Exit, tshirt and jeans. Enter, suit and tie.

Wish me luck America.  I'm moving to Europe!

 

Some Scumbags Are Worse

There are scumbags and there are scumbags. 

Here's the thing.  We NEED guys like Spitzer.  He went after corporates like a man obsessed.  When news hit, the New York Stock Exchange trading floor cheered.  Not me.  He prosecuted price fixers.  He put the hammer on investment bankers inflating IPO prices (sub prime anyone?).  He exposed payola taking DJs plugging the record company's agenda.

Even if they are just individual cases, they and the long history of Spitzer as a hardline attorney general acted as a strong deterrent for cheaters.  This is cheating by individuals, ala Ken Lay and cheating by big business ala Worldcom.  The definition of a cheater is someone who screws you to get ahead.

As far as I know, the only people who got screwed by Elliot Spitzer are his family and more literally, his hooker.  Incidentally his family stands by their man.  I don't know if that makes Spitzer not a cheater.  That's up to him and his wife.

As I said, there are scumbags and there are scumbags.  Elliot Spitzer may be a scumbag but he never screwed me.  Hence, I don't care about what happened.  He did on the other hand screw the scumbags that screw me financially every day, and now that man is out of office.  NOW, you have my attention.

At the end of the day, why should you care about Elliot Spitzer?  Is he going to steal your girlfriend?  Clearly not.  He pays $1000 an hour for that.   What difference does it make in the kind of governor he is?  The kind of prosecutor?  And so why do we care?  Why do we get involved in this political freak show that often brings down our best politicians?  JFK had Marilyn, Clinton had Monica, and don't get me started on Martin Luther King.  We didn't care so much then.  Maybe because in that time their priorities were our priorities.  If that's the case, what are our priorities today?

Roadtrip! SF -> LA -> LV

Day 1 ~ 3:

Got into SF.  This is a strange city.  It's simultaneously advanced and backward at the same time.  Nouveau dotcom millionaires abound but so do fecal stained homeless.  I've been to lots of places where income disparity is far and wide but SF is the first place where the millionaires and the homeless dress more or less the same.  EVERYONE has an iPhone out here.  Sad ruins of the 90's tech bubble are scattered about the city.  Loud futuristic architecture mesh with minimalists designs combine with years of neglect to create landscapes both vapid and sanguine. 



Day 4, 5:

Drive down the famous PCH down the California coastline.  It's like driving on the edge of earth.  To your left are desert mountains bold and mighty which hint of death.  To your right are hazardous cliffs that drop down to torrential ocean swirls.  Jagged rocks come out of the sea like the tail of a Stegosaurus.  Waves crash violently upon black earth.  The beauty of Big Sur makes you fear God.

We take a rest in Cambria.  A charming little town whose residents seem about as old-fashioned as the 150 year old hostel  we stay at.  We eat pot-pie for dinner and wake up to Ollaliberry jam in the morning.  One funny note - the first hotel we tried to negotiate the price down.  The guy says "Sorry.  Can't give you a discount.  It's spring break".  Not to sound sarcastic, but if I was a young frat boy looking for some "Girls Gone Wild" action, Cambria California might be the last place on earth I'd go.  I sure hope that guy isn't counting too much on the Cancun crowd. 



Day 5, 6:

We go to L.A. I used to watch TV shows like "Blind Date" and listen to bands like "Sugar Ray" and I would think, WHERE do these people COME FROM?  Then I went to L.A. and suddenly it all made sense.  I have to give L.A. this.  As mainstream media as L.A. is, this is the place where mainstream is born.  If other cities could broadcast their vibe worldwide as good as L.A., then by definition they'd be mainstream too. 



Day 7:

Las Vegas = The Palms hotel.  When we checked into the hotel we saw "The Playboy Club" and were hesitant.  What sort of crowd does "The Playboy Club" attract on a Sunday night?  Sounds like a sucky party until you realize ... yup ... it's Spring Break and you're in Las Vegas.  Almost as wild as Cambria California.  Almost.

A road trip for the ages.  I love you America.  

     

I turn 29 today

30 in a year and .... as you know .... it's all downhill from there.  This year - I'm making it count.  (cue guitar riff)

Thanks for the birthday wishes everybody.

The Case for McCain

I like Barack Obama as the Democrat.  The problem though is the longer he has to campaign - the more promises he'll have to make - the more beholden he'll be to the Democrat behemoth - the less likely he'll be the transformative figure we want once elected.

Here is something I did not know about John McCain.  His 18 year old son is a Marine serving in Iraq.  George Bush can't claim that.  Neither can Dick Cheney nor Don Rumsfeld. 

Given his hawkish stance on the war that's quite an ace up his sleeve.  You'd think candidate McCain would blast the news from the rooftops, bring it up at every stump speech, and retort every critic with his son's name.  He doesn't. 

He doesn't hide it, but refuses to talk about him in any detail.

My guess, McCain's like that for 3 reasons.  First, because he is old school enough to keep candidate McCain different from citizen McCain.  Second, he doesn't want to put a target on his boy's head.  Third, it wasn't his decision.  It was his son's.  Perhaps a son raised by a Vietnam war hero wanting to make his old man proud, but a son nonetheless.

I'm not sure what's going to happen.  I predict John McCain will lose in the general election.  It's highly unlikely that he'll get the Republican base going and the Democratic turnout in November will slaughter him.  As a life-long Democrat, I say this with subdued joy.

For as much as I like Barack Obama the fact remains he wasn't there when Congress voted for war.  He didn't see the intelligence.  He claims to be a maverick but saying what you would have done in hindsight doesn't make you as a maverick.  Being a maverick makes you a maverick.  Hillary Clinton will tell you its not easy to oppose a Republican majority in Congress.  Well.... it's even harder when you're a Republican.

People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are FURIOUS that McCain got the nod because of his continued history of defying the party line to do what he feels is right.  North-East liberal that I am, McCain warms my bleeding heart.  More than that, he shows me he won't trade integrity for popularity.

John McCain is a straight shooter who will never get his time.  Sad.  He would have been a good one.

Are Asians Smart?

I don't see color, I'm color-blind.  People tell me I'm Asian, and I believe them because they copy off my math test. 



After a little googling I found this very pretty chart with all sorts of cute colors and racial stereotypes on the NSF website.  As you can see, teenage Asians in America schools are freakin' dweebs.  I couldn't find a more recent study presumably because the NSF has done enough damange to the self-esteem of Asian kids who score below 600 on their SAT Math.

A lot of people try to explain this highly complex and multifaceted phenomenon in the time it takes to eat a biscotti.  "Culture" they say!  Asian have an education-prioritizing culture.  Asian parents see education as a way to move up in society.

But I always wonder if this is true.  I've lived in Asia.  I've met lots of Asian parents.  Here are two impressions that strike me now as I reflect on my 5+ years travelling through multiple Asian countries, living and working among the natives

1. There are a lot of stupid Asian people
2. There are a lot of people

I am highly skeptical and often offended by "culture" arguments. Yes, I think Asian cultures stress education.  Conversely, though is that to say that white, black, and latin culture do not stress education? 

The other problem I have with "culture" arguments is that it completely ignores common sense numbers.  The United States has 300 million people.  Compare that to China which has 1.3 Billion.  India has 1 Billion.  Japan looks small but they've managed to fit 130 million people on that island.  When you talk Asia, you're talking a big haystack.  Of course you'll find more needles.

Asians in the United States tend to be first generation immigrants.  This means two things.  First it means that the people who are coming over from the Asian nations are self-selected.  A Chinese beet farmer making a $100 a year is not relocating his entire family to Omaha Nebraska to become a beet farmer here.  The HK engineer who graduated top of his class to study at Harvard is more like it.  Second, it means that the people who come over work abnormally hard.  As a parent, you do not move your kids thousands of miles from the Filipines just so that they could sit on their ass and play video games all day.  You worked your ass off to give them an opportunity and you'll be damned if they mess it up.

Here's the thing about Asian-Americans.  It's not that they're not smart.  The SAT scores, the enrollment in top Universities all say otherwise.  It's just that if you want to contexualize them as Asians you find they're not really representative of Asians as a whole.  Come to think of it they're not really representative of Americans as a whole either. 

Nothing about their background makes them smart.  It's they themselves.

update - Doh! How could I forget?

Does time fly when you're having fun?

I've heard people say this before and I always wondered if it's true.  From the New York Times today: 

Inner time is linked to activity. When we do nothing, and nothing happens around us, we’re unable to track time. In 1962, Michel Siffre, a French geologist, confined himself in a dark cave and discovered that he lost his sense of time. Emerging after what he had calculated were 45 days, he was startled to find that a full 61 days had elapsed.

It would seem that time flies when you're NOT having fun.  Actually, time flies when you're bored shitless in a cave for 2 months!  Time or - more accurately - the way humans perceive time is a lot longer when you're enjoying your life. 

I find this information very useful when it comes to the choices I make in my life.  I think everybody has faced something like the

1.  Do I take this job I hate that pays a lot, or
   
2.  Do I take this job I like that pays very little

conundrum.

That's an oversimplification.  In real-life it's way more complicated.  Regardless, the conventional wisdom in this kind of decision making is:  Maximize Your Time.  If you made this into a mathematical equation it'd look like:

If you follow that logic one way to make your life better is to increase the benefit - i.e. make more money, have more fun.  That makes the decision hard.  People generally don't know what makes them happy, and if they do they don't know if it'll make them happy in the future.

The genius of Einstein was that he did not consider time a constant.  I'm no Einstein (obviously), but I think something similar.  Think back in college when you went by semesters.  Those semesters feel like entire years.  The fact is, they're only 7 months long.  That is major shrinking of perceived time.  A lot of people say that college were the best years of their life.  Part of it is I think you do so much in such a short time.

My point is this.  Maybe you're like me, you don't know what makes you happy in life.  It sounds strange, but for me it's like I don't have a choice in what makes me happy, what benefits me.  Hence I don't pay much attention to increasing the numerator.  I pay attention to time.  I focus on shrinking the denominator.

If this blog feels like it's taken an entire day write and it's taken 20 minutes - Life is good :)

Boy ... are my arms tired

whew!

Airline	Flight #	Date	Departure	Arrival
Northwest Airlines	NW0539	12/05/2006	New York	Detroit
Northwest Airlines	NW0025	12/05/2006	Detroit	Tokyo
Asiana Airlines	OZ1035	12/07/2006	Tokyo	Seoul
Asiana Airlines	OZ1025	12/12/2006	Seoul	Tokyo
Northwest	NW0005	12/26/2006	Tokyo	Singapore
Cathay Pacific	CX716	1/26/2007	Singapore	Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific	CX715	1/28/2007	Hong Kong	Singapore
Tiger Airways	TR112	2/16/2007	Singapore	Bagkok
Tiger Airways	TR119	2/17/2007	Bangkok	Singapore
Singapore Airlines	SQ176	03/08/2007	Singapore	Hanoi
Singapore Airlines	SQ175	03/12/2007	Hanoi	Singapore
Singapore Airlines	SQ26	05/01/2007	Singapore	New York
Singapore Airlines	SQ25	05/05/2007	New York	Singapore
Tiger Airways	TR716	5/18/2007	Singapore	Perth
Tiger Airways	TR717	5/20/2007	Perth	Singapore
Valueair	VF501	5/26/2007	Singapore	Jakarta
Valueair	VF506	5/27/2007	Jakarta	Singapore
Singapore Airlines	SQ424	7/15/07	Singapore	Mumbai
Singapore Airlines	SQ423	7/18/07	Mumbai	Singapore
Thai Airlines	TG410	7/25/07	Singapore	Bangkok
Thai Airlines	TG640	7/26/07	Bangkok	Tokyo
Thai Airlines	TG641	7/29/07	Tokyo	Bangkok
Thai Airlines	TG401	7/29/07	Bangkok	Singapore
Northwest Airlines	NW0006	08/04/2007	Singapore	Tokyo
Northwest Airlines	NW0012	08/04/2007	Tokyo	Detroit
Northwest Airlines	NW0536	08/04/2007	Detroit	New York
Singapore Airlines *	SQ21	08/07/2007	Newark	Singapore
Quantas Airways	QF31	8/24/2007	Singapore	London
British Airways	BA208	08/25/2007	London	Paris
Air France	AF2318	10/25/2007	Paris	Frankfurt
Air France	AF2219	10/26/2007	Frankfurt	Paris
Air France	AF2322	11/16/2007	Paris	Munich
Air France	AF2023	11/18/2007	Munich	Paris
Air France	AF624	12/12/2007	Paris	Guadaloup
Air France	AF621	12/18/2007	Guadaloup	Paris
British Airways	BA309	12/31/2007	Paris	London
British Airways	BA189	12/31/2007	London	Newark
Continental Airlines	CO1762	1/13/2008	Newark	San Jose
Continental Airlines	CO1485	02/11/2008	San Jose	Houston
Continental Airlines	CO137	02/11/2008	Houston	Los Angeles
Delta Airlies	DL885	02/11/2008	Los Angeles	Honolulu
Continental Airlines	CO14	2/18/2008	Honolulu	Newark

* longest non-stop flight in the world - link

Unorthodox Travel Advice in Hawai'i

Visit Chinatown in Honolulu's downtown district.  Unlike the rest of the city is is dirty, noisy and the buildings are rundown and old.  What you will discover that Chinatown is a misnomer.  Rather what is represented in this area is a hodgepodge of South East Asia.  Inhabitants and stores are Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino and Malaysian.  They have an amazing if ghetto footcourt which features a Filipino place, next to a Singaporean place, next to a Malaysian place, next to a Thai.  You'll never see that anywhere else in the States.  My (possibly racist) assumption is that new South East Asian immigrants account for a large portion of the manual labor that runs Oahu's tourism industry and thus this neighborhood has a distinctly blue-collar feel to it.  This place doesn't look to impress anyone and certainly not tourists. 



An interesting tidbit courtesy of Hideki Kinoshita.  Many of the Chinese who live in Hawaii came many years ago did so to flee the communist regime.  Hence you will see a plethora of ROC (Republic of China) flags in this neighborhood (also the Taiwanese flag).  Definitely pick up fresh Lychee at one of the grocery stores.  Like the $10 per bag coffee, it's grown on the island and it's damn good.

Scubadive the YO-257.  If you're not certified, get certified because you don't want to miss this.  Not only were there tons of beautiful fish and sea turtles around this WWII wreck, every once-in-a-while a miniature submarine called the Atlantis does a flyby.  It's just you in a scuba suit and a crustacean filled shipwreck in that deep blue sea and there's a whole crowd of little kids in a sub thinking you're part of some giant aquarium.  Definitely Captain Nemo 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea.   Also, disregard your scuba instructor and swim into the ship.  It's really cool inside.

Eat at McDonald's.  There are many fine eating establishments but if you're looking for something "Hawaii" and you're Grad student broke then head for the arches and get the Local Delux Breakfast - which consists of Spam, Portuguese Ham, and Rice.  They don't even sell rice at McDonald's in Japan.   It'll make you fat and comatose by the time you hit the sand.  Just like a beached whale.  Awesome.

Hawai'i - A Japanese-American Perspective

Hawaii is beautiful.  Hawaii is a specimen.  I've never been anywhere that has such a combination of:

1. ridiculously nice weather
2. crystal clear water
3. abundant wildlife
4. beautiful scenery
5. convenient amenities 
   

Demographically, Hawaii is so different from the rest of the United States that it might as well be its own country.  There is a clear majority of Asians living on the Island.  When I first heard this I thought this was based on self-selecting anecdotal evidence - as in "There are HELLA Asians in LA" (really?) .  But the 2000 U.S. census numbers back it up.  What's more, the three most common ancestries on the 1.2 million person island are Japanese, Filipino, and Hawaiian at 21%, 18%, and 16% respectively.

To me, the surprising thing about Hawaii is how American the place is.  Seriously.  I do realize it's been a U.S. state since 1959.  But then again Puerto Rico is a lot closer, has been a commonwealth since 1952 and that place still speaks Spanish.  So, you would think that a place inundated with 3rd and 4th generation Asians isolated by thousands of miles with a historical trajectory differing greatly from the rest of the country would develop a culture abjectly unique. 

To be fair ... it's not like there are no differences.  Spam and rice are fondly incorporated into the local cuisine.  Hawaiian and Japanese words are spliced into the vocabulary.  Also, when someone points out a local Hawaiian accent you can tell a slightly different intonation on the English.  It's just that there just aren't the big over-arching cultural differences you'd expect  from this virtual petry dish and for me this is genuinely puzzling.  From what I can tell local Hawaiians shop at the same Best Buys, Sears, and Trader Joes that we do.  They eat at the same fast-food places and are into the same brands.  From what I can tell they more or less share the same gas guzzling, free spending, politically centrist, fiercely independent, racially tolerant, media crazed culture as the rest of America.

I can't really explain this turn of events which leads me to believe two things:

1) I'm right about Hawaiian culture.  It is basically the same as mainstream American culture at which point I'd really like someone who knows more about Hawaiian history and sociology to explain how things turned out this way.   I am at a loss.

or

2) I'm wrong.  Hawaiian culture is actually very different from the rest of American culture, it's just that my gringo tourist ass did not spend enough time there or didn't know where to look at which point, I need to go back.

Either way, Hawaii is a baffling place considering it's racial composition and history.  It's interesting to me not just because I myself am a 1st generation Japanese-American, but because if in 50 years Hawaii can go from an island nation filled with 1st generation Asians farming rice and sugar-cane into a tourist hot-spot for Leno-watching Americans, then who knows ... maybe McDonalds Iraq featuring the "Baghdad Burger" isn't as far away as people think.