Lost in Americana - 丢失在美国

Hold on an internet minute, let me just Facebook-Blog that Twitter before I Flickr that Yahoo!?!*#@

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:41:00 +0000

This week I bit myself and joined Twitter - that latest rad social networking sensation that even the Senate seems to have taken up. Back in graduate school I was known as "that cyber kid who's on everything!". To fill up my empty hours after labs and after reading papers, I started a blog in Yahoo!360, then here on Blogspot, then Xanga, Friendster, Doostang and, when launched in Britain, Facebook. I then started taking pictures and posting them up on Flickr for far-away family to see what I saw.

It's not hard to understand why it becomes so harrowingly addictive, especially for people like me, who require a thrice daily fix to fill their empty time and quite probably their empty souls. Had I been born just a bit more of an extrovert with, say, an ounce more love for real people and had I grown up in a town other than London, where the weather is not such a miserably foul dictator, I would not have joined this crazy modern internet phenomenon and perhaps I would have been more fulfilled with what I had.

But history has run its course. Instead, I now scroll through terabytes upon terabytes of meaningless friends' updates daily: Sarah is shopping on Oxford Street; Mark is in Bombay, woohoo!; Ashley has started drinking beer at 10am and thinks everyone should do it; Tania is now a pious protestant nun and wants to chastise Britney Spears' baby. OK, so the names are not real and neither are the updates I've just taken from my sometimes garbage-filled skull, but you get the picture - it all adds up to garbage. On top of this, Twitter - bless their Silicon Valley souls - add an extra layer of complexity and suddenly, I get these @ signs seeing people I don't know in real life, responding to celebrity updates about celebrities I cannot relate to in real life, such as @Stephenfry it is true, you are bisexual, or @Sarah_Palin I think you won't be back in 2012. I can even link my Twitter update to Facebook and vice versa? Yes! I can feel important in front of "friends"!

Honestly, it no longer matters to me that around 60% of my Facebook "friends" are people I never talked to in school, or one of my few close friends just took a picture of himself in a compromising position next to a dolphin in Disneyland, or what the next Senator thinks about his football team while listening to Obama's address. It no longer matters that there are these hot looking girls linked up to every social network talking about tech-wizardary improvements, luring sweaty-palmed geeks to their subscriptions. I don't care that you can use all these fantastic magical applications (apps) on each website, or on the iPhone, to further improve your over-connectedness to strangers or to play mind-numbing games:

Case in point:

For too long we have become obedient to the idea that online friends and, to a certain extent, online dating is actually normal. A world of cowards (or we are encouraged to be cowards), cowering behind a screen to exchange messages or spy on people we would otherwise never give a second glance to on the street. We entertain ourselves with the idea that it's OK to procrastinate because we are making contacts with potentially new business associates, or dates and opening doors to new horizons. Our souls have been blackened enough and it is time for me to call it quits - let's do something REAL.

NEXT WEEK I WILL ABSTAIN from any of these social network websites for a week. If I do well, I will continue for longer and longer, until I eventually give up all this online shenanigan business. This is going to be tough and it will be as if I checked into rehab. But I will still have the internet, e-mail and online news. Here's to a more healthy soul in the face of great adversity and a lack of friends! With any luck, I won't be back here.

Chinabounder - 欲望上海

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:31:00 +0000

A few years ago, a humble, English man left his less than mediocre life in Britain to take up a job teaching English in Shanghai, China. He soon embarked on a journey as a sex tourist and started a blog of his daily casual sex-capades. He went by the name of Chinabounder in his now notorious blog, Sex in Shanghai (A Western Scoundrel in Shanghai tells all) - his real name is allegedly David Mariott. Before long, the Chinese netizens discovered it and started raising complaints. One of the professors in Shanghai University, called for the blog to end. I e-mailed Chinabounder once asking why he wanted to brand Chinese people with ridicule, before his blog was taken down by the Chinese internet police. He replied with a huge rhetorical essay on why he thought China lacked potential and why the women he met were so easy. Excerpt from his e-mail, dated 2006:

Come come now, surely you must recognize that China is full of problems?

I guess that I have given you the idea I look down on Chinese people. I am sorry if that is so. I guess (like rather a lot of foreigners here) I have quite a lot of anger towards China. What makes me angry is that the government of this country holds back the talent of its people. The dead hand of the CPC turns education here into ideological bullshit. Too many people just give up and become drones in the face of this. I see this most clearly when I teach kids. I have found that each kid – let’s say under ten – is an individual; each has his or her own personality. But as they grow beyond that age, they become the same… the education system stifles and oppresses their individuality and crushes their natural selves.

I do see a day when China is the world’s superpower, and I look forward to that day. Of course, on that day Chinese women will just laugh at my attempts to seduce them -- and quite rightly too. But right now it is easy to do, so I do it. Just like it is easy to earn money here, so I earn it. What do you expect? Who turns down opportunities to live the life they want to live? It is not very honorable, true – but imagine getting to 90 years old and regretting not living life to the full. How terrible!

The West (meaning, ‘white people’) has pretty much run the world until now. It’s about time Asia had a go in the driver’s seat. Fuck, *of course* China could out-perform the West, as you say. But it won’t with this current government.

It seems to me the CPC is holding back that day. The CPC does not really give a fuck about China; its first priority is to keep in power – looking after the country comes a distant second. It does seem to me that a lot of overseas returnees do come back just to make money, and do not have any interest in changing the system. That makes me sad.

Finally: I began by saying China has problems, but please don’t think I am singling it out. I know only too well that my country, the UK, has lots of bullshit too. One of its major problems is the petty, small-minded and gossipy nature of many UK people. And – as I guess you have experienced – there is a lot of subtle (and overt) racism in the UK. I find that disgusting and I am highly critical of it.

Anyhow, that’s enough from me. I look forward to the day when guys like you run the globe. I hope you make a better show of it than Bush and Blair and that lot.

Best,

David

My response - what and idiot! Do something with your life instead of pulling out the old angry white man in Asia with a conscience card! If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. His case is not extraordinary. There are plenty of European and American Chinabounders in Shanghai right now replicating his actions - some of my friends included. This is why I've been reminded of this blog now.

Last year David Mariott re-emerged from hiding to publish a book, based on his experiences in Shanghai, "Fault Lines On The Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great". Thankfully, his book did not make it onto the best seller list and to this day, he is still best known for his salacious blog. Needless to say, I won't read the book. If I wanted to know why China may not be great, I just have to listen to my own nagging grandparents, the greatest critics of their own country.

Admittedly, out of all his nonsense, he has a point. For all the glamorous glitz of the Chinese Olympics in 2008 and the past 30 years of non-stop miraculous economic boom, the Chinese mentality remains the fundamental rock that can't be changed. The greatest stumbling block that still prevents my family from returning back to a country of ruthless leaders and shallow-minded civilians.

[The Guardian has the best story on it]

The Importance of Being Angry

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins from the Christian Old Testament and it's not hard to understand why society still preaches against it. But anger has its uses, or else, why, as humans, would we be programmed with this emotion. Recent research from Harvard University found that people who let out anger constructively in the workplace were able to get ahead more quickly than those who repressed it and felt trapped under the glass ceiling. Let's face it, who has not found themselves in a pent-up rage at work?

That's not to say it's OK to let out fists of fury at your work colleagues every time your boss piles on an unreasonable amount of projects on your desk. I've worked with people before who are constantly angry at work, who have to share their raw emotion everyday with everyone, making others work around their needs. They are vile.

But those who can express and manage their anger constructively are able to channel their emotions and drive themselves towards much higher goals. For example, when someone is not pulling their weight at work and begins to drag your work behind, it helps show a bit of anger when you tell them off, provided you don't make it too personal. That can make a real difference. It's not that emotions are strictly good or bad, but it is about how appropriate they are to the situation and how we deal with them.

If history has taught us anything, it's that anger can be a powerful tool in shaping our progress as people. Progress was made for the abolition of slavery because people were enraged at the injustices on an entire race. Progress was made for women when Emmeline Pankhurst was enraged by the ruling men of England. Indeed even in the New Testament, Jesus also became angry at the people in the synagogue who remained silent when he asked if it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath and he became angry at the money changers in the temple.

I get angry from a lot of things:

The failure of small universities to introduce bigger ideas or inspire its students, or to help newer, younger students to make more contacts.

The lack of lead Asian and particular male Asian actors in Hollywood films, despite legions of Asian actors in Southern California who can clearly act better than the familiar few famous names being over-paid on the silver screen.

The assumption that Asian communities in America and Europe do well and are always over-achieving when they have to fight just as much racial prejudice as any other.

The sneaky international legislation introduced by the American government and Wall Street institutions to oppress ordinary people, sometimes far far away, in order gain money for itself.

The list goes on and I can't say I have the answers to any of these problems. I'm hoping other Angry Asian Men will help.

However, my anger is important to me because it allows me to move forward in work and life. It keeps me down to earth and motivated when I become too self-indulgent. It is the only thing I have to stop me from retreating into the lazy mediocrity of a numskull's life - after all, of the seven deadly sins, I would rather suffer from wrath than sloth!

Chinatown Bus

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:26:00 +0000

One of the extraordinary properties of America is its capacity to generate successful entrepreneurs out of humble foreign immigrants. The most striking example for me lies in the Chinatown-Chinatown bus services. Here on the East coast, there are at least a dozen rival bus services that depart and arrive daily in downtown Chinatowns between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC and they have plans to extend further south. To top it all off their prices are dirt cheap and buses run very reliably - in some cases, out-competing the traditional cross-country Greyhound coaches and the over-priced Amtrak train monopoly. I travel on one of these coaches (New Century - and possibly the most popularized) every two weeks to visit my mum in DC.

It is worth it for the convenience, the money you save and the greeness. Yes it's cheap because it only costs $28 return for a roundtrip. Yes, it's green because you are not pumping gas into your own car to drive three hundred miles. The Asian drivers are always pretty much on time and are familiar with the route. Occasionally the driver even tries to do some live sight-seeing commentary on warm, pleasant summer days.

Unfortunately, word of the cheap-ass Chinatown bus has spread like wild-fire in the last decade and its popularity has soared so high it now attracts too many customers. A lot of the time the coaches are over-subscribed, especially on busy Sunday afternoons and if you get there ten minutes before the bus leaves, you WON'T get a seat. Scrambling on this bus to grab a seat can be disorderly at best. I'm often reminded of the scene from Babylon A.D. when Vin Diesel and Michelle Yeoh desperately chase for a space on an illegal Russian submarine, with hundreds of other desperate refugees fleeing a nuclear disaster, only to be shot at and pushed off into the frozen ice. That's the feeling you get if you arrive just a few minutes too late and the full coach is about to leave before you even figured out it was supposed to go to Philly, not New York - then you'd have to wait another 4 hours in the cold for the next one! It's sometimes hard to decipher where and when the next bus is departing when the driver and ticket sales women speak to you through their broken Chinglish. Obviously once you do get on, you have to sacrifice the comfort and space that you may have in your own car by squashing yourself in a seat with a stranger next to you for 3 hours + and suffer occasional bad smells from the only available public restroom at the back of the vehicle.

However, despite all that, if you don't have a car, don't plan to spend money on fuel and are a skint student/academic, this is THE way to travel between the big cities on the East coast.

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This week, Lost in Americana watched another graduate student at the university defend his thesis in front of his relentlessly demanding thesis committee - one that has been mentioned before, renowned for their over-ambitious snarling, even derogatory questions. My god, these professors are unreasonable! Lucky for him, that graduate student has already done some pretty smart work, has a list of good publications to back himself up and an intimate knowledge of how to rebuff the attacks. Lost in Americana looks forward to the day he will also be punished (again) in front of the high and mighty thesis committee members when he gives his postdoc seminar before leaving the bloody place!

Limey Racism - 英国人种偏见

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:07:00 +0000

When I was at school, a third of my classmates were second or third generation British Pakistani and Indian immigrants from hard working professional families. The majority of my school was made up of white middle class British pupils and teachers and the remainder of it, a few stragglers from Hong Kong, other European countries and pseudo-BBCs, like me. I never really suffered any serious racist taunts at school, save being called flat faced occasionally, but I remember others who were.

Although racism was and is frowned upon, and generally repressed, I remember the white kids would whisper behind their backs the "PCs are going to play football today for the Indian World Cup". PC (Pakistani Club) referred to a couple of Pakistani boys in the class who were picked on because they always disappeared at lunch, at the same time, for midday prayers. The "Indian World Cup" was an innuendo for the group of hotchpodge Asian kids who always gathered together at lunchtime to play football. It's not that the "white" people didn't mix with the "Asian" people in class or in after school rugby - they did really well - but lunchtime football was an example of simmering tensions between the ethnicities.

I personally was never attacked for being yellow. Being Chinese in England is very different from being Chinese in America, in the sense that there just aren't that many in England and most minorities are just not that upwardly mobile. However, the upside is that the Chinese minorities are not singled out as much, simply because they are not seen as a threat for taking highly skilled/paid jobs. That being said, I do remember people throwing eggs at our house and car in the early 1990s when my family first moved to England as we (and an Indian family) were the only non-white people in the neighbourhood. There are of course instances of racism against Chinese people which no doubt occur (Remember the 18 illegal Chinese immigrants who drowned at Morecomb bay in 2004, because the locals drove them away from the safe areas of picking cockles).

But, when it comes to racism directed against Asian people, "brown" people have it worse . One of my friends who qualified as a junior doctor three years ago was stabbed in the stomach by a patient he was trying to help, while working on an A&E shift at a hospital in Kent. Whilst he was still bleeding, he went up to the patient, who happened to be drunk, and asked why he did it. The patient replied "because you're a Paki, you're a terrorist and I don't trust you". My friend happens to be of Indian descent but that didn't make a difference to his inebriated attacker. In spite of this racist assault, my friend the Indian doctor mustered enough energy to calm his drunk patient, take him back to the ward to help him seek council and to find him a white doctor. That's bravery for you.

It's understandable how this kind of racism can occur, in light of the car bombing of Glasgow City airport and London by British Iraqi doctors and engineers a few years ago. In recent years religious fundamentalism has swept the British muslim society and in its wake, there has been a renewed sense of racism against all Asian minorities as a whole. Unless there is more awareness placed in schools and universities on understanding our cultural differences, particularly the ones we least understand, the situation will only spiral downwards. This applies not just for Britain, but for the global community and especially for the USA.

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This week, Lost in Americana continues to be baffled by the American Northeast weather. It all started rather chilly in the week with shed loads of snow and hail dumped on our freezing necks - but by Thursday, the air became so hot the birds began chirping, the cherry blossoms began blooming and girls started revealing their bikini lines in the streets, ready for Spring. As fun as it is jumping in snow one day and watching bikini girls walk by the next, I'd prefer to have a fixed temperature so I can go outside without having to think if I need to wear an eskimo coat or a Hawaiian t-shirt.

The Thing About Ivy Leagues - 常春藤盟校

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 01:00:00 +0000

The differences between going to a good university and an exceptional university are many. But one thing stands out - the social network and people you make contact with.

At a fundamental level if you enter an Ivy League, people will want to know you because they think you are (a) very smart, or (b) very rich and have influential parents (G.W.Bush, case in point). This I can tell purely from seeing dozens of former fellow students from London fly off to Harvard/Columbia for their postdoc research and suddenly gaining a LOT of new friends, through partying/socializing/getting involved in community projects a LOT. I remember my Dad used to tell me about all these brilliant characters he met at MIT and immediately plunging himself into a huge group of new friends he instantly befriended, even if some of them turned out to be idiots. If you want to be superficial, you could argue that students, or scholars, who enter Ivy Leagues, major universities or mega companies always seem to gain a huge number of friends on Facebook, simply as a reflection of how many MORE people they come into contact with.

My first impressions of coming to work at this, my current medical school was how few social activities there are for research students and postdocs and the general lack of communal interaction between departments (save for graduate open days). There is not even a decent-sized communal lunch space for graduate students and postdocs (there is a space in the basement). I see pathetic students eat shitty pieces of sandwich everyday outside their respective labs, on their own, on dusty rotting chairs for christ sake! There is a rather dindgy canteen for undergrad. students and a decent gym (I'm not complaining about the state of the art gym), but such is the miniature size of this med. school and university as a whole, it simply breeds and shouts CLAUSTROPHOBIA, all around. In my old university in London there was a seminar room which was converted into a coffee room at mid-morning, a lunch room during lunch hours and a beer/party room in the evening for visiting or leaving scholars, providing a spirit for all people in the department to socialize together - and that was just in one department, on a daily basis. Here, there is no communal coffee morning, no communal lunch (especially not in my lab of F.O.B.s). Asking some of these guys to go out or do some fun activities outdoors at the weekends is like trying to drag out a two ton rock! How are you supposed to work hard and do good science, if you don't play hard?!?!

Still, the lab I work in currently seems to be hard working and the boss is very good at motivating people on top of getting grants/publishing papers. Where in the world they get their energy from to work so hard, if they stay at home all weekend watching American Idol, remains a mystery to me. I get my energy from pumping iron at the gym while trying to work away the frustration of not being able to socialize. From every pain, there is gain.

Listen to the Beat

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:20:00 +0000

The markets are collapsing, so let's listen to Beyonce and forget the Foo Fighters.

According to an NYU academic Phil Maymin the more regular the beat on the nation's top 100 singles, the more volatile the American markets. After studying decades of Billboard's Hot 100 hits, Maymin found that songs with low "beat variance" had an inverse correlation with market turbulence. True to this statement, Beyonce's most steady-beat song, single ladies is EVERYWHERE, but the appeal of indie grunge bands, like the Foo Fighters and MGMT are now beginning to fade. The most obvious examples to me are now happening in recession-hit Britain. You have the rising starlet golden girls, such as "Adele", the "Ting Tings", and "Little Boots" suddenly hitting the charts this year with their VERY regular beating pop, or electro pop music, enabling some, like "Duffy" to even go on to win the Brit Awards. Then you have good old Coldplay, REM and no doubt other indie rock bands, who in previous boom years would have swept the awards and chart toppings, but this year have failed to be mentioned.

Apparently, people's preference of musical beats always correlates with changes in economic stability. The most popular songs become steady just before the economy slumps, but complex songs catch on before the markets rebound. I like to think of it as escapism. When the markets turn sour and people start to lose money, people go home and turn on stable, regular pop music to help them stay positive to keep going. When the markets become bullish again, people cheer up, they have more money and time to spare, so they like to listen to more complex music. To put it simply, when we have no money, we listen to brainless pop and when we have money, we listen to deep melancholic indie rock.

I for one prefer indie rock, as a reminder of the halcyon days of when the markets were well and people were happy, at least on the surface. But then again, I am usually deeply melancholic.

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This week, Lost in Americana scowls at his failed experiments, realizing he wasted last weekend staining tissue that simply dropped off into the ether after long hours of painstaking preparation. But he quickly cheers up again by doing another experiment that ends up with a real result. He has also been set the task of teaching a fresh graduate student how to dissect mice, even though he has barely got the hang of it himself. In the process he is reminded of the analogy to playing action video games. With dissection/surgery, as with video games all you require is good hand-eye coordination and a good stomach for a little gore.

Know ThyCity

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:51:00 +0000

It strikes me how little people know about their own city, especially if they have been living there for at least five years. You don't have to know it inside out - that's the job of tourist guides (unfortunately, not F.O.B. taxi drivers), but you should have a basic knowledge of the main commuter routes and places to hang out. I was eavesdropping on a conversation the other day, where someone was looking for the closest underground station to get from Center City to UPenn (presumably UPenn med. school) because they had a seminar there. This person had been living in Philly for five years already and one would expect they knew their way around, at least, the central part of the city!

What generally happens is that when people move to a new city, or even if they visit it for a while as tourist, they find out not only the major tourist attractions, where the locals never bother to go, but also they explore the alleyways, the hip neighbourhoods and the local gems that become overlooked by the tourist guide. At least, this is what I'd do. Fair enough, some might need to spend a huge amount of time and energy in the lab, working, studying, or getting used to a new culture and language. But in the face of all odds, you'd still need to relax and travel around living up to the sense that "travel broadens the mind". In my mind, nothing broadens it more than finding a neat fusion cuisine restaurant tucked away in the corner of, say, UPenn.

A city is like a friend (or an enemy) - however you deal with it, you have to get to know it.

The Devil's Advocate

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:55:00 +0000

One of the first cultural nuances I noticed when crossing the pond was how impatient and challenging Americans can really be, when it comes to work. My rude awakening came the day I went to interview for my, now, current job and gave my presentation about my graduate studies - as people do when they apply for a new research position. I was interrupted at virtually every slide section and every point I made during my talk, when the over-zealous professors challenged my thought process and dug their claws deep into every philosophy I came up with explaining my work. So eager were they of getting to know my work that they ended up arguing among themselves and contradicting each other, when I couldn't come up with an explanation. This being utterly unusual in my experience of interviews that I thought they truly were disappointed at me and did not want to offer the job. The other institutes I gave a talk at were all so complimentary about the presentation! But they did offer the job to me much to my (and a lot of other people's) surprise. Only today did I realize their bizarre interview technique was actually standard protocol, when another fresh-faced graduate came to this med school to give his presentation and suffered the same outrageous grilling.

I have to admit, although they may put you back in your box and make you feel ashamed of your hard slaved experiments on the day, when you step back you appreciate what these professors are trying to do - to get you thinking and help you pass a thesis defence (of which at the time, I hadn't done), and also prepare you for the real tough world of grant and paper rejections. Money is hard to come by in science and for that matter, in any profession, so when you are applying for money, people are always going to try to beat you down, to challenge you anally at every little nook and cranny of your god forsaken work. You can kind of see this principle at work in any reality TV show contest in the last decade - like, say, American Idol, or Hell's Kitchen. In such cases, you have judges (Simon Cowell in American Idol, or Gordon Ramsey in Hell's Kitchen) who blow scorn, fire, rage and spit on the singer (in American Idol), or chef (in Hell's Kitchen) if they mess up ever so slightly. In science, you have the reviewers and professors (the judges) who also inflict a tough scolding on you, the budding scientist, if you miss just one minute detail in your paper, or thesis, or grant application.

Of course, this never really occurred to me in England where being polite and patient is a deep rooted social philosophy. None of the professors I presented my work to ever stood up so quickly at every turn and challenged my presentations on such a rigorous and almost theatrical scale the way these Americans have (but then again, I never presented at Oxbridge). In fact most of the time, all my presentations only garnered praises, which when you think about it, does not help you learn, even though it boosts your ego. This being the case, it has caused consternation before. In my previous lab back in London, one of the graduate students was so pumped up on her confidence from years of praises at her presentations, that when she finally went to do her thesis defence and the examiners gave her such a hard grilling (the examiners were Scottish), she broke down in a panic attack - she did pass in the end, after a 5 hour ordeal with some 200 pages of corrections to her thesis.

It seems like there is no way around it. Sometimes, in order to learn and to get good at something, you have to be placed through misery, either by hardened "experts" or people who rule you, or if you don't want to go down that route, just put pressure on yourself. This being America, pressure at work is constant and palpable, which ever route you choose.

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This week, Lost in Americana has continued his early morning weight lifting routine at the gym, in the face of the lack of swimming facility. How long does it take to fill up an 80ft by 10ft by 5ft swimming pool with water? Apparently longer than 3 bloody months! That's insane! By attending the small, rather humble gym of his apartment, Lost in Americana is now in contact with various gregarious characters: including a small, stubby and overweight couple who bounce like elephants on the treadmill, a really big burly 6ft tall skinhead Vinny Jones look-a-like, who cries a lot in the man's sauna and a few rag-tag old timers who are trying to preventing the onset of their imminent heart disease from a lifetime of Philly cheese steaks. This week, Lost in Americana will also be watching the Oscars, live, online from his computer - for the first time and he will be pondering how L.A. can still afford such a lavish extravaganza with a sinking world economy. Recession? Not in Lalaland! The show must go on!

Rachel Not Getting Married

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:51:00 +0000

There is something about award-winning low budget films featuring "extraordinary people" living "extraordinary lives" which has been bugging my nerves for some time now, mainly because they are NOT extraordinary and in fact don't deserve our wasted attention. What better film to illustrate my point than Jonathan Demme's latest comi-tragic indie docu-flick, Rachel Getting Married. A young, recovering drug addict emerges out of rehab to join her family for a few days in celebration of her sister's marriage, only to rediscover the rifts between her and various people in her life, including her suddenly pregnant engaged sister, have not healed as much as she'd like to.

According to Demme, it's a film about "extremely interesting people in a supercharged environment". According to me, it bored me to zzzzzzzzzz. For one thing it's the semi-casually scripted dialogue all the way through the film that does not grab my attention or conjure up my emotion - not even with doe-eyed Anne Hathaway behaving badly. It's also the fact that I cannot RELATE to any of the characters - the white (or black) middle class American suburban setting with leafy surroundings, big detached houses, happy couples, three kids, three cars and stable jobs. Why the hell would you do drugs if you had all that going for you in the first place, you ungrateful brat?! You know most people in the real world can barely feed themselves on $1 a day. Then again, I think Jonathan Demme's foresight and wit as a director has long passed his Silence of the Lambs days.

Of course, my list of cinematographic grievances doesn't just stop with Rachel Getting Married. There are a whole host of indie movies, decorated with film festival accolades that have confused me over the last decade, when it comes to the pointless depressing cinematography that is used to portray the otherwise unexceptional characters. These include "Garden State", "Donnie Darko", "Mulholland Drive", "Anger Management", "Broken Flowers" and the really surreal "Lost In Translation" - to which, believe it or not, the name of this blog is loosely based on. Lost in Translation being the exception as it is something I can bizarrely see parallels in myself, since it features a certain Bill Murray, feeling isolated when he is thrown into Japanese cultural misunderstanding versus me, feeling isolated being thrown into an American cultural deluge. But even that film falls apart at the end, where you are left asking, just what is the point of any of this film and WHO CARES?

I guess I prefer my films to be cathartic on a personal level and being in a job that asks open ended questions constantly, I like to at least find some answers when I go watch a movie and relax. In that sense, I also don't like films that set themselves up for sequels or the forced continuation of TV series dramas (the likes of Lost, Heroes and 24 have now totally lost my respect, purely due to their weekly frustrating episode endings). If you're going to start off showing something to us, for goodness sake end it properly, on the day, hopefully with a bang! Is that too much to ask? But I guess, hollywood movie/TV writers and producers need to make a living and they need to keep going at the expense of creativity.

Guns-n-Passports

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Last week I came across an application form for the full US citizenship (made for Green Card holders), in which a page is listed with "Yes" or "No" boxes for which you have to tick "Yes" in order to qualify to be considered. One of the questions included, something like, "I am willing to bear arms and be called up to defend the country in the event of an armed conflict". Being a pacifist, if I were to apply (for which I have no intention to), I am very inclined to tick "No", at the risk of being rejected by the high and mighty US authorities above. The idea of being conscripted to defend your country is very foreign to me, as is the idea of citizens legally owning guns (the second amendment of the US constitution). Britain abolished military conscription in the 1960s and China, due to its population over-size, does not implement this system, at least not for its city folk. On top of this, I simply don't understand the wars America now rages and, for that matter, many foreign conflicts America has dabbed its fingers in for the last 50 years.

Which brings me to Sunday morning, when I was browsing through the New York Times, to find that the US army is now so desperately short of troops that they are willing to grant citizenship within 6 months, even to temporary US Visa holders (like me) if they join America's call to arms and serve in the US armed forces. The first thing that pops into my head is: if you are from a country outside of America and you have seen what utter failure America's fighting has brought on foreign soil, just in the last eight years alone (because you have not yet been brainwashed by Fox and MSNBC), why in your damn mind, would you still want to join America's armies and fight more stubborn wars, bringing more potential devastation, sometimes even to your former countries?". Maybe there really are desperate people still ferociously in need of becoming US citizens. I'm thinking the illegal aliens/asylum seeking refugees/Mexicans. Or maybe they get a kick out of joining the army to go "travelling", shoot up "terrorists" and find camaraderie, because life without conflict is just too boring. With rising unemployment, joining the army suddenly seems not such a bad idea for most people with their heads spinning around, lost in mortgage debt.

Maybe I'm missing the point and patriotism - of which I know nothing about - being so ingrained in American culture (or any sovereign state), has such a strong power over people that it drives them to go kill themselves. But wait, haven't we seen this before? Didn't the Romans conscript foreign nationals into the Roman Legion, and grant them citizenship after honorable discharge, ordained by Emperor Claudius in 89BC? If memory from my primary school days serves me right, the Roman army simply became over-stretched across vast areas of Europe and North Africa before the Republic imploded and collapsed. Surely the American army is on the verge of the exact same thing today.

The Anti-Valentine's Day - 否请人节

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:32:00 +0000

In times of financial melt-down and global depression, holiday seasons have become humble in the name of saving money and being sensible. Naturally, one of our first holiday casualties of 2009 has become Valentine's Day. Just look at the Guardian's "Don't break hearts or the bank" suggestions to realize times are changing. People who know me will know my revulsion and lackluster passive stance to Valentine's Day and all that it stands for, in (most) years past. This, not helped by my absolute ignorance of shopping or simple gestures to please women or, for that matter, lack of women to please ("Awwwwww", say my grocery market checkout girls when they realized I'm single, but buying enough food to eat like a pig).

Interestingly, for me, I get to notice this whole subculture of backlash against Valentine's Day for single people, who display their disaffection to the date that celebrates happy couples, by celebrating being unhappily free but sexual. Probably the best example is: "Eco Age's Anti-Valentine's Party" in London and the"Anti-Valentine's Day After Work Party" in Philly, all designed for singles to pull or "pick-up" as locals call it, in an attempt to not feel left out. Anti-Valentine's Day (as I googled it) is all over the place, in every city, in every underground bar - the first rule of Anti-V Club is to not talk about the club, the second rule of Anti-V Club is to not talk about it - like Fight Club. Not that I have the car to go into town to join them in the evening, or the time to do so this year.

The point is, as the economy slumps, jobs are bled and homes are lost, we can expect to see a lot more couple break ups, marriage break ups and family tear ups than in the glory days of the money boom. This adds to a potential surge in the number of single people celebrating "Anti-Valentine's Day" desperately seeking second chance lovers - however old they are, however stable they thought they were. Boom and bust economics determines boom and bust love. Fact.

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This week, Lost in Americana is finally picking up some pace at work, in the lab, since his animals have come in and are now being sacrificed on a regular basis to please the Gods, which will in turn save the dying economy. Well, not quite. He also gets an American Borders books reward card and can now begin to add another collection of popular science philosophy / social science / non-fiction (you boring geek!) books to his collection that he promptly threw away when leaving the UK. With all that spare time still looming around in the evenings after work he still has time to keep blogging and read casual books. What happened to afterschool happy hours? Oh yeah, that's right - he still can't drive there to attend them!

In Pilgrims We Trust

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:34:00 +0000

America is a country of contradictions. None more so than the seemingly contradictory attitudes of its people. This week Philadelphia based Comcast Cable network announced it was investigating a pornography interruption in its Super Bowl feed. The lawful citizens of Arizona tuned in to watch the fourth quarter of Super Bowl on February 1st when, SHOCK HORROR, they were subjected to a 30 second clip of pay-per-view porn channel. So grave was this hardcore blimp, that Comcast are now recruiting the FBI to investigate. From the same people who would rather John McCain lead the free world into four more years of anarchy and would quite happily subject themselves to excessive - pornographic - coca cola/pepsi advertising during Super Bowl interludes, comes the oh-so holier-than-thou cry of "Stop our kids from catching a view of that semi naked man for 30 seconds". Sure it's a bit lewd, but demand of an FBI investigation? Really?

On the subject of scandals, this week it was also revealed that Alex Rodriguez, superstar baseball legend of the Yankees has admitted to using performance enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers in 2001/2002. So big was this that President Obama himself has made his statement about his disappointment in American baseball, calling it "depressing news". What's also depressing is that half of Texas' neo-cons are probably still doing performance enhanced drugs right now, aka. pot, aka. George W. Bush in his College days. Did Bush ever apologize for smoking pot the way this Rodriguez guy (or a certain Michael Phelps guy for that matter) has had to do? Did pot even enhance the former President's performance in ANYTHING?

What all this boils down to is America's clinginess to its founding fathers' pilgrim fantasy. The idea, brought by Protestant Europeans, who swore not to indulge in sex, drugs, rock and roll or any other activities the bible did not promote, has transcended into this modern day fad of persecuting anyone who steps slightly outside of their hyper-conservative moral values. Not that ALL values taught by the church are bad, indeed the church is an essential institution in America which gives people hope and the will to keep going despite all odds. It's also a public hang-out and a place to socialize and feel connected (unlike Europe's reliance on pubs and cafes). But when its steak in society extends this far into the lives of ordinary people and culture, it becomes disdainful.

Ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? - 幸运

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:27:00 +0000

The analysts in America have announced 600,000 jobs were just lost in the month of January alone. While the government try desperately to inject the umpteenth hundred billion dollar bailout rescue package into the economy, the world crumbles before us into apocalypse.

But seriously, it's not all doom and gloom, there must be some winners. Who are they? Well, academics for a start. Those who have just graduated fresh out of university in the embryonic stages of career are facing the worst employment climate ever, so naturally, they are stampeding back into the classroom. Those who were on Wall Street earning millions and now out of the job ie former Lehman Brothers, Meryll Lynch, Deutsche Bank, RBS employees are returning back to their Ivy towers of learning - mostly back to economics and law of course. Interestingly, women are now also big gainers. I won't be surprised if by the end of next decade, most of the jobs in the city and in the power houses of governments are predominantly ruled by women, swaggering around in their custom-fit power suits and inch high leather business shoes, Hillary Clinton-permitting.

Then there are the lucky few like me, who have always been on the fringes of society, in academic science research and have not ever left research yet. Believe me, I've contemplated about it, like every other graduate student in their deepest, darkest hours spent in the abyss of hair-tearing experiment failures / thesis writing. I'm still contemplating about leaving right now! But then, I've never been on the dole, never gone to a job centre (to actually search for a job) and never faced a situation where I have to ask "what the hell do I do now I that I can't afford to pay for my next meal?" I guess sometimes it pays to be NOT good at Maths-Physics-hardcore male dominated subjects in school and not get into a finance / mega corporation city job. Besides, at the end of the day, medical research is a very worthy cause and you're trying to improve human life instead of JUST making money for yourself. I speak with glee and a self-righteous laugh when I say, I am well set to weather the economic storm - at least until my contract runs out at the end of next year, by which time I will crawl down to the job centre queue for the first time in my life and beg for mercy.

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This week, Lost in Americana runs off into the freshly fallen Philadelphia virgin snow and jumps around like a crazy Homer Simpson-type monkey making footprints while taking pictures to save later for laughing at himself. All this is done during the work day because he returns home early, comfortable in the knowledge that being a scientist without animals to work with and with no after work social network means you can skip home early to make a fool of yourself. It's almost like being unemployed, except you are being paid just about enough to cover your ass and feel just enough pride to keep going. Skipping home early this week also serves a dual purpose in order to avoid the suddenly depressing hush hush atmosphere in the lab brought on by that F.O.B. argument described in the previous blog. I feel sorry for one of those postdocs. Having stayed in America for nearly a year, not managing to publish any papers, to then deal with "I think you are stupid" accusation by another foreigner will probably put her off coming to the US (or at least to this university) ever again. It's not like they even have a bar to go drinking in / people to talk to after work in order to drown their sorrows like the "real" Americans.

Conflict of Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:28:00 +0000

文化的不同－师节的冲突

Understanding local knowledge is a must when moving country or even moving to another city in the same country. It's one thing for me to say, moving between two countries both of which share the same language, culture, "special relationship" and hell, even two current wars. But how can you begin to grasp it when you move half way around the world from an Asian country to an American superpower? Where the language, mentality and social relationships of people are completely different, how can you truly understand local knowledge?

In my lab, the postdocs, the PhD students, the PIs are a representation demographic of the world's fastest developing nations - China, India and Poland and to a lesser extent Japan. They come in search of a publication or two, some maybe want to stay on to do further research and write their own grants, some want to go back home after a year. They all arrived in the US within the last twenty years and spent their developmental years in separate cultures and countries.

Our lab collaborates and talks and jokes and we all work in a friendly atmosphere most of the time. But dig a bit deeper and you realize the simmering petite tensions between everyone and the lines are drawn neatly between people from each nation. Every now and then a couple of people will make a vague lewd remark in their own language about a third party standing right next to them and laugh out loud and that foreign party won't have the faintest idea what just befell them. Had they heard it in English they would surely punch back at them that instant.

Today, there was a flash point in the office, when someone accidentally saw another person's complaint in an e-mail (written in English and stupidly left open on a shared computer) about their misuse of an animal order - I'm not going into details and to be frank, I don't know and don't care. This e-mail accusation, supposed to be kept private, hit them hard and they just let go in an out pour of anger on the perpetrator, who, you guessed it, is a visiting postdoc from another country for just a year. Their argument carried on for some time and eventually led the two of them back to the bench where they continued a shouting match of "I think you're stupid!", "No, I think you're stupid, yes you are!" across opposite sides of a shelf and ended in one person turning off the others' vacuum pumps while the other was in the middle of an experiment. All very immature and unprofessional, when you consider those involved were two MIDDLE-AGED WELL-ADJUSTED CAREER WOMEN.

Until you consider the deeper context that the two adversaries are from fundamentally different countries with different thinkings - one from an Asian country where the rule is to hold in frustrations to yourself, or to e-mail them to your local iron-fist councilman and the other hails from a former dictatorship who emigrated to the US twenty years ago and is not afraid of voicing their discontent with fire and wrath. For people like this to sort out their grievance, they would need to step over cultural differences, or else undergo another Cultural Revolution. But sometimes as a visitor to a foreign culture, you just can't do anything.

Snowhere - 雪花落地

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:09:00 +0000

一落雪花
一滴雨苗
一丝阳光
全国发妙

Snow in North Eastern America is part and parcel of all winters. In fact, I'm surprised I haven't seen more of it in the last two winters I've been in the US and dismayed I've still yet to see it at Christmas - in the land that mass marketed the wish-for-a-miracle and happy family White Christmas. But snow has been covering my area in Philly, to a greater or smaller extent for the last month.

It is with great surprise that the same amount of snow you expect to see here in America has hit good old London - the land that mass marketed half-hearted gloomy, whining rain. In an even greater surprise the ordinarily moaning minions of London have stopped moaning, briefly. They even stepped out, had snow fights with each other and made conversation with strangers, forgetting, just for a day, that their dismal public transport grounded to a halt with the first snow flake. For this, I applaud you Londoners - it's Miracle on Hampstead Heath, as opposed to Miracle on 34th Street.

Lost In Super Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:49:00 +0000

Last year it was the New York Giants. This year it's the Pittsburg Steelers. All hail to them and a big congrats - they played a good tough game. But then, there is always that other side of me that just doesn't understand. Twice I've watched the Super Bowl. Twice I've failed to understand the rules of the game. Not that I ever understood rugby back in England, even though I was forced to play it for a brief while with all the other moaning teenagers in my first year of secondary school. I say I've seen the Super Bowl "twice" now, in the loosest sense because this year I followed most of the 3rd and 4th quarter via online live blogs - I don't have a TV. Incidentally, in the USA, live internet video streaming can be done for Presidential Inaugurations and Election Night speeches, but not for watching 11 overgrown gorillas run around punching each other trying to get a giant egg!

I don't have a TV because I'm not a REAL American. It just so happens that I don't subscribe to nutcase programming (e.g. FOX News and MSNBC) with adverts every 5 minutes between very repetitive nonsense commentary by old-timers about how this year's catch by Larry Fitzgerald, or how that pass by Ben Roethlisberger will go down in history as the greatest ever ever. Even if I were to watch it all live on TV (as I did last year in a youth hostel travel lodge), I'm not going to be enthused about buying Pepsi-Max, Budweiser, or watch Hulu programmes advertised by a seriously facetious Alec Baldwin with alien tentacles. People actually sit through and watch the Super Bowl for that??? Anyway - despite the shamelessly contemptable advertisement and the general all-round stupidity of US TV, a sports game is a sports game and the teams who win the NFL championships are surely very worthy champions considering what they have to go through.

Scumdog Million hairs

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:47:00 +0000

The "Age of Irresponsibility" is over, according to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It's time to stop "shameful" behavior and have some "discipline" according to President Barack Obama. With all this talk of unemployment, depression and apocalypse there is a renewed passion in the game of "Let's name and shame" well-off celebrities, on top of the usual evil Senators and CEOs of major corporations. It all began last October, with "Sachsgate" when Jonathan Ross and Russel Brand were scapegoated for taking the piss out of Andrew Sachs on BBC Radio 2, when what seemed like a harmless joke about this mediocre actor's granddaughter opened a flood of more than 100,000 complaints within a week.

This subsequently ignited the BBC and caused them to suspend the overpaid, long-haired Jonathan Ross and boot out the equally hairy and self-loving Russel Brand. It's all very well, that A-list celebrities should be behaving better, but in the past years of economic boom, would those 100,000 people who complained into the BBC really have given a flying toss about Andrew Sachs when they were happily employed, busy working and earning their own salary?

Of course, on this side of the Atlantic, in the country that virtually invented the "naming and shaming" of celebrities, the latest "victim", (if you can call him that) is none other than the late Governor Rod Blagojevich, or "Scumdog Million hairs". The disgraced Illinois Governor comes from a long line of scandalous Illinois politicians (of whom Barack Obama has miraculously escaped) and has been purged for trying to buy his way into the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. In trying desperately to plead his innocence with people Blagojevich has appeared in numerous daytime TV talk shows to show off his HAIR (on such things as The View ).

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Scumdog Million-Hairs

Daily Show Full Episodes
Funny Political Videos

Important Things With Demetri Martin
More Funny Videos

Unknown to him, the people who had voted and supported Blagojevich previously have probably become unemployed and lost all meaning in their lives since. His disapproval voter ratings have been as high as 80% since October 2008, when he did NOT endorse Obama's election campaign. Those newly unemployed citizens watching him on so many daytime TV shows now see him as a narcissistic hair loving oaf on top of lying, cheating, money laundering and probably raping their kids out of their of their tax payer money. Then again, I think the same could be said for Russel Brand and Jonathan Ross, and all hairy cheating celebrities alike since the global recession has turned the unemployed masses into celebrity-eating TV/radio talk show zombies, even worse than during the boom years.

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This week, Lost in Americana struggles see the point of going to work when he cannot acquire any mice. Yes - his work now depends on mice and mice = money and time. Suddenly, with all that extra free time not doing experiments, he realizes how few friends he can actually chat up during idle hours and is reminded of how difficult it is to make friends without a car (or in fact do anything) in car-dominated America. In addition, his swimming pool has now been broken for 3 weeks and in the face of lack of exercise his cortisol levels are going through the roof. He decides to throw a few chairs across the room in his apartment just to let out some rage and to fill the void. Next week, when the deliveries finally come, Lost in Americana will be eating live bloody mice in the corner of the street, sulking away. 24 hour public transport overrun with pests and hungry foreign beggars i.e. New York City is now a VERY VERY appealing place to be because that would give him the freedom to travel, get involved and meet more people and maybe find some mice to work with.

Laugh out loud hysterically and fall off your chair

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:16:00 +0000

Yes, this book is real. As real as "How to Date an Asian Woman".

Found this through someone's Flickr Photostream. I like the excerpt they quoted from the book:

"MENTAL PROGRAMMING: TO DATE A WHITE WOMAN
- Define long-term goals
- State short-term objectives: What type of image do you want to project?
- The what and how should be in harmony with the targeted white woman you have in mind
- Set dating strategies to project your availability and image
- Analyze available physical positive assets (good looks, body type,) and resources (time, money).
- Gather the white woman's personal data
- Keep a diary, take notes, and review plans."

It's as if you're telling a computer how to be human.

Can you spare me some CHANGE please

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:11:00 +0000

Living in London for the best part of a decade teaches you how to communicate with people from a hotchpotch of different races and cultures and wealth – at least I hope it does.

The first thing you notice when living in the US is how greatly racial segregation still pervades every city. This is in spite of the country having elected its first African American president and, I guess, why people see his election as so monumental. A lot of African Americans still live on a separate side of the city from their white, Asian, Latino and other counterparts – and people still refer to this side of town as “ghetto”. Many people in my neighbourhood earn very little and have very little compared with those in more affluent areas of the city and the rest of the ethnic "ghettos".

I’ve lived in this kind of area before in London with its share of poverty and disproportionate number of African/Carribean population. I used to see people hold up the line on Sunday afternoons in Tesco supermarket drawing up food stamps and vouchers to buy their entire weeks’ groceries. I also used to see police cordon off the road every Sunday after a fatal stabbing. Here I am, 3000 miles away in a different country and I see the same thing, again people holding up the food line at supermarkets paying for their entire Sunday shopping with child benefit cheques and vouchers (at least they have child benefit). I also see a lot of broken down housing, fresh from arsen attacks and also police warnings of recent murders.

My guess is – and this is a GUESS because I don’t know their plight - the people living in my area want to be represented more in every sector across America, especially in the places of power, the Senate, Congress and the White House. Of course they are naturally inclined to pin all their hopes on Obama – they want to be thought of as upwardly mobile just like anyone else in the country. Will they be disappointed after the Obama administration has finished? Well, let’s face it, as President, Obama is not likely to be able to answer to most of their demands. The Obama election campaign time and time again referred to representing the middle classes, but did not once mention the underclass.

America is fundamentally conservative and the government, in the name of protecting its people, will act to protect the rich, or moderately rich, no matter who is in the White House. Conservative America does not believe in placing race above issues of preserving its power and certainly does not believe in placing the poorer Americans anywhere close to where they live. Change cannot happen for people in my neighbourhood unless the richer people in the suburbs decide to give up everything, come here, live with these people and start a dialogue with them. Let’s face it - racism is inherently a human problem. Not a state, national or government one.

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This week, Lost In Americana has restarted his Blogspot blog after a two and a half year hiatus to finish his PhD and move country/get a job. He also goes home to DC to see his Mum, celebrate Chhiese New Year and collect some jade trinkets that she brings back from her three month sojourn to China. While in DC he develops an inflamed gum and suspects he has a wisdom tooth waiting to gouge its way up angrily against his premolar, making his only enjoyable activity of eating oily dumplings everyday a painful nuisance. The joys of moving country involve losing friends from the old country and seeing yourself overtaken on Facebook by old not-so-internet savvy friends suddenly gaining a lot more friends for yourself - beating you down to a pulp in Facebook popularity, in a sense.

From BBC to ABC

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:06:00 +0000

It’s been 3 months since I first moved to Philadelphia and 4 months since I moved from London to the US. Having anticipated great challenges in starting a new life, new job and new environment, I never could have anticipated some of the changes I have had to deal with, or for that matter, the new changes I now embrace.

Aside from adjusting to the obvious shift in the attitudes of the people - from the land of the Brits where people are cool, reserved and characteristically rigid to the land of the Yanks being loud, proud but remarkably warm, there are also the subtle, unspoken differences within American culture that I have learnt to respect.

For me personally, the first thing I notice about a culture is always the food. Anyone who knows me, knows I AM all about food. As a Chinese Brit (often referred to as a "BBC ", though not completely true), growing up in England, I used to struggle with understanding the British obsession with Indian curry, or Indian food in general. For me, my Mum’s Chinese cooking was by default the best. That was before I left home, made friends and realised how much Indian, and indeed many other immigrant communities had become so quintessentially British. Most Chinese communities in Britain have settled into British society for a few generations, but they are not as settled relatively to, say, the Indian communities, or the Pakistani, or the Sri Lankan communities (a result of Victorian era British colonialism). While these Asian communities already have huge representations in all areas of British life, including Local government and some in Parliament, there are just not that many Chinese Brits who are so integrated in Britain, in the same sense (of course, I'm not discounting the great celebrities, such as Gok Wan, Ching He Huang, Vanessa-Mae etc. - all hail to them!)

In America as you know, size matters. Chinese immigrants from all of China make up a majority of the Asian demographic. They are represented in every sector of the US economy, from academia to banking, from laborers to the Senate and special interests lobbies. This is the country that brought us Bruce Lee, invented chop suey and boasts the biggest Chinatowns in the West, afterall. Even in Obama’s new cabinet there are Chinese Americans (Secretary of energy Steven Chu), not to mention Obama’s family (brother in law, Konrad Ng).

No wonder, then, my first and best meal when I arrived in the US was a Chinese meal cooked by a mainland China chef in a Shanghainese restaurant. Suddenly, Chinese food from all regions of China are available to me – in contrast to just the same oily food I remember growing up in England. When Americans talk about ethnic food, a lot of them display a preference for Chinese food. This makes sense. The more integration of the ethnic group, the better they can market and sell their trademark foods.

Ironically, when I sit down with people in America and ask what they think about Indian curry, a lot of people recoil and complain about the greasiness (a view I saw a lot of Brits express when asked about Chinese food). It’s not that there are no good Indian restaurants in the US. It’s more about the mindset of the general American population, who prefer Chinese food because there is more of it to go round – both good and bad quality.

Now as I start my life in the US as a Chinese American (trying and probably failing to become an American born Chinese, "ABC"), I can draw from my new experiences a sense of pride I did not have as a kid. Not only proud of the fact that the food I love is also liked by millions of other people in a Western country, but also proud that I have experienced several very different cultures in my short life.

Final New York City Video - 最后一场纽约电影！

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 20:51:00 +0000

New York City, Summer 2006

In New York City's Chinatown - 去唐人街

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:37:00 +0000

This video is from Wednesday, Day 4 of my New York City trip, when we stumbled on a funeral procession. The deceased is either very popular or very rich (or a triad family gang member). Either way, we don't get to see this kind of elaborate ceremony in London!

A little Sex & A lot of City - 林深去纽约

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:34:00 +0000

Just got back from New York City, on another whirl-wind four day tourist pilgrimage. I have been to New York three times now, but never have I been able to travel around freely and truly absorb the atmosphere until this time.

With thanks to my friend and fellow grad. student, Ellie, we managed to pick through some of the hotspots and cheap eats in the Big Apple as well as an economic, but good quality students’ hostel. The best way to tell the story, is by the photos I took (see Flikr). I will also upload some video clips from my trip, when I have time.

Meanwhile, here is a small De-Briefing:

Day 1: Traveled via Chinatown-Chinatown shuttle from Washington DC to New York. Bladder almost bursts with urine on a non-stop 4hr bus journey. Have lunch at GoGo Dimsum in a small Chinatown restaurant overlooking the Municiple Building.

Arrive at a made-for-students hostel, HI Hostel on Amsterdam Ave and 103^rd St. Upper West Side. After check-in, walk through the upper half of Central Park, along the Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis Resevoire, the Great Lawn, Turtle Pond and onto 79^th Street East. Grab a burger at a Spanish restaurant. Walk back..

Day 2: Walk down 5^th Avenue from 72^nd Street all the way to 34^th Street. Walk past the world’s most expensive and largest shops. Get forcefully offered perfume at Saks 5^th Ave. store. Walk past Time Square back up to the Metro station.

Go back to the hostel to meet Ellie, who has just come from Princeton, after a 2 month lab placement. Grab a sandwich at Subway. Go back downtown to climb to the top of the Rockefeller Centre. Gawk at a stunning view. Walk back to 5^th Avenue and see St Patrick’s Church. Go to the Museum of Sex (MOSEX) and laugh at early 20^th Century US / Japanese / Manga porn (Yes, cartoon porn, cheap thrills!). Walk down to Union Square to have dinner at the Republic on 17^th St. Go back to meet Ellie’s friend and go out to a couple of bars – an Irish bar on Broadway 102^nd and the Dive Bar on Amsterdam Ave, 96^th St.

Day 3 (This day had thunderstorms): Catch the bus to visit the Guggenheim Museum. Visit the Metropolitan Art Museum (The Met). Have an expensive burger at The Met. Gaze at the Manhattan skyline from the roof top. Take the bus to the Museum of Natural History. Gawk at dinosaur skeletons.

Walk to a Cuban/Chinese restaurant, “Caridad” on Columbus Ave and eat until our stomachs drop. Walk to the Lincoln Centre and listen to open air free jazz concert. Watch a free stilt show/dance perfomance at sunset. Go back all tired

Day 4: Catch the metro to Brooklyn and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan. Walk from City Hall Park to Chinatown. Watch a hundred men funeral procession with its own Chinese horn blowers and carnival dancers. Walk up to Little Italy and have lunch at Il Forna. Ellie chats up an architectural firm partner, who shows off his blackberry and claims to have sent all 4 kids through Ivy League universities (a rich New Yorker).

Arrive at Battery Park and take the Circle line ferry to Liberty Island, followed by Ellis Island. Take pictures at the foot of Statue of Liberty and learn America’s immigration history. Have dinner at McDonald’s near Wall Street (I was told this would be a swanky branch, but it wasn’t). Climb the Empire State Building at sunset and watch the lights in Manhattan flicker on. Gasp at the view. Go back all tired.

Day 5: Walk with Ellie through Straberry Fields (John Lennon’s memorial) and to the promenade, Central Park. Go rowing at “The Lake” and take cheesy pictures of each other and of turtles. Go back to Subway to grab a sandwich. Say goodbye to Ellie (she will spend another two days there), check-out of hostel and catch the shuttle bus back to DC.

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For me, the “Sex” I saw was in the Sex Museum and strongly suggested by the gorgeous looking women strolling their tiny dogs around town. But the “City” I saw was, just as Americans say, like “Emerald City” from the Wizard of Oz. New York is a place where American dreams are made and quashed everyday, where people’s egos and salary scales are as tall as the buildings they work in and as large as the 5^th Avenue they walk on.

Isabella from Macau - 依莎貝拉

noreply@blogger.com (Lost in Americana) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:54:00 +0000

One of the perks of coming to the States and hanging out at my Mum's house includes being able to watch some quality Chinese films as well as some really low quality Chinese sitcoms.

Today I watched Isabella (依莎貝拉). Despite my initial reservations, this turned out to be a beautiful movie, shot in reflective mood and artistic colour. Set in the backdrop on the advent of Macau's hand-over back to China (in 2000), it depicts the growing semi-romantic bond between a young, abandoned prostitute searching for her dog (named Isabella) and her corrupt policeman father (whom she had a one night stand with). It's an unexpected masterpiece of Hong Kong cinema. Even more unexpected is that Macau/HK popstar, Isabella Leung Lok Si - 梁洛施 (who, incidentally, looks delicious) can act too.