term on purpose) by such a coincidence. Indeed, in a country where so much effort is put into erasing this event from history, this is not surprising. However, what may be somewhat surprising is how many people in China unofficially realize this and will not let it go no matter how much pressure is applied to enforce the erasure - as evidenced by the commentary on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter, if you will). Equally surprising, perhaps, is that the Chinese government continues to wear blinders on this subject and refuses to realize that the only way that it will ever truly go away is to open the history books and try to deal with it as honestly as possible. Of course, the fact that the government has not dealt openly with any other incident in its short history (including the Long March, the Shanghai massacre of communist partisans in 1927, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution or any other incidents regarding the corruption of its members - mot notably Mao himself) does not make this an isolated incident.
As an aside, this is not to suggest that other governments deal honestly with their own history, including various democracies. They are often similarly dishonest. The difference, if not always true, is that most of them (particularly in democracies) can and are held to account for their mistakes and misdeeds and there can be open discussion among those citizens (for the most part). It is quite clear that this is not the case in China.
And, while we're on the topic of the Chinese government looking, um, well, foolish, how about the fact that it is again calling for the US government (namely, the US embassy in Beijing) to stop producing data on the environmental pollution issues that plague China (and Beijing specifically). After all, it's making China look bad. Heaven forbid that honestly reporting on environmental pollution that is legitimately dangerous to the citizens should make someone look bad and want to encourage them to remedy the situation! No, the entire point is to maintain the power structure which is obviously hard to do when those idiot Americans are telling people what they already know because they see it everyday - the pollution where they live is dangerous to them. While the Chinese government makes some valid points about a single site making a statement about the overall pollution level in the area, this just obscures the fact that the government is simply wanting to hide facts from its citizens for fear it may be held to account - as, quite frankly, it should. Instead of trying to find reasonable solutions, the government spends more time and effort seeking to assign and avoid blame for issues. Unfortunately, this will probably only make it more likely that it will inevitably fail to last in the same fashion that it continues to fail those it alleges to represent.
As an aside, this is not to suggest that other governments deal honestly with their own history, including various democracies. They are often similarly dishonest. The difference, if not always true, is that most of them (particularly in democracies) can and are held to account for their mistakes and misdeeds and there can be open discussion among those citizens (for the most part). It is quite clear that this is not the case in China.
And, while we're on the topic of the Chinese government looking, um, well, foolish, how about the fact that it is again calling for the US government (namely, the US embassy in Beijing) to stop producing data on the environmental pollution issues that plague China (and Beijing specifically). After all, it's making China look bad. Heaven forbid that honestly reporting on environmental pollution that is legitimately dangerous to the citizens should make someone look bad and want to encourage them to remedy the situation! No, the entire point is to maintain the power structure which is obviously hard to do when those idiot Americans are telling people what they already know because they see it everyday - the pollution where they live is dangerous to them. While the Chinese government makes some valid points about a single site making a statement about the overall pollution level in the area, this just obscures the fact that the government is simply wanting to hide facts from its citizens for fear it may be held to account - as, quite frankly, it should. Instead of trying to find reasonable solutions, the government spends more time and effort seeking to assign and avoid blame for issues. Unfortunately, this will probably only make it more likely that it will inevitably fail to last in the same fashion that it continues to fail those it alleges to represent.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
WTF? Not thinking
While some of my friends pay attention to my blog (in much the same haphazard way that I may read theirs occasionally), I suspect that most people who read this have no idea who I am other than what little I may actually write about myself. So, before I go into details with this post, let it suffice to say that I consider myself an average guy who is just generic enough to fit in most places, depending upon how I look and carry myself at any given moment. And I've almost always been that way. I've been an outsider to most groups and yet just enough of an individual with knowledge and personality to be able to deal with people from almost any social/cultural/religious grouping. I've never been a close member of any of those groups but I have close friends who are from almost all of them. As a result, I like to think that I'm fairly diverse in my outlook, opinions and viewpoints.
Put another way, I don't necessarily look Chinese but I speak the language and have lived there. I don't necessarily look Hispanic but I grew up in a largely Hispanic area and was fluent in Spanish at that time (nowadays, if I start a sentence in Spanish I invariable end up in Chinese because I forget the words in Spanish). I don't necessarily look Middle Eastern but have done a great deal of research on some of the cultural and religious customs of that area so I'm not completely ignorant - especially since 2001. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that I've been mistaken for all three of the above at different times.) I don't necessarily look black (or African-American if you prefer, though oddly enough, most of my friends can't stand the term) yet, again because I grew up in largely minority-populated areas, I can fit in well enough with my friends. And perhaps it is because I do have such a diverse background and it is natural for me to talk with anyone regardless of their social/cultural/religious background that I have some of the experiences I do. It has only been in recent years that I have started to realize that most people grow up in a very mono-ethnic area and never leave that area and thus my experiences tend to make me unique (at least with the majority of people with whom I deal). I don't pretend to be an expert, mind you, I just have grown to realize that my background and knowledge is a little different from a lot of other people...
So, that being said, it sometimes amazes me what people will say to someone based solely on their looks. I've worked for a boss who had the temerity to tell me one day that Blacks and Hispanics (I started to leave that word with a lower case "b" but figured if I was going to capitalize the "h" in Hispanic - because I've only ever seen it that way - I should probably do the same for "Blacks" though I've typically seen it in lower case. Is that a form of latent or institutionalized racism?) were genetically inferior to Whites and Asians (ok, see my aside above about blacks and consider I was going to do the same for whites. Does that make it ok?). I've had Black friends (well, now I'm just going to capitalize it for the rest of this post to prevent acrimony) tell me that all Asians looked alike. I've had Asian friends tell me that they don't like Blacks because they're dirty and criminals. I've listened to White people tell me - who didn't know me at all - about how all Arabs are terrorists and we should just nuke all of them back to the stone age. I've listened to some of my Indian and Pakistani friends complain about the hypocrisy of Americans (typically Whites) and their faux-religious foreign policy that discriminates against them - even if they're just as Christian as the Whites who would otherwise bomb their home countries back to the Stone Ages.
Yes, one would think that after hearing all of these things many times in my lifetime, I might become somewhat inured to these comments. However, that is apparently not the case. Recently, in my office, one lady with whom I work started making asinine, racist comments about Asians and then using her fingers to slant her eyes as a way to discern Japanese and Chinese (Japanese eyes slant upward while Chinese eyes slant downward, according to her). I rarely take anything personally in my office but I have to admit that this lady got to me and I had to walk away before I said something that would be totally right but also grounds for termination. Then, after doing it again yesterday (she's done it a few times over the last several weeks) while asking if I wanted to order Chinese food with her team, I politely (ok, well, as politely as I could manage) declined stating that I preferred my wife's cooking. One of her co-workers must have said something to her because when I came back by her desk later, she stopped to ask me if my wife was Chinese. I answered in the affirmative and walked on (because I was worried I would say more if she said something else). She has worked to avoid me since then - as best I can determine because she's embarrassed realizing the things she's said were totally wrong and she would not have said them to any Chinese person and I'm probably the closest she will ever get to that ("y'know, 'cuz ya can't understand anything they say 'cuz they got those ter'ble accents!"). So, in short, she knows she was wrong because she made comments that would be publicly unacceptable but were ok to someone whose background she assumed based on their appearance - though I've made no attempt to hide my family. Yep, that's what I refer to as "not thinking". Or stupid - take your choice.
What gets me is that they will make all of these comments to others who they believe are like them but won't try to address these issues publicly and try to resolve some of the underlying issues. Thus, they continue to perpetuate and fester because no one will deal with them. But, saying that, maybe I will take up the opportunity to discuss this lady's comments with her in the near future and see if maybe I can help to get one person to understand some of these differences. As the saying goes, think globally but act locally. And every change starts with one person.
Put another way, I don't necessarily look Chinese but I speak the language and have lived there. I don't necessarily look Hispanic but I grew up in a largely Hispanic area and was fluent in Spanish at that time (nowadays, if I start a sentence in Spanish I invariable end up in Chinese because I forget the words in Spanish). I don't necessarily look Middle Eastern but have done a great deal of research on some of the cultural and religious customs of that area so I'm not completely ignorant - especially since 2001. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that I've been mistaken for all three of the above at different times.) I don't necessarily look black (or African-American if you prefer, though oddly enough, most of my friends can't stand the term) yet, again because I grew up in largely minority-populated areas, I can fit in well enough with my friends. And perhaps it is because I do have such a diverse background and it is natural for me to talk with anyone regardless of their social/cultural/religious background that I have some of the experiences I do. It has only been in recent years that I have started to realize that most people grow up in a very mono-ethnic area and never leave that area and thus my experiences tend to make me unique (at least with the majority of people with whom I deal). I don't pretend to be an expert, mind you, I just have grown to realize that my background and knowledge is a little different from a lot of other people...
So, that being said, it sometimes amazes me what people will say to someone based solely on their looks. I've worked for a boss who had the temerity to tell me one day that Blacks and Hispanics (I started to leave that word with a lower case "b" but figured if I was going to capitalize the "h" in Hispanic - because I've only ever seen it that way - I should probably do the same for "Blacks" though I've typically seen it in lower case. Is that a form of latent or institutionalized racism?) were genetically inferior to Whites and Asians (ok, see my aside above about blacks and consider I was going to do the same for whites. Does that make it ok?). I've had Black friends (well, now I'm just going to capitalize it for the rest of this post to prevent acrimony) tell me that all Asians looked alike. I've had Asian friends tell me that they don't like Blacks because they're dirty and criminals. I've listened to White people tell me - who didn't know me at all - about how all Arabs are terrorists and we should just nuke all of them back to the stone age. I've listened to some of my Indian and Pakistani friends complain about the hypocrisy of Americans (typically Whites) and their faux-religious foreign policy that discriminates against them - even if they're just as Christian as the Whites who would otherwise bomb their home countries back to the Stone Ages.
Yes, one would think that after hearing all of these things many times in my lifetime, I might become somewhat inured to these comments. However, that is apparently not the case. Recently, in my office, one lady with whom I work started making asinine, racist comments about Asians and then using her fingers to slant her eyes as a way to discern Japanese and Chinese (Japanese eyes slant upward while Chinese eyes slant downward, according to her). I rarely take anything personally in my office but I have to admit that this lady got to me and I had to walk away before I said something that would be totally right but also grounds for termination. Then, after doing it again yesterday (she's done it a few times over the last several weeks) while asking if I wanted to order Chinese food with her team, I politely (ok, well, as politely as I could manage) declined stating that I preferred my wife's cooking. One of her co-workers must have said something to her because when I came back by her desk later, she stopped to ask me if my wife was Chinese. I answered in the affirmative and walked on (because I was worried I would say more if she said something else). She has worked to avoid me since then - as best I can determine because she's embarrassed realizing the things she's said were totally wrong and she would not have said them to any Chinese person and I'm probably the closest she will ever get to that ("y'know, 'cuz ya can't understand anything they say 'cuz they got those ter'ble accents!"). So, in short, she knows she was wrong because she made comments that would be publicly unacceptable but were ok to someone whose background she assumed based on their appearance - though I've made no attempt to hide my family. Yep, that's what I refer to as "not thinking". Or stupid - take your choice.
What gets me is that they will make all of these comments to others who they believe are like them but won't try to address these issues publicly and try to resolve some of the underlying issues. Thus, they continue to perpetuate and fester because no one will deal with them. But, saying that, maybe I will take up the opportunity to discuss this lady's comments with her in the near future and see if maybe I can help to get one person to understand some of these differences. As the saying goes, think globally but act locally. And every change starts with one person.
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