Some things I Picked Up from American Women

# I say NO, and that means NO.
# When I say "Fine", "Whatever", and "Right" with a weired tone, you know I mean "you are an idiot and I don't care what you think".
# I say Thank You whenever someone does anything nice for me because I don't expect anyone to do anything for me.
# I pay my own bills.
# I have a lot of road rage.
# I paint my toe nails.
# I eat yogurt (but no cheese snacks, thanks).
# I call my female colleagues "honey" and "sweetheart" sometimes.
# I drink cold milk even when I am having my period.
# I don't try to avoid using "I" any more.

The Ugly Internet

The older I get, the more I believe that humans are born evil, especially when no one is watching, like on the Internet. I started writing my Chinese blog in the hope that I could use facts and reasons to change many people's ignorant and distorted view of the world. But sometimes I am tired and have doubts if that would ever happen. Too many people leave irresponsible and nasty comments without even reading my blog carefully. When you argue based on ideology, not facts, then there is really no discussion, it's just a vent-out, a monologue.
Well, I guess I would still write on, changes are incremental, especially changing people's minds.

Just because he can't speak English...

Doesn't mean he is stupid, Ma'am.

I was in the public library today waiting in a long line to borrow a new economics book. There were three clerks working at the counter but the line was held up by an old white lady. She seemed to be upset by the clerk who was handling her check-in. I could hear the clerk, sitting low, speaking broken language, sounded like he might have some sort of disabilities. I couldn't see him but I was imagining a person with down syndrome struggling with these simple tasks. The old lady eventually called the white mid-age clerk nearby to sort her problem.

At that time, I caught a glimpse of the sitting clerk: he was not disable, he was an Asian in his late 50s.

The white clerk tried to explain to the old lady that the Asian clerk did nothing wrong. Actually he did check-in twice to make sure the book was taken off her record. She murmured and insisted to have all her record printed out, which the white clerk obliged.

The woman waiting behind me was a bit disgusted: "What is her problem? Doesn't she know that you can't check a book out twice? Just because he is a minority, she thinks he is stupid?"

I turned around and said: "That was condescending."

She stared at me through her sunglasses like she was stunned and angered: "What? My comment?"

I replied: "No, her attitude."

Chinglish VS Chinese/English

I was reading a Chinese lady's blog this morning. She wrote a short article about Beyonce and American feminism. I didn't know anything about her before today. Interestingly, her blog uses a style of mixing Chinese and English. I am no language purist. I think the recent ban on English acronyms usage in public media in China is ridiculous. Language is liquid, it changes with time, culture, and geography. Languages mix with one and other daily. There isn't and shouldn't be any defined border among languages.

But I honestly didn't see the point of this lady's blog of mixing the two languages. Is she writing to a Chinese audience or American audience? Switching back and forth of languages destroys the flow of the article and annoys the hell out of me. Is it a pretentious way of showing off that she can command both languages? Or is it a sign that she can't work with either well?

I speak and write in English everyday, it doesn't make me a better writer in Chinese. Ultimately, it is the logic and flow that makes a good argument and good essay. The soul of writing is not the language, it's the thoughts behind the language.

Shanghai Pollution

On the popular website for Chinese living abroad, mitbbs, people often post their experiences visiting China. A recent post described a mother's worry for her daughter's health in Shanghai because the pollution is so bad. The responds this post got were overwhelmingly negative. Many people said the original poster was too picky and pretentious. Sure, very few people on that forum was born and raised in the US. Instead, they are immigrants, often moved out of the country in their adulthood. It is hard to argue that after a few years living elsewhere, a person would grow so unaccustomed to his/her birth place.

But we all know, we all change. Isn't that the main purpose of leaving in the first place? We want to change, and give up what we had for the hope of change. Besides, why do some people like to bury their heads in the sand? I guess it's too hard to judge something when you have too much attachment or affection towards it.

Writing in another language

I haven't been keeping up with this blog lately. Like my own private English blog, it is not easy to enjoy writing in English as much as I do in Chinese. While I was writing my dissertation, I realized that I couldn't see the logical disconnections in my English writing as I could in my native language.

LOGIC! Never occurred to me before that it could be a problem. I am not saying I'm good at logic but I haven't had any problem convincing/arguing with people before. Of course, this has something to do with the length of the dissertation too, it's hard to keep track of a 200-400 pages argument. It just goes to show you that we take many simple things for granted, such as our ability to write. It takes a change of scenarios to challenge you to think, and hopefully to change as well.

What is the point of writing anyway? I write so much, but can't write three sentences straight without my mind wandering around in between. Is it the language? Or is it that my attention span has become so short? With three different writing projects in the next month to finish, I suddenly feel that I should pick this blog up now, so I could use my wandering mind for something useful... good logic? Perhaps.

Cast-outs or the chosen ones

I always think that people choose to come to the US because they believe what this country stands for. But I was reading George Carlin's "Brain Dropping" and realized that you can look at this another way: that we're all cast-outs from other countries. We can't fit into where we were born. We choose to leave because we can't stay with our own people any more! I think both reasons are plausible and probably both are true. Of course the synergy of these cast-outs is amazing, so maybe it's not too bad to be not conformed.