learning about others

Some people, when they are told about other people’s plights or hurts, say, “What’s that got to do with me?” When you tell them about specific stereotypes/actions/words that hurt you, they say, “So what? Get over it.” Me, when someone tells me that they don’t like this or that or have been hurt by something or that there is a specific injustice that rankles them, I want to know what underlying reasons lead to this situation, why it bothers them, and what can be done. I love to find out about things and to expand my knowledge base of “the human condition”. I want to be sensitive to other people’s plights and to learn better how not to be a jerk and instead be a better contributing member of society.

This philanthropic view is the cover story for my blog-reading addiction. Heh.

Well, I’m only half kidding.

I’ve been reading Waiter Rant for an inside look at that lives of waitstaff. It’s given me a greater appreciation for people who work at restaurants, and I have internalized some tips to make sure I am not a jerky customer. I hate it when people feel like they can be rude to people and put them down because you happen to be paying them (or someone else) for something or another. It’s not like the person signed up to be your indentured servant.

I’ve also been reading Jon’s Jail Journal. The jail he was in before sentencing (he was in the interim jail for over two years) is in Arizona and sounds like a really frightening violation of human decency, especially as some of the people there had not yet been convicted yet and some had yet to be sentenced (after conviction). I vaguely remember reading about the tent jails before, but I have no idea where or when. There are some excerpts at The Guardian.

My dad doesn’t talk to anyone (that I know of) of how things were in jail and prison. I can’t imagine how it was for him, and I don’t know the conditions he was held in. I don’t know what his daily routine was. I don’t know anything about the place, except that told to me from the nursing and medical staff whom I spoke with on several occasions. His correctional officer also seemed like a decent person when I spoke to him, but what did/do I know about what really went on? I was told by a nurse that it was one of the nicer facilities, but the stories in “Jon”‘s journal shake me. My dad had gone through Vietnam as a young man. I don’t know what he went through. He never talked about that either. All the things he’s seen in his life that he doesn’t talk about… what is it doing to him? He’s never been a decent father, and he’s been a pretty crappy husband to my mom most of the years they’ve been married, but he’s still a human being and he’s still a person who’s been through a lot of senseless pain. Some people are just not good in certain roles, and as an adult, I can and have long since accepted that.

It’s stupidly ironic that I feel like I am learning about him only through reading about strangers and their stories.

The U.S. penal and justice system is broken. It needs to be fixed. We can cage people up and treat them like animals and pay out ridiculous amounts of tax dollars that could be going into health care or education, or we can address the real problems and try to find real answers. If I know what those are, I’ll let you know. :p There are people who should be locked up that aren’t. There are people who really genuinely need mental help but do not get it. There are people who don’t need to be doped up that are. The end result is that the system does not produce the results that we want to/are led to believe.

This post was brought to you by my Bleedin’ Liberal Heart ™.

ETA: Due to popular request [read: Because I remembered and felt like it], I bring you more “real life” blogs:

• Gang Stories, by a former gang-banger now living a white-collar life
• Clublife, by a bouncer at two NYC clubs
• opinionistas, by an associate at a law firm in NYC
• Random Acts of Reality, by an EMT working in London, England.

It’s weird that I’m not that interested in meeting people, yet I am still interested in learning more about the human experience and hearing about other people’s daily lives.

future blog topics

• How much I love and value the teachers I had growing up.
• How much I hate what a big revelation the phrase, “He’s just not that into you” is supposed to be. Come on now!
• How much I can’t stand Michelle Malkin and how I am constantly surprised by her continued media presence.
• How much I love the show “So You Think You Can Dance” (I know I wrote that before).
• How I hope I’m not going to obsessively blog about our wedding plans like I did about NaNoWriMo during December of last year.
• How I wonder how to parlay my skillset into doing something “worthwhile” in my “spare” time.
• How much I am looking forward to September (release of Serenity and A Breath of Snow and Ashes)

Blogger for Word

Now enabling your blogging addiction:

Blogger for Word is a free add-in for Microsoft Word that lets you save a Word document as a post to your Blogger blog with just a few clicks, and without even opening up a browser. Blogger for Word makes it even easier to express yourself online, save your documents to the web, and edit your work both online and off.

Click on the title of this entry to go to blogger to download.

generations

I have no idea why, but my beloved friends and esteemed colleagues seem to believe that there is room for argument on the concept of what it means to be a first, second, or third generation American. Note that people also use the term first, second, or third generation immigrant to describe the same thing.

Ahem. No, there is no room for argument. I don’t say that because I think I’m right, so there! No, I say that because it is the truth. (So there! Hee!) My familiarity of the generation labels does not arise from some introspection and creative wordsmithing. The concepts of the generations are well-documented and accepted among those who study and write about immigration culture, in particular to the US. I have friends who insist I am wrong, but come on! You know you are just going with what you think sounds right, and not from knowledge of the accepted vernacular. I can’t just go around making things up about what I think “queer” or “neo-con” means based on what I feel; I must accept the normative use for these words and so must you!! Accept it! Take it! What’s my name?!!

…

Sorry.

Here is the breakdown:

• First generation: This is the first generation in your family to move to and to live in America and/or become naturalized. This generation is born in and spent their formative years in a country that is not the US and often (but not always) self-identify their culture to be the one they were raised in, and not the American culture. They are often the ones to have made the decision to immigrate, and were not children that just went along with their parents. Often, but not always, the first generation does not speak English as a first language. Anyway, they are the first in the family to live in America and to become immersed in American culture, the first to have to try to adapt to the new country.
• Second generation: This consists of the children of the first generationers. They are the first generation in their family to be born Americans, but their parents may already be naturalized, thus they are not the first generation Americans. This generation often suffers from a language gap with the parents and may not actually be able to communicate easily with each other (other than the normal parent-child thing). They grow up in a mixed culture — inside the home, it is very clear that they are in the culture of the parents’ origins, but outside of the home, they are true-blue Americans. While they are largely familiar with the superficial layers of their parents’ culture, they do not hold first-hand knowledge of the culture.
• Third generation: This consists of the children of the second generationers (duh). Because they are raised by the second generationers who self-identify largely as plain old American, they often don’t learn any of the language or culture of grandparents, even if both parents are of the same ethnicity. They are Americans raised by Americans, and there is very little to distinguish them from anyone that’s been in the US for hundreds of years.

For the people who can’t take my word for it, here is a list of references:

• The Ilse: First Generation Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973 – Korean immigration
• Legacies
  
• Dissimilation? The Educational Attainment of Second Generation Immigrants – even immigrants to Germany use the same terms!
• Second-Generation Immigrants in California – pdf WARNING!
• Immigration and immigrants 2001: Updated numbers on immigrants – Note: “The immigrant population consists of first-generation immigrants who are born abroad, and second-generation immigrants who are born in Norway.”
• Nisei/Sansei – Note: “The Issei had no easy time after their arrival in the US.” Then later: “The Nisei, their children, were citizens by birth, but did not escape the racism.”

Hmm, I didn’t know about the kibei:

There are also the Kibei, who are the same age as the Nisei and were born in America, but were schooled in Japan, arriving back in this country to live as adults.

Anyway… I fall into the gap between the first and second generation. I was born in Korea and spoke Korean as a first language and even attended school there for a bit. But I was still a small child when I moved to the US. My older brother was 12 years old and had attended up to the 6th grade in Korea, so he’s even further into this category. We are what are called the 1.5 generation.

It’s weird being 1.5 generation because we immigrated with our parents, yet because of exposure to school and peers, we learned the language faster than them. So we end up as translators for our parents and stand in for them when our younger siblings need help in school. It’s fine at my current age of 29, but for my older brother who had to deal with this most, it was not good at the age of 12. Most of my friends who are 1.5 generation grew up feeling like we were really Korean/Chinese/Cambodian/etc deep down inside, remembering the feeling of acceptance when we were kids and the shock of rejection when we moved to the US. Most of us were picked on by our peers and strangers in the streets for being different. But most of us also got a big awakening when/if we had a chance to visit the country we had considered home. It’s most definitely not home. We might have fond memories of the place, but we are like mutant aliens when we visit. We can barely get by with our American accents.

I struggled with issues of cultural identity as an adolescent, but I know where I am now. So this post isn’t really about that. I had to cut myself short when I realized where I was going. That’s just too boring, really. It’s just to clear it up for you peeps who dare to question my wisdom. Hee. Please don’t kick my ass.

looking cautiously optimistic

We went to see a couple more wedding venues on Saturday: The Faculty Club at Berkeley and Madison’s at Lake Merritt Hotel. The weekend before that, we saw Berkeley City Club.

I really love Madison’s — it’s just beautiful, the view is fantastic, and it’s a local business, so it has some relevance to us and our lives. We made up a spreadsheet this weekend of the various different options we have at the different places. There is no conclusive answer yet. I hope we can decide soon.

ETA: My friend is selling her wedding dress. She bought another one that suits her better, so she’s selling the one she had picked out before. See the ad here and mention me to her if you decide to get the dress. 🙂

banal

How do you pronounce banal? www.dictionary.com says:

Usage Note: The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: it is preferred by only 2 percent of the Usage Panel. Other possibilities are (rhyming with anal), preferred by 38 percent of the Panel; (rhyming with canal), preferred by 46 percent; and (the last syllable rhyming with doll), preferred by 14 percent (this last pronunciation is more common in British English). Some Panelists admit to being so vexed by the problem that they tend to avoid the word in conversation. Speakers can perhaps take comfort in knowing that any one of the last three pronunciations will have the support of a substantial minority and that none of them is incorrect. When several pronunciations of a word are widely used, there is really no right or wrong one.

I always pronounce it the second way.

This leads me to the true topic of this blog entry: being anal.

Five minutes after typing that last sentence: Holy crap, I just deleted a bunch of stuff I had written about being anal, then realized that I had already posted on this very topic already. I don’t remember when, but I know I did. This isn’t really happening to me. Oh dear.

transmission

Seppo and I were heading down 880S when the transmission suddenly died. We flipped on the hazard lights and coasted to the nearest exit (fortunately, we were going slightly downhill shortly after losing the transmission). We had just picked up the car yesterday from the garage after getting the front axel replaced. It cost me a pretty penny. And a few ugly ones too. Thank goodness I upgraded to AAA Plus at the end of last year, because we were able to get towed to the garage we used for the axel instead of somewhere within a measely seven mile radius. When the tow truck picked up the front of the car, the transmission fluid gushed out in a terrifying rush. Looked like creepy machine blood. Seppo’s mom picked us up from the garage, then we had some food at Noah’s Bagels (where they forgot Seppo’s order entirely, then burned my bagel to charred black goodness, forgot Seppo’s potato salad, then didn’t toast the bagel dark the second time — oh well), then came home, where I found that I can’t seem to connect to the VPN at my work. This is pretty comical.

That will show me to get “angry” at things that don’t really make me that angry. Heh.

The good thing is that we were able to get to a safe place after we lost the transmission. We also have jobs where we won’t get instantly fired for missing a day. We got to eat an early lunch outside. We had someone available that could pick us up, no problem. We had AAA Plus! Hee. We can spend some time with the dog. It’s not bad, all things considered.

I only hope the car does not cost a lot to repair. We are assuming for now that the problem was caused by the work done by the garage earlier in the week/end of last week, but there is no guarantee that it’s not a new, unrelated problem. Let’s hope not.

phone

Sometimes (like this morning), when I’m on the phone letting it ring and ring in hopes that someone will pick up eventually on the other end, I forget who I had been trying to reach by the time it gets picked up/goes to voicemail. The same thing happens when I’m on hold. I have to constantly remind myself who I was going to talk to and why, or I end up sputtering nonsense or hanging up out of embarrassment.

Talk about ADD.

Angry Ei-Nyung

Pissing me off today: the fact that websites related to weddings overuse italics and center alignment, rendering most pricing charts unintelligible. Whatever happened to neat little rows and columns? Or how about a dynamic pricing page where you can select various options and number of guests to get a ballpark figure for the total package?

I hate you, gaudy wedding sites.

answer: no, i don’t.

Question: So you think you can dance?

I have been watching this show, now that Hell’s Kitchen is over, and I am nothing if not a reality tv monkey. I have to face up to who I am, and when I look in the mirror, I see the shamed face of a woman who loves reality tv. I can only watch one at a time though. I have learned in the past that I can’t really do two at once. It is too much of a time commitment, and I want to actually have some semblance of a life.

Anyway, I love this show. I don’t love how once in a while, they try to get some shock value by being overly insulting (I dislike Creepy Uncle Nigel), but for the most part, they keep it zipped. It’s like this show combines two of my great media loves: reality tv competition + breakdancing. There was even an instance of a dance battle in last night’s episode. Awesome. They have dancers of all sorts of different backgrounds (jazz, ballet, hip hop, break, tap, etc) going through various classes to learn different styles and to get evaluated by the instructors. They are down to the final 16 people. I think the format changes now that they are into the finals, but what do I know.

If I could instantly pick up some skill overnight, it would be breakdancing.

Seppo and I are taking tomorrow off from work. Yay! While it’s a pretty exciting idea, in reality, we’ll probably just end up taking the car into the mechanics and run some other errands. Heh.