if I had the guts and if I knew what else I could do if I came home.

I’m pretty serious. I do not want to be here right now.

One of those days where I have to trust my head and not my heart. Funny, that this would come days after what I just wrote.

I’m considering buying a compass. Just a small  one to keep in my pocket. I suppose it’d be useful for the one time I’ll get lost wandering around the woods of Yosemite, but my main reason would be for symbolic reasons–reminders, rather.

The past few weeks I’ve really started to once again feel the mental toll of getting older. Sometimes I feel like my body is aging too, and that’s more because of my recent lack of exercise than anything else, but being in school and doing a lot of forward looking has made me think of what my own future holds: holding a job, taking care of family, being sure I’m on top of all my responsibilities.

That’s what it is really, being on top of all my responsibilities. Grad school has taken up most of my life, and it’s become a challenge to keep up with not just the rest of my responsibilities, but also the things that I need to keep doing for me to feel alive: talk to family, keep in touch with friends, finding a church, doing a few hobbies here and there.

It’s easy for me to get lost in everything. So much is going on, in such a rapid pace, and so much of it is important to where I’m going in the future. And truth be told, I don’t know if I like where I’m going. Journalism can be a scary place. I’m getting frustrated with interviewing people and talking to random strangers about things I don’t care about. For the first time, I’m wondering why I didn’t take science more seriously–not because I’m Asian and so I must follow that path, but because I read an issue of Popular Science and find myself intrigued and genuinely excited. It doesn’t help that a number of people have dropped out of the program at school. I won’t lie; I’ve considered doing that myself. Many days, it just feels like I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere.

Which is where the compass comes in. For the days where I just don’t know what I’m doing, I try to remember: I do have a direction, and that direction tells me that where  I’m going isn’t a place I’m traveling to for my own desires–that I’m not here studying journalism just because it’s my life long dream, I’m doing this as a service for someone else. Yes, there are days for where I wish I could go back and be a computer programmer, doctor, or a number of other professions. But that ship has sailed, and only comes back for the “what if’s” and regrets of those who missed it.

And so I have to believe that I’m at a place not by my own design, and not for my own good. And I have to believe that I am good at what I’m doing, or I wouldn’t be here.

And I have to believe that what I’m doing will be used for a greater purpose than fulfilling my own lifelong wishes. Because if that’s my goal, I’m sure as hell not fulfilling it now.

Let me clarify.

Grad school has become so much of my life, that I feel like my life is school. I’m not trying to excel in some balancing act of life and school, because life more or less doesn’t exist, and what little does exists only inside of school. Eating is for school, sleeping is for school, even reading news is for school.

On paper, I’m supposed to have about 35 hours of class a week. Every day except Tuesday, I start at 9:00 a.m. I end at 4:00 or 5:00pm, with a lunch break in the middle whose length is at my professor’s discretion. Sometimes I need to attend a seminar during lunch, so I have no lunch. It’s like a 9-5 job.

Except there’s also homework. Readings, short assignments, full blown projects. I’ve stayed up till at least 1am the past three nights. Normally that’s not a big deal. But since I have to wake up by 8 in the morning, well sleeping at 1 doesn’t cut it anymore. I usually use a good chunk of my weekends playing catch up.

So it’s a good thing, that at least on some level I’m enjoying what I’m doing. There’s a lot of hoop jumping, a lot of work that I feel is unnecessary or even detrimental, but there’s also stuff that I genuinely find interesting. City council meetings are bad, staged radio shows are good.

But still, my life that I had, all the stuff that’s made me, me, feels like it’s been tossed aside and put on pause. So, an understatement is to say it’s a breath of fresh air when a friend shoots an e-mail, when I talk on the phone with somebody from back home, when I even watch an episode of a TV show. It’s hard to explain why it makes me smile, except to say it reminds me that I still have a life to live outside of school.

I haven’t yet figured out how to fit into my schedule some other things I wish I could do. I have little energy to run, no time to really exercise, and no will to really do any of my hobbies like write. I don’t even have my guitar or a piano. I still haven’t figured out how to do the whole God thing.

The whole process is a mental challenge, usually a forte of mine. This however, is a completely different beast.

It’s been a tough, long and busy week. And here comes another one. School is tough and is testing my resolve. Still, I said I’d update, here I finally am.

Last time I mentioned there’s another good thing about uprooting yourself and moving to a new place. Almost eight months ago, I wrote this for a community forum I was volunteering at. This is just before I jumped on a plane to Taiwan.

There are some things you just don’t get used to no matter how many times you do it. In less than seven hours, I’ll be jumping on a plane and leaving the country again for an extended period of time, and like every time before it, I’m starting to feel the goosebumps and shivers crawling up my skin.

Not all nerves mind you; a good chunk of the emotion is in the excitement of an adrenaline filled rush. Exploring a land never seen before, meeting people you only see on TV, living as strangers would live, they’re all things that get my blood pumping. It’s this understanding something foreign in an age of comfort—the modern day adventure, that’s one of my favorite things about these kinds of trips.

The second is similar, but is slightly more pretentious and self-help in nature. Still, after years of experience I can safely say that being uncomfortable is the single most influential factor towards my own personal growth. Maybe it’s because once you’re in a completely foreign land you realize how little you know about the world, and how useless that little bit is anyway. It’s like starting from scratch, learning how other people live their lives, how who they are and where they live constructs their own worldview. It’s humbling, and it’s exactly the right antidote for a time when we feel like we understand everything there is to know about the world.

Not to say that the whole experience isn’t equally fear inducing. All I know about where I’m going is from research or hearsay. I’ve never seen the place with my own eyes. I’ll probably get lost. But I’m confident that the trip will be full of life lessons I may not even know I’ve learned until months after I come home. At the very worst, it will simply be a great traveling experience.

And that’s a better assurance than I could ask for.
In a similar fashion, moving to Chicago has been another chance for me to grow and learn more about the world. Sometimes I feel that California is like a bubble within a larger bubble that is America. I forget that California does not represent all of America, and living somewhere else besides California reminds me of that. Even though I’m not in a completely new culture, I have to stay alert, knowing that I don’t know much about the local way of life, how that might be different from the sunny West.

It’s humbling, and yet another reminder of how little I know.

Moving and starting from scratch–reinventing yourself–is good for one thing, if nothing else: understanding your own social skills.

I realized I’m a directional kind of guy. For most things in life, I like them to be going somewhere. It doesn’t have to be very fast, and it doesn’t have to get wherever it wants to go anytime soon, it just needs to be moving.

So when I met 30+ of my cohort for the first time last night at a potluck/get-together/party that wouldn’t have been out of place in an undergrad home if they had beer pong, let’s just say I was a little, unsure of what to do. In one room people were chatting. In the next room, people were chatting. And then they were chatting in the kitchen. And the balcony. Oh so much chatting…

I think simply lounging around and rambling about nothing is a great exercise, with friends you already know. It’s a terrible way to meet people, let alone 30+ of them. I suppose this is why I’ve never found the “go to a bar and talk to random people/pick up girls” game very fun: all you do is chat. This might surprise the friends who think I love to talk, which I do. If you want to gauge how much fun I’m having, it’s directly correlated to how many words are coming out of my mouth. But when I meet people, I want to do something. Play games, go to a show, any sort of activity that provides direction. I probably would have even preferred a game of beer pong because it would have been something to do. At the very least a basic, “hey let’s go around and introduce ourselves…”

Of course, part of the issue last night could have been I’m a late comer. Most of the people had met up once or twice before and maybe were already comfortable enough to just sit there and chat. Maybe part of it was I was one of only a few guys and the night felt like a girls’ party.

Strictly as an observation. The three Asian girls who were there (two of which are either American or Canadian) either enjoyed chatting with or made it a point to talk to me. Any other girl who was of a non-Caucasian ethnicity spoke with me. Any Caucasian girl who wasn’t from the South spoke with me. As for the guys, all of them at least said ‘hi’.

I was the only Asian American guy there.

I think it has to do with familiarity. The rest of the girls, like I said, had already met. The fact that I was an Asian American guy at what felt like a girls’ party probably was just on the rest of the long list of unfamiliar things about me. Still, I find it interesting. Food for thought.

Oh, there is at least one more good thing about moving and starting from scratch. I’ll save it for the next post.

Every once in a while it’s fun to wander into religious territory and spout off a few words. I read something today that got me thinking about charismatic Christians. I’m slightly disappointed that this sect has chosen to use the word ‘charismatic’, just because it co-opts what is generally a lovable and also attractive adjective to use. Who doesn’t want to be known as charismatic? Well, when talking about religion, quite a few people I gather.

When I first went to college, I’d argue I had a pretty open mind towards the whole thing. I’d heard about it, seen other people laugh about completely off the mark prophecies, and watched others snicker about falling onto the ground. Still, it was hearsay, and I didn’t pass much judgment. So when I first ran into some charismatics, I honestly was a bit excited. It was like a benign curiosity.

I suppose the problem was, the first handful of people I met who were ardent followers to these ideas, were less than your ideal poster child and if they were marketers I would have them fired. Kind of like how sometimes you botch your first meeting with a potential-significant-other-you-have-a-crush-on and forever leave a stained impression, people either alienated me completely (and showed no interest in explaining themselves), were full of their actions, or flat out drew swords at the mere mention of doubt to what they were doing. They also sung the same songs over and over again.

My curiosity ran away and I don’t see it coming back.

I don’t deny the existence of what charismatics claim exists. I know stories–of personal friends, not those about a friend of a friend of a friend–who have had wonders done before their very  eyes, if not being the subject themselves.

For myself, I feel I’m just indifferent. It’s nice, and I don’t have much more to say about its relevance to me. I hope I’m a charismatic guy. But that’s the only instance I’d use the word to ever describe myself. I never liked labels anyway.

In the end, I guess I’m just, not that interested. Which is more than what I can say for the other end of the spectrum…

You know those feelings, the ones that other people have that you can understand, but can’t really connect with? Not so much sympathize, or even empathize, but actually feel on a personal level?

Today, feelings that people have against immigrants finally went across intellectual lines and connected with me in a concrete way.

I was visiting a family friend the other day as a gesture of goodwill towards and also from my mom. It dawned on me, that this 80+ year old lady I saw lives in a nice suburban house by herself, has never worked, speaks less English than I do Korean, and will never pay a single cent of tax except when she buys groceries, and that’s only when she doesn’t buy food items.

She’s also an American citizen, thanks to her children who immigrated, and so is entitled to government funded Medicare, Social Security, and other elderly necessities. She gets $800+ a month just by being here. She just had surgery; 100% reimbursed by the government.*

And of course, when I say the government, I mean you, me, and anyone else who pays taxes.

If this situation weren’t disingenuous enough, one more thing. She doesn’t own the house she lives in; her daughter does. Because if she herself owned it, the government would realize she has a financial asset, and therefore isn’t entitled to nearly as much money.

I can understand that there are times when people immigrate to other countries, they want to bring their elderly relatives because they’re the only ones left in their home country. This isn’t the case. Said lady has plenty of relatives in Taiwan (where she also gets retirement benefits…) and even makes it a point to go back once a year for a month.

This lady isn’t the only person I personally know who does this. It would be out of character to go into a tirade about people who have never worked for a penny in their life in America and taking all of our resources.

But let’s be real about this. There are people who are struggling to make pennies every day, who work with all their energy and can barely find enough to eat. When they get injured, they stay injured for fear of medical bills. It’s a tragedy, that our money instead goes to people like my family friend, and not those who really need it.

I don’t want to say it, but there really is some truth, that there are immigrants who come here to do little but take advantage of what the country offers.

* – Interesting case of pseudo-socialism, which should silence anyone who thinks our current medical system is already government-hands off.

Mariah Carey is a one of a kind singer. There’s nobody really quite like her. Sure, there are others who can do that dolphin-falsetto-whateveritscalled thingy. There are other sings who can do barritone, alto, soprano and beyond. But none of them are Mariah Carey. And after a troubling hiatus she’s made a comeback that’s spanned two albums and looming third led by a story-ridden hit single on the radio.

I wouldn’t mind if this comeback ended here.

Mariah Carey used to sing ballads. Now, she sings hip-hop/pop ditties with catchy hooks grooving beats and electronic versions of herself. That’s fine, I like songs like that.

But if she wants to be remembered as a singer, she needs to either stop making music now, or drastically change the songs she puts out. Why? Simple. Her songs, with very little exception, can be sung by anybody. The beats are catchy but the melodies are generic. There’s no depth, variety or spark of creativity in them. These kinds of tracks are a dime a dozen. For every new hit she comes out with I can point you to another artist who can do exactly the same thing. Britney Spears can sing ‘Obsessed.’ Hell, I can do it.

Except for this little slap you in the face section in the end of almost every song starting from Emancipation of Mimi. After the bridge and during the last chorus and on, out of nowhere she remembers, oh yeah I’m Mariah Carey I can do more than this, and busts out a range beyond Miss Spears. She throws in those crazy falsettos. She becomes Mariah Carey.

As if to remind us that she has an incredible voice capable of vocal ranges wider than a grand piano. It’s musically tasteless, obviously thrown in and only serves to  prove a point.

There’s nothing Mariah-Carey special about the three minutes you just listened to.

A friend asked me point blank the other day: do I think Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang should be a part of China?

I usually try to avoid straight answers to questions like these, if only because once you give an answer, you’re instantly grouped into either Sinophiles or China-bashers (i.e. Westerners hell bent on interfering with China’s internal affairs), when the reality is, my opinion, and most people’s at that, is infinitely more complex than any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer could ever hope to articulate.

Here’s some of what I think. It doesn’t really bother me–on all three counts–whether or not the rest of the world officially recognizes China as a whole or its disputed parts. I personally don’t need the world to admit that there is only one China and therefore it is a great civilization. I don’t need Taiwan to successfully secede in order to feel like China got a lesson it deserved. And I certainly don’t need to hear things about “respecting our sovereignty” and worrying about other countries trampling over my identity.

I prefer to focus on two things: the actual people of these disputed territories, and the others who get lost in the cracks of these superfluous debates.

The first is somewhat obvious. What is actually good for the people of Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang? What will help them live?

It’s the second point, the people who get lost in the middle, that bothers me. There’s a country south of China called Laos. It’s poor, developing, and relies on foreign aid to sustain its people. Story goes, Taiwan used to send millions of tons of rice to them. Laos would send a thank you note back, Taiwan sends another batch, rinse wash repeat. Now, Taiwan won’t do it. Because Laos won’t send a thank you note to the Taiwanese government. Because that could anger China who sees recognition of Taiwan’s government as a threat to itself. The people of Laos need the rice, and they’re not getting it, and when they’re spending their days looking for ways to eat, I guarantee they’re not thinking about, “Hm, who do I support? China, or Taiwan?”

Taiwan used to send aid to the few countries that did recognize Taiwan. The ones that changed their mind, well the aid stops going.

In other words…this has become just a game. A game where food and aid have become the bargaining chips of countries interested in flexing their political muscle to, do what again? Get recognition of identity and land. Nobody really wins, but of course, people lose, even–and especially those who have no vested interest in the game.

I’ve been reading a controversial, and also old book–The Clash of Civilizations. You may have heard of it. It was referenced too many times in either classes or other conversations for me to just look it over, so here I am, reading again.*

One concept in particular I’ve been brooding over is this: all humankind defines themselves by what they are not. In other words, I’m nice and not mean, funny–not boring.

The idea is most clearly seen when people of different backgrounds come into contact. When an Iranian and an American meet, they exchange cultural ideas. The question is, does coming into contact make the more alike (therefore diffusing potential tensions), or more different (solidifying their differences)?

I can see arguments for both sides. Let’s look at the USA, a country of many ethnicities, and compare it to say, South Korea, which is…well, predominantly Korean. The position of what I’ll call, real cultural exchange, is that because America is such a mix of cultures, we’ve become a group of people whose own identity is becoming more blurred, more mixed, and less concrete. We don’t simply belong to the culture we grew up with, we’ve changed over time due to the people we meet. Someone referenced once, look at all the little “towns” in major American cities; Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Saigon, Japantown, the list goes on. All there, sharing ideas, blurring lines of identity, and making everyone better off for it.

But that example, is also a case for the opposite: when people of different cultures meet, they might come into contact with other ideas, but they don’t accept them. In fact, they identify more with who they already are, especially now that they have found something that they are not. Again, people define themselves by what they are not, so the theory goes.

So in the case of metropolitan diversity, the example begs a question. Exactly who frequents these “towns”? Do those of Latino descent go to Chinatown? What about Indians in Japantown? Why do “towns” exist in the first place? Shouldn’t the idea be we don’t segregate ourselves according to our culture and create blocks in the middle of a city? City in a city?

Or another more personal anecdote. In International-House at UC San Diego, the idea is to create a place where people all around the world gather, mix, and share. While I was there, I saw the opposite. The Asians gathered, the Europeans gathered, and when the few crossed lines? Awkward, so the stories go. People’s identities were reinforced, not blurred, and didn’t do away with the “I’m not like them” mentality.

One more story. During the election primaries of last year, many people though the metro, integrated areas would be the most open to the idea of a black president, and that backwater, homogenous states (e.g. Idaho), would be completely against it. In cases it turned out to be the opposite.

On some level, I think some of both happens, which unfortunately means its hard to come up with a sociological framework in which to box people into. But on a global level, especially with the global exchange of information, are we becoming a more united people through the sharing of ideas, or even more iron-clad in the identities we already are, and of those closest to us? While I’m in realist mode, I’m inclined to think that unfortunately the latter is true; looking at China and how the internet and increasing information flow has made the Chinese in many cases more persistent in their belief that Westerners are out to get China than the other way around. Fortunately, I don’t think it has to stay this way–things can be improved.

* – I actually finally read my dad’s novel, which is a personal accomplishment. This getting back to reading is a good thing I think. There’s also this funny but super irreverent book on the Bible I’m looking at. More on that later.