informal writing #4

Angry Asian Man

At my first glimpse at the blog when I skim it, I think it is a blog simply talks about Asian Culture, or Asians in America and so on, nothing special. But then, I wonder why the name of the blog is Angry Asian Man. Why Asians are angry?

I try to go through the post one by one. Each post has its own function and characteristic. For example, one shows you a amusing Japanese commercial, one informs readers there will be an event by a Chinese association in Los Angeles, and one introduces the author’s favorite Asian actor who plays in the American drama, Lost and so on. Overall, the posts are enjoyable to read because the topics are different. When I read other blogs while the posts/ works are in the same pattern or are about the same topic, I feel bored reading them, but that is not for this case. Even I am an Asian as well, I do not know some of the contents introduced in the blog. Those post can introduce Asian culture to those Westerns who want to know what is going on in Asia. But still, I can not find out the reason why the blogger thinks Asians are angry. Therefore, I try to look at the list “angriest posts” on the right hand side of the blog. When I go through those angriest posts, I find one thing in common among the posts and I understand and agree that Asians are supposed to be angry.

The author is actually revealing his feeling about racism towards Asian in America, but he does not do that obviously. He talks about trivial things happen in our life to show the invisible racism issue. For example, in the post “Asian sleeping in the library”, he introduces a Tumble site, which has a bunch of photos of Asian students sleeping in the library. And there is something in the site makes him uncomfortable, so am I. I do not think there is only Asian who sleeps in the library. Why does the site only have photos of Asians sleep in the library? I think it is trying to mock the hard-working Asian students. The sleeping face of the Asian is ugly and hilarious for Americans or others, but it may be offensive for Asians. Another example “the green horney starring jay chou…or, uh, john cho?” may give you more hints to identify the perspective of the bloggers. The post first introduces the new Hollywood movie “The Green Hornet”, which was number one at the box office weekend. However, the Internet Movie Databases’s entry for The Green Hornet was incorrectly listing Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou to John Cho. It is really not respectful to Jay Chou, who is the most popular star in Taiwan and China. The blogger inserts a link of the interview and the history about Jay Chou to ask the readers try to know more him at the end of the post. When you read the post “Rush Limbaugh mocks Chinese president with the Ching Chong”, you would definitely agree with the blogger that Asian, or at least Chinese should be angry when their president is being mocked.

Those little things can actually reveal Asians are treated unfairly somehow. There are much more examples happen around us every day. It is not obvious, but racism issue is there. However, the fact is, Aisans work hard, contribute and are getting more and more successful in American or other countries. Look at the posts “the 30 most influential Asian Americans under 30” and “Godfrey Gao, Louis Vuitton’s first Asian male”, they tell you that Asians are getting greater achievements through their hard-working, and there is nothing about Asians should be mocked or made fun of.

Informal Writting #3

I think everyone in this class has been to Westfield Valley Fair before, so we should feel lucky that our class is on Thursday, not Saturday because we know the parking in Valley Fair is a nightmare, but it is acceptable on Thursday. When I was trying to answer the questions on the work sheet, I realized something I never thought of. To be honest, I don’t like shopping in Westfield Valley Fair unless I really need something that can be found there, such as Apple Store. I used to think it is just my personal feeling, but I found out that it was not just me, many people didn’t enjoy shopping in that large mall either. So I think it really has its problems there.

I agree other classmates’ opinion that the architecture might be inspired by the Greek temples and paradise in the ancient myths. Based on the interior decoration of the mall, I suppose it is classified as a luxury mall for upper classes or higher-income consumers who are Western Whites, especially ladies. They can afford luxury goods and they are willing to spend. However, the fact is residents in San Jose do not belong to this group. This is undeniable by the statistics on the San Jose fact sheet. First, according to the data of the city of San Jose, the majority San Jose residents’ household annual income is below $100,000, only 41% of them have over $100,000 income distributions. Secondly, over half of San Jose residents do not speak English at home while only 46% speak English as their mother language. In fact, only 31.8% is White people in San Jose. The majority may come from Mexico, Asia, or other countries. This group consists of legal or illegal immigrants, international students or temporary foreign workers who hold working Visa. Thirdly, 66% do not have Bachelor’s degree or higher degree. This is a rather convincing number to conclude that most of San Jose residents are common working class on average. So Valley Fair is not supposed to be a place for San Jose residents. However, these middle class people are actually spending more in this mall.

As a result, when you the stores in Valley Fair Mall, you will easily see the difference between Louis Vuitton and Forever 21. I think there may be more salesladies and security guards than customers in Louis Vuitton. On the contrary, it is always crowded, people form a long line waiting for the fitting room in Forever 21. Although the mall aims its customers to the higher income people, the average or middle-lower classes are actually spending their money in the mall instead of the upper class. I think the problem is that the layout of the stores in the mall classifies its customers into classes. That actually makes many customers feel uncomfortable. I remember I wanted to buy a wallet from Louis Vuitton for my dad for father’s day last year, and I went to the Louis Vuitton retailers in this mall. However, I feel unexplainably stressed once I stepped in the store. I did not mind that no people serviced me or asked me if I needed any help, but I really felt uncomfortable with the way the security guard in a formal suit looked at me. Although I bought a wallet for my dad finally, it was not a happy shopping experience. I would be happier when I buy clothes in Forever 21 although it is crowded and takes me more time to wait for paying.

The classification between different customers is the major problem for Valley Fair Mall. It does not only restrain customers’choices when they shop, but also affects some stores’ owners if their products are for economic classes while the location of their stores is closed the luxurious stores. Therefore, I suggest Valley Fair should re-locate the stores. For example, move the rather luxurious stores to Santana Row, such as Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. It is better to put them with those glamorous brands like Gucci and Burberry together there. And then H&M and Urban Outfitter can replace them and be moved into Valley Fair Shopping Mall. They are more affordable to the public. It might be hard to make all the stores equal in the mall, but at least Valley Fair Shopping Mall should break down the invisible wall between different classes there. Instead of locating the stores based on their popularity, Valley Fair mall can locate them by categories or functions, such as put all the shoes stores together, locate the ladies fashions stores together and group all the restaurants or fast food stores as a whole and so on. When a customer wants to buy a watch, he can easily know where to go in the mall and have all the choices instantly. When the customers spend less time looking for the right place to find the right goods, the parking issue might be relieved a little bit as well. 

If it fails to make every customer feel he is welcomed to the mall, he might think he does not belong to the mall and go to shop somewhere else. I think once the problem is solved, although GAP, H&M or Forever21 are everywhere, customers would like to go to Valley Fair Mall definitely because of the noble and magnificent interior decoration.

informal writing #2

Informal writing #2

I know it sounds unbelievable, but truly, it is my first time to see The Matrix, a very famous sci-fi movie from 1999. Therefore, I do not fully understand the movie, but I have a general idea what the story talks about. This two-choice offer for Neo is actually a big question to everyone that relates to how you should live your own life. My understanding about the blue pill and the red pill is that, if I choose the blue one, nothing will change, and I can still take the control on my life which I am familiar with, although it may not be the true world; if I choose the red one, then I cannot tell what will happen, I might go to a new and dangerous world that I never known before, just like Alice follows the rabbit to the hole and enters the wonderland that does not make any sense.

After thinking for a while, I am sure I will take the red pill just as Neo did.

It is not just because of my strong curiosity. I know a lot of people want expectable and stable lives with not many challenges. However, don’t you think it is boring? Suppose we can live to 80 years old on average, we may spend the first 25 years in school to get education for working in the next 35 years, and finally, spend the last 20 years staying at home, doing nothing, and waiting to die. Whenever I think of this, I feel so sad and frustrating.

I remember when I was a little girl, I always think I am special. I imagine I can be an astronaut, doctor, or president one day. However, as I grow up, I forget about my childish dream. I choose the major that is for me to find a good job easily because I know more about the world. I face the reality. I am clear about it is so hard, almost impossible to be a president. I have my parents and two sisters need to take care of. And I want to have a stable life now just as everyone does. The environment and the people around me tell me what kind of life I should expect. To be honest, this is not the best life I want, but it is the best one I can get with limited choices and I am also contented with what I have now. I have my families and friends with me, I enjoy going to school, and I like my part-time job.

My life is just so predictable as if it is run by a program. Therefore, if someone tells me the world we are living is a digital world run by tons of complicated program by computer, by machine or robots, I might believe that. Human beings always think we are the owner of the world. We believe we are dominating the world because we are the one who create things. We create the house we are living in, we create computers, and we create technology. However, if machine and robots have thoughts and feelings, they might be able to create machines themselves. It is just a time of problem. When technology is getting more and more advanced, in 2199, 3199, or 4199, the world might be dominated by the robots. Do you think human beings are still the cowner of the world at that time?

According to the movie, obviously it is the robots that take control of the real world, and human beings are just under the control of the machines, so all we know is fake and fictitious. Sometimes, when I think about what happened in the dream last night while brushing my teeth in the morning, I might ask myself if it really happened before, or if I am brushing my teeth in my dream right now. And my answer is it does not really matter what is real or what is not, what matters is what happens to me and how I feel about that. If I had a sweet dream last night, I will be happy the whole day although I know it was just a dream. In fact, to say I am happy, I would say I remember the feeling of being happy in my dream. That why i still feel happy. I hope you understand what I am saying. Experience and memories are important. So I prefer challenging and unexpected life over boring life if I can choose. Therefore, I will absolutely pick the red pill if I can make my own decision which can richen and color my life.

IAT posts

I took the weight IAT

This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of people who are obese and people who are thin. It often reveals an automatic preference for thin people relative to fat people.

The result is:

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Thin People compared to Fat People.

I find it shows what I am really thinking in my mind, what I want and what I prefer.

While I am doing the test, when good words associate with fat people and bad words associate with  thin people or good words associate with thin people and bad words associate with fat people, I have to keep telling myself, "fat is good or thin is bad" in order to press the keyboard as fast as possible. However, once I finished the test, it does not have any effect on my preference on fat and thin people. I do not want to judge that if the test is really scientific and accurate or not, but I completely agree with the result.

I took age IAT as well

This IAT requires the ability to distinguish old from young faces. This test often indicates that Americans have automatic preference for young over old.

The result is:

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Young compared to Old.

This is true. I really prefer young more compared to old. Actually, I think not only American have automatic preference for young over old, everyone from other races prefer young as well. Certainly, it is because old means aging, weak and death. So I think the test is useless and reflects nothing.

For both tests:

Although these tests are telling us something we already know or agree with, it has some science in them. When I do the test, for example, I may get the wrong answer more easily when fat people associate with good words, or it may take longer for me to think about it. So when thin people are associated with good words, I can answer faster and more accurate. Which means I think thin is always better subconsciously, so it can tell I perfer thin more. I think that is how the result is evaluated.

informal writing #1

In Kwame Anthony Appiah’s examined life, he shares his understanding about the idea of Cosmopolitanism. According to Kwame, there are two means by Cosmopolitanism. First, we have to recognize that we are responsible for all the people in the world, not just those we encounter. Second, it is okay to be different. I was kind of confused about the statements because I think they conflict with each other. In my mind, cosmopolitanism is similar to universalism or globalism. They all suggest that we, all the human being live together as a whole. We should share everything we have, and be responsible for everything we own. If it is okay to be different, cultural relativism must follow. Then how can we be cosmopolitan?

Later on, I check it out in the internet, I realize that I focus too much on the question about whether we should be the same or different under cosmopolitanism. Instead, it is all about attitude. Cosmopolitanism becomes a recommended attitude when we encounter different cultures and traditions as globalism becomes the new trend in the world. The first sentence “we are responsible for all” means we belong to the world, not just to our own country. The second means even more. I think “it is okay to be different” is the spirit of cosmopolitanism. It suggests that it is important to realize that one’s own culture is just one of various cultures in the world, and we need to know how to understand and respect the cultural difference between each other. Therefore, the essence of cosmopolitanism is appreciating ones’ own culture and compromising others. Let me borrow the words from Kwame, Cosmopolitanism is exchanging ideas about right and wrong. Exchange is a very appropriate word used here, it points out that there is no superiority or inferiority between cultures. We are all equal.

The sad thing is that the ideology is too idealistic to accomplish. No everyone would like to be open-minded to other cultures. Although some people move to other country, they still live the way they used to live. For example, my whole family immigrated to the United States in 2008, my parents still refuse to learn English for they say it is not their language. Another example is travelers are not always interested in studying the cultures of foreign countries in a deeper way. People who leave their hometown and work abroad just want to earn more money, and send it to their families in order to give them a better life. In other words, still, all they care about is the country where they are from. Therefore, there are not many people who are cosmopolitan in the world, but they play very important role in the progress of globalization.

I am not professional in Philosophy and there is still a lot for me to explore about cosmopolitanism, but I can say it is good. At least there will be no more wars under a cosmopolitan world. For those anti-cosmopolitans who argue that the national identity of each one is very important, I have a question for them. Why do they care so much about their race or nationality? If you have a white mother who is from Europe and a black father who is from Africa, how do you define yourself? Therefore, national identity can mean nothing. What we should care about is the whole world, what we can do to contribute all the people and how to make the ultimate benefits for everyone. It is not hard to get started, just try to know more, learn more and open your eye to see more. You will be pleased to find out that there is a lot of fun learning about others’ cultures. And it will be a shame not knowing anything about other countries in the world where you are living in.

Blog post 1: Scavenger Hunt

5. a student sleeping in the library

8. the creative minds class blog

12. someone who has seen Tron in 3D

4. Euphrat Museum of Art

2. Bus stop

9. Coke bottle in Bookstore

11. Someone wearing Converse tennis shoes

 14. Someone who knows a popular dance move and who can teach that dance move to group members

 10. Two Honda civics of the same color, parked side by side in the parking lot

1. a duck

3. A copy of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.

6. Jamba juice cup

7. De Anza President Brian Murphy

Blog post 1: Scavenger Hunt

1.      The first feeling I had when I heard we needed to play the game in the freezing evening was “WTF”! I did not understand how Scavenger Hunt was related to the class. However, for completing the game to get the extra credits, I partnered with Tony and Zi Ai and started playing the game once it was started. It seemed like a game for little kids for searching things, but it turned out that it was an activity required some techniques and skills such as organizational ability, creativity and physical strength and it can be quite challenging under stressful restriction of time. Instead of saying it is a game, I would say it is an experience of problems solving.

2.      I want to answer #2 at the end of the post.

3.      When we were playing the game, we did not pay attention to the rules. It did not say that we had to take the picture of the actual thing, so other teams just searched the pictures of the things on the list on internet while we really planned to go to the KC center (classroom for environmental science) to see if there were ducks. So what we did was we first eliminated the things we were impossible to get without using the pictures from the internet, such as De Anza president Brian Murohy, someone whose first name was Apryl/April, and a duck. Then we planned the route for the rest on the list. We started from library, bookstore, bus stop to parking lot and then back to the classroom. We still believed Scavenger Hunt was looking for the actual things, but not just searching the picture. We got 9 of the 14 on the list while we still had 15 minutes left. Although we did not complete all of them, I think we did a good job already.

4.      And 5. We did have some problems during the hunt. The 1^st problem must be running outside under the thrilling and freezing weather, but after we kept running to look for the targets, we got warmer and warmer. The 2^nd problem was we did not know it was so difficult to find two Honda Civics parking in the parking lot. Luckily, one of our team member Tony had a grey Civic, so we just needed to find one more and then tony parked his one next to the other one, so we solved our 2^nd problem. The 3^rd problem was our carelessness, I could not believe three of us did not see item #3 which was a copy of The Fire Next Time, which I believed could be found easily in the library. However, once we got the sleeping person in the library, we just left right away and forgot to ask the librarian for the book.

6.      The hunt fully showed individuals’ characters. For example, Tony was the one who offered ideas about what we could do to get the targets. I listened to Tony’s ideas and then organized them together to decide what we were going to do step by step. Zi Ai was usually the 1^st one who could see our target quickly. I would say Tony might be the most creative in us, which might be also related to his major. Since his major was business and I believed business majored student should be always resourceful and creative. I was the director and organizer in our team. I agreed that I might be good at planning and organizing since my major was Math. And Zi Ai was prompt and smart. He saw things in details.

The hunt did not only reveal individuals, but also revealed society somehow. Such a game requires other people’s help who might be strangers. For example, when we were looking for someone who wore Converse tennis shoes, we needed to ask someone we did not know to help us to take pictures together. Luckily, our De Anza students are nice enough to help us. We are just like freinds helping each other. De Anza college is like a small society and I would say it was a harmony society. 

going back to #2. After we noticed  that other teams just looking for the pictures on the internet, we did so since we had 15 minutes left. With internet, we easily found a duck, the copy of The Fire Next Time, Jamba juice cup and De Anza president rian Murtphy. Although I still believed that searching the stuffs from internet was not the spirit of the game when Else Maxwell created it, we just did so anyway. Again, it was just because we had time. I think we will not do the same thing again when we play the same game next time.