One of my friends sent this to me. I hear the message, but I don't know what to think yet.
Mayda Del Valle - To All The Boys I've Loved Before
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
calling all spammers
we're not interested in your phony biz deals, lame ecards, lottery notifications or penis enhancements. i will continue to delete your posts whenever i find them, so please move on to the next site. try posting your trash elsewhere!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Completely Useless?
The other day, between classes, I told another teacher that I am planning on taking the annual Japanese Language Proficiency Test this December. Never you mind what level, especially when I tell you that the teacher I was talking to is taking the highest level of the test. Since Japanese is one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn (3 systems of writing plus grammar that is just about the inverse of what exists in English), the simple act of saying, "I am taking the 1-kyuu level exam" tends to have the effect of evoking a silent, reverent hush among the Westerners in the room. I nudged my piddly low level exam preparation book to the recesses of my purse, thoroughly shamed that I had even thought to tell her I was taking the exam. After all, she knows over 1000 Chinese symbols, multiple thousands of Japanese words and has mastered enough Japanese vocabulary and its twisted, devious grammar to read a newspaper. I wasn't worthy; I wasn't worthy ...
My coworker saw that I was impressed and immediately began to denigrate her skills. She was taking the 1-kyuu, sure, she said, but there was no way she'd pass. It took her 6 years, after all, to learn 1000 kanji* and now she had 2 months to learn 1000 more. "It is," she declared, "impossible."
*Chinese symbols used heavily in Japanese writing
"Oh, it can't be," I said. "You've already come so far. And how fantastic that you've learned so much Japanese in the first place!"
Here, my coworker grimaced. "It honestly isn't that great," she said. "As a matter of fact, I didn't recommend it, considering that learning Japanese is really sort of useless."*
"Useless!" I was flabbergasted. "What do you mean?"
(*Let me pause here to state that before she declared the study of Japanese "useless", my coworker told me she was having an "I hate Japan" day - very common for ex patriots. That said ... )
"It's useless," she continued, "because for the insane amount of work it takes for a native English speaker to even learn the language it just isn't worth it when you'll probably never have the opportunity to use it once you move back home."
My coworker had a point. Realistically speaking, how exactly is Japanese going to help either of us when we move away, beyond helping us speak to waiters at Japanese restaurants and impressing Japanese friends, or the random nihonjin we meet? Myself, I'll never have the sort of job where I have to deal with Japanese businessmen and I really don't foresee myself marrying into a Japanese family. So why even try to master Japanese grammar?
I started studying Japanese in the first place because I didn't want to be an ignorant Ugly American who stomped all over the culture and ran around further embarrassing her people by insisting on speaking English to shopkeepers. Furthermore, I hated depending on my Japanese-speaking friends (all men) to speak for me. Lastly, I love languages and especially love learning anything new. And I love learning new things because, ultimately, though I see her point, I am not like my coworker on her "I hate Japan!" day.
You see, I don't think there is such a thing as "useless knowledge."
"Random facts," "useless knowledge": these terms are popular in American culture. People who can quote scientific equations or name the number one hits of cultural icons from the 40s are sniggered at - until they win cool millions on Jeopardy, of course. Learning skills you don't actually use or being an Arts major in college is especially scoffed at. What will you ever do with a head full of theory? our parents, friends, and parents' friends complain. Computers; go into computers. Or business. Something you can touch. Double major - why?
I double majored in college - two majors that could only be considered "useless" - English and Paleoanthropology. Granted - the latter is hardly a "useless" field but if you aren't planning on entering it then the hours spent in the lab, the papers sweated over, the numerous primate taxa memorized do start to seem un-worth it. I double majored because I was fascinated in evolution, stones and bones - I needed to know more. I also wanted to study literature because I saw myself as a novelist, from the time I was small. I wasn't particularly interested in working for newspapers so English, rather than the rule-heavy Journalism, was really all that fit, even if it didn't necessarily translate itself to a sure-fire job once I graduated.
Five years later, I'm proud to report that I've been making a living ever since I graduated; first at TV Guide and then as an editor at a media research company that went from a start up in Chinatown to a swanky operation on Park Avenue. Today, I'm an English teacher living abroad and since I moved to Japan my creativity is higher than ever. No, I have never been required to discuss Shakespeare or Faulkner at my jobs but just because I am not required to discuss them doesn't mean I don't. I'm never far from someone who loves to read as much as I do and I've yet to find someone who is unimpressed by my knowledge of human and primate anatomy. I love the things I learned and even if I did feel disgruntled during the lean times when I was out of work nothing could ever take from me the ecstasy I felt each time I was inspired by Hemingway or examined the unmistakable evidence of the valgus knee in an archaic hominid.
Any fool will tell you that knowledge is power. Most of us will never have the opportunity to use what we learned in science camp to create a bomb out of chocolate and foil, but for those of us who live simple, quiet lives, our hard work is usually reward us through the sweet, random little life surprise.
Hands-down, my favorite thing about life is the sweet, random little surprises. Let me illustrate: at 15, you buy a blue T-shirt at Wet Seal with the image of a frizzy-haired woman you can't place so you ask your mom and discover that it's Gilda Radner, star of Saturday Night Live in the 70s. You develop an interest and research her career, discovering a genuine admiration for the woman's comedic gifts. At 20, you meet a woman in a coffee shop while wearing that old T-shirt who is so impressed she comments on it. She loves Gilda Radner, she gushes. Gilda was her favorite comedienne - ever. You chat it up and before you know it, you find a wonderful new friend who, actually, later introduces you to the man who will become your new boss at a time when you are desperate for work. Surprise!! Thank you, Gilda and Wet Seal.
All right, so maybe that's an extreme example but I'm sure the general pattern is familiar; or at least I hope it is because the random little surprise is such a sweet part of life. The random little surprise ... so very often brought about by a shared or obscure knowledge gleaned at some point when it seemed completely unimportant.
Here, some examples from my own life:
At 13, I decided to write a novel. It would be set in Germany and take place during World War II. My protagonist would be Jewish and, of course, she would be sent to Auschwitz*. I read everything I could find on the Holocaust, Judaism and even started trying to learn German.
*Please ignore the ludicrousness of this idea - I was 13, after all, and I had great ambition.
When I was 15, I realized how fabulously ridiculous and offensive my nearly-completed novel was. I was a 15 year old girl surrounded by Catholics and Protestants in a Florida town that had, perhaps, 5 Jewish families. I'd never starved, I knew nothing about life. How could I possibly write a novel about the Holocaust??? I set aside my hard work, burning with shame. Oh, the waste of all those hours in the library, fueled by creative passion and empathy.
Three years later, I became infatuated with a half-Jewish man who was living in Germany and obsessed with World War II. He laughed at what he called my "scheiss German" but was impressed with my other knowledge. Our relationship was poisonous and things ended badly, but nonetheless, my research at age 13 had not been in vain. I moved to New York at 18, where I was surrounded by Jewish people and got plenty of opportunity to expand my knowledge of their culture. Just the other day, I met a German tourist in Thailand who was impressed that I knew various cities in Germany - things learned from my time with the World War II nut.
In college, as I stated, I studied Paleoanthropology. It hasn't earned me a dime (... yet) but it has made impressed countless acquaintances and made me extremely aware of my anatomy. On a crowded train with no straps to grab, I tuck my knees in towards each other since I know that part of the reason H. sapiens can stand upright is because our femurs are slanted inwards (the valgus knee), which affects our center of gravity. As the train jostles, I give my center of gravity a little help. I never, ever fall.
At 6, I decided I was going to be an author and taught myself to type on the typewriter in my father's office. I soon discovered that I was extremely fast at it and after taking a typing course my Freshman year of high school, I could literally type over 100 words per minute with my eyes shut. At 27, I have no creative work published but since I was 20, I have run a transcription side business that brings in at least a couple of thousand extra dollars per year. No, I'm not an author ... but was learning how to type useless? I think not. And who knows ... I might write that novel yet.
No knowledge is useless; it only depends on how open you are to using it and how large you expect your reward to be. Sometimes we use it in a small way, sometimes we use it in a large way. Your mosaic of knowledge makes you who you are. We can never, ever know what opportunities will arise or how anything we know now can help us. Good Boy and Girl Scouts fill their minds and are always prepared. You don't have to be an ace at building fires to shine - although I do recommend learning things like tying slip knots and building fires. Just look at those poor folks on Lost. Again, fictional, but ....
My boyfriend is Irish. Years ago, I worked in an Irish bar with a number of his countrymen. I learned a lot of Irish slang, that a fantastic Irish TV show called Father Ted existed, the fact that Catholics call the Northern Irish city "Derry" and Protestants call it "London Derry," and a number of folk tunes. At the time, I was angry and humiliated to be working as a waitress when I had a double bachelor's in Arts from NYU. I look at it now as getting a head start.
But if my relationship with Colm doesn't work out, I suppose could meet and marry that Japanese boy yet. In any case, I'll be ready.
My coworker saw that I was impressed and immediately began to denigrate her skills. She was taking the 1-kyuu, sure, she said, but there was no way she'd pass. It took her 6 years, after all, to learn 1000 kanji* and now she had 2 months to learn 1000 more. "It is," she declared, "impossible."
*Chinese symbols used heavily in Japanese writing
"Oh, it can't be," I said. "You've already come so far. And how fantastic that you've learned so much Japanese in the first place!"
Here, my coworker grimaced. "It honestly isn't that great," she said. "As a matter of fact, I didn't recommend it, considering that learning Japanese is really sort of useless."*
"Useless!" I was flabbergasted. "What do you mean?"
(*Let me pause here to state that before she declared the study of Japanese "useless", my coworker told me she was having an "I hate Japan" day - very common for ex patriots. That said ... )
"It's useless," she continued, "because for the insane amount of work it takes for a native English speaker to even learn the language it just isn't worth it when you'll probably never have the opportunity to use it once you move back home."
My coworker had a point. Realistically speaking, how exactly is Japanese going to help either of us when we move away, beyond helping us speak to waiters at Japanese restaurants and impressing Japanese friends, or the random nihonjin we meet? Myself, I'll never have the sort of job where I have to deal with Japanese businessmen and I really don't foresee myself marrying into a Japanese family. So why even try to master Japanese grammar?
I started studying Japanese in the first place because I didn't want to be an ignorant Ugly American who stomped all over the culture and ran around further embarrassing her people by insisting on speaking English to shopkeepers. Furthermore, I hated depending on my Japanese-speaking friends (all men) to speak for me. Lastly, I love languages and especially love learning anything new. And I love learning new things because, ultimately, though I see her point, I am not like my coworker on her "I hate Japan!" day.
You see, I don't think there is such a thing as "useless knowledge."
"Random facts," "useless knowledge": these terms are popular in American culture. People who can quote scientific equations or name the number one hits of cultural icons from the 40s are sniggered at - until they win cool millions on Jeopardy, of course. Learning skills you don't actually use or being an Arts major in college is especially scoffed at. What will you ever do with a head full of theory? our parents, friends, and parents' friends complain. Computers; go into computers. Or business. Something you can touch. Double major - why?
I double majored in college - two majors that could only be considered "useless" - English and Paleoanthropology. Granted - the latter is hardly a "useless" field but if you aren't planning on entering it then the hours spent in the lab, the papers sweated over, the numerous primate taxa memorized do start to seem un-worth it. I double majored because I was fascinated in evolution, stones and bones - I needed to know more. I also wanted to study literature because I saw myself as a novelist, from the time I was small. I wasn't particularly interested in working for newspapers so English, rather than the rule-heavy Journalism, was really all that fit, even if it didn't necessarily translate itself to a sure-fire job once I graduated.
Five years later, I'm proud to report that I've been making a living ever since I graduated; first at TV Guide and then as an editor at a media research company that went from a start up in Chinatown to a swanky operation on Park Avenue. Today, I'm an English teacher living abroad and since I moved to Japan my creativity is higher than ever. No, I have never been required to discuss Shakespeare or Faulkner at my jobs but just because I am not required to discuss them doesn't mean I don't. I'm never far from someone who loves to read as much as I do and I've yet to find someone who is unimpressed by my knowledge of human and primate anatomy. I love the things I learned and even if I did feel disgruntled during the lean times when I was out of work nothing could ever take from me the ecstasy I felt each time I was inspired by Hemingway or examined the unmistakable evidence of the valgus knee in an archaic hominid.
Any fool will tell you that knowledge is power. Most of us will never have the opportunity to use what we learned in science camp to create a bomb out of chocolate and foil, but for those of us who live simple, quiet lives, our hard work is usually reward us through the sweet, random little life surprise.
Hands-down, my favorite thing about life is the sweet, random little surprises. Let me illustrate: at 15, you buy a blue T-shirt at Wet Seal with the image of a frizzy-haired woman you can't place so you ask your mom and discover that it's Gilda Radner, star of Saturday Night Live in the 70s. You develop an interest and research her career, discovering a genuine admiration for the woman's comedic gifts. At 20, you meet a woman in a coffee shop while wearing that old T-shirt who is so impressed she comments on it. She loves Gilda Radner, she gushes. Gilda was her favorite comedienne - ever. You chat it up and before you know it, you find a wonderful new friend who, actually, later introduces you to the man who will become your new boss at a time when you are desperate for work. Surprise!! Thank you, Gilda and Wet Seal.
All right, so maybe that's an extreme example but I'm sure the general pattern is familiar; or at least I hope it is because the random little surprise is such a sweet part of life. The random little surprise ... so very often brought about by a shared or obscure knowledge gleaned at some point when it seemed completely unimportant.
Here, some examples from my own life:
At 13, I decided to write a novel. It would be set in Germany and take place during World War II. My protagonist would be Jewish and, of course, she would be sent to Auschwitz*. I read everything I could find on the Holocaust, Judaism and even started trying to learn German.
*Please ignore the ludicrousness of this idea - I was 13, after all, and I had great ambition.
When I was 15, I realized how fabulously ridiculous and offensive my nearly-completed novel was. I was a 15 year old girl surrounded by Catholics and Protestants in a Florida town that had, perhaps, 5 Jewish families. I'd never starved, I knew nothing about life. How could I possibly write a novel about the Holocaust??? I set aside my hard work, burning with shame. Oh, the waste of all those hours in the library, fueled by creative passion and empathy.
Three years later, I became infatuated with a half-Jewish man who was living in Germany and obsessed with World War II. He laughed at what he called my "scheiss German" but was impressed with my other knowledge. Our relationship was poisonous and things ended badly, but nonetheless, my research at age 13 had not been in vain. I moved to New York at 18, where I was surrounded by Jewish people and got plenty of opportunity to expand my knowledge of their culture. Just the other day, I met a German tourist in Thailand who was impressed that I knew various cities in Germany - things learned from my time with the World War II nut.
In college, as I stated, I studied Paleoanthropology. It hasn't earned me a dime (... yet) but it has made impressed countless acquaintances and made me extremely aware of my anatomy. On a crowded train with no straps to grab, I tuck my knees in towards each other since I know that part of the reason H. sapiens can stand upright is because our femurs are slanted inwards (the valgus knee), which affects our center of gravity. As the train jostles, I give my center of gravity a little help. I never, ever fall.
At 6, I decided I was going to be an author and taught myself to type on the typewriter in my father's office. I soon discovered that I was extremely fast at it and after taking a typing course my Freshman year of high school, I could literally type over 100 words per minute with my eyes shut. At 27, I have no creative work published but since I was 20, I have run a transcription side business that brings in at least a couple of thousand extra dollars per year. No, I'm not an author ... but was learning how to type useless? I think not. And who knows ... I might write that novel yet.
No knowledge is useless; it only depends on how open you are to using it and how large you expect your reward to be. Sometimes we use it in a small way, sometimes we use it in a large way. Your mosaic of knowledge makes you who you are. We can never, ever know what opportunities will arise or how anything we know now can help us. Good Boy and Girl Scouts fill their minds and are always prepared. You don't have to be an ace at building fires to shine - although I do recommend learning things like tying slip knots and building fires. Just look at those poor folks on Lost. Again, fictional, but ....
My boyfriend is Irish. Years ago, I worked in an Irish bar with a number of his countrymen. I learned a lot of Irish slang, that a fantastic Irish TV show called Father Ted existed, the fact that Catholics call the Northern Irish city "Derry" and Protestants call it "London Derry," and a number of folk tunes. At the time, I was angry and humiliated to be working as a waitress when I had a double bachelor's in Arts from NYU. I look at it now as getting a head start.
But if my relationship with Colm doesn't work out, I suppose could meet and marry that Japanese boy yet. In any case, I'll be ready.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
gee golly goodness, granny!
Doris Lessing wins Nobel for literature - Yahoo!
News http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071011/ap_on_en_ot/nobel_literature
simone sent me this link today...coolness! pls, check it out :)
News http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071011/ap_on_en_ot/nobel_literature
simone sent me this link today...coolness! pls, check it out :)
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Aftermath
How do you deal with the break up of a relationship that lasted longer than all your previous relationships combined? Yes, these are relative terms.... I'm talking 6 years.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Preaching to the (culturally-aware) choir
I do apologize for being totally AWOL. I have since started medical school, and because this is the week of our first exam, I am SERIOUSLY PROCRASTINATING! But also, we started a new unit in our "fuzzy" half of the curriculum, and an event in today's class particularly bothered me. I've copied the post I wrote on my own blog, below.
Wish me luck! It all goes down Friday!
**********
Today, we began the small-groups sessions of our Communications class. This is where we're going to learn to gain patients' trust, built empathy, and overall communicate effectively. Part of this class requires us to research some "difficult topic", and then make a presentation to the group and practice the scenario with a patient instructor.
My school is starting this new program, a pilot, really, where they want to introduce culturally sticky situations into the repertoire of uncomfortable topics and situations. So, during our first small-group session, today, in the midst of our introducing ourselves to each other and talking about our backgrounds, one of the course's co-directors came in to talk about this program. At the end, she passed out the handouts that explained the pilot and asked interested parties to take one.
Everyone did EXCEPT the two white-male students in the group.
After everyone talked about where they were from, including those of us born in or have traveled extensively abroad (at least three of us), it just does not seem right. Here in medical school, you should be learning to deal with people from other cultures, and it shouldn't be optional. You're not really going to have the option of excluding cultural groups from your practice*, so shouldn't you be learning how to "be respectful at all times" within a variety of contexts? No, not an exhaustive course in the nuances of every cultures, but rather an idea of the variance in interpretations of major life crises and sickness.
Maybe it is because these two men intend to practice in their home states, somewhere rural, maybe. An all-WASP town. However, you're here now. You're in Chicago, with the largest Hispanic population outside Los Angeles, with social problems of gentrification, amongst other aspects and issues of diversity. You can't hide from it.
It's not even a matter of the school's curriculum, although I think there are limitations to that - there's a couple sessions (a handful of hours) of cultural sensitivity training in the spring. But in a room where you are the only WASPs amongst your peers, it's a slap in the face of everyone else that you passed the stack of sheets on - totally uninterested in (or most likely oblivious to) bridging the gap - and passed on the opportunity to seem empathetic within your own classroom. Honestly, if you're going to be offensive to your peers on the first day of class, I can only wonder how you, after you have the "M" and "D" next to your Anglican surname, will treat the patients whose names you cannot pronounce, who you may have to speak to with an interpreter, or who are scared and apprehensive or overly obedient because they come from another culture.
Will you show them the same kind of empathy you showed us today?
*No, you should not be excluding cultural groups from your practice. Unless you are racist. Which, if you are, that's a whole other ethical issue.
**********
Any questions/comments you want to direct specifically to me can be sent to: da period pan period jin atsign gmail period com.
Wish me luck! It all goes down Friday!
**********
Today, we began the small-groups sessions of our Communications class. This is where we're going to learn to gain patients' trust, built empathy, and overall communicate effectively. Part of this class requires us to research some "difficult topic", and then make a presentation to the group and practice the scenario with a patient instructor.
My school is starting this new program, a pilot, really, where they want to introduce culturally sticky situations into the repertoire of uncomfortable topics and situations. So, during our first small-group session, today, in the midst of our introducing ourselves to each other and talking about our backgrounds, one of the course's co-directors came in to talk about this program. At the end, she passed out the handouts that explained the pilot and asked interested parties to take one.
Everyone did EXCEPT the two white-male students in the group.
After everyone talked about where they were from, including those of us born in or have traveled extensively abroad (at least three of us), it just does not seem right. Here in medical school, you should be learning to deal with people from other cultures, and it shouldn't be optional. You're not really going to have the option of excluding cultural groups from your practice*, so shouldn't you be learning how to "be respectful at all times" within a variety of contexts? No, not an exhaustive course in the nuances of every cultures, but rather an idea of the variance in interpretations of major life crises and sickness.
Maybe it is because these two men intend to practice in their home states, somewhere rural, maybe. An all-WASP town. However, you're here now. You're in Chicago, with the largest Hispanic population outside Los Angeles, with social problems of gentrification, amongst other aspects and issues of diversity. You can't hide from it.
It's not even a matter of the school's curriculum, although I think there are limitations to that - there's a couple sessions (a handful of hours) of cultural sensitivity training in the spring. But in a room where you are the only WASPs amongst your peers, it's a slap in the face of everyone else that you passed the stack of sheets on - totally uninterested in (or most likely oblivious to) bridging the gap - and passed on the opportunity to seem empathetic within your own classroom. Honestly, if you're going to be offensive to your peers on the first day of class, I can only wonder how you, after you have the "M" and "D" next to your Anglican surname, will treat the patients whose names you cannot pronounce, who you may have to speak to with an interpreter, or who are scared and apprehensive or overly obedient because they come from another culture.
Will you show them the same kind of empathy you showed us today?
*No, you should not be excluding cultural groups from your practice. Unless you are racist. Which, if you are, that's a whole other ethical issue.
**********
Any questions/comments you want to direct specifically to me can be sent to: da period pan period jin atsign gmail period com.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Call Me a Hypocrite ...
Technically, the video I am about to share with you should offend each and every one of us, as feminists. It shows - shock! horror! - a male publicly degrading a female. In his familiar eyes is a sadistic gleam and his barbed words are veiled in a friendly tone. To add to the horror, the aforementioned public degradation is an ambush. The female, to her credit, reacts with arguable poise and stands up for herself: "You're making me sad I came," she says. "You're hurting my feelings!" The audience is less than sympathetic - they roar with laughter each time the man licks his chops and delivers yet another carefully crafted attack.
So why am I not outraged at this display that occurred on national television, on a major American network? Why am I not sympathizing with the mistreated female? Why am I, instead, posting the video of this occurrence in this forum and about to hit you with what I intend to be the clincher for this blog post?
Because the man committing this act is David Letterman and the woman is Paris Hilton.
Call me a hypocrite if you want. Sorry, sisters - this is one time when I've gotta side with the boys.
Besides; Dave hasn't been this sharp in a long time.
So why am I not outraged at this display that occurred on national television, on a major American network? Why am I not sympathizing with the mistreated female? Why am I, instead, posting the video of this occurrence in this forum and about to hit you with what I intend to be the clincher for this blog post?
Because the man committing this act is David Letterman and the woman is Paris Hilton.
Call me a hypocrite if you want. Sorry, sisters - this is one time when I've gotta side with the boys.
Besides; Dave hasn't been this sharp in a long time.
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