If I'm ever bored, I guess this will be on the list of things to do

Take the SAT again for shits and giggles. Just to see how I'd do on the whitest test ever.

http://deadspin.com/5893189/what-happens-when-a-35+year+old-man-retakes-the-sat

You Don't Know Jack

An article about my friend in a high school newspaper: http://elestoque.org/2012/03/12/magazine/jack/

On April 7th, there will be a donor registry event at BruHaus on Wilshire (Down the street from UCLA). People can join the bone marrow donor registry and get a 10% discount and food and drinks.

Save lives. All it takes are some cheek swabs and an open heart.

Operation Reset

On my quest towards being a better person:

1. Listen
2. Make lists
3. Complete lists
4. Improve communication
5. Be nice
6. Be fair
7. Be respectful of others
8. Be patient
9. Judge less (because right now, it seems impossible to pass judgement on others)
10. Make time for people and give EVERY ONE my best
11. Not take things and people for granted
12. Complain less
13. Journal more - cheaper than therapy
14. Tell people I care/love them more
15. Have more courage
16. Be more productive
17. Stick to goals and not settle
18. Smile more
19. Watch the word vomit
20. Think more and think deeply

Quarter life crisis...part deux

I just realized that this year, I'll be in what I consider to be my mid-twenties. It's a terrifying thought. Especially with a friend's father ailing, and three other people I know under 30 dying of leukemia. So sad.

I feel a sudden need to accomplish more and faster. And do good. Because I'm dying a little every day like everyone else, and if I were to suddenly kick the bucket without warning, I'd like to have left behind something. Even a small something. A few great memories, or a certain feeling. Maybe this is just my desire to be significant somehow, like pretty much every person desires.

Please join the bone marrow registry. www.bethematch.org

Help me save someone

It's easy to operate under the false assumption that we are invincible when we are young. That we are healthy and strong, and can't be bothered with how vulnerable we actually are to disease, debilitating injuries, pain, suffering, and even death. But every once in a while, comes a very healthy slap to the face, bringing us collectively back to reality: that mortality is a very real thing, and it's hitting me remarkably close to home.

I met Jack when I was in second grade. He was in my class very briefly, before he transferred out, to a different teacher. I'm actually much better acquainted with his twin brother, since we had more classes together in high school, and play rugby, Rock Band, and board games during holidays with a group of friends from high school. Though I didn't spend very much time hanging out with Jack, I know that he is an extraordinary individual. He was involved in Speech and Debate in high school, went onto West Point, and then graduated from UCLA. He is a scholar, an athlete, an extremely determined individual, and a genuinely friendly person.

Last summer, Jack was diagnosed with Acute Leukemia Syndrome. Rounds of chemotherapy changed nothing; his only option now is a bone marrow transplant.

Unfortunately, his parents aren't matches. Even Jim, his twin brother, isn't a match. The really, truly, knots-your-stomach-frightening thing is that his chances of finding a match are extremely slim. Like 1 in 20,000 slim. And if a match cannot be found, and soon, it means that Jack, for all of his courage and fight, will die.

The statistics behind finding a match are generally shitty: There are 9.5 million people in the Be the Match Bone Marrow Registry, which is roughly only 2 percent of the entire US population. To make matters worse, there's a significant number of people in the registry that will not donate if asked to do so. (The percentages of donors who are available and willing are:  65 for Caucasians; 47 percent for Hispanics; 44 percent for Asians; 34 percent for African-Americans.) Finding a match is especially difficult for minority groups, with multi-racial/multi-ethnic individuals having the hardest time finding matches.

This isn't a situation where Jack was involved in a Final Destination - style untimely accident. He has a shot at life so long as people step up and register. The more people that register with the Be the Match bone marrow donor program, the more likely that a match can be found. His family and friends are currently employing  every resource they have to find a donor, including Reddit, the TC registry, and crowd-sourcing on Facebook. They are fighting to give him his best chance, and I am doing my best to do the same.

I'm not just asking you to think about mortality right now. I'm also asking you to help:

Please take five minutes and join the National Marrow Donor Registry. This site has just about everything you need to know about the registry and bone marrow transplants. You complete a brief questionnaire, some straightforward registry forms, and you're 90% done. Assuming you agree, the organization will send you a cheek swab kit to obtain a sample of your cells. And the kit is exactly as it sounds; you swab four giant q-tip things on the inside of your cheeks, and you send the kit right back. Absolutely painless.

You could also find a local bone marrow drive to register immediately. You could also plan your own bone marrow drive.

If you are a match for someone in need, you will be contacted by a medical professional. Jack has a greater chance of matching someone of Asian descent (only about 7% of the 9.5 million donors are of Asian descent), so I especially encourage all those in the category to apply. You may not be a match for Jack, but you may be a match for someone else, and be that person's best chance at life.

Last, but certainly not least, please pass this message on.

Thank you.

Symptomatic of Being in Grad School

From Wikipedia, the most awesome of debatably legitimate online resources:
"The impostor syndrome, sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. It is not an officially recognized psychological disorder, but has been the subject of numerous books and articles by psychologists and educators. The term was coined by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978.^[1]
Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.
The impostor syndrome, in which competent people find it impossible to believe in their own competence, can be viewed as complementary to the Dunning–Kruger effect, in which incompetent people find it impossible to believe in their own incompetence."



That, and what am I doing with my life?!

Steinbeck on Love in a letter to his son

Steinbeck is one of my favorite writers, and this letter to his son (who wrote to him about the prospect of falling in love) is yet another reason why:


New York
November 10, 1958
Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.


The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,
Fa

Bad analogies in the Washington Post

An oldie but goodie from the Washington Post. The best worst analogies ever!

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
12. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
13. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
14. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
15. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at asolar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
17. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
19. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
20. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
21. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
23. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it hadrusted shut.
24. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
25. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
26. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
27. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
28. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
29. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
31. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
33. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
34. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
35. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
36. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
37. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
38. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
39. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
40. Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
41. They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
42. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
43. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
44. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
45. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
46. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
47. The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
49. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
50. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
52. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
53. You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
54. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
55. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
56. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

Privilege 101

If you pay any attention at all to the news, you've probably seen plenty of footage from the Occupy Movement. Or perhaps something about higher education. Or something about marriage. Race? Probably, check.  More likely than not, you've heard the word "privilege" tossed around.

I recently found one of the best essays explaining privilege that I've ever read. On a blog. Here's the post. Read it and think. Dare you to engage someone and have a little tete-a-tete about privilege.

Stay Creative

I like the last one most - Finish something. [=

Response to Amy Chua's Article in WSJ

Just in case you all haven't had a chance to read "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior", here's the link:


The woman gives new life to the term Hard-Ass Asian Parent through her own accounts of her parenting style. She weakly prefaces her discussion of the "Chinese Mother" and subsequent parenting style with the following:

"I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough."

So even the Western mothers that are considered "strict" evidently do not have the endurance to be a Chinese Mother. Nor do they have the guts to go the extra step to shame their children into obedience.

In another part of the article, Chua mentions that her father used to call her "garbage" when she was disrespectful - a tactic she says she used on her own daughter, in English and at a dinner party. Lovely. Had I been in that position (and I have been in similar situations), I would simply pocket that horrible memory, only to have it re-surface in a very self-destructive way.

This then brings up the point that many people have reacted to this article - including blogs such 8Asians and Racialicious - and brought up the fact that Asian Americans are more likely than those of any other racial group to fall into depression, attempt suicide, and resort to the multitude of self-destructive behaviors and disorders.

Chua claims that the article was a mishmash of different excerpts from her book, which she is currently schilling - Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Of course the editors at the WSJ did not consult her about the edits or the article title and of course they would choose some controversial sections! I'll take that statement as fair, since during my amateur dabblings in writing for my University's newspaper, it would be rare that I would be consulted for edits in my column or stories for the news section during the production process.

However, this anecdote is no better:
"My kids were maybe seven and four and my husband had forgotten my birthday so at the last minute we went to this mediocre Italian restaurant and he said “O.K., girls you both have a little surprise for mommy.” And my daughter Lulu pulls out a card, but the card was just a piece of paper folded crookedly in half with a big smiley face and it said Happy Birthday Mom. And I looked at it and I gave it back and I said 'This isn’t good enough. I want something that you put a little bit more time into.” So I rejected her birthday card. People can’t believe I rejected this handmade card. But she knew as well as I did that it took her about two seconds to do it. That’s the story that’s coming off as the most outrageous, which in our family is like a standing joke.

Clearly, I'm not in on the joke because I don't find it funny... Again, if I were in that situation, I would undoubted cry myself dehydrated and then some from the shame. I wonder if Chua's daughters will really turn out to be as happy as Chua claims herself to be.

And on another note, this is strike two for me personally from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the WSJ has it out for Asians/Culture, or for publicizing Chinese/Asian parenting in the most awful ways possible. Making the model minorities scary..again? The editors and the publication earned strike two with the 2005 article "The New White Flight", which insinuates that Asians and aspects of Asian culture, that promote extreme to impossible pressures on youth to academic success, is driving Caucasians out of Silicon Valley. My own high school was named as one of the sites that the writer cites as evidence to her thesis.
href="http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113236377590902105-lMyQjAxMDE1MzEyOTMxNjkzWj.html">

No bueno, WSJ, no bueno.

Shout out to Santa Clara County

As an addendum to my previous post...
If you happen to be registered to vote in Santa Clara County, then please take some time to look at the candidates for the Santa Clara County Board of Education.

I'm going to take a bit of time to plug Dr. Michael Chang, professor at De Anza College and Director and Founder of the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute. I recommend taking a good look at his candidate profile:
http://www.smartvoter.org/2010/11/02/ca/scl/vote/chang_m/

Dr. Chang is an inspiration in many ways. His achievements and contributions to the Cupertino/Bay Area community have been significant, and even more so when one considers the fact that he is a first generation Asian American. (Asian Americans tend to have lower levels of voter turnout than other racial groups, despite having higher average incomes and level of educational attainment.) As an educator and activist he has done a great deal to educate young people on the importance of civic engagement, particularly for Asian Americans. With APALI, Dr. Chang has successfully created an ever-growing network of people that that want to be engaged with the community in a variety of capacities - particularly with politics.


And to wrap things up nicely, here's Beau Sia telling you to vote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptbZ0hvbIC4

Election Time

It's that time of year again! November 2nd is fast approaching and now is the crunch time for everyone that is campaigning.

Absentee voters need to get their ballots in!

It always strikes me that while people seem to stay so on top of the latest shenanigans of the cast of Jersey Shore or the latest outrageous outfit that Lady Gaga wore, they tend to be remarkably uninformed about what is going on politically around them. The voter turnout seems to reflect that.

Maybe it's just me, but it shouldn't be too hard to look up the Propositions on the ballot, or listen to snippets and/or read transcripts of the debates of the candidates for various seats in the different tiers of local and state government.
Take some time and do some reading! 20 minutes to an hour is all it takes. That's either one episode of Big Bang Theory
Here's a list of the Propositions:
http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/
Office candidates:
http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/candidates/statements/

P.S. Saying that your vote doesn't matter is a terrible excuse to not vote. Though it is true that a single vote does not have a huge impact on the outcome. However, in aggregate it certainly is significant. It is unbelievable the number of people that try to use this same excuse as the reason why they don't bother to vote. Why would you disregard such a great privilege anyhow? So many different minorities country in this country have had to fight tirelessly to obtain the privilege to have their needs be met and represented politically. Please don't do a disservice to the activists that fought to provide you with the right to vote, and certainly not to the communities that you are a part of. Voting is a basic civic duty, so get on it!

P.P.S. If you don't vote, you effectively relinquish your right to complain about the election outcome and whatever subsequently that you do not like.