Eurasian Sensation

On looking racially ambiguous (@ Peril Magazine)

2012-01-29T08:48:00.000+11:00

Check my latest post over at Peril, which is about the variety of things people have said to me based on my hard-to-define ethnicity.

Me: “Can I get some of the queso fresco, please?”

South American woman in deli: “¿Cuánto quieres?”

Me: “Er… sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”

South American woman in deli: “Oh, sorry! (To workmate) “Se parece a un chico Cubano!” (He looks like a Cuban boy!”

Full post here.

From around the interwebs...

2012-01-27T16:49:00.000+11:00

Here are some cool things I read recently. I present them here so that you too may read them, and thereby become smarter and more interesting, and thus make more money and have better sex.
No need to thank me.

The one-shot society: Exams in Korea
In The Economist

Korea’s well-educated, hard-working population has powered its economic miracle. The country has risen from barefoot to broadband since 1960, and last year, despite the global slowdown, its economy grew by 6.2%. In the age of the knowledge economy, education is economic destiny. So the system has had far-reaching and beneficial consequences.

Yet it also has huge costs. For a start, high school is hell. Two months before the day of his exams Kim Min-sung, a typical student, was monosyllabic and shy. All the joy seemed to have been squeezed out of him, to make room for facts. His classes lasted from 7am until 4pm, after which he headed straight for the library until midnight. He studied seven days a week. “You get used to it,” he mumbled.

The Butchers of Nigeria - How a corrupt nation bred Boko Haram, the Islamic sect terrorizing the country’s Christians.

Wole Soyinka at The Daily Beast

This horde has remained available to political opportunists and criminal leaders desperate to stave off the day of reckoning. Most are highly placed, highly disgruntled, and thus highly motivated individuals who, having lost out in the power stakes, resort to the manipulation of these products of warped fervor. Their aim is to bring society to its knees, to create a situation of total anarchy that will either break up the nation or bring back the military, which ruled Nigeria in a succession of coups between the mid-1960s and the late ’90s. Again and again they have declared their blunt manifesto—not merely to Islamize the nation but to bring it under a specific kind of fundamentalist strain. Rather than act in defense of Nigeria’s Constitution, past rulers have cosseted the aggressors for short-term political gains. However, those who have tweaked the religious chord are discovering that they have conjured up a Frankenstein.

Why the Chinese save
Sheldon Garon at Foreign Policy Magazine

To be sure, many East and Southeast Asian societies appear culturally disposed toward thrift. But I question the timelessness and uniqueness of so-called Asian values regarding saving and consumption. As heretical as it may sound, the widespread “urge to save” in Asian economies has less to do with their shared “Asianness,” and may be more related to their common adoption of savings promotion practices from other countries.

Pornistan - A brief history of sex
Iqbal Latif at The Iranian

Which is the No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? i.e. The Pornistan of the world! Google found that of the top 10 countries - searching for sex-related sites - six were Muslim, with Pakistan on the top i.e. The other Muslim countries are Egypt at number 2, Iran at 4, Morocco at 5, Saudi Arabia at 7 and Turkey at 8. Non-Muslim states are Vietnam at 3, India at 6, Philippines at 9 and Poland at 10. Google lifts the veil now and most of the hardcore puritan nations come out unclothed!! Sexual frustrations lead to choked sex sites on Google within most of the Islamic crescent! Even though homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom ranks No. 2 for searches for "gay sex," behind the Philippines.

5 things you can learn about India from their action movies
At Cracked.com
Every shot in Enthiran watches like a blind editor came in and chopped the first and last third off of the scene, regardless of consequence. The movie switches locations before you realized the conversation ended, and new characters pop in for lines, even though you had no idea they were in the room in the first place, or else they leave the scene entirely and the film doesn't bother to show you. The end result is the implication that this entire society has mastered the art of teleportation, but mostly just use it to nag each other across a span of continents.

Every Chinese New Year I'm shufflin'

2012-01-20T11:18:00.000+11:00

Some might see this as disrespectful to tradition, but I think it's just harmless fun. I wouldn't want this to replace the traditional CNY lion dance (or is it a tiger dance?) of course, but they've done the traditional thing and are just adding something different and entertaining at the end.

And I understand if some of you never want to hear Party Rock Anthem every again. But it's worth watching if only for the bit at 1 min 43 seconds.

This seems to have been shot in Malaysia by the way, I think in Bukit Bintang although I could well be wrong.

Things I read in 2011 (@ Peril Magazine)

2012-01-18T01:04:00.000+11:00

I have another post up as part of my regular blogging gig at Peril Magazine. It's entitled 5 Asian-related things I read in 2011 that you should too. A brief review of 3 books and a couple of online articles. Check it here.

RIP Jimmy Castor (1947 - 2012)

2012-01-17T14:04:00.001+11:00

Jimmy Castor, legendary funk and latin boogaloo musician, passed away January 16th aged 64.
Castor is far from a household name but the singer, saxophonist and percussionist had a career spanning 3 decades and encompassing a wide variety of genres.

His best known track is probably It's Just Begun from 1972 (as The Jimmy Castor Bunch), which was never a hit at the time but later became a favourite of breakdancers who love its timbale breakdown and sheer kinetic energy. I still remember the first time I heard the song's distinctive saxophone hook; I was at a house party and I had to immediately seek out whoever owned the CD to find out what the hell was this cracking groove I was listening to.

That was the title track from his second album, yet Castor's musical career started way back in 1957 as a 10 year-old. He replaced Frankie Lymon in The Teenagers and cut the fun doo-wop track I Promise. Soon after he took up the saxophone, and found a home in New York's boogaloo scene, which brought together elements of American R&B with Cuban son and mambo. One of Castor's best-known hits - Hey Leroy, Your Mama's Callin' You - comes from this era, and was a minor chart hit in 1966.

Castor's light-hearted approach to music continued into the 70s, as he became known for what could be termed novelty hits. His biggest hit, Troglodyte, features no singing, only Castor telling a story about a funky caveman trying to get some action over a stomping groove, and also features the sampled-to-death introductory line, "What we gonna do right here is go back...wayyy back... back into time."
A character introduced in that song later became the basis for The Jimmy Castor Bunch's other major hit, The Bertha Butt Boogie. Again, its lyrics are incredibly silly, but the groove is absolutely unstoppable.

With other song titles like King Kong and Hey Leroy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is Your Father, you get a sense that Castor had a fairly light-hearted approach to his job.

More obituaries: Gil Scott-Heron, Guru, Manute Bol, Amy Winehouse.

Shock as man notices that 7-11 stores are run by Indians

2012-01-17T11:29:00.001+11:00

A ONE Nation candidate has courted controversy, complaining that Indians own most convenience stores.
One Nation Queensland state director Ian Nelson made the comments shortly after he announced that he would run for the key seat of Ashgrove.
"Ninety-five per cent of those 7-11 stores are now run by Indian families," he told the Nine Network yesterday.
"Now what's happened to the Australians that man those, that have those leases?
"Now they've gone, they're out."
Asked whether he was worried about being labelled racist, Mr Nelson replied, "How is that being a racist?"
Labor member for Ashgrove Kate Jones wasted no time taking to Twitter to ask Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman whether he was still considering a preference deal with the One Nation party.
[Source]

A few points:

* Yes, a huge proportion of convenience stores are staffed by people of Indian, or at least South Asian, descent. Thank you Captain Obvious.

* Are these people really "Indians" or are they "Indian-Australians"?

* Is there any suggestion that there is something wrong with that? Do Indians do something to illegally or improperly corner the market? Or are they simply doing a job that a lot of "Australians" aren't so keen to do?

* People from India are often more willing to work longer hours, or at later hours, than many others. Take them out of the equation, and there'd be a smaller pool of people willing to do these jobs, meaning fewer convenience stores open when you need them... which is not very convenient.

* I'll repeat a point I've made in earlier posts. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Immigrants who end up on welfare are derided as freeloaders. Immigrants who work hard and succeed are derided as "taking our jobs". Solution = don't be an immigrant, because you just can't win with some people.

Related posts:
"Send them all back!" even if they are Australian
When is an American not an American?
Asians taking over Melbourne's phone book

My favourite thing in the world, this week - "Pizza Boomerang"

2012-01-12T15:10:00.000+11:00

I don't know quite what this is, but I do know that it may just be the best thing in the entire universe.

Suffice to say that I wasn't quite expecting what happens at the 1 minute 45 mark.

Internet, I want to hug you.

Those smelly foreigners with their curries and things...

2012-01-11T23:55:00.000+11:00

Got a post up over at Brown Pundits, about Teresa Gambaro's "migrants should learn to queue up and wear deodorant" comments. Check it.

What your garden gets up to while you're away

2012-01-11T23:52:00.000+11:00

So I was away overseas for 3 weeks, in the middle of what I'm told was a weird summer that featured both a heatwave and a hailstorm. My housemate watered and tended my garden a little in that time, but not enough to stop it from getting a bit out of control. But being left more or less on its own leads to a few unusual occurrences that I wouldn't have seen had I been looking after it in that time.

This bamboo was fairly uniform when I left, but then this single spike shot up dramatically.
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world.

This is actually chicory, a somewhat bitter leafy green that I use to make Greek horta. Having constantly picked at its leaves, I'd never witnessed its beautiful blue flowers.

This is a chrysanthemum, but a variety that I have been growing for its leaves,
rather than its flowers. The leaves are common in Chinese cuisine, known as tong ho.

It may look impressive, but size is not everything.
This sort of thing needs to be harvested
when about half this size, as the flavour suffers
with increased growth.

This is actually dill. It likes to be watered regularly for leaf production.
Without that, this is the result.

Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls

2012-01-09T22:09:00.000+11:00

Created by video blogger Chescaleigh (aka Franchesca Ramsey), this clip has swiftly become a viral sensation. Apparently she posted it, went to work, and by the time she had come home it had already amassed a million hits. Of course, it has stirred up some controversy too - the obligatory "if a white girl made the same thing about black girls, it'd be called racist" and so on. Which misses the point of why someone would make a video like this in the first place. It's also worth pointing out that this is a parody of another recently popular viral video, Shit Girls Say".

I like it not just because it's funny, but also because Ramsey has a rather unnerving resemblance to my own partner (hair aside).

2011 in recap: My top posts for the year

2012-01-08T01:19:00.001+11:00

The beginning of 2012 gives me the chance to shamelessly promote the stuff I wrote in 2011 which you should read, if you haven't already.

Here are some ruminations on race, ethnicity, culture and religion:

Pursuing a Better, Smarter Kind of Immigrant?
What are the Actual Benefits of Ethnic Diversity?
Asians are "Rape-ish"
UCLA Library is Overrun by Hordes of Asians
Comebacks to Stereotypical and Racist Comments - South Asian Edition
Satoshi Kanazawa and Black Women
The Geography of Knob Size
The Racial Politics of Imitating Someone's Accent
Indian Film Stars versus Regular Indians

The Thorny Question of Muslim Youth and Rape

Is it Islamophobic to Ban the Burqa?

As usual, about a month of my year is spent in Southeast Asia. Here are some of the posts inspired by my journeys there and by the people I know there:

Bersih 2.0: The Malaysian Government Shows its True Colours
Random Thailand Thoughts

Thoughts from my Latest Malaysia Trip

The Assumption of Sugar, or not
Mistakes Indonesians Make when Trying to Speak English

This year I also landed a blogging gig for Peril, an online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine. Here are the posts I wrote, which are all featured on the Peril website:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Karaoke
Your Normal Is Weird
The Lure of Black Music
Comparing Asian-Australians and Asian-Americans
Asian Food and Australia's Changing Palate
When White People Cook Asian Food

I've also been posting occasionally at Brown Pundits. You can check my posts (some of which I have also posted on my own blog) here.

Back to my own blog now, here are some more articles that touch primarily upon Asian-Australian issues.

The Bloke from the Anti-Asian Party and his Asian Wife
The Whiteness of the Australian Modelling Industry
Are Asian-Australians Moving Towards Voting Liberal?
Shock and Disbelief as Andrew Bolt is Revealed to be Racist
White Flight from Selective Schools

Making a big splash this year, and eliciting responses ranging from praise to outright hatred, was Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, or specifically the edited excerpt of it published in the Wall Street Journal. Here are some of my thoughts:
On Hardass Asian Parents
More on Amy Chua
So, I Finally Read "...Tiger Mother"

Some other random things:

Quiz Time! (European Names)
Quiz Time! (Asian Diasporas)
Great Black Cover Versions of White Songs, part 2
Viking Influence on the English Language
Eating Seasonally and Ethnically

Open Letter to my Flatmate

Housemate Hunting: Highs, Lows and Finding "The One"

More like this:
2010 in recap: My top posts for the year
Listmania: My favourite movies of the 00s
Listmania: Greatest tracks of the 00s

Having problems...

2012-01-05T23:36:00.000+11:00

Having some blogging issues at the moment...

Bear with me while I try to sort it out, folks. Hopefully all will be well again very soon.

Finally, a solution to dawdling

2012-01-05T21:42:00.000+11:00

Dunno why I didn't think of this. Japan, you've done it again.

In my life I have most needed one of these bells in the streets and subway platforms of Hong Kong, and in KLCC mall in Kuala Lumpur. Although having said that, in neither of those places are the people so unfailingly polite as the Japanese, so I'm not sure how effective it would be.
The other problem is that the average dawdling teenager probably has an iPod playing while they dawdle, which possibly neutralizes the bell.

Why this Kolaveri Di song so popular?

2012-01-05T20:48:00.000+11:00

CNN recently declared Why this Kolaveri Di? (meaning something like "Why this murderous rage, girl?") this its song of the year. Haven't heard of it? It was released in mid-November as promotion for the upcoming Tamil movie 3, and quickly became a viral sensation around the desi internets. Sung by actor Dhanush in a drunken "Tanglish" (that's a hybrid of Tamil and English), the original clip has swiftly racked up over 32 million views on Youtube, while various other spinoff, remix and parody versions in various languages (Malay, Punjabi, Arabic) have garnered another 20-odd million views. It's won a Youtube Gold Award for the greatest number of hits within a certain time frame.

Here is the song itself:

In a sense the song playfully references the way contemporary Tamil speech has co-opted numerous English words, even though the precise meaning of some of them might require translation to the average English speaker. A "soup boy", for example, refers to a guy who has lost out in love.

My first encounter with the song was at a Punjabi Sikh wedding reception, as members of the groom's family performed a choreographed dance to it; anyone who's been to an Indian wedding knows that sort of thing is not unusual. My second encounter was after seeing the CNN report and needing to figure out "why the fuss?" My initial reaction: meh. It's ok.
I then proceeded to sing it to myself on repeat for the next 3 hours.

Is that the key, then? Is it merely the song's catchiness, pure and simple, that has allowed it to win fans across linguistic and cultural barriers? Or is it something more? Because there are many songs that are extremely catchy that never cross into any sort of public consciousness. After talking to some Tamil peeps, this is what I can deduce:

* Dhanush is a popular Tamil movie star.
* Dhanush's father-in-law is the superstar Rajnikanth, who is sort of like the Tamil version of Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and Jesus rolled into one. Anything even vaguely associated with Rajnikanth automatically gets the Midas touch in South India. Rajnikanth's daughter Aishwarya is also in this clip and she's hot.
* Indian media was plugging this Youtube clip like crazy, so its status as a "viral" hit was somewhat engineered.
* Dhanush's singing drunkenly about getting drunk appeals to a lot of young folks (think Afroman's Because I got high as an example) and the theme (guy getting rejected by a mean girl) is easy to identify with.
* The fact that it's in English, or at least a sort of English, means that Indians who aren't Tamil can also relate to it easily enough.
* The large number of English-speaking Indians and Sri Lankans around the world can be amused by this Indianized variant on the language.

I dunno. Just enjoy.

Random Thailand thoughts

2011-12-26T19:14:00.001+11:00

I write this from an internet cafe in Chiang Mai, while next to me a young Buddhist monk in orange robes is busily updating his Facebook status.

That to me says a lot about the kind of place Thailand is.

Thais are such an easy-going and friendly people that it's hard to imagine how country has been riven with violent political protests of late, or how police corruption is such an enormous problem. But that peaceful nature is clearly a must when dealing with Bangkok's notorious traffic. Apparently it's no longer the worst in SE Asia - Jakarta has claimed first prize there - but that says more about what's wrong with Jakarta rather than Bangkok getting any better. Jakarta's public transport system is still barely a notch above dysfunctional, and Bangkok's is outstanding as developing countries go.

I ducked into a pharmacy in Bangkok's mammoth Mah Boon Krong (MBK) shopping centre the other day as I needed to buy some moisturizing cream. (I like my skin to be baby smooth, okay? Don't judge me.) However, it was almost impossible to find any product that didn't trumpet it's "whitening" property as it's greatest asset. I'm quite white enough already, thank you. It's sad that this sort of thing is endemic throughout Asia. The beauty of Thai women is well-known around the world, and despite what most Thais probably think, I'm guessing that having a slightly tanned complexion is part of the reason.

I've written before about Thai names and how they just happen to sound very rude or funny when written down and read by English speakers. I won't add too much to what I've said before, but I'll just mention a few random place names: Gaysorn Plaza, Chong Nonsi, On Nut, and Udom Suk. Oh and let's not forget Anusarn Market.

One thing you may not know is that Bangkok has one of the largest Sikh communities in the world - they make up the vast majority of the 105,000 Indians resident in this city, and most have dual Thai-Indian citizenship. It was this community that brought me to Thailand to celebrate the 4-day wedding of Punjabi friends (he's from Bangkok, she's from Kuala Lumpur). Ending the celebrations by driving off in a "Just married" tuk-tuk was a brilliant touch.

I'm quite conflicted about the multitude of white guy - Thai girl couples that I see everywhere in Bangkok. On one hand, I try not to judge people too much since I don't know them - if I had a SE Asian girlfriend and we went to Thailand together, I'm sure people would look at us in a certain way, and I don't want to leap to conclusions. On the other hand, something about it just creeps me out. On the other hand (I have a lot of hands), if both parties are getting some mutual benefit out of it, then maybe that's a good thing. Then again, there are a helluva lot of victims of many Western men's view of Bangkok as a place to come and satisfy their less saintly urges, and many don't really have a say in their fate.

What bars (both cool and creepy) are to Bangkok, coffee shops are to Chiang Mai. They are everywhere, all with espresso machines and free wi-fi. While this could imply that northern Thais are a bunch of latte-sipping, facebook status-updating yuppies, it's probably more likely that it reflects the different breed of tourist that arrives in Chiang Mai as opposed to Bangkok. Most of them wear fisherman pants.

Speaking of coffee, order a cappuccino in Chiang Mai and odds are it will be dusted not with chocolate but with cinnamon. Which is actually an improvement, to my tastes. But the real coffee to try is kopi boran, meaning "ancient coffee". It's not that ancient really, but appears to be what Thais call any coffee that's neither espresso-machine-based nor Nescafe instant. Kopi boran is usually filtered through what looks like a large sock, and will probably be served with condensed milk unless you ask otherwise. I really like the muddy brew, but then again I tend to like condensed milk in things.

The Dome hotel in Chiang Mai has a ginger cat that rides the elevators like it ain't no thang. That's not necessarily a reason to stay there, but I just thought it was awesome. Like most cats, it has a major sense of entitlement.

Insert innuendo here

2011-12-21T16:45:00.000+11:00

This is a popular product in Jamaica, apparently. Courtesy of my friend Roderick Grant.

I couldn't decide between the multitude of double-entendres I wished to caption this photo with, so I'll leave it up to you, the readers. Please leave a comment with your best.

The lure of black music (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-12-15T15:17:00.003+11:00

My latest post for the Asian-Australian online arts & culture mag Peril is up and it's about how much culture and ethnicity may influence into liking certain kinds of music, including my own personal journey in musical taste. Check it here.

If you are a wannabe anthropologist like me you can start to speculate about these sorts of things. Why, for instance, do Pacific Islanders have such a love of reggae and soul music? I’d guess that a large factor is that those genres are deeply rooted in the church’s traditions of harmony singing, which is a huge part of Islander culture. In addition, there is clearly something in the meaning and feel of music from black America that resonates with the culture and experiences of the people of the Pacific. Likewise, it’s not hard to see why so many young Sudanese-Australians are so strongly drawn to hip-hop, which shows black people taking pride in themselves. Some things are a bit harder to work out… for instance, what is it with the whole of East Asia and cheesy ballads? That one is still a mystery.

My favourite thing in the world, this week

2011-12-11T00:14:00.000+11:00

Seen this yet? If not, enjoy! It's one of the most brilliant ads I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Every scene in it is an absolute winner.

Unfortunately the butt of the joke here, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, apparently did not appreciate it to the same degree. Neither did Mugabe supporters, some of whom made threats to Nando's employees in Zimbabwe, which eventually resulted in the ad being canned. Shame. Still, Nando's, a South Africa-based chain responsible for a great many ads noteworthy for their humorous social commentary, refused to apologise, and good for them.

What are the actual benefits of ethnic diversity?

2011-12-09T11:37:00.000+11:00

A commenter asked an interesting question on a recent post. I started to write a reply in comment form, but as it started to get lengthy I figured it would be better as a post of its own.

Eurasian sez:

It’s frequently been said that despite the way many Australians laud the benefits of multiculturalism, this embrace of other cultures often doesn’t go any further than our eating habits.

Bay Area Guy sez:

I'd say the same thing applies in the United States. This has been pointed out both by white nationalists and liberals such as Christian Lander (author of the hilarious, and in my opinion very insightful "Stuff White People Like")
When white yuppie/SWPL types say they like "diversity", it usually boils down to one thing: Good "ethnic" food. That, and other things such as music.
In all of my life, I have NEVER heard anyone successfully argue in favor of the notion that racial diversity is a strength (maybe you'll be the first =D).
When they do, it usually revolves around specific items such as food and music. They'll enjoy the food and music, but would prefer to avoid large numbers of the people of that race.
(I don't like using the term "culture" too much, because at least in my experience, PC types use it as a code word for race)

Note: Bay Area Guy is apparently some kind of White Nationalist (I'm familiar with his comments on another blog), but he comes across as open-minded enough for reasonable and respectful discussions, so I guess he's welcome here.

I'll say a few things.

I don't think diversity is all smiles and sunshine. It has both bad and good aspects to it. The problem is, how does one quantify the benefits or drawbacks? To say that a society is improved by diversity is entirely subjective, and I don't think there is any definitive formula that can prove that cultural diversity is awesome. The justifications for diversity can sound perfectly reasonable to many, while to some it may sound just like feel-good hippy nonsense that doesn't have any actual tangible benefits.

I'll also add that I'm not a blind adherent of multiculturalism. I love living in an ethnically diverse society, but for such a society to function it has to be developed and managed correctly. There needs to be the right balance between the expression of diversity on one hand, and integration into the established cultural norms on the other, and I don't think we always get that right. I don't even know if it is possible to get that balance right. So there will always be examples of what is wrong with diversity, if you wish to find them. But I would question whether such an example is due to diversity itself, or the way diversity is managed.

Food and music are mentioned as the usual reasons thrown out for diversity being positive. Let me dwell on music for a moment, with the United States as an example. How that country came to acquire its particular kind of racial diversity -through slavery and oppression - is hardly something to be proud of. Yet the intermingling of European and African cultures has changed global culture immeasurably. Virtually none of the popular music we listen to today would be possible without a mixed-race America, and that includes most genres of music that we tend to think of as "white", such as metal. White folks wouldn't have done it on their own, and neither would Africans.

Is music a triviality? Perhaps, perhaps not. More broadly, it is an aspect of culture, and culture is what tends to change once the ethnic makeup of a country starts to shift. And it's important to note that when we speak of the benefits of diversity, we are speaking primarily in cultural terms rather than economic ones. This is why answering a question like "what are the actual benefits of racial diversity?" is not necessarily easy.

Ethnic diversity also adds new dimensions to other cultural expressions such as sport. While there is a lot of consternation these days about basketball and its increasingly "ghetto" image, it's worth reflecting that the sport could never have become the world-conquering juggernaut that it did in the 80s and 90s without African-Americans. That's a huge worldwide sporting and merchandising industry based around the athletic and aesthetic qualities that guys like Jordan, Magic and Shaq brought to the game. You couldn't build such an industry on the more subtle qualities of a Larry Bird.
Living in a monoculture isn't so bad, but it is nonetheless limiting in the sorts of experiences and ideas that can be generated. And in that sense, ethnic diversity encourages broadmindedness. Sure, there will always be ignorant and close-minded people around, but my hunch is that negotiating a multicultural society actually forces one's mind to think outside the square. There's a reason why country people and small-town people, bless 'em, are stereotyped as being more fixed in their way of thinking and stuck in the past; they are more likely to live in a bubble which mostly includes only people who are like them.

Why do I personally like living in a diverse society? For me, it like travelling without actually having to spend the money to travel. Due to the constraints of time and money, I don't think I'll ever go to Afghanistan, Zimbabwe or El Salvador; yet I've had the fortune to meet many people from those countries. When I do go overseas, I'm not one to lie around on beaches all day; I'm in markets, eating at roadside stalls and trying to get a feel for what the people are all about. I'm someone with a curious mind, and I like to understand the vastness of the human experience, and what the similarities and differences can teach me about myself and those around me.
So I don't know if that answers Bay Area Guy's question at all. But I actually think that a diverse society has made me into a better and more well-rounded human being, if that's worth anything.

Our perceptions of cultural diversity are often based on our own ideals and prejudices. Some of us see a rose-tinted view of a diverse society, in which everyone lives happily ever after and no one has any medieval attitudes which cause angst and disharmony. At the other extreme, some people only see the negative. Neither are right, I think. Yet even the people who condemn diversity are probably unconsciously living a life that would not be possible without it.

Asian Food and Australia's Changing Palate (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-12-07T00:05:00.000+11:00

Here's another post I have up at Peril (Asian-Australian arts and culture mag): Asian Food and Australia's Changing Palate. The title pretty much says it all.

It’s frequently been said that despite the way many Australians laud the benefits of multiculturalism, this embrace of other cultures often doesn’t go any further than our eating habits. While someone may love the way a diverse society gives them a ready supply of felafels, fried rice and pho, they don’t necessarily interface at any deeper level with the cultures those foods came from. And while I agree that this is largely true, it is nonetheless a good start. Surely the broadening of the Australian palate has had some kind of positive effect on the broadening of our national psyche. I’m not sure how you would measure such a thing, but surely the bogan douchebags who yell out “curry muncher” at passing Indians would be less likely to do so if they could only spend more time munching curry themselves. It’s harder to keep seeing Afghanistan simply as a barbarous wasteland once you’ve discovered the frankly amazing things Afghanis can do with rice and kebabs. So perhaps the dudes slaving away in their shops making shawarma, som tum and futomaki are the ones who are really at the vanguard of combating racism in this country.

Check the full post here.

RIP Howard Tate, 1939-2011

2011-12-05T01:24:00.000+11:00

60s R&B singer Howard Tate passed away this week aged 72. Tate was another sadly unappreciated soul giant who is revered amongst crate diggers for his blues- and gospel-tinged recordings, primarily from 1964 and 1968.

Probably the quintessential Howard Tate track is the majestic Get It While You Can. This is perhaps better known as a Janis Joplin song, but it's hard not to argue that Joplin's later version pales beside Tate's original.

Another favourite of mine is Ain't Nobody Home, also better known for being covered by BB King.

The composer of both songs, the great Jerry Ragovoy, also sadly passed away in July this year.

Jay Smooth on how to talk about racism

2011-12-02T12:03:00.001+11:00

And in general I think we need to move away from the premise that being a good person is a fixed, immutable characteristic, and shift towards seeing being good as a practice, and it is a practice that we carry out by engaging with our imperfections. We need to shift from, we need to shift toward thinking of being a good person the same way we think of being a clean person. Being a clean person is something that you maintain and work on every day. We don’t assume that I’m a clean person therefore I don’t need to brush my teeth. And when someone suggests to us that we’ve got something stuck in our teeth, we don’t say “Wh-what do you mean? I have something stuck in my teeth? I’m a clean person! Why would you--”

Gold. That's a bit from this really interesting TEDx talk from Jay Smooth, who is a DJ, blogger and all-round interesting and intelligent dude. I know listening to some guy give a talk for 12 minutes is a little too much like school for some of you people (myself included), but check it out, it's consistently interesting and may just change the way you think about the issue of racism and racist comments.

One more bit I think needs repeating:

We deal with race and prejudice with this all or nothing, good person/bad person binary in which either you are racist or you are not racist. As if everyone is either batting a thousand or striking out every at bat. And this puts us in a situation where we’re striving to meet an impossible standard. It means any suggestion that you’ve made a mistake, any suggestion that you’ve been less than perfect, is a suggestion that you’re a bad person.

So we become averse to any suggestion that we should consider our thoughts and actions, and this makes it harder for us to work on our imperfections. When you believe that you must be perfect in order to be good, it makes you averse to recognizing your own inevitable imperfections and that lets them stagnate and grow.

The belief that you must be perfect in order to be good is an obstacle to being as good as you can be.

Check Jay's full post on it here.

How I learned to stop worrying and love karaoke (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-11-29T00:32:00.001+11:00

If you haven't read it already, I have another post up at Peril (an online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine). It's about my journey toward becoming a karaoke enthusiast.

And a weird world it was, where my preconceived notions about what music males were meant to like were to be severely challenged. One time I was invited by a Chinese friend, who also brought along a posse of guys who I knew from the basketball court; they were Vietnamese dudes from Springvale, they had fringes that hung dangerously low over their eyes, and I was nervous around them because I figured they must have been in some kind of gang. But as soon as they arrived at karaoke and started selecting only songs by Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, I realised they clearly weren’t as scary as I had first thought.

Full post here.

"Warriors of Goja"

2011-11-29T00:32:00.000+11:00

All of a sudden, The X Factor and Australia's Got Talent seem even more boring than before. Might need more Punjabi contestants.

Asian parents again

2011-11-28T23:52:00.001+11:00

White people tell black people how they should react to racism in football

2011-11-25T01:35:00.000+11:00

Racism in football is not new, and not as bad as it used to be, but it still manages to find ways to raise its ugly head. With Chelsea captain John Terry under scrutiny for apparently calling QPR's Anton Ferdinand something that rhymes with "plucking whack stunt", and Liverpool's Luis Suarez recently in hot water for repeatedly calling Man U's Patrice Evra "negrito" during a game, racism is a hot topic right now. And that's not to mention the regular incidents of crowd racism that plague the game, particularly in continental Europe. In but two such incidents this year, Djibril Cisse, a French striker plying his trade in Greece, was subjected to monkey chants and then attacked by opposing fans in a February derby match; while legendary Brazilian left-back Roberto Carlos repeatedly had bananas thrown at him on the pitch in the Russian league.

So in these delicate times, FIFA President Sepp Blatter hardly covered himself in glory when he suggested that players who are racially abused by other players on the pitch should be able to resolve it with a simple handshake after the game. Combined with the way FIFA comes down on clubs whose supporters are responsible for racist behaviour - either ignoring it completely or giving them a light slap on the wrist - it all adds up to a administrative body that is completely out of touch.

Man U's Rio Ferdinand (brother of the aforementioned Anton), who is not normally known for saying anything particularly intelligent, tweeted in response:

"I feel stupid for thinking that football was taking a leading role against racism.....it seems it was just on mute for a while."

and:

"Just for clarity if a player abuses a referee, does a shake of the hand after the game wipe the slate clean??"

While Arsenal's young combative midfielder Emmanuel Frimpong tweeted the cruder but funnier:

"If Blatter Ever Come to Arsenal am Gna Frimpong Him"

Following this uproar, Blatter released a statement saying he was misunderstood, and attaching to it a photo of him hugging a black man for good measure. (The particular man is a prominent South African politician, the awesomely-named Tokyo Sexwale.) It is the photographic equivalent of the classic response to accusations of racism - telling everyone that you have black friends. Because everyone knows that if you have even one black friend, you are automatically deemed free from racial prejudice.

Meanwhile, former Uruguayan international and now coach of Brighton, Gus Poyet (below), stuck up for his under-fire countryman Suarez.

"I believe Luis Suarez, it's simple. I played football for seven years in Spain and was called everything because I was from South America. I never went out crying like a baby, like Patrice Evra, saying that someone said something to me."

Now, I don't really know what nasty names white Spanish people call white South Americans, but I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that they are probably not quite as nasty as what white people call black people. And they probably don't have quite the same historical context to them.

Tumblrs that I'm digging right now...

2011-11-23T16:35:00.000+11:00

http://thai-flood-hacks.tumblr.com/

http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/

"The Slap" and racebending, part 2

2011-11-21T00:45:00.002+11:00

I wrote recently about the acclaimed Australian mini-series The Slap and its rewriting of the ethnicity of a major character from the Christos Tsiolkas novel it was based on. Not a huge deal, perhaps, as it was seemingly done to accommodate the availability of the wonderful black British actress Sophie Okonedo. Thus, the Indian character Aisha in the book became the Mauritian character Aisha in the series. My point in the previous post was that it was a shame that Asians, and South Asians in particular, are majorly unrepresented on Australian TV, and here was an explicitly Indian main character in a hotly anticipated series, and now she's no longer Indian.

Now, I was happy to let that go. But for all it's excellence as a series (and it is very good indeed), the more I realise the makers of The Slap need a slap themselves for the way they are treating the story's Asian characters.

Aside from the character of Aisha herself, there is the Eurasian man she ends up having a dalliance with.

To quote the book:

She had noticed him immediately. She assumed every woman at the conference had, for he was almost ridiculously handsome, Eurasian, with a delicate snub nose, a gym-trim body and the most pale-white skin she'd ever seen. At first she had thought he might be Spanish, but the surname on his name tag was unmistakably Chinese, Xing. Art Xing. It sounded like the name of one of the bands that Hector enjoyed listening to.
At the first dinner, after their shared laugh, she had asked him where he was from.
“I’m Canadian.”
“Obviously,” she snapped amiably, rolling her eyes and pointing to the red and white maple-leaf insignia at the end of his tag. “But what’s your ethnic background?”
“I used to think that was a very Canadian question. But I’m discovering you Australians are exactly like us.” He was smirking, his eyes teasing her. She found she had to force herself to look straight back at him. Her impulse was to look down at her empty plate. She felt absurd, but his beauty did make her swoon. Oh grow up, Aisha scolded herself, you’re not some teenage twit and a Beatles concert, you’re a forty-something mother of two.
“My father is third-generation Chinese from Toronto. My mother is Czech.”

So, how is this ravishingly sexy half-Chinese man represented in the TV series?

Well, for a start he's not Chinese anymore. In the series his name has been changed to Art Ramirez and he appears to a Hispanic American of some kind. His ethnicity is not mentioned.

Speaking of Asians, another Asian character from the book has been completely omitted from the series - Van the Vietnamese DVD pirate, who is the business partner of Kelly, Harry's mistress.

Am I making a big deal about nothing? Perhaps, perhaps not. The ethnicities of Aisha and Art are not essential components of the story, in comparison to the Greek and Anglo characters whose culture plays a very real part of how the story unfolds. Likewise, the presence of Van the DVD guy is not integral.

But given that the novel version of The Slap won so many plaudits for exploring the way ethnicity and culture interweave in modern Australian society, it seems extremely odd that the directors seem hell-bent on minimizing the role of Asians in the TV version. Especially given that one of the directors, Tony Ayres, is half-Chinese himself. You'd expect better from him, surely.

Representation on television is important. I don't want to watch wall-to-wall Asians, but I do expect that when I watch a story with Asian characters, they won't be modified to be anything other than Asian.
Particularly for Asian men. If Asians have little visibility on Australian television, then Asian men are harder to spot, and sexy roles for Asian men are downright invisible. So it is saddening that while the directors are happy to show a naked Asian prostitute in one episode, they think nothing of changing the sexy Asian guy to a sexy Latino guy.

So for the time being, if you want to see an Asian man on Australian TV, you'll have to be content with watching Asian tourists getting detained on Border Security.

Surely someone's singing wasn't that bad...

2011-11-20T23:28:00.000+11:00

Bats and poles used in karaoke brawl
Baseball bats and metal poles were used in a brawl outside a karaoke bar early this morning with six men taken to hospital for treatment.
Police received reports of a large fight in front of the bar in Railway Parade North, Glen Waverley around 3am when it's believed 10 men attacked a large group of patrons leaving the premises.
Acting Sergeant Alex Goodman said the attackers fled quickly and that police were unable to determine whether the attack was gang related or what the motive might have been.
"This is a particularly disturbing and brutal attack carried out in the main street in Glen Waverley. This group were all wearing hoodies and had their faces covered at the time," acting Sergeant Goodman said.

WTF Asian people? Ok so I don't know for a fact yet that the assailants were Asian, but I'd bet a small sum of money on it. The victims were certainly Asian.

Come on people, this is messed up. How is possible that the words "karaoke" and "disturbing and brutal attack" can be used in the same article? (Well actually...)

Comparing Asian-Australians and Asian-Americans (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-11-16T17:05:00.000+11:00

So I have another post up at Peril, this one is about the similarities and differences between Asians in Australia and the US. Byron Wong of the Asian-American blog BigWowo helped me with a few details.

Because the Asian-Australian community is on the whole a little younger than that of Asian-Americans, we arguably remain more “Asian”, since there are fewer of the older generation who were born in Australia or grew up here. In addition to this, Australia takes in proportionally far more international students than the US; our nation of 22 million has around 280,000 international students, whereas the US has 670,000 international students but in a population of 308 million. This means that Asian international students have a considerably greater cultural and numerical impact on Australia than they do in the US. Through them, Australian-raised Asians find another avenue of connecting with Asian culture, and they seem to keep us a bit more “fobby” than Asian-Americans.

Full post here.

Weird spammer names

2011-11-16T16:06:00.001+11:00

I'm sure, like me, you get your share of spam entering your mailbox. One thing that I've found increasingly amusing is the names of the spammers - clearly not their real names - which appear to be randomly generated. Some of them come across as pretty regular names, while some of them are names that could possibly be real, but seem to be just too awesome for anyone to have in real life, other than the hero of a 70s blaxploitation flick. Examples:

Houston Justice
Odis Youngblood
Preston Hawk
Ulysses Paige
Wendell Sylvester

Others, again, could possibly real but seem just kinda odd:
Roosevelt Mims
Alsatia Entartre
Tonia Yazzie
Ethyl Kathyrn

My favourites are those that look like odd juxtapositions of Spanish first names and English surnames, to make combinations that seem very unusual in real life (but might be reasonable in a future Hispanicized USA). Examples are:

Salvatore Burton
Ramon Light
German Sims
Maricela McNeal
Juan Stroud

Alphonse Grady
Lucio Hargrove

Raymundo Lane
Marcos Whitman
Graciela Morrow
Refugio Stuart
Porfirio Levine
Luz Hanks
Jorge Head
Marcelo Barry
Moises McCain
Carlo Ayers

Even weirder are the ones that combine Asian first names with European surnames, such as:

Yong Ladner

Mao Evelina

Sung Graham

But my all-time favourite is one that is not just awesome, but seems to represent a future peaceful and unified Middle East. I present to you:

Muhammad Goldstein

That name is just so awesome that I was almost tempted to buy whatever cock-enlarging product he was trying to sell me.

On the topic of spammers, this clip from The Onion from a couple of years back is not only hilarious, but manages to capture the language of the spam industry perfectly.

Your normal is weird (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-11-15T21:04:00.000+11:00

I've got another post up at Peril, the Asian-Australian online magazine. It's about culture and mis-communication.

Take for example, the distinctive “head wobble” common in South Asia. It signifies that one is listening and agreeing with the person speaking to them; yet viewed through a Western lens, it may be interpreted as a sign of indecision or wishy-washiness. There does exist a stereotype in the West about South Asians being less than trustworthy, and I wonder if this most desi of gestures contributes to that. Or for another example, eye contact. It’s frequently lauded as essential for effective communication, and some sort of guarantee of truth-telling. (“Look me in the eye and say that.”) Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, looking someone directly in the eye can range from mildly inappropriate to downright confrontational, depending on the situation. Many Asian cultures, placing a high emphasis on hierarchy and proper deference to ones elders and social betters, frown on eye contact in many contexts.
So what does this mean for someone who’s absorbed this Asian value trying to make their way in the world, or at least in an Australia that holds very Western or Anglo norms of body language? How does one gain the trust of your boss, or impress a potential mate, or convince the police that you didn’t commit that crime, when your head keeps wobbling around or you don’t look them in the eye?

Check out the full post here.

Still more Awesome Asian Ads - Thailand

2011-11-15T20:56:00.000+11:00

Thai commercials. Still better than any other country's.

More: here, here and here.

Hotness

2011-11-13T00:46:00.000+11:00

So a friend of mine and I were lunching at a cheap-but-effective Indian eatery recently. When it came time for the waitress to take our orders, she offered the standard array of spiciness options that you are frequently faced with in Indian restaurants: Would you like mild, hot or medium?

My friend plumped for “medium”, while I asked for “mild” instead. Interestingly, my dish (mild shahi paneer) turned out to be spicier than his dish (medium eggplant masala), which was not particularly spicy at all. We speculated on the reasons for this... had they just got the order wrong? Or had they decided to have mercy on a poor white guy who didn’t know what he was getting himself into? (He is white, while I am, well, 50% less white than he.)
Now I am quite partial to spicy food, yet I regard asking for anything other than the “mild” option to be fraught with risk. Because I’ve had allegedly “medium” things before that were hotter than the breath of Satan and threatened to burn a hole in my stomach; yet other restaurants serve “medium” dishes that would have any self-respecting Indian labeling it as being tasteless and asking to pass the extra chilli.

So as there is no universal measure of spiciness that every restaurant adheres to, how does one adjudge the right level to ask for?

I figure you can make an educated guess from the clientele of the restaurant. A place which mostly caters to a middle-class white crowd will probably have a completely different idea of "hot" than a place that caters to fresh-off-the-boat Indian students. So when they ask how hot you would like it, you might need to look around to decide whether "hot" means "hot for Indians" or "hot for white people", because the two things are quite different indeed.

(Cross-posted at Brown Pundits)

Mindy Kaling on "The Daily Show"

2011-11-06T16:05:00.000+11:00

I was somewhat oblivious to Mindy Kaling until I saw this interview from last week. Now, I can officially declare that she is totes cool. Nice back-and-forth between her and Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Note: You probably can't watch this if you are in Australia, due to Comedy Central's deal with the devil (the Fox corporation). I'm able to watch this from Australia, but I have magical powers.

The Asian Menace

2011-11-03T21:22:00.000+11:00

Randomly encountered this, from The Chaser's War on Everything from a few years back. Amusing.

From around the interwebs...

2011-11-02T16:30:00.001+11:00

Cool things I've read recently when I should have been studying:

Bali is Paradise Lost for middle-class white people (at The Punch)
This is a brilliant f*cking article, taking the piss out of a not-so-brilliant travel article. (See also this excellent response: It's Bali, Not Paris.)

Now it’s all sell, sell, sell as Webb so brutally discovered. It’s as if Asians – or the Balinese in this case – seem to think that they can exploit innocent western travelers by slowly and steadfastly chipping away at the integrity of white cultural traditions like bargain hunting and getting-away-from-it-all.
What was once a beautiful cultural experience for westerners has been consumed by the voracious greed of the locals who have the audacity to try and make a quick buck at the expense of package tourists. Now you can’t even enjoy a $3 cocktail in peace without some grabby little Balinese person trying to get you to help them put food on their family’s table.

Tiny martyr for Chinese freedom (at The Drum)
Analyzes the social context surrounding the infamous hit-and-run incident in Foshan where a toddler was hit twice by trucks, and drivers and onlookers did nothing to help.

The Chinese people have been forced by almost 60 years of communist rule into survival mode, trusting only themselves and their chosen circle. They have re-erected their metaphoric family compound walls against an arbitrary state and a ferociously competitive economy. With minimal security and trust, there is minimal capacity to take a leap of altruism.

“I Really Want You To Do My Vice-America President.”
Jon Huntsman claims he’s fluent in Chinese. Is he? (at Slate)
Interesting article about the way we tend to overstate the ability of English speakers who have learned another language, especially in comparison to non-English speakers who learn English.

Considering Huntsman’s moderate Chinese speaking ability, the better question may be why American media have been so eager to gush praise upon a skill it cannot evaluate. NPR says that Huntsman’s appearance on the Colbert Report (where he asked Colbert to “do my vice-America president”) “did win some points for fluency”; Colbert pronounced it “terrifying.” New York magazine calls the seven-second clip of Huntsman at the Faith and Freedom Conference “a brief but impressive reminder of his fluency in two languages, or two more than Sarah Palin.”

GOP Nominee For KY-GOV Slams Dem For Participating In Hindu ‘Idolatry’ (at TMG)
Democratic Governor of Kentucky Steve Beshear catches heat for hanging out with Indians and not lecturing them about how Jesus is more awesome than Vishnu.

“He’s there participating with Hindu priests, participating in a religious ceremony,” Williams said. “They can say what they want to. He’s sitting down there with his legs crossed, participating in Hindu prayers with a dot on his forehead with incense burning around him. I don’t know what the man was thinking.”
Williams further told reports: “If I’m a Christian, I don’t participate in Jewish prayers. I’m glad they do that. I don’t participate in Hindu prayers. I don’t participate in Muslim prayers. I don’t do that. To get down and get involved and participate in prayers to these polytheistic situations, where you have these Hindu gods that they are praying to, doesn’t appear to me to be in line with what a governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky ought to be doing.”

This week in the world of ninjas...

2011-10-26T17:56:00.000+11:00

Ninjas are everywhere. Be careful.

More ninja-related things: here, here, here and here.

"White flight" from selective schools

2011-10-21T12:32:00.001+11:00

A "WHITE flight" from elite selective high schools is entrenching ethnic segregation in Australia's education system, according to a social researcher. In a study of student language backgrounds in schools, Dr Christina Ho, of the University of Technology Sydney, found a clear pattern of cultural polarisation, with few Anglo-Australians in high-achieving selective entry government schools. Students from migrant families — mostly from Chinese, Indian and other Asian backgrounds — dominate the enrolments of the schools.
In Melbourne, 93 per cent of students at Mac.Robertson Girls High School and 88 per cent of pupils at Melbourne High School and Nossal High School are from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE), a category that also includes those from non-Asian backgrounds. In Sydney, nine out of the top 10 highest performing selective schools have similar high percentages of LBOTE pupils, mainly from Asian backgrounds.
People who speak an Asian language at home make up 8 per cent of Australia's population, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Dr Ho said it was understandable why so many migrant families, put off by high fees in private secondary schools, flocked to public selective schools because of their outstanding academic results.
"Anglo-Australians' shunning of public selective schools is less explicable, particularly among those families with talented children who might achieve the required standard on the selective schools [entry] test," said Dr Ho, whose findings are published in the journal Australian Review of Public Affairs.
"The 'white flight' from these schools must partly reflect an unwillingness to send children to schools dominated by migrant-background children, which simply further entrenches this domination.
"If current trends continue, we risk creating highly unbalanced school communities that, rather than reflecting the full diversity of Australian society, instead constitute unhealthy and unnatural bubbles of segregation and isolation."
Dr Ho's study examined enrolment data given by all schools and education authorities to the My School website. The LBOTE data measures cultural diversity and, unlike birthplace, identifies second and subsequent migrant generations not born overseas but who are members of a cultural minority.
The principal of Melbourne High School, Jeremy Ludowyke, rejected suggestions that the school was not culturally diverse. "We don't see a white flight expressed in the pattern of applications to the school," Mr Ludowyke said.
About 60 per cent of his pupils have a parent born overseas.
"Melbourne High and Mac.Rob have played a pivotal role in providing opportunities for newly arrived migrant communities. They're part of the success story of multiculturalism in Melbourne," he said. [Source]

This is not the first "white flight" article that the Fairfax media has run in recent years; this one in 2008 reported that white students in Sydney were flocking to the independent school system to avoid certain public schools with large Muslim populations, while rural students were doing the same thing from schools with high proportions of Aboriginal students.

The Asianization of Melbourne's selective state schools has been going on for a while - my largely Asian social circle is rife with selective school graduates. I have to say I'm a bit sceptical about whether this "white flight" is a real phenomenon. Are the parents of white students actively rejecting these schools because of their predominantly Asian population, or are they simply being out-competed by Asian students for entry places?

Another article in the same paper this week points to the culture of private tutoring amongst many Asian pupils as a potential cause, which implies that if this "white flight" is really taking place, it is perhaps less about the Asians themselves than about the stress-inducing methods increasingly deemed necessary to remain competitive in an Asian-dominated environment.

So is this a cause for concern, or not?

Yes and no. (Regular readers will know that's my standard answer for most things.)

I've written previously about the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attitude towards immigrants in this country; minorities are either condemned for not performing and fitting in well enough, or feared for performing too well. It's hard to escape that feeling when reading articles such as these.

Australians tend to have a somewhat laid-back approach to life; it's a part of our national character which has contibuted to this country being a highly sought-after place to live. Undoubtedly some see the Asian approach to education as incompatible with this aspect of Australian life. Yet in a competitive global marketplace, perhaps we have a lot to learn from Asians, and it is hard to argue that cultures that place an extremely high value on education would not be a positive influence.

The question is, how far do we take that? An overwhelming focus on education at the exclusion of sporting and other leisure pursuits can have very negative side effects; in the US, suicide and depression rates amongst young Asian-American women are alarmingly high, for example.

Something else to think about: does the selective school system merely favour the hardworking, the gifted, or both? A lot of evidence shows that many naturally gifted students are wasting away in our public schools, either hiding their intelligence to avoid being ostracised and bullied, or dropping out because they quickly grow bored with the limited curriculum. For these students, the selective system would seem to be a godsend. Yet does an increasingly Asian Australia mean that diligence becomes far more important than natural ability when it comes to academic success?

And if so, is there anything wrong with that? Obviously we are not talking about a dichotomy of gifted versus hardworking students; most of our highest achievers have both qualities in spades, and a student gaining entry to a selective school would undoubtedly need to be of at least average intelligence anyway. But "Asian parenting" (a problematic stereotype, but let's accept it for now) means that Asian students who may not have great natural intelligence can still outperform many who are. As customers, employers and consumers, we expect hard work and commitment from our workforce, and probably value them more than brainiacs who lack work ethic. Is it only right that we reward hard work, rather than those vague concepts of giftedness and intelligence?

Again, the concern is that as a society we are criminally under-utilising some of our sharpest minds, those students who have great intellectual capacity but don't easily fit into a highly regimented culture that relies mostly on extreme diligence as a path to achievement.

The most obvious solution is to have more selective schools, and it's one that the Victorian government has belatedly begun to address.

But multiculturalism is a two-way street, and I think we may eventually see things working out for the best. I like to think that just as the influence of Asian students will be beneficial for the broader Australian schooling culture, Asian students will become more Australianized as well. As Amy Chua laments in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the second and third generations of migrants tend not to have the same fierce aspirational mentality. Let's hope that means a perfect study-life-balance that allows students to reach high levels without becoming stressed-out robots in the process.

Of geeks and gangsters: the "model minority"
Asian kids, Jewish education
On hardass Asian parents
Summation of Wesley Yang's "Paper Tigers"

My favourite thing in the world, this week

2011-10-21T12:31:00.000+11:00

On Suarez and Evra

2011-10-19T13:06:00.001+11:00

In the English Premier League, matches between Liverpool and Manchester United are always testy affairs due to their long-standing rivalry. This past weekend's game had another nasty angle to it due to racism claims on the field. United's black French defender Patrice Evra reported to referee Andre Marriner that he was being repeatedly racially abused by Luis Suarez, Liverpool's Uruguayan forward. He later told French TV station CanalPlus "There are cameras, you can see him (Suarez) say a certain word to me at least 10 times." If you're not sure what that the "certain word" is, it's the one that begins with N that black people are generally not fond of, unless the person saying it is black in which case it's sort of okay. Suarez is a little brownish perhaps, but technically not black, which means he's potentially in hot water as the English FA are conducting an investigation into Evra's claims.

Liverpool, for their part, have completely backed Suarez's claims that he is a lovely person who loves everybody, and have also called for Evra to be punished for making a false allegation should the FA find no proof.

European football is riddled with racism; in some countries on the continent, large sections of the crowd routinely bring banana peels to the game solely to throw at black players (based on the logic that there is some correlation between black people and monkeys). The English league has been one of the more successful at eradicating this kind of rubbish, so the allegations will no doubt be taken seriously.

Evra and Suarez have their own individual baggage that impacts on this furore. Evra has been the alleged target of unproven racist incidents before - which makes it easy for some to dismiss him as someone who was struggling to contain Suarez on the field of play and so played the race card in retribution - although to be fair to Evra, the previous allegations were not made by him personally. For his part, Suarez was sent off in the last World Cup for the most obvious and cynical handball you'll ever see, is continually accused of diving and feigning injury to get other players in trouble, and not so long ago was suspended for biting another player on the shoulder during a game. All of which doesn't mean he's a racist prick - just a prick - but I doubt anyone would be surprised if his list of odious behaviours happened to include racist taunts.

Of course, according to Suarez, he's not a bad guy, just misunderstood, if this amusing statement on his Facebook page is anything to go by:

“I’m upset by the accusations of racism. I can only say that I have always respected and respect everybody. We are all the same. I go to the field with the maximum illusion of a little child who enjoys what he does, not to create conflicts.”

But Liverpool's stance on the matter - that Evra be banned if Suarez is cleared - is ridiculous in what it implies, although that hasn't stopped 'Pool fans enthusiastically embracing it. Unless video replays can conclusively prove what Suarez said, which is unlikely, or unless someone else on the field can credibly verify what Suarez said, then it comes down to one man's word against another's.

Without trying to be hyperbolic, there is a parallel with rape cases here. In an incident in which only the two people involved know what happened and which is difficult to prove, the odds are that the accused is cleared of the charge. But that doesn't mean the incident didn't happen. Obviously making false allegations is very serious, as it potentially leads to an unjust punishment and can ruin someone's reputation even if the charges are found to be baseless. But if we were to punish everyone who made an accusation which could not be proven, it would be an active discouragement for anyone to report the transgression. There is a massive difference between deliberately lying and alleging something that cannot be proven.

There even remains the possibility that neither of them are at fault. Given that English is a second language to both Evra and Suarez, I wouldn't be surprised if it stemmed from a misunderstanding; perhaps Suarez said something in Spanish, or in his Uruguayan-accented poor English, and Evra misheard it as the N-word.

Although Suarez being Suarez, I reckon he's probably guilty. Great player, but he's kind of evil.

Media-led burqa hysteria?

2011-10-16T00:26:00.000+11:00

Amusing take from the folks at ABC's The Hamster Wheel on the Australian media's sensationalising of the burqa issue.

But this clip and the content within it represent for me the nature of problematic discussion about Islam in Australia. The Hamster Wheel guys do a good job of showing some of the ignorance that drives the prejudice against Muslims in Australia, and how the media fuel so much of it. But they also hint at the usual idea pushed by the Left that those who worry about the influence of radical Islam in Australia are probably stupid or racist or both.
Our media has essentially created a dichotomy: you are either a Muslim-hating xenophobe, or you accept anything and everything that Muslims do and assume that it'll all be okay in the end. For me, I look forward to a happy medium in which Australians (including Muslim Australians) can accept that Muslims are welcome and valued members of our society, yet acknowledge that certain practices associated with Islamic culture have no place in Australia. Of course, no two people seem to agree on exactly where that happy medium lies, so I guess we are stuck with the polarisation.

See also:

How the media manufactures a racist "controversy"

Is it Islamophobic to ban the burqa?

"The Slap" and race-bending

2011-10-15T23:50:00.001+11:00

The television adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ multi-awardwinning novel The Slap has been one of the most anticipated events on Australian TV this year. Set in Melbourne’s suburbs, it explores the fallout amongst a group of friends and family after a man slaps a misbehaving child (who is not his own) at a barbecue. Tsiolkas focuses particularly on the diverse tapestry of modern suburban Australia, and how ethnicity, gender and age influence the characters’ actions and reactions to the incident.

I should state firstly that I haven’t read the novel, and so don’t have any positive or negative preconceived notions about how it should be translated to film. But it’s interesting to note that one of the notable changes in the production process has been to the ethnicity of one of the characters - Aisha, wife of Greek-Australian Hector and the organiser of the barbecue at which the titular slap takes place. In the novel, Aisha is described as Anglo-Indian, but the Aisha of the TV version is played by British actress Sophie Okonedo, who is Nigerian/Jewish by ethnicity.

According to this article:

As much as possible, the filmmakers looked to actors who matched the characters' ethnicity.
In the case of Aisha, this led to a drawn-out process after Connolly travelled to London to audition British-Indian actresses.
After meeting the ''staggeringly great actress'' Okonedo, a decision was made to change Aisha's cultural background to Mauritian. According to Connolly, Tsiolkas was very open to the changes, even writing a detailed backstory for the ethnically transformed Aisha.
While Tsiolkas's book is specifically about the experiences of Greek-Australian migrants, Aisha's Indian ancestry is explored in less detail. What mattered to Tsiolkas, Connolly says, is that Aisha regards herself as an outsider to mainstream Australia, a common bond that links her to Hector and his close-knit Greek family.

Not having read the book, I can’t yet comment on how integral Aisha’s Indian-ness is to the story, and whether her character would be essentially compromised by being Mauritian instead. Blogger Byron Wong tells me that the Indian element is important and the alteration is extremely disappointing. Tsiolkas obviously didn’t think it was a huge deal.

Now I like Sophie Okonedo, and it’s hard to dispute her ability as an actress, having been previously been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Hotel Rwanda. But it’s still a shame. Over half a million Australians have South Asian ancestry, and it’s one of the fastest growing segments of our population. South Asian Australians have a very prominent presence in fields like medicine and information technology (as well as some of the stereotypical ones like driving taxis and working at 7-11s). Yet as far as Australian TV drama goes, they may as well not exist.

Notably, this is one of the first times that a major role in a major Australian TV series was of a specifically South Asian character, yet whoever was involved in casting The Slap could seemingly not find an Australian actress of South Asian background anywhere. Now admittedly, I can’t think of any off the top of my head, as there are none with a significant profile. Yet that also says a lot about the industry’s reluctance to give such people the chance.

Even if they had gone with a British-Asian actress instead, that would still have been a positive thing to at least see a desi playing a desi in a sizable role on Australian TV. Alternatively, if someone of Indian descent was required, I hear there’s a country called India which is apparently full of them, and presumably some of them can act too.

At least I’m glad that while Aisha got “race-bended”, she didn’t get white-washed as frequently happens to non-white characters in film and television (see the Billy Sing story as an example). Melbourne has a sizeable Mauritian community and I’m happy to see them get some love, even if Okonedo is obviously not Mauritian herself. It’s good to see an “African” character on Australian TV, and it’s good to see an actress the calibre of Sophie Okonedo on Australian TV. But surely it’s not an impossible task to have a specifically South Asian character played by a South Asian actress.

UPDATE: It turns out that Aisha is not the only Asian character in The Slap who has been de-Asianized. Check it here.

See also:

The lack of Asians on Australian TV, and why it matters

Yellowface is still alive

Guess who's Middle Eastern?

2011-10-10T11:28:00.001+11:00

I've just about exhausted my Guess Who's Asian? series for the time being, so I'm going to cast my net a bit wider to the South-West part of Asia. There are lots of famous people who are not widely known to have Middle Eastern ancestry; here are a few. I'm pretty sure none of them are terrorists, in case you are worried about that sort of thing.

Steve Jobs (left) - the late co-founder of Apple was was adopted, but his birth parents were Abdulfattah Jandali, an Arab (Syrian) immigrant to the US, and Joanne Schieble, an American of Swiss-German ancestry.

Wentworth Miller (right) - the apparently drool-inducing star of Prison Break, Wentworth Miller's family tree reads like the Human Genome Project; a father of African-American, Jewish, Cherokee, English and German ancestry, and a mother of Russian, French, Dutch, Lebanese and Syrian descent.

Kelly Slater (left) - arguably the best-known surfer of all time, the Florida-born Slater has Syrian ancestry on his father's side and Irish on his mother's.

F Murray Abraham (right) - The veteran actor, best known for his Oscar for Best Actor in Amadeus, and his role in Scarface, was born to an Italian-American mother and Syrian Christian father. The F stands for Fahrid.

Casey Kasem (left) - if you are like me and grew up listening to the American Top 40, you'd know doubt remember this guy's archetypical radio DJ voice. He was born in Detroit to Lebanese Druze parents, and while his surname is a giveaway as to his Middle-Eastern heritage, he pronounced it in such an American way that it never occurred to me. His real name is actually Kamal Amin Kasem.

Paul Anka (right) - pop idol from the 50s and 60s, best known for the songs Diana and Put Your Head on My Shoulder. Anka is Canadian-born to parents of Lebanese parents.

Andre Agassi - former world number 1 Tennis player; his father, Emmanuel Agassi (originally Aghassian) was an Iranian-born Olympic boxer who was of Armenian and ~~Syrian~~ Assyrian descent.

Julia Sawalha (right) - the UK actress best known as the straight-laced daughter Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous. Her father is Jordanian actor Nadim Sawalha, and her mother is British.

Mitch Daniels (left) - Governor of India and formerly Republican presidential hopeful, Pennsylvania-born Daniels' paternal grandparents were Syrian Christians.

Colombian pop star Shakira (right) is usually thought of as Latin American, but her name (full name Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll) also reveals her Arabic (Lebanese) origins; Colombia actually has over 800,000 people of Lebanese descent. She also has Italian, Spanish and Macedonian ancestry.

How Asians get to work

2011-10-06T00:08:00.000+11:00

4 ways.

And don't try this ish at home, kids:

Asians are "rape-ish"

2011-09-30T19:06:00.000+10:00

One of the myriad things I do with my life is answering questions on Yahoo Answers, mostly questions about my areas of professional expertise (sexual assault, domestic violence, etc). Given that the interwebs are so rife with erroneous, ignorant and objectionable opinions, it's important to put some informed opinion out there, under a pseudonym of course.

Anyway, I couldn't resist answering this question today and sharing it with you. It tells you a lot about how stereotypes are created. Note the opening "I'm not racist, but..." -type line which is obligatory just before saying something racist.

And my response:

Shock and disbelief as Andrew Bolt is revealed to be racist

2011-09-30T01:39:00.001+10:00

Australia's most popular news columnist, Andrew Bolt, found himself on the wrong end of a Federal Court decision this week. Justice Mordy Bromberg found the right-wing polemicist and his publisher the Herald-Sun guilty of a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. The paper will be forced to print an apology. The court found that 2 articles Bolt penned about certain fair-skinned members of the Aboriginal community were racially offensive, humiliating and "destructive of racial tolerance".

You can read the articles for yourself (White fellas in the black, and It's so hip to be black) although for legal reasons they may not stay up on the web for too long.

Predictably, the Right in Australia have collectively tut-tutted about the threat to free speech, with the Coalition signalling it will try to amend the Act if it gets in to power. By contrast the Left in Australia, who have long viewed Bolt as some kind of racist climate-change-denying Antichrist, seem happy to see the guy cop a legal beating.

For me, there are a few aspects to consider. Will this truly be a landmark ruling ushering in a new Orwellian approach to censorship in this country, as some are saying? Time will tell. While I believe there is certainly a place for legislation dealing with racial discrimination and vilification, I'm skeptical about its use in anything that's not a clear and fairly extreme case. I don't like most of what Bolt has to say, but in the main I think he should have a right to say it, just as other people should have the right to call Bolt a bit of a douche in reaction. Rather than trying to shut Bolt up, I'd prefer the Left lift its game, since Bolt's primary drawcard is his ability to point out stupidity on the Left. (Let's be honest, both sides of the spectrum have stupidity in spades if you look for it.) But it's important to keep in mind the particular details of this case. Bolt got facts wrong, quite basic facts, about the people who subsequently brought the case against him. While Bolt denies accusing fair-skinned Aborigines of identifying as black for cynical motives, the tone of these articles and others (this has been a long-running theme on the Bolt blog) certainly casts these people in a negative light for having the nerve to call themselves indigenous.

I've never been a fan of Andrew Bolt and have had my share of things to say about him on this blog, particular his love of highlighting "ethnic crime". I do feel a tiny bit sorry for him on this occasion, however, because I happen to agree with one of his points.

I have no issue with people claiming Aboriginal identity even though they might be predominantly European in ancestry and have a corresponding appearance; I'm in no position to judge how Aboriginal their upbringing was. I also have no issue with affirmative action policies for Aboriginal Australians; given our shameful history, there needs to be at least some measures in place to give them a leg up. However, it is where these two concepts meet where a problem can occur. Positive discrimination for Aborigines occurs in order to counter the racism and disadvantaged upbringings that they so frequently experience... yet does someone who is 3/4 white and is raised in a predominantly white environment actually experience these challenges to a substantive degree?

So while I don't think it is fair to question whether a "white" Aborigine is actually an Aborigine, it does seem fair to question whether they are entitled to all the financial benefits and opportunities that come with being Aboriginal when they almost certainly do not suffer the same level of disadvantage that a "black" Aborigine does. Particularly in cases where "black" Aborigines, a great many of whom are truly needy, are actually missing out on opportunities to Aborigines who are effectively white in appearance.

So Bolt actually had a point in there somewhere. It's a shame then that it had to be made by someone whose writings have shown repeated antipathy to the Aboriginal cause, and indeed to any culture that is not North-Western European in origin. It didn't take a court decision to prove that Bolt is a racist, or at very least "racially insensitive" or "racially inflammatory"; that was pretty well known already. But a wise man can admit that once in a while, one's ideological opponents can sort of get it right on some things. And if Bolt's overall tone was not so contemptuous of non-white people, maybe people on the other side of the spectrum might actually be able to listen to him without working themselves into a rage.

When White People Cook Asian Food (@ Peril Magazine)

2011-09-22T01:12:00.000+10:00

"...But in practice, when white chefs try to do Asian food, there is often something missing. The balance of flavours is slightly out; it’s a bit like someone’s idea of what Asian food is, rather than actually being Asian food. The punchier aspects of Asian cuisine – garlic, chilli, fish sauce, shrimp paste, lime and so on – are muted, while the sugary elements are often too strong."

One of the reasons I haven't been posting quite as much on my blog recently is that I'm doing some guest blogging at Peril, which is an Asian-Australian online magazine. My first post - When White People Cook Asian Food - is up now; you can go check it out here.

This week in "Ask Andrey"

2011-09-08T23:34:00.000+10:00

An occasional guilty pleasure of mine is the website of Andrey Arshavin, a footballer who plays for Arsenal and captains the Russian national team. A diminutive, quirky forward who has the gift of looking slightly amusing in every photo taken of him, Arshavin's form on the pitch has tailed off considerably of late; yet he still contributes awesomeness to the world in the form of the Ask Andrey page on his website. The instructions are simple: "FOR FANS: ASK QUESTION" and Andrey will answer. The internet being what it is, most of the questions asked by Arshavin's fans are somewhat on the odd side; to his credit, Arshavin answers accordingly.

andyBafc: Andrey, are you frightened of bears?

AA: On the contrary, I like bears.

peeer97: when you where 13 was you fast ?

AA: Yes, and even when I was 7. Fast as a lightning.

joey101: Hello there! , what would you say your political views are?
AA: Globally speaking I’m for world peace.

abhi1793: Do you use hair gel??? If you do what type do you use?? What's your favorite hairstyle??? I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ your hair?

AA: I don’t have an ad contract with any hair gel producer. I use water before the game. A lot depends on water chemical composition.

SMR453: Andrey, was Windows 7 your idea?

AA: Unfortunately, no.

jehanm: Hey Andrey .... This is Jehan here from India. I want to ask you what is the best way to meet you personally in London ??

AA: What’s the purpose of your question?

More photos here.

I do loves me some Onion.

2011-09-07T22:16:00.000+10:00

On being tried while black. Sort of.

As brilliant as The Onion is, sometimes the funniest thing about them is the Youtube comments from people who think these stories are real news. This is why canned laughter was invented for TV comedy.

How to mess up your kid. Correlation or causation?

2011-08-31T00:28:00.000+10:00

(Reuters) - Children whose mothers smoked while pregnant were more likely to end up on medications such as antidepressants, stimulants and drugs for addiction, according to a study from Finland that hints at smoking's affect on a baby's developing brain.

While the findings don't prove that cigarette smoking during pregnancy causes changes in children's brains or behavior, they offer one more piece of evidence that should encourage women not to smoke while pregnant, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

One in 11 children was prescribed a psychiatric medication at some point during that period, including anti-anxiety drugs, antipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulants and drugs for addiction.

Of children and teens whose mothers didn't smoke during pregnancy, 8 percent were on at least one of those drugs during the study period. That compared to 11 percent of those whose mothers smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes per day, and close to 14 percent whose mothers had lit up more than 10 times a day.

This is pretty obvious, the only surprise is that it wasn't higher.

But it raises an interesting question for me. Does it actually prove that smoking while pregnant is the cause of the higher rate of medication?

Not really. I'm passionately anti-smoking and certainly believe that smoking while pregnant is a repugnant thing to do. But I wonder how much of this issue is actually correlative rather than causative.

Here's the thing: if you are the kind of person who smokes while pregnant, you are more likely than average to be a stupid, shitty parent. If you smoke more than 10 times a day while pregnant, you are even more likely to be so. Someone who is has a poor grasp of decent parenting, whether they smoke or not, is far more likely to raise a child with depression, anxiety and addiction problems.

I certainly think smoking while pregnant is physically damaging to the unborn child. But studies like this don't necessarily indicate it. It could just be that smoking is not the cause of dysfunction, but rather a reflection of it. So if you are smoking while you are pregnant, the chances are definitely higher that you will raise a problem child, but it may well be you, rather than the ciggies that did it.

Housemate hunting - highs, lows, and finding The One.

2011-08-30T01:38:00.000+10:00

You may notice that I haven't been posting much recently. I've been preoccupied with several things, one of which has been looking for a housemate. It's a difficult process, and one that bears an odd similarity to the dating game. You're searching for a potential long-term companion, and then jump into a committed relationship that sometimes goes sour but is not always easy to extricate oneself from. In other ways, it's completely different - having a housemate makes financial sense, while being a romantic relationship definitely does not, although it does have some associated fringe benefits that a housemate usually doesn't.

In the end, I think I may just have found The One. But more on that later.

My ex - well, the previous guy who lived in my house, anyway - was just a disaster, but the humanist in me held out some deluded hope that I could maybe change him. My view of human nature is clearly far too optimistic. You can only change someone if they want to change, and this guy had no interest in it. So battered and bruised, I had to admit defeat, and once that whole messy affair was over and I got him the f*ck out of my house, it was time to find someone new.

Advertising on flatmate-locating websites is hit and miss. I stuck my profile out there, to show the world what I had to offer, while trying to get the attention of certain other searchers who seem really appealing. Most of the time they just ignored me. I did get some attention and inquiries, but it was all for naught. They weren't really serious, and just led me on; or alternatively, they wanted something I just couldn't offer.

The first serious candidate arrived in the form of a pretty Mauritian girl who seemed a little ditzy, but was basically friendly and genuine. She liked my place, we got along, and it seemed all good. One of the first questions she asked was "Is it okay if my boyfriend stays over?" and I said of course, it would be fine. Then a couple of days later, still undecided, she asked if the boyfriend could come check it out also. No problem, I said. Her boyfriend was Indian, and the last Indian guy who came to check out my place was really cool and chilled out (he ended up moving in with his sister instead), so my mental image was of "the friendly nice Indian guy". However when they turned up, over an hour after they were meant to come, it was clear that I should have factored in the all-too-real possibility that he would be "the controlling, surly, patriarchal meat-head Indian guy". The contrast between the bubbly friendly girl and the boyfriend-doing-his-best-Terminator-impression was stark. (Nice girl dates jerk; it's a timeless combination. When Joe Jackson sang the lyric "Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street", he neatly summed up the incredulous frustration of nice blokes everywhere.)

My hunch was that what seemed like a promising arrangement was now dead in the water, and this hunch was confirmed later that night when she messaged me. It was just as I had suspected: she thought the place perfect, but her boyfriend vetoed it. "He's very possessive", she texted, in what I could only assume was embarrassed resignation. I had thought that when I mentioned earlier that I already had a girlfriend who stayed with me part of the time, that would allay his fears that I would somehow seduce his woman. But the fact that my girlfriend is Indian probably just made it worse - he probably figured I was one of those guys who has a thing for brown girls. Which, to be fair, is not a million miles off.

I was going to give her a bit of relationship advice - working as I do in the domestic violence sector I deal with controlling asshole guys all the time - but after some wise counsel from my girlfriend I decided against it. I believe her words were "I like you better without your face punched in", which is hard to argue with really.

Anyway, it was probably a blessing for a number of reasons. Firstly, had she moved in I would have had to deal with Controlling Boyfriend's attitude on a regular basis, and I can think of better ways to spend my time. Secondly, as much as I don't like to admit it, perhaps he was kinda on to something. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to have a good-looking girl move in. It's not like I'm going to be messing around - I'm in a very committed relationship and am pretty confident I can control myself - but it's probably not wise to tempt fate either. With that in mind, I've developed a Litmus Test For Potential Housemates. I ask myself "If I was single and she was interested, would I bone her?" and if the answer is yes, she can't stay.

And the other reason it was a blessing is... that I've found someone. It happened a few days later. I was feeling a bit down, in large part because I'd already started planning how I was going to spend the rental income I almost had. And then suddenly he appeared. A mysterious stranger who entered my life with a flatmate inquiry containing the words "Awesome! Still available?" Dude, you had me at "Awesome". I checked out his profile... vegetarian! Loves cats! Into gardening! Plays music! Non-smoker!

Be still, my beating heart. I relayed these details to my girlfriend, who happened to be on Skype with me at the time, and she laughed at how totally gay I had become within the space of 45 seconds. But screw it. I replied to him confirming the room was still available, and wanted to add that we had a lot of stuff in common and was looking forward to meeting him. But I had to restrain myself. Can't seem too desperate, you know... it's a turn-off.

Well to cut to the chase, it turns out he's moving in within the week. Seems like a really nice dude too. And he passes my Litmus Test For Potential Housemates in that I felt no great urge to bone him (and probably won't in the future either). So things are looking up, particularly for my bank balance. And let's be realistic, there's still the possibility that he could somehow turn out to be an utter c**t, or be in a cult, or have some weird habit like shitting on the floor or torturing puppies. He'd still be a step up from my previous housemate though.

"How to be Asian".... um....

2011-08-21T21:38:00.000+10:00

Reader Leilani Torres sent me the link to this clip, and I'm not quite sure to make of it.

I know there's not enough time in the world to discuss every instance of someone putting something racially provocative on the Youtubes; I just found this rather interesting because it bears such a resemblance to Alexandra Wallace's "ching chong ting tong ling long" clip that became infamous a few months back. But at the same time, this one seems so ridiculous that it seems more of a joke and not really anything to get worked up about. The comments at WorldStarHipHop where this came from are mostly hateful (the term "f****** b**** is used frequently - I have no idea what that could mean). But I dunno. I still think this is dumb, but then so is most of the crap on Youtube. But I didn't actually find it particularly offensive. Should I have? Let me know what you think.

Singapore's answer to Michael Winslow

2011-08-16T20:14:00.000+10:00

I think one day I'll start a website devoted solely to amusing Asian uncles.

What the f***, Comedy Central?

2011-08-13T12:17:00.002+10:00

To my friends Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart: it's been nice knowing you.

For the last year or so, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have been two of my favourite shows, providing a valuable window on American politics. First, when they were on ABC2, then when they lost the rights, via the Comedy Central website.

No longer.

Comedy Central has apparently signed an exclusive deal with Foxtel that blocks Australian viewers from watching the show online. Switching on yesterday to get my daily dose of Stewart, I was greeted everywhere with the message: "Sorry, this video is unavailable from your location."

So now Australian fans will only be able to watch these programs if they pay for it. Of course, they are not on free-to-air in the US either as I understand it, but Americans can still watch it online nonetheless.

So what the f***, Comedy Central?

There are several ironies here. Firstly, Stewart ran a story a couple of weeks ago complaining about how British broadcasting authorities had censored The Daily Show because of laws forbidding the use of parliamentary footage for satirical purposes. At least the British can still watch you, Jon.

But more ridiculous is that the company that Australians will have to pay money to in order to watch The Daily Show is Foxtel, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Part of the same global corporation responsible for Fox News, the right-wing propaganda station that Stewart rails against on a nightly basis.

I won't be forking out the monthly fee to Foxtel, because I have more important things to spend money on, such as putting food on the table, keeping a roof over my head, and paying my way through school.

So thanks for the memories Jon and Stephen, it's been fun.

UPDATE:

So, I've sniffed around, and the internet being what it is, there are still ways to watch it. I'm not a technical computer-thingy-type-person, but you can watch it via a proxy IP address. Plus there are other ways. Search around.

"Fair and Lovely Inside"

2011-08-11T22:28:00.000+10:00

This is awesome.

If you are unsure of the context of this send-up, check the clips here.

It's not The Revolution

2011-08-11T00:52:00.001+10:00

Civilization is, as always, only a thin veneer.

Now that the streets of Britain have turned into a remake of 28 Days Later, it's interesting to contrast it with the other "popular uprisings" that the world has witnessed this year, across the Arab world. There will undoubtedly be a minority on the radical Left who will make this all about The State and The Pigs versus The People or whatever, but that's mostly bullshit really. While there are certainly some legitimate resentments fueling the rampant destruction that began in Tottenham and overtook the country, ultimately the majority of it is little more than young men giving themselves license to unleash their anti-social sides on the world around them.

While there has also been an ugly side to the protests that occurred in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, those were people who actually lived in conditions of oppression and poverty, who rose up against the power structure in a relatively peaceful fashion. While the rioters in England are largely from the underclass, and are poor and disenfranchised by the standards of the UK, I imagine most people in North Africa would consider them to be immensely privileged. As with the anarchists who decided to cause havoc in London in March this year, it seems that there will always be a barbaric element in society that even relative affluence cannot silence. People all over the world living in genuinely appalling conditions can frequently stage uprisings that don't devolve into randomly stealing and breaking stuff.
I wonder what people in Burma would think of all this business.

This person knows the deal:

Multi-racial Spiderman

2011-08-05T19:06:00.001+10:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The Daily Show - Culture War Update - The Dividening of America - Lou Dobbs vs. Biracial Spider-Man
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Malaysia’s behaviour lessons for non-Muslims during Ramadan

2011-08-03T01:51:00.004+10:00

(Cross-posted at Brown Pundits)

A couple of race- and religion-related controversies in Malaysia this week.

8TV decided to axe a series of public service announcements after claims that they were racist against Chinese-Malaysians. The ad campaign was aimed at teaching non-Muslims how to behave respectfully during Ramadan, and portrays a young Chinese woman speaking in a loud and crass fashion at the market and eating in public. See for yourself:

(8TV is having a lot of these clips deleted from Youtube; try here if you can't see it.)

I wouldn't call this racist, but it is laughably pathetic nonetheless, particularly the bit when a shocked Malay man shields his daughter's eyes from seeing the woman's armpits (blurred for good measure). There are plenty of influential Malay voices in the media, government and religious spheres who love to play the victim card ad infinitum - cultivating the perception that the non-Malay, non-Muslim minorities are somehow trampling all over Malay rights and religious sensitivities.

Also this week on the topic of respectful behaviour:

The Football Association of Malaysia has apologised to Chelsea after the London club complained of anti-Semitic abuse in their tour match against a Malaysian XI recently, directed at Israeli winger Yossi Benayoun. Yet it is an apology that seems disingenuous in the face of the Malaysian State's attitudes towards Israel.

I've watched highlights of this game, and while I couldn't hear anything racial, Benayoun is audibly booed every time he touches the ball, something the other Chelsea players are not subjected to. Benayoun himself is a likeable footballer who is completely uncontroversial aside from being Israeli.)
“The FA of Malaysia would like to strongly register that we do not condone any form of racism in football,” the statement read. “If such an incident did happen we would like to apologise to the player concerned and also to Chelsea FC. From our initial observations, if such an incident took place, it would have involved a small section of spectators at the match. This surely does not reflect the feelings of the majority of fans in this football-loving country.”

Of course, Malaysians should probably reflect on a history of anti-Semitism in the country. Last time Chelsea toured Malaysia in 2008 there was talk that then coach Avram Grant and defender Tal Ben Haim would not be granted visas to enter the country. Former PM Mahathir Mohamad once claimed that the Jews ruled the world by proxy. And it was only a couple of weeks ago that government-backed newspaper Utusan Malaysia made the ludicrous claim that the recent rallies for democracy in KL may have been the work of Jews.

Since the two countries have very little to do with each other in practical terms, and most Malaysians will never actually meet a Jew, this feeling originates solely from the fact that Malays are Muslim and therefore lots of them just assume that disliking Jews is part of their religious duty.

Moowee

2011-07-29T01:06:00.000+10:00

This is too good to have only 1,646 views. From Canadian comics Ali Rizvi Badshah and Frank Agyemang.

From around the interwebs... Asian parenting, education and achievement

2011-07-27T14:22:00.001+10:00

Three interesting articles I've chanced across this week...

How to raise a global kid

Taking Tiger Mom tactics to radical new heights, these parents are packing up the family for a total Far East Immersion.

Happy Rogers, age 8, stands among her classmates in the schoolyard at dismissal time, immune, it seems, to the cacophonous din. Her parents and baby sister are waiting outside, but still she lingers, engrossed in conversation. A poised and precocious blonde, Hilton Augusta Parker Rogers, nicknamed Happy, would be at home in the schoolyard of any affluent American suburb or big-city private school. But here, at the elite, bilingual Nanyang Primary School in Singapore, Happy is in the minority, her Dakota Fanning hair shimmering in a sea of darker heads. This is what her parents have traveled halfway around the world for. While her American peers are feasting on the idiocies fed to them by junk TV and summer movies, Happy is navigating her friendships and doing her homework entirely in Mandarin.

Asians Underrepresented in Senior Ranks, Study Says

Despite relatively high salaries and an outsized share of Ivy League degrees, Asian-Americans are underrepresented in executive suites, according to a study released Monday.

One-quarter of Asian respondents said they face workplace discrimination, while only 4% of Caucasians believe Asians are treated unfairly on the job. According to the report, Asian-American workers are also more likely than other minority workers to work less or consider quitting because of bias."In Asia, there's a saying that the loudest duck gets shot; in America it's: the squeaky wheel gets the grease," said Ms. Hyun. "These things are totally different and at odds with each other."

Ironically, the relative success of Asian workers may be exacerbating the problem. To date, few companies have had career development programs for Asian employees, because they are seen as a "model minority," according to the report.

Ripa Rashid, a coauthor of the report, said that the survey reveals something that she hears often from workers and managers: Asian-American employees are culturally uncomfortable with the type of swagger and self-promotion that often spells success in U.S. firms.

The study also showed that Asian employees may be less comfortable sharing their personal lives with coworkers and less likely to enlist more senior coworkers as mentors or sponsors.

"They just put their heads down and work and believe that's all it takes to get to the top," Ms. Rashid said.

Tiger Mothers or Elephant Mothers? by Peter Singer

Tiger mothering might seem to be a useful counterbalance to such permissiveness, but both extremes leave something out. Chua’s focus is unrelentingly on solitary activities in the home, with no encouragement of group activities, or of concern for others, either in school or in the wider community. Thus, she appears to view school plays as a waste of time that could be better spent studying or practicing music.

But to take part in a school play is to contribute to a community good. If talented children stay away, the quality of the production will suffer, to the detriment of the others who take part (and of the audience that will watch it). And all children whose parents bar them from such activities miss the opportunity to develop social skills that are just as important and rewarding – and just as demanding to master – as those that monopolize Chua’s attention.

We should aim for our children to be good people, and to live ethical lives that manifest concern for others as well as for themselves. This approach to child-rearing is not unrelated to happiness: there is abundant evidence that those who are generous and kind are more content with their lives than those who are not. But it is also an important goal in its own right.

RIP Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

2011-07-24T10:06:00.000+10:00

British singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London home from causes yet unknown. She was 27.

Winehouse's dysfunctional personal life and troubles with substance abuse were legendary and had become something of a running pop-cultural joke. But that aside, let's focus on her music. She only released two albums, but each made a significant impact. Frank (2003) was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, while Back to Black (2006) was a multi-platinum-selling number 1 hit around the world. The two albums when taken together show the breadth of Winehouse's singing and songwriting ability. Frank is a jazz album with soul and hip-hop inflections, while Back to Black is strongly influenced by 60s girl-group soul.

Winehouse deserves a lot of credit for re-introducing retro-soul to the mainstream; it was a style bubbling around in the early 00s waiting for a larger audience, until Back to Black put the genre back in the top 10. The key was Winehouse's use of Mark Ronson and Salam Remi as producers, and NYC's fabulous Dap Kings as her backing band. It is fair to say that the huge success of two other British female singers, Adele and Duffy, owes a lot to Winehouse's breakthrough with Rehab.

One of my all-time favourite dance-and-get-wild tracks is Winehouse's guest appearance on Mark Ronson's Versions album. Valerie is a cover of the Zutons' 2006 hit, which is very different but also awesome in its own right.

But while Winehouse's best-known work was similarly brash and brassy, her slower, tender moments were often even better. Love is a Losing Game, off her second album, is just amazing in it's timeless beauty.

Frank to me is an uneven album stylistically, and Winehouse herself said she was only 80% happy with it. But it has some wonderful songs, particularly this one, Help Yourself. The song title is sadly ironic.

Japanese TV weirdness of the week: Split-walking

2011-07-24T09:36:00.000+10:00

Why not?

The benefits of an Anglo name

2011-07-21T23:57:00.000+10:00

A SUDANESE man who has applied unsuccessfully for more than 1000 jobs has resorted to using a fake Anglo name on his resume in a desperate attempt to get work.
Former refugee Agnok Lueth, 23, who fled war-torn Sudan for Melbourne in 2004, created the resume alias "Daniel McClean" because he believed Australian employers were unwilling to give him a fair go under his real name.
Mr Lueth sent out hundreds of resumes for jobs he was qualified for, but only received callbacks on applications with the fake names.
Of the six applications with the fake name, he got five callbacks.
The Swinburne University biomedicine and commerce double degree student can speak three languages, has a favourable work history and volunteered for three years for an Australian aid organisation.
Despite meeting the job criteria for positions as a waiter, shop assistant, call centre worker and bank teller, Mr Lueth told mX he felt overlooked by employers.
"I did a test to see if it was an experience problem or something more," he said.
"I sent six resumes with my qualifications but used a different name, and I was surprised at how quickly I heard back from five of the companies for interview requests."
(Read more...)

Perhaps there is more to this story, but taken at face value it is troubling yet not surprising. Recent studies in Australia, the US and Canada showed that having an Anglo-sounding name is a massive advantage in the job hunt. You can read about that in my previous post here.
New migrants are usually going to have some obstacles in a job interview, simply due to challenges of communication and culture which may result in a slight disadvantage compared to locally-raised folks. But from the looks of things, even getting a job interview is challenge enough.

A nice turn of phrase from Chinese Arsenal fans

2011-07-20T20:30:00.000+10:00

North London football side Arsenal are touring China this week, and played a 1-1 draw with Hangzhou Greentown. A backdrop to the match is the long-running transfer saga in which superclub Barcelona are trying to sign Arsenal's star playmaker and captain Cesc Fabregas, yet are going about it in a devious fashion. They keep offering far less money than he is worth, while constantly making overtures to him in the media aimed at unsettling Cesc and having him force the issue with his club.
So I couldn't help but laugh at this banner created by some of Arsenal's Chinese fans, which sums up the thoughts of Arsenal fans everywhere with some slightly odd English which makes just that much cooler.
Courtesy of Arseblog.

Ugly Americans on social media, again

2011-07-20T16:06:00.001+10:00

This week, Japan defeated the US in the Women's Football World Cup on penalties after a thrilling comeback. You can watch the highlights here.

Anyway, certain US soccer fans were not particularly happy about this result. And since social media sites exist for seemingly no other purpose than to help douchebags express their every douchey thought to the world, these fans happily demonstrated that uniquely American trait of assuming the US has a God-given entitlement to do whatever it wants and be better than everyone at everything ever.

Remember, this is over a game of soccer.

These were taken from Buzzfeed, where there are plenty more.

See also here and here.

The problem with "Angry Boys"

2011-07-20T00:59:00.000+10:00

Chris Lilley's comedy Summer Heights High was one of the great recent successes of Australian television, dominating the ratings in 2007 and introducing a number of terms into the popular lexicon ("ranga" being the most obvious). Australia has not had a stellar record for producing sitcoms, but SHH was one of our best; smart, edgy and hilarious. Lilley, who created the series and played the 3 main roles, was widely lauded as a comic genius.

Angry Boys is Lilley's much-awaited comeback, but its initially high ratings have plummeted. While some viewers and critics still love it, the general consensus is that it's just not funny. SHH had 3 brilliantly-drawn characters that could have carried an entire series on their own; the 6 characters Lilley plays in Angry Boys are barely interesting enough to carry an episode. His mockumentary-style has always walked a fine line; like The Office, which is the modern benchmark for this kind of comedy, Lilley's characters are often quite unpleasant and prone to inappropriate and cringeworthy moments. Yet in his first two series (SHH and We Can Be Heroes), the writing was clever enough to balance those aspects, and the characters had enough depth to make them interesting. Angry Boys amps up the foul language and "edginess", but forgets that SHH was popular primarily because it was funny.

But the series has drawn criticism for other reasons, too: it has been described as homophobic and racist.

The homophobia accusation is fairly unfounded, to my mind. Yes, the word "fag" is thrown around seemingly hundreds of time during the series, but since Lilley is trying to capture the world of the uncouth teenage boy, it's hard to avoid such a term. And while there is plenty of homophobic language, it would be a stretch to describe the series itself as being at all homophobic.

The racial aspect is a bit more troubling.

I have real problems with the two non-white characters being played by Lilley: S.Mouse and Jen Okazaki. It's not the first time Lilley has played ethnic characters, with SHH featuring Tongan school bully Jonah Takalua and WCBH featuring Chinese scientist and aspiring actor Ricky Wong. I thought Jonah was a brilliant character; having worked with many Polynesian kids in the school system I've seen plenty of kids like Jonah and it really worked for me, particularly as Lilley nailed the accent and mannerisms required for such a character. Ricky Wong was not quite as interesting a character, but worked for the most part. Both were quite easy stereotypes - Asian nerd and Pacific Islander dumb tough guy - but Lilley was able to pull off the performances, primarily because they were funny, but also because he got the nuances correct, mostly.

By contrast, his performances as S.Mouse and Jen Okazaki just seem lazy. In a recent interview with Voyeur magazine, Lilley says:
"I never sat down with a Japanese lady and studied her hand movements or anything... the performance side of it and the language is much more instinctive."
And perhaps therein lies the problem. Maybe Lilley has been around enough young Pacific Islander and Asian kids to sufficiently absorb their mannerisms and accents, so that he can "instinctively" conjure the Ricky and Jonah characters. But in playing an African-American rapper and a Japanese mother, he is in unfamiliar territory and it shows.
Jen Okazaki only seems Japanese if you've never met a Japanese person. Lilley summons up the same generic Asian accent that was passable for Ricky Wong but is just wrong here. The assumption that Chinese and Japanese people speak exactly the same is kinda ignorant.

S.Mouse is even worse. Adopting blackface is a risky move, and is bound to draw displeasure from some people. I personally would be okay with it if Lilley put the effort in to creating a decent character. But he can't do a convincing black American accent, so settles for an unconvincing white American accent instead. Lilley seems to think impersonating a black American is as simple as saying "motherfucka" and "nigga" a lot.

The Vine magazine ran a story last week in which they showed some American hip-hoppers the segments involving S.Mouse, the black American rapper played by Lilley. Their comments were less than complimentary.

Given that the "Aussie" characters in Angry Boys are quite well-rounded and are depicted with enough pathos that they almost seem like real people, it seems strange that Lilley's two ethnic characters are so ridiculous and lazily drawn. And one obvious question for me is: why does S*Mouse have to be black? Lilley clearly can't pull off a black American character, but a white American rapper, or even a white Australian rapper, would be more within his capabilities. And given that S.Mouse is a stereotypical "fake rapper", a rich kid trying to act like he's from the streets, a white S.Mouse would actually work well for such a theme.

Is Angry Boys a racist program? I wouldn't say that, but I would say that when it comes to the issue of race, it is a dumb program. Interestingly, the series (like SHH before it) probably shows non-white faces more than any other series on Australian TV. But while there are many of us who are crying out for more representation in the media, Angry Boys doesn't portray minorities in a particularly enlightened manner. Sure, most of its characters are somewhat unpleasant, but there's just something that makes me uneasy about the way non-white characters are portrayed here.
The inmates at the juvenile facility where Gran works are virtually all Aboriginal, African or Pacific Islander, and the one who receives the most attention is an Aboriginal boy whose crime was masturbating a dog. Then there's S.Mouse, of course, whereas Lilley admits that with Jen Okazaki he aimed to create "the meanest, most awful character I've ever done." The obsession with her son Tim's sexuality - and the implication that pretending that he is gay is a lucrative marketing strategy in Japan - is uncomfortable when you consider the emasculated way Asian males are portrayed over and over again in the West.

But for all that, Lilley would still get away with it if Angry Boys was only funny. But he has clearly mistaken "edgy" for "funny", and this pursuit of edginess informs his clumsy portrayals of non-white people.

Some Engrish from Shanghai

2011-07-14T15:51:00.000+10:00

My friend Raffi Koshayan travels to Asia a lot and has a good eye for spotting odd translations into English. These are from his favourite Manchurian restaurant in Shanghai.

With some of these, you can probably work out what they intended to mean. With others, it's a complete mystery... so if any of you out there read Chinese, you might be able to explain to the rest of us what the hell they actually are intending to say.

I also invite you to contribute your own captions for each.

1.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Bersih 2.0: the Malaysian government shows its true colours

2011-07-12T02:37:00.000+10:00

Malaysia again has reminded us that one of Southeast Asia's most advanced nations is still mired in authoritarian government mentality.

This weekend, the Bersih (clean) movement gathered in central Kuala Lumpur to call for electoral reforms, with as many as 50,000 ordinary Malaysians taking part. The response from the police was swift, turning hoses and then tear gas on the protesters.

I implore you to watch the video below; it's 12 minutes long but captures the drama of the events unfolding, and captures the raw reality of how the Malaysian police operate, at the behest of the ruling party UMNO.

It has been widely reported that the man seen around the 9-minute mark, convulsing on the ground while handcuffed as police stand around indifferently, is Baharuddin Ahmad, who passed away shortly after. However Bersih's website seems to indicate that this is mistaken identity.

Here are some accounts of the events. First, the Wall Street Journal:

Based on the evidence of this weekend's rally in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysians aspire for a more competitive political system than what they have. Also based on this weekend's evidence, Prime Minister Najib Razak isn't prepared to give it to them.
An estimated 20,000 or more people peacefully gathered in Kuala Lumpur Saturday to call for free and fair elections. Their complaints included vote-rigging and gerrymandering of constituencies to the ruling party's benefit. Bersih 2.0, as the rally was called, was the biggest event of its kind in four years. The original Bersih (the word means "clean" in Malay) called for electoral reforms in 2007.
As with the original rally, this one was met not by understanding from the government but by police deploying tear gas and water cannons. More than 1,600 attendees were detained and released late Sunday. One demonstrator died from a heart attack.
The crackdown was little surprise given the government's actions before the rally. Over the past two weeks, the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) tried its best to intimidate the organizers. More than 200 activists and opposition members were detained, some on charges of "waging war" against Malaysia's constitutional monarch. The police arrested those wearing T-shirts affiliated with Bersih. The army publicly conducted crowd-control exercises.
The situation was on the boil until the king intervened, asking both sides to settle differences. Mr. Najib offered a stadium to host the rally but then backed off. Last Thursday, he appeared with a group of martial artists who vowed to "wage war" against Bersih, saying: "If there are evil enemies who want to attack the country from within, you, my brothers, will rise to fight them." His scare tactics backfired as thousands of protesters, further angered, arrived from across the country.
Saturday's rally has united and energized the political opposition. So the government is now downplaying the entire event and even blaming Bersih for creating chaos. The police claim only 6,000 protesters showed up. Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein complimented police efforts to keep control despite "being challenged and provoked." He said the protesters sought "to be arrested in order to portray the government as cruel."
If the government is going to respond like this—intimidation followed by denial—a Bersih 3.0 could eventually materialize, though organizers have ruled it out anytime soon. Underlying this weekend's events is growing public impatience with UMNO as Malaysians find rising inflation, coupled with slow reforms, eating into their standard of living. Saturday's turnout is a sign that Malaysians also understand the link between true democracy and good government.
On Sunday, Mr. Najib called on the "silent majority" of Malaysians, who he claims opposed Bersih, to speak up. If he continues to create an environment of fear and repression, he may find this silent majority speaking up soon, but against him.

Now, this from Bernama, the state-run newspaper which is little more than a mouthpiece for the government:

The rally organised by 62 non governmental organizations, including the Bar Council, who are claiming themselves to be a civilized society and demanding reforms for a clean and just election, was nothing more than a ploy by the opposition.
Because, based on the two slogans adopted by the opposition parties - 'reformasi' (reformation) and 'Allahhu Akbar' (Allah the Almighty) - lauded by the demonstrators during the rally, it was clearly evident that the demonstrators were their supporters and the presence of the opposition leaders is further testimony.
...
Are they oblivious of what happened today? -- traffic congestion due to police inspection (police roadblocks), business premises forced to close, disruption in daily activities in the city, loses amounting to millions, social functions like weddings disrupted.
The illegal rally also saw hundreds of demonstrators who failed to heed warnings from the police being detained, including opposition leaders.
What happened today prompted Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim to refer the illegal assembly as an attempt to tarnish the image of the government led by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.
Dr Rais was reported as saying that the opposition were alarmed by Najib's numerous successes achieved through the implementation of the 1Malaysia concept and economic transformation.
Their claims for reform and a clean and just election in reality does not make sense because the reality is that the opposition had won five states and 82 of the 222 Parliamentary seats whilst Barisan Nasional (BN) lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament during the March 2008 general election. (Full article)

The best part is where the article claims that yelling "reform" or "Allahu Akbar" is a sign of being an opposition supporter. Not to mention the inherent implication that being an opposition supporter is akin to being a traitor.

Now from someone on the ground. This comes from a friend of mine, JJ, who was in the midst of the demonstration when the police fired tear gas into a hospital compound after protesters had sought refuge in there. I should add that JJ is far from being a rabble-rousing activist; he is a pretty conservative dude who works as a market analyst. He's the kind of ordinary Malaysian who made up the Bersih crowd, regular folk who have had enough of being governed by crooks and gangsters.

1. I've never seen Malaysia more united in a singular cause. All the races came together to march even in the pouring rain. Really amazing stuff. I've never felt more patriotic and proud to be Malaysian.

2. The demonstration was peaceful, respectful, organized and clean. No smashed windows, burning cars, looting, vandalism etc etc which the government portentously warned may happen. If anyone was violent, it was the police - launching teargas canisters without warning, directly at opposition leaders instead of in the air.

3. The crowd was massive. Not the 6,000 the IGP so naively and defensively claimed. Come on, if they arrested around 1,500 people (another stat from the cops), does that mean they brought in a quarter of the rally's members? What rubbish. What I could see when we congregated at the crossroads of Jalan Yap Kwan Seng and Jalan Ampang (between Public Bank HQ and KLCC) was the entire length (as far as the eye could see anyway) of Jalan Ampang crammed with people. And this doesn't include the other group which gathered at Petaling Street after the police fired water cannons in the Pudu intersection - effectively cutting the crowd into 2. I was forced into the Pudu crowd and my brother into the Petaling Street one.

4. I'm not entirely sure what time the Tung Shin hospital incident occurred. But i remember it started about 45mins to an hour after the rain started. We got word that the FRU were advancing down Jln Pudu towards Jln Bukit Bintang. Because we didn't want to clash with the UMNO Youth Patriots there, we took a perpendicular road along Jln Pudu which led up to an abandoned piece of land. At the end of this area was a small steep incline leading up to Tung Shin Hospital which was separated from us by a wire fence. To avoid being cornered by the police, the demonstrators started climbing up the cliff and lifted up the bottom of the wire fence to let everyone into the hospital compound.
Most of us managed to get into the hospital and took shelter from the rain under the awnings round the back. Some of us went to the carpark overlooking Jalan Pudu to see what was going on. We saw FRU members marching up the street. They proceeded to fire at least 4 tear gas canisters into the hospital compound. One landed about 10 feet from me. To escape the gas, we all entered the back entrance of the hospital building. The crowd should be commended for being civilized, quiet and respectful throughout our temporary huddle in the lobby.
It was unfortunate that the hospital staff refused entry to some demonstrators pleading to be allowed in from the front entrance. However I heard that after I left some 10 minutes later, they relented. I was only in Tung Shin for half an hour before escaping through the back fence in case the FRU decided to storm the hospital.

I'll leave the last words for Malaysia's super-oily Prime Minister, Najib Razak:

The Birth of a Nation

2011-07-10T22:22:00.000+10:00

On July 9th, South Sudan officially became the world's 193rd sovereign nation.
It is an understandably joyous occasion for a region that has rebelled against the oppressive government of Sudan, and endured a bloody civil war in which an estimated 2 million people have been killed and 4 million displaced.
There is some cause for optimism for the long-term future of South Sudan as it is rich in oil, and has agricultural land that has led some to predict it will become the breadbasket of East Africa.
But for the time being, the new nation remains mired in dire conditions, after decades of neglect by their former rulers. Illiteracy is around 85%, and 90% of its 8 million citizens live on less than US$1 a day. North Sudan still claims some oil-rich territory along the border, which remains a cause of dispute. Infrastructure is woefully underdeveloped. And the country is home to 200 different ethnic groups who will have to learn to get along in this new political environment.
But long-awaited stability in South Sudan will hopefully mean greater stability in the nations that border it, and an easing of the massive refugee crisis caused by the war.

Translating Australian comedy to the US

2011-07-09T00:46:00.000+10:00

Wilfred has proved a surprise hit in the States, premiering to an audience of 3.8 million viewers last week. The show, about the friendship between suicidal loser Ryan (Elijah Wood) and a dog named Wilfred (played by Jason Gann in a dog suit) garnered the highest premiere rating ever for a program on the FX network.
It's surprising for a number of reasons; there is a dark streak to Wilfred that would seem to sit uncomfortably with American audiences' tastes in humour, while the show's whole premise is too left-field for many viewers to quite grasp. And even in its original format in Australia (where it ran for two seasons in 2007 and 2010, winning three AFI Awards in the process) it was hardly what you could call a smash hit. I think I'm the only person I know who watched it regularly, and most people barely seem to have heard of it.

So is the US version actually any good?

Well, yes, although I still think the Australian version is better. Despite it's deliberate edginess, in many ways the US version pans out like a typical odd-couple bromance; Wilfred may be coarse and seedy, but he "completes" Ryan and pushes him out of his comfort zone to be a better person (although its not quite as cheesy as that sounds). The original Australian Wilfred had a far more sinister character; aside from his undying loyalty to his owner Sarah, he was manipulative, cruel and entirely self-centred. The American producers obviously found this too dark and have tried to make it a bit more like the film I Love You, Man, with Wilfred as the Owen Wilson character.

That said, it's nice to see some better production values (the Australian version was as unglamorous as you can get), and nice to see that the concept originally birthed by Gann and Adam Zwar has found the appreciative audience it deserves. Keeping Gann as the titular character makes a huge difference; it is one of those cases where the lead actor is the show. As an example, while Steve Carrell does a creditable job in the US version of The Office, he is barely a patch on the toure de force that is Ricky Gervais in the original.

The relative success of Wilfred sits in marked contrast to the last Australian comedy that was adapted for US screens.

Kath and Kim was a huge hit in Australia. Not what would be termed sophisticated humour, but what it did, it did well. The US version was utter garbage and was thankfully put out of its misery after 1 season. Aside from it being completely unfunny, the problem was that the producers seemed to completely miss the point of what made it work.

The key theme of Kath and Kim - the contrast between one's real and imagined class - is emphasised by the Australian series' low production values, and a cast whose lack of physical attractiveness is played up by "bogan" accents, and deliberately bad hair and fashion. Yet the US version has a good-looking cast and a glossy set, and the social class aspect is downplayed. The original Kim character is dumpy and style-deficient yet is convinced of her own hotness (emphasised by co-creator Gina Riley being considerably older than the character). But Selma Blair as the American Kim actually is hot.

Kath & Kim Episode 10 - News by JumpinJollyHolly

It's hard to imagine a translation of Kath and Kim to the US ever being truly successful, but it's harder still to imagine how they could ever get it quite this bad.

Peaceful Indonesians

2011-07-08T00:12:00.001+10:00

Reader Fred Rice pointed me to this clip seen at Japan Probe the other week.

"A Japanese TV show found an international survey that ranked countries where people were least likely to become angry. Indonesia was ranked #1. To test this claim, they sent comedian Udo Suzuki to Bali, where he acted like a jerk and tried to provoke the anger of Indonesian people.
Just to test his anger-inducing abilities, he first tried sneaking up behind a white woman and popping a balloon next to her head. Sure enough, she got visibly angry and left the area.
He then targeted Indonesians. First, he did a couple surprise balloon pops. Next, he randomly poured water on somebody. He cut in line at a grocery store. Then he put super spicy hot sauce into an ice desert.
One guy seemed very uncomfortable after eating the hot sauce, but nobody became visibly pissed off. Nobody yelled at him. Nobody stormed away in anger. Suzuki’s antics provoked no rage.
According to post-prank interviews, Indonesian parents teach their children not to get angry over small matters and not to fight with other people. A lot of Indonesian people don’t think it would be worth getting worked up over a little prank."

try to make them angry by cicacocadou3

Now obviously that show is pretty staged and proves little or nothing. And obviously I'm biased being part-Indonesian myself, but as far as I'm concerned, the study is pretty accurate. It may be a huge and culturally diverse country, but as a general rule, Indonesians are a very easy-going people. Of all the countries I've been to around Asia, only the Thai people seem to match Indonesians in the polite and friendly stakes.

Or alternatively, you could take a completely different view.

This is of course the same country which has suffered several internal terrorist attacks in the last decade. It's the same country in which up to 1 million people were murdered in anti-communist pogroms during the civil unrest of 1965-66, with the killing often carried out by civilians. It's the same country guilty of bloody repressions in West Papua, Aceh and its former province East Timor. It's the same country that in the last 15 years has witnessed sectarian conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Sulawesi and Ambon, mass beheadings of Madurese transmigrants by Dayak tribesmen in Kalimantan, and mass gang-rapes of ethnic Chinese women and looting of Chinese shops in the 1998 unrest. Indonesia is frequently lauded for practising a moderate, secular and tolerant form of Islam; yet Muslim militancy has been on the rise in various forms with groups like the Islamic Defenders Front, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the terrorist Jemaah Islamiyah. It is notable that one of the few words to have entered the English language from Indonesian/Malay is amok, meaning to suddenly snap and start attacking people indiscriminantly. It's a very Indonesian phenomenon.

In other words, it looks like an extremely violent and aggressive place. So which is the real Indonesia?

"Pub sorry for evicting patron with turban"

2011-07-05T16:28:00.000+10:00

A Brisbane hotel that evicted a patron for wearing a turban is trying to find him so it can apologise. Spirit Hotels, which is a Coles subsidiary, has confirmed to AAP one of its staff members at the Royal English Hotel at Nundah in Brisbane's north on Sunday asked a man to remove his turban under its "no headwear" policy. After the Sikh man refused, he was evicted.
A spokesman for Spirit Hotels said the decision to ask him to remove his turban was an oversight. "Our hotels have a policy where patrons may be asked to remove headwear to help the venue manage security for staff and patrons," the spokesman said. "However, in this particular incident, the patron should not have been asked to remove his turban, and we are attempting to contact the patron to apologise. Hotel staff are being educated again on correct application of the policy."
Queensland Hotels Association chief executive Justin O'Connor said hotels had the right to set dress standards and refuse entry or service to anyone who did not comply with their code or breached laws on the responsible service of alcohol.
"As long as it's not in breach of the anti-discrimination act then they can set a dress code," Mr O'Connor told AAP.
(Full story)

Nice that this seems to working itself out, but it's odd that this sort of thing is still happening. In a fairly multicultural city like Brisbane, has no one told the staff at the Royal English Hotel that a turban is not just another hat? You'd have to question why the matter is of such importance that it warranted such a drastic step as evicting the man. Was he somehow wielding the turban as a deadly weapon? Was the headgear such a crime against sartorial aesthetics that it was hurting the other patrons? Common sense would say no. You could certainly make reasonable arguments against certain religious paraphenalia, such as the burqa, niqab or the kirpan (Sikh ceremonial dagger). But wearing a turban or yarmulke would not seem to count as a security or safety risk to anyone.

Although as many of the comments attached to this news site indicate, common sense is not all that common.

"he dont deserve an apology this is australia respect out rules and adopt our coulture dont come here and make your own rules"

"HERE is the answer - BANANAS!! Monkeys love 'em! Just lay some on the ground leading right into the sea and hopefully they will follow and drown!!"

"fit in or piss off. Sick of muslims and other funny hat wearers, if your god is so great kill yourselves and go be with him"

But putting aside the rights of the discriminated Sikh man for a second, let's not forget another minority group whose rights are being trampled upon: the security and door staff and pubs and bars. Is political correctness and multiculturalism trampling on their inalienable right to be assholes to anyone who dares to try enter their venue without being sufficiently cool?
On second thought, I'm sure they'll be okay. As long as they are properly trained to not make an issue of turbans, they can still fall back on usual repertoire: "Sorry, members only tonight," or the classic "Not with those shoes, mate."

The racial politics of imitating someone's accent

2011-07-04T00:40:00.001+10:00

FOX News reported - or concocted - a controversy last week when it accused Jon Stewart of racism for imitating Herman Cain, a black Republican presidential candidate.

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Now I'm obviously a fan of Stewart and The Daily Show, so perhaps I'm biased here. But it's hard to see the racism in the segment about Cain. As Stewart points out, he routinely imitates the accents of all kinds of people, and it never previously caused an uproar at FOX. The issue smacks of right-wing resentment that liberals so frequently play the race card, so the Right don't want to miss their chance to play it too.

FOX contributor Bernie Goldberg has this to say.

Let's say a white guy goes on television, puts on an exaggerated "Amos 'n Andy" "black voice" and proceeds to make fun of a black man whose politics the white guy doesn't like. Actually, let's say he goes beyond merely making fun of the black man. Let's say he tries to make the black man sound downright stupid. Does that make the white guy a racist?
The correct answer is ... it depends.
If the white guy is Rush Limbaugh and the black man is Barack Obama, then of course the white guy is a racist - according to liberals.
But if the white guy is Jon Stewart and the black man is Herman Cain, the conservative businessman seeking the Republican nomination for president, well, then, that's another story.
The other night Jon Stewart went on his show, and while he didn't put on blackface makeup and start tap dancing he did put on a "black voice" and proceeded to mock Mr. Cain in a way that would never be tolerated if a conservative had done it.
Yet liberals didn't scream "racist" the way they do when they see a tea party rally or when a conservative so much as looks askance at Barack Obama. Instead, they laughed. They thought it was a regular riot that a genius like Jon Stewart made that conservative black guy sound like a dumb character in a minstrel show.
But why isn't Jon Stewart a bigot, when Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly would be tagged as racists if they had done the very same thing? That's easy. Because Jon Stewart is a liberal and liberals aren't racists. Only conservatives are.

Now, surprisingly I actually think there's a lot of truth in what Goldberg says regarding the liberal-Left being way too quick on the trigger to cry racism. It is an annoying tendency of the Left which is often counter-productive in a "boy who cried wolf" kind of way. When someone somewhere is ready to accuse someone of racism over something that is only racist at a real stretch, then it allows the Right to decry political correctness yet again. Then when someone does actually say something racist, the Right find it easier to rebuff criticism by claiming to be victims of PC hegemony.

But Goldberg displays another classic trait of the American Right, which is to be completely ignorant of context when deciding what's racist or not. When he claims "Jon Stewart made that conservative black guy sound like a dumb character in a minstrel show"... did Stewart really do that? Did Stewart really put on "an exaggerated Amos 'n Andy 'black voice'", or did he imitate the way Cain speaks reasonably accurately? Does Herman Cain speak with an exaggerated Amos 'n Andy "black voice"? Where he says "Let's say he tries to make the black man sound downright stupid"... could it not be that Stewart tries to make politicians sound downright stupid every night on his show, and this one just happened to be black. So while Goldberg's broader point is a fair one, he has chosen a dumb example for his example of "liberals making racist comments".

Goldberg is not really saying that Stewart is racist, only that conservatives should cry racism about it in the way that liberals cry racism when Rush Limbaugh and his ilk make comments disrespectful of blacks and other minorities. Of course, in a racism-crying competition, conservatives would be blown out of the water, and it's not just because liberals are so much better and more practised at it. Primarily it's because most black people probably wouldn't find Stewart's dig at Cain to be racist; yet they'd more likely take greater umbrage at the comments of right-wingers like Limbaugh, Malkin and Hannity. Because Limbaugh, Malkin and Hannity are, if not racists, at least doing a good job of sounding racist from time to time. So if conservatives want to make out that they are less racist than liberals, surely the first step would be to, you know, stop conservatives from saying racist things.

Here's another conservative, James Hirsen, commenting on "liberal racial hypocrisy" who shows that knack for missing the point of jokes, not once but twice.

After showing the footage, the Comedy Central star displayed a billboard that read: “Herman Cain 2012 — I Don’t Like to Read.”
The racist threads woven into this comedic sketch are that the black man has difficulty reading and lacks intelligence. Neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton saw fit to call a press conference.

See, no. The "I Don't Like to Read" thing comes straight from Cain's statements of not wanting to read long bills. It's nothing to do with the idea that black people lack intelligence - that exists only in the mind of some viewing who would already think that. The implication of what Hirsen is saying is that no one can ever mock anything an individual black person says as being stupid without it being a de facto attack on the intelligence of black people as a whole. To be fair, had a right-winger made a similar comment, I'm sure liberals would probably use the same faulty logic to accuse him of racism too. Hirsen continues:

Bill Maher also used Cain as comedy fodder for the “New Rules” segment of his HBO show. While giving mock advice to GOP candidate Newt Gingrich, Maher said, “Let me put your unpopularity in context for you — you're a Republican and you're polling behind a black guy.”
The not-so-coded racism in Maher’s skit is that Republicans are hated, but if the Republican individual is also black, he or she deserves even more scorn because of his or her skin color.

.. and again, totally misses the joke. What Maher seems to be implying is that Republican voters don't like black people, and thus for Gingrich to be less popular than a black candidate (Cain) with Republicans must be a grave indictment.

So, to one of the main issues of this whole business: Is it racist to imitate the accent of someone of a different nationality or ethnicity?

My answer: Hell no. Or at least, not necessarily. Depends how you do it.

I tend to think that if you can pull off the accent of a particular person or ethnicity properly, it's probably OK. If instead you resort to a dumb, uber-stereotypical accent, then you're starting to tread on more dangerous ground. Stewart gets away with his "Amos 'n Andy" "black voice" because Herman Cain actually sounds like that. On the other hand, when you hear people mocking accents in the most stupid and disrespectful ways - like Rush Limbaugh has done in the past - it's much more likely to be racist.

It's all about context, but unfortunately context is one of those things that a lot of stupid people don't really understand.

Awesome Asian dude of the week

2011-06-28T00:16:00.002+10:00

Heineken's "The Date" ad

2011-06-24T00:16:00.000+10:00

Ok, so check this new ad from Heineken. It's called "The Date" and it's pretty cool. But there was something in it that sorta piqued my interest.

Yes, it's the white guy/ Asian girl pairing.

Now, before some of you start to get your back up, let me say something first up. There are some Asian guys out there who have a degree of hostility to that kind of relationship, and who would dismiss the guy as a rice chaser and the girl as having some kind of self-loathing. I'm not really one of those people. I'm a product of such a relationship, for a start, and I'm in a inter-ethnic relationship of my own (she's Indian).

I like to see Asians get some representation on the screen. But the problem is that it's primarily Asian women, and when those Asian women get some lovin', it is almost always with a white guy. Of course, white guy/ Asian girl couples are commonplace in real life, so it's expected that you'd see them a bit on screen. Yet the clear majority of Asian women in Western countries choose to date or marry Asian guys, and portrayals of Asian-Asian couples are surprisingly rare. Perhaps there is a limited amount of Asian-ness producers think their audiences can handle, and two Asians in a relationship is one too many.

And a white woman with an Asian guy? According to TV and film, such a thing may as well not exist. (Note to pedants: there are exceptions to this, I know, but I'm talking overall.)

So while the frequent portrayal of white guy/ Asian girl couples does to some extent reflect reality, bear in mind that popular culture doesn't just reflect reality, it shapes it. And the portrayal of Asian men in popular culture tends to vary between poor and non-existent. When the highest profile Asian male actor in the West is Ken Jeong, best known for exposing his very underwhelming penis in The Hangover, you know that things aren't that healthy.

So as you watch the dashing white dude in the above video, sweeping the hot Asian girl off her feet in an Asian restaurant (aka "her natural environment"), ask yourself this. Why did it have to be that particular racial combination?

In isolation, it's just a couple, and their racial combination is no more significant than any other racial combination. If you look at it as part of an overall trend, then it might start to bother you a little.

Why women are the cause of all the world’s problems – Malay edition

2011-06-16T20:37:00.001+10:00

(Cross - posted at Brown Pundits)

There is Islamic misogyny, and non-Islamic misogyny, but the Islamic variety seems far better at convincing otherwise intelligent women to buy into this nonsense.

A Happy Man, A Happy Home

“You just need to open the newspaper or watch the news on TV: there are so many sex-related social problems rape, incest, prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Men will not be committing these crimes if they are sexually satisfied at home, she [Fauziah Ariffin] stresses. “The key to make a man gentle and loving is a first-class loving wife an obedient wife. When the wife is obedient, the husband will be happy and gentle. They will not look elsewhere for the loving they need.”

And like simple economics, cutting off the “demand” for the illegal “sex” will cut the supply. “The authorities have come up with a lot of solutions and conducted various raids or operations to nip these social problems, but they still exist. The solution we are proposing is one that is guaranteed to work, as it is backed by the Quran,” she explains.

Committee member Siti Maznah Mohamed Taufik tries another argument to demonstrate how a sexually frustrated man can cause violence in society.

“Just yesterday, there was a story about a man who hit his wife with a lesung (pounding stone) because she refused to have lunch with him. Do you believe that? It does not make sense. Just because of lunch, a man would hit his wife until she is hospitalised? I’m sure it is because she did not give him any the night before. That’s why he was furious with her.”

I wonder if it occurs to them that perhaps the reason this wife didn’t want to have lunch or sex with her husband is because he is the type of asshole who likes to hit women with pounding stones.

There are plenty more facepalm moments in the full article. A common thread in these kinds of worldviews is their extremely low expectations of men, who apparently can’t stop themselves from raping en masse unless they get a regular diet of sex at home. So it’s heartening that a Facebook group that has sprung up to denounce the "Obedient Wives Club" was started by a Malaysian male, 22 year-old Matthew Tard Ong.

I personally don’t think this is a mainstream view among Malay women – this group appears to have some extremist associations. But how widespread is this? And is it a Muslim thing, a Malay thing, a Malaysian thing, or a human thing?

Learn to cook Malaysian food... from Rick Stein and Gordon Ramsay? Um...

2011-06-12T17:46:00.001+10:00

I caught a bit of Australian Masterchef this week, in which two contestants won a trip to Malaysia to receive a cooking lesson and introduction to Malaysian food from British celebrity chef Rick Stein.

So what's wrong with that picture?

Rick Stein, of course. No disrespect to the guy, I don't mind his shows, and he has actually championed Malaysian cuisine in Britain in the last couple of years. But it's rather odd that Masterchef would send contestants to Malaysia - where there are presumably a large number of Malaysian chefs - and then present as the Malaysian culinary expert a fellow from England, who only really discovered the cuisine around 2009 as part of his Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey series.

So how did Rick do? Well, he made a serviceable curry laksa, but did several things that were not authentic. Which is not a crime, but if you are going to be shown "the flavours of Malaysia" by an "expert", surely you'd want to experience proper Malaysian food and recipes, right?

No, because Masterchef repeats a well-worn idea in mainstream television that Western audiences can only understand Asian food through a Western interpreter.

Malaysian cuisine seems all the rage in UK celebrity chef circles now, as evidenced by Gordon Ramsay also doing a show in Malaysia. He spends a week observing various aunties making food, and by the end of it is presented as having mastered the cuisine, as he comes second in a nasi lemak-making competition despite apparently not knowing how to use a rice cooker. All that in only one week, Gordon? My, aren't you smart.

Perhaps Gordon is taking his inspiration from Sam Worthington's character in Avatar. White dude parachutes into a foreign land, is bamboozled by their exotic ways, yet in no time manages to beat the natives at their own game. Flirting with their women all the way. You win again, Mighty White Man.
You can watch Ramsay in Malaysia below.

Gordon Ramsay in Malaysia from Joseph Teo on Vimeo.

Random eccentric old Greek guy for the win

2011-06-12T17:45:00.002+10:00

Awesome photo of the week

2011-06-11T16:32:00.000+10:00

Question: WTF?!?!?

Answer: It's a training drill at Chengdu zoo, for the eventuality that tigers escape and need to be tranquilized.

(Source)

Penny Wong, taking no sh*t

2011-06-09T00:43:00.001+10:00

I did hear about this on local news when it happened, but I've been surprised at how this story has travelled, with various American and British news sites and blogs picking up on it as well. And I understand why; I could watch this all day. I'm not particularly enamoured of anyone in Australia's governing party right now, but I got to give Penny Wong props for how she handles the Coalition's David Bushby's demeaningly sexist "meow" during a session of the Senate. The segment between 0:10 and 0:15 is priceless; Wong reacts without missing a beat, and her icy stare speaks volumes. And I like that as the only Asian woman in Australian parliament (Wong was born in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia), she shows that she is nothing like the fragile demure stereotype that Asian women are often saddled with.

Fun with Wingnuts

2011-06-07T20:27:00.001+10:00

People who read blogs sometimes argue in those blogs' comment sections, but not everyone knows how to argue in a manner befitting civilized mammals.

Here is an exchange I had today with someone named "Anonymous", reproduced in its glorious entirety. It took place over at Field Negro, which is a pretty good blog but for some reason attracts an alarming number of douchebag commenters.

Eurasian Sensation said...
If Palin somehow becomes President, the USA will be regarded as a worldwide joke. Everyone - seriously, EVERYONE - outside the USA regards her as an ignorant moron. Sort of like a hotter version of George W Bush. She represents everything people dislike about America.

Anonymous said...
Eurasian:
Let's be honest, American could care less about you, who you are, and I guarantee the country you live in never comes up during our dinner time conversations.
We simply don't care.
But thanks for playing faggot.

Eurasian Sensation said...
Anon:
"Faggot"?
Classy. Anyway, I'll pretend you are some kind of intelligent life, and point out that it is interest of the US to be respected by other countries. If we respect you, we are more likely to conduct trade with you and less likely to plot terrorist attacks against you.

Anonymous said...
Listen Pencil Dicked Faggot,
For centuries we have not cared and our interests have been preserved quite well. You used word "intelligent" are you not aware of terrorist attacks/plots to other countries, some peace loving? Stupid pencil dicked Asian Faggot.
Are you sad you cannot get a green card?

You know what? That guy votes.
That would be bad enough, but he helps vote for the most powerful person in the world.

Question: If I'm the "faggot", why is HE the one who keeps talking about MY genitals?

On a serious note though... I don't actually think Sarah Palin has a chance of becoming President of the USA. But the world still better hope that she doesn't. For all it's faults (and it has many), the US is still one of the good guys. Most of the time. And so it's important for the US to have a leader who doesn't go around pissing off the entire rest of the world. And it's important for the US to have a leader that other nations respect, and don't regard as an ignorant hick.

Summation of Wesley Yang's "Paper Tigers"

2011-06-05T10:33:00.000+10:00

After the whole "Tiger Mom" phenomenon, the other article that has the Asian-American blogosphere talking is called Paper Tigers, by Wesley Yang in New York Magazine. Yang touches on Asian culture and its flow-on affects to Asian-American self-esteem and success. He alludes that Asian values are a key to success yet paradoxically a barrier to the highest levels of success in the corporate world; and thus the "bamboo ceiling" comes less from the white establishment and more from Asians being too deferential. Understandably, there have been some angry reactions to Yang's article, but I think it's certainly a true of some Asians.

Yang's article is here. But if you are like me and are too busy (read: lazy) to stay focused through the whole 11 pages (!), here's a summary of it by The Young Turks. Aside from Ana Kasparian referring to Wesley Yang as "Wesley Tang" within the first 5 seconds, it makes for good viewing.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm": Larry and Leon mix up phones

2011-06-05T10:26:00.001+10:00

Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you haven't got hip to it yet, is a sitcom revolving around Larry David, co-writer of Seinfeld and the insipration for the Seinfeld character, George Costanza. The show comes across as the somewhat less brilliant cousin of Seinfeld. But given that Seinfeld was clearly the best sitcom ever in the history of the universe, that's no disgrace. CYE still has its moments of utter brilliance.

In one of my favourite moments from season 7, Larry accidentally swaps phones with his extremely ghetto houseguest, Leon. Hilarity ensues.

The junk that's on everyone's lips

2011-06-03T22:17:00.000+10:00

I've experienced a marked upsurge in blog traffic recently. While I'd like to think that the world is finally taking notice of my considerable genius, it has much more to do with the vagaries of Google searches.

I once wrote a post entitled The Asian penis in popular culture, which is about how mocking the alleged size of Asian men's genitalia has a tacit acceptance in movies and television. Part of that post contains a reference to actor Ken Jeong, who appears stark naked in both Hangover movies, revealing what could probably be described as a micropenis.

That one page has received 2,357 hits this week alone. Why?

Well, The Hangover 2 has just come out, and it turns out that if you type in "Ken Jeong penis", my blog is the second entry listed. Hooray for me! I've finally achieved my ultimate blogging ambition: to be a haven for people who possibly have a unhealthy obsession with Ken Jeong and his miniscule junk.

So I present to you, in all it's glory... the Ken Jeong-related search terms that have led people to my blog this week.

ken jeong tiny penis
ken jeong's small penis
Ken Jeong Mini penis
is ken jeong dick really that small?
ken jeong tiny dick
ken jeong was naked
ken jeong actual penis size
ken jeong cock
tiny penis ken jeoung
does ken jeong have a penis?
is ken jeong's penis small?
how big is Ken Jeong dick
ken jeong genitalien
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does ken jeong have the world's smallest dick?
is ken jeongs penis really that small?
ken jeong penis podcast
Ken Jeong penis naked
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ken jeong + penis
is ken jeong's penis that small?
why does ken jeong have a small penis?
ken jeong real penis size
does ken jeong really have a small dick?
is ken jeongs penis that small?
Ken Jeong small penis

The other blog post of mine that generates the most traffic is Race, IQ and penis size. So if you're smart and you're a blogger, you'll clearly realise that the way to generate maximum blog hits is to write about penises as much as you can. You could just call your blog "Penis Blog" and in no time you'd become the Bill Gates of blogging.

And for the record: yes, it's real. Apparently that is his tiny little dong.

So on behalf of men of Asian ancestry everywhere, I say: thanks a f*cking bunch, Ken. It's one thing to have the kind of pecker that even small rodents would find inadequate. But did you have to exhibit it quite so much? You are now the poster boy for Asian penises. What about those of us who have regular sized junk? How do you think that makes us look? If, God forbid, The Hangover 3 ever gets released, we may reach the point where no woman will be able to contemplate getting their swerve on with an Asian man without worrying about the possibility that he suffers from a case of Jeong-dong. So keep the damn thing in your pants.

In other whang-related news, the other penis that everyone is talking about is that of New York congressman Anthony Weiner (yeah, I know), who is accused of sending a picture of his robustly bulging underpants to some young woman on Twitter. Weiner claims someone hacked into his account.

The Daily Show is having a lot of fun with this story as you'd expect.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Circumcision 2011 - Between a C*#k and a Hard Place - Weiner Investigation

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The Big Wang Theory

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The Indonesian abbatoir scandal, and pain for the sake of "purity"

2011-06-01T15:54:00.000+10:00

I would love Indonesia to make headlines in Australia for the right reasons, for a change.

CANBERRA - Australia suspended live cattle exports to 11 Indonesian abattoirs on Tuesday and announced a review into the A$320 million (S$421.76 million) trade after graphic footage was broadcast of Australian cattle being inhumanely slaughtered.

"I have decided to halt the trade of live animals to the facilities identified by the footage. I reserve the right to add further facilities to the banned list," Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said in a statement.
"I will appoint an independent reviewer to investigate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter," he said.
Australian national television on Monday aired footage of cattle being beaten, whipped and kicked prior to slaughter in Indonesia, prompting a political outcry in Canberra and Indonesian officials to call for calm to avert a trade row.
"It exposed nothing short of shocking cruelty for Australian livestock," said independent MP Andrew Wilkie, whose backing is vital for Prime Minister Julia Gillard's one-seat government.
Wilkie and independent Senator Nick Xenophon on Tuesday unveiled legislation calling for the immediate ban on live animal exports to Indonesia and a full ban of live animal exports to all nations within three years.
"The pictures we saw last night were horrific, and if it was happening here in Australia, those people would be arrested and prosecuted," Xenophon told a news conference.
More...

The footage, which was covered on ABC's Four Corners program Monday night,can be viewed here. It doesn't make for easy viewing, that's for sure.

A few thoughts:

Indonesians are, generally speaking, a warm and good-natured people, but the concept of animal rights remains a fairly foreign one. This is not to say that Indonesians are any more callous toward animals than most other people in developing countries; but there is certainly a widespread cultural attitude that views animals in purely utilitarian terms. It's quite telling that the Indonesian slaughtermen, knowing full well that they are being caught on video, treat the cattle in incredibly cruel ways and think nothing of it.
It wasn't dwelt upon too long in the story, but one of the key issues here is halal butchery. Modern science has shown that stunning an animal unconscious before administering the lethal cut is by far the most humane way of slaughter. But Muslim countries everywhere have been hesitant to adopt this method, partly for economic reasons, and partly because stunning is not mentioned in the Qur'an. Even in Australia, where stunning has become mandatory in abbatoirs, some have been granted exemptions from this, in order to meet the demand for halal meat. (I'm not sure if this applies to kosher meat as well?) From what I understand, some halal meat production in Australia involves stunning, and some doesn't. Likewise for Indonesia. There needs to be some serious education about this in the industry, and among Muslims, who should really be the ones agitating about this. There is nothing in the Qur'an to my knowledge that forbids stunning, so I'm sure that if made aware, most Muslims would consider that stunning is not only more humane, but also compatible with halal regulations. Does Allah really consider it more religiously pure for animals to suffer much more than they need to? I doubt it.
Unless stunning is made mandatory in Indonesia (which I doubt it will be any time soon, if ever), inhumane practices will continue unabated. The bottom line is money - it is a poor country. As everywhere, those with money are notoriously tight-fisted with it and unlikely to implement costly new technologies unless they are forced to. And even then, widespread corruption will be an impediment, as it always is in Indonesia. Even if Australia can flex its muscles and achieve some kind of victory here, which looks possible, it will probably only affect the livestock that comes from Australia.
Those of you who favour a small-government approach in which industries are left to regulate themselves should consider this documentary as a powerful argument as to why industries shouldn't be left to regulate themselves.
As barbaric as some might consider the treatment of the animals in the documentary to be, bear in mind that this shouldn't be completely foreign or unimaginable to Westerners. Like many things in the developing world, Indonesia is doing what the West was doing about 100 years ago. And many animals in Australia still exist in awful factory farming conditions. So Australians shouldn't be too quick to get on their high horse.
The footage of Australian-raised brahmin cattle awaiting their fate is disturbing, and Australian audiences were repulsed by the idea of these beautiful animals being put to death in a painful, efficient and careless way. But I do find it interesting that the same audiences have no problem with the basic idea of these beautiful animals being killed to make burgers and steaks. The only difference between the Indonesian and Australian methods is a few more minutes of stress and horrific pain - the end product is still the same. A nice creatures's life extinguished just so you can have something to go with your potatoes. Yes, I'm a vegetarian.

So I finally read "...Tiger Mother"

2011-05-31T13:50:00.000+10:00

Given that Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother came out in January, this post is not exactly topical, but I figured it was better late than never. Plus I did have a bit to say about Chua and her book at the time (here, here, here and here), without actually having read it, so perhaps this will complete the circle.

Amy Chua is a woman who has garnered an enormous amount of hatred in the last few months. The problem is this: the vast majority of the people directing the hatred at her have not actually read her book.

Instead, what most people base their Tiger-Mom-expertise on is the Wall Street Journal article which rocketed Chua to fame. Thing is, that article takes bits and pieces of her book out of context, slaps a provocative title on it (Why Chinese Mothers are Superior) and garners both fame, dollars and death threats for Amy Chua. The WSJ piece comes across as simultaneously an assault on the alleged moral laziness of "Western" parenting, and an unabashed glorification of sadistically hardass Asian parenting, the kind that presumably leads to straight-As in math, a place at a prestigious university, and possibly a stress-related burnout and therapy by age 24. But that's not really the entire story of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Chua complained about being taken out of context, and she's right. And for anyone who actually wants to dig even a centimetre below the surface of this issue, it's not too hard to see why. Firstly, check the front cover, underneath the title. It reads:

This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

So straight away, it's apparent that there's more to this than "Chinese mothers rule, Western mothers suck."

Secondly, anyone with basic levels of comprehension should be able to discern that there is a cheekily humorous streak that runs through the excerpts in the WSJ article, in passages like this:

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

So my assumption from day one was that what to some came across as cruel arrogance in that article was at least partly Chua exaggerating for effect. Which is why I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, and defended her on a few other blogs where commenters tore into her for all kinds of things, either real or imagined. (Those things include being married to a white guy, and being born in the Philippines and thus being insufficiently Chinese.) I just figured that it's best not to rush to judge something you haven't actually read yet.

The book itself is very easy to read, while occasionally causing great discomfort at the extremes Chua describes going to in order to bend her rebellious younger daughter to her will. She seems to be often brutally honest about this, and in writing it was almost certainly aware of how horrible it sometimes makes her sound. Indeed, much of it is obviously self-parody. But most of all, understand that this is a warts-and-all story of a journey through parenting, in which Chua gradually comes to the realisation that Chinese parenting (or at least her idea of it) is far from perfect.

That's a key point. This book is not a parenting manual. It is a memoir, which details both ups and downs, and which ends up questioning many of the assumptions that are stated at the beginning of the book.

I certainly didn't finish the book thinking Chua was a great parent, or deciding that this kind of Chinese parenting model would be the right one for me. But it did make me think a lot about what kind of parent I'm going to be in the future, and what kind of discipline and encouragement I will apply to my offspring. Particular for me as a person whose social circle contains a large number of Asian high-achievers, but whose own more relaxed upbringing has led me down a path that is rather less orthodox, yet just as rewarding in different ways.

Any artist or writer needs to be mindful of how their work will be interpreted by the public. And it is true that Amy Chua's work has stirred up a heap of anxieties from Asian-Americans worried about the perpetuation of the model minority stereotypes, and from traumatised survivors of Tiger parenting. As well as a fair share of racists looking to vent their resentments towards Asians and their academic achievements. My main gripe with Chua is that she has made Chinese parenting synonymous with Amy Chua parenting. And while there are many Chinese (and other ethnicity) kids who identify with the hardassed-ness Chua describes, that quality may have manifested itself only in certain ways, to a less extreme extent. In a sense, it may also serve to devalue the intelligence of Chinese youngsters in the public perception, promulgating the view that rather than being smart or creative, they are merely super-efficient products of some kind of parenting sweatshop.

But by the same token, virtually any person whose writings appear in the public domain would agree that you can't control how others take you out of context. And it's not Amy Chua's fault that a lot of people only know how to interpret things in the worst way possible.

I enjoyed reading the book very much, but I'm not in any rush to be a Tiger Parent. And personally, I'm very glad that my own mother was and is nothing like Amy Chua. But those of you who are looking for a villain in this story would be better off pointing fingers at the Wall Street Journal, which presented Chua's story in the most controversial and sensationalist light possible.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron (1949 - 2011)

2011-05-29T23:33:00.001+10:00

Another giant of music, the legendary singer Gil Scott-Heron, passed away this week aged 62. A prolific artist who released an album every year of the 1970s before his life began to go off the rails, Scott-Heron carved out a distinctive style of his own, blending jazz, soul, blues and funk with an early form of rap poetry.

Scott-Heron was one of those cats who never had anything resembling a hit on the pop charts, yet inspires reverence among those in the know, and was extremely influential to artists in a number of genres. He was also a complex and deeply flawed character; while his songs spoke eloquently and powerfully about the ills facing African-Americans, he spent most of his life from the early 80s onward in the grip of crack cocaine, and spent several years in jail in the 2000s for drug-related offences. It always seemed almost inconceivable that such a fate could befall a man as intelligent and positive as he. He did manage to release an album in 2010 (his first in 16 years), entitled I'm New Here.

I managed to catch the man live in the mid-90s, touring off what was his then-comeback album, Spirits. Gil was only in his mid-40s but I'd guessed him to be at least 20 years older due to his weathered, emaciated appearance. From that underrated album, Don't Give Up is not one of his better-known tracks, but it represents the breadth of his musical oeuvre, with his distinctive spoken/rapped delivery and blues-soaked singing over a jazzy groove. It's sad listening to these lyrics today, which reflect on his many frailties yet offer hope for a salvation that was never to come.

The song that most people know Gil Scott-Heron for was one of his very earliest releases, The Revolution will not be Televised. While the song's many pop-cultural references have long since dated, its fierce critique of television and mass consumerism's effect on societal consciousness is just as relevant now as it was back in 1970.

Scott-Heron has often been dubbed "The Godfather of Rap", something of a misnomer and a label he was apparently not fond of. His distinctive brand of poetry set to music did not directly give rise to hip-hop, although he was very influential to later generations of rappers. In many ways he resembled his contemporaries, The Last Poets, and like them is frequently associated with the black militancy of the era. But Scott-Heron's politics were often more nuanced, and in his poem Brother he skewers those so-called black revolutionaries who were more concerned with superficial displays of pride than actually bringing about positive change.

While his first album was primarily poetry accompanied by conga beats, his subsequent work revealed his more musical leanings. He played keys while singing in an unmistakable baritone that was unpolished but soulful and jazz-inflected.

We Almost Lost Detroit is from his 1977 album Bridges. Hip-hop fans might recognise chunks of the song sampled in Black Star's Brown Skin Lady and Common's The People.

The Bottle is one of Scott-Heron's better-known works, from his 1974 album Winter in America. On flute is his long-time collaborator Brian Jackson.

Making pad thai, the vegan black metal way

2011-05-29T23:32:00.000+10:00

I wouldn't say this is an authentic version of pad thai, but if you are a vegan black metal type of guy, you probably don't care.

South Asian diets and flatulence

2011-05-25T14:26:00.000+10:00

Originally posted at Brown Pundits.

“Beans, beans, the musical fruit/ The more you eat, the more you toot” – children’s song

As you probably know, legumes (beans, lentils and peas) have high levels of oligosaccharides, which result in increased levels of flatulence. Whenever I hear someone mention eating baked beans (one of the principal legume-based dishes of Anglophone culture), someone else almost inevitably makes reference to their fart-producing capacity.

But brown people eat legumes like no one else. The average person in South Asia eats some kind of dal at least once a day, and probably more.

There are of course numerous other culinary cultures that revolve very heavily around legumes – Egyptians, Ethiopians and especially Mexicans – but South Asia is the global capital of legume consumption. India especially, given that around 400 million of its people are vegetarian and thus rely on dal as their primary source of protein; although due to poverty, I figure dal is still the main protein source even for the majority that do eat meat.

That would seem like a lot of farting.

Now, I haven’t done the research on this, and frankly I don’t want to. But would it be fair to say that Indians are the farting-est nationality in the world?

Or does one’s digestive system acclimatize to a diet high in legumes, to the point where flatulence is no longer a problem?

It is notable that both Mexican and Indian cuisines make extensive use of ingredients which supposedly lower flatulence levels. In India it is the powdered resin known as hing or asafoetida, while Mexicans add the herb epazote to their bean dishes.

As a vegetarian myself, and one who is very partial to Indian food, I eat a lot of lentils and chickpeas, and thus can personally testify that things can get pretty windy afterward. But I still don’t eat legumes quite as much as the average Mexican or Indian. So does the average desi household resemble dinnertime with the Klumps?

See also:

Foods that make you stink - Fenugreek

"Die 100 Augen Der Ninja"

2011-05-25T00:22:00.000+10:00

Salvatore sent this to me, asking "Do you find this funny, or is it just me?"

Answer: It's not just you. I'm not sure why, but Ninjas speaking German is funny every day of the week.

Asian kids, Jewish education

2011-05-24T01:29:00.003+10:00

Having just spent a couple of weeks doing teaching placement at a Jewish school, I by chance happened to meet the father of one of the students. Nothing unusual there, except that he was Asian - as far as I could tell, an immigrant from China - and as far as I could tell, not one of the Chosen People. His son was one of a couple of students of apparent Chinese background who I had noticed at this school.
I asked this parent, in as tactful a way as possible, about the Jewish connection. There was none, he happily said, but he figured that it was a good school and that was good enough for him. His son, as far as I could tell, is content and accepted as the rare Asian face amongst a student body that is overwhelmingly made up of Ashkenazi Jews. The school is fairly secular, but is nonetheless very proud of its Jewishness and connections to Israel; it's culturally rather than religiously Jewish.

In any case, it's still an unusual choice for a non-Jewish Chinese student. Yet my Hong Kong-born friend Helen did her high schooling at a Jewish school in Melbourne as well. She was the only Asian student there. Like the Chinese parent I met recently, Helen's parents presumably figured that the Jewish emphasis on high academic achievement bode well for their daughter.

I've spent time in a lot of schools, and come across Hindu and Sikh students in Christian schools, which I assume is due to those schools being the best in a particular district.

I guess it's not altogether surprising, really. Certain Asian cultures are obsessed with their children's academic achievements. So some Asian parents have reasoned that having their child immersed in someone else's religion or culture is a small price to pay for a top-class education. Indeed, they may even regard the exposure to a different religious tradition as beneficial to that education.

So there are some shared values between Jews and Asians in regard to the primacy of education. But do they value the same type of education?

Coincidentally, BigWOWO has a good post up about Jewish culture valuing the humanities as a core aspect of education in a way that Asians typically do not. I happen to agree. At the Jewish school I observed a explicit push in the curriculum to teach students to think critically and philosophically from a very early age. I think it's fantastic.

Asian parenting tends to have a different focus though. Amy Chua, who put Chinese-style parenting (or at least a version of it) in the headlines with her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, makes it quite clear in the opening pages what the priorities are in her children's education. Maths is big. Piano and/or violin are essential. Drama and sport, not so much. Other instruments, not so much. Indeed, I had to do a double take the first time I met a young woman of Chinese background who had not learned either piano or violin, but instead was learning to play the djembe. You don't see many Chinese parents clamoring for their kids to learn African drums. Chua ironically has a Jewish husband, and daughters who are raised to see themselves as Jewish, yet her approach to education is thoroughly Chinese.

As someone whose circle of friends is dominated by South and East Asians, it almost goes without saying that virtually everyone I hang with either has a university degree or is studying for it, and got grades in high school that put me to shame.

But particularly among East Asians, I notice plenty of business-brains and math-brains and IT-brains, but very few humanities-brains. Which is fine; it's not hard to see the greater perks of a degree in medicine or pharmacy as opposed to say, a Masters in philosophy. But I fear that Asian culture is so obsessed with churning out children who grow up to have only traditionally-valued careers, that we will lose something in the way of imagination and innovation. Or even just the ability to be interesting in conversation.

As is pointed out in BigWOWO's article, and returning to the theme with which I began this one, there is perhaps something Asians can learn from the Jewish approach to education. In the US, ethnic Indians, Japanese and Jews are amongst the very highest-performing groups in terms of wealth and education, yet notably Jews have achieved their success in a broader range of fields, from hard sciences to the entertainment industry. To my mind, that suggests that their community is maximising the diverse range of talents contained within it, rather than trying to turn everyone into a doctor.

See also:

Gina Yashere - The Pushy Nigerian Mum

Goodness Gracious Me - Typical Asian Parents

The Rapture that never came

2011-05-23T13:29:00.001+10:00

I woke up and I'm still here. So The Almighty didn't destroy the world after all. Well I'll be.

Guess I shouldn't have called everyone at work a bunch of c***s on Friday as I left, then. Couldn't resist an opportunity to settle a few scores. This is going to make for some awkward water-cooler moments.

Anyway, while waiting until the next scheduled Rapture (2012 I believe), pass the time by enjoying some Raptures that did actually happen, and were in fact very cool.

THE RAPTURE: Get Myself Into It by rooroo

Those raptures in Jurassic Park were pretty awesome too.

"The very foreign correspondent"

2011-05-22T17:51:00.000+10:00

I was a fan of the UK series Balls of Steel. Sure, it was occasionally puerile, and prank-based humour can often be annoying rather than funny, but it did the genre better than most. Now Balls of Steel Australia is out on Foxtel. I haven't watched it since I'm too cheap to pay for Foxtel, and I'm a bit sceptical anytime someone tries to take a winning British comedy and replicate it in another culture. But here's a taster, and it features comedian Nazeem Hussain of Fear of a Brown Planet and Salam Cafe fame.

Satoshi Kanazawa and black women

2011-05-22T17:09:00.001+10:00

Satoshi Kanazawa, evolutionary psychologist and a lecturer in the management department of the London School of Economics, ran into some controversy this week over a blog posting, entitled "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"

It's part of his Scientific Fundamentalist blog at the Psychology Today website, in which Kanazawa's subheading claims to take "A look at the hard truths about human nature". Psychology Today soon removed the offending article, and the London School of Economics is considering Kanazawa's future at the institution.

Fortunately, someone managed a screen-capture of his blog post, which you can see via BigWOWO's blog, here.

Here's an excerpt:

"It is very interesting to note that, even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others… Nor can the race difference in intelligence [...] account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women."

So is he a nasty racist, or truth-telling scientist who fell foul of political correctness gone mad?

Or a bit of both, perhaps?

It's telling that the title is not "Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"...

but:
"Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"

In other words, Kanazawa seems to accept unquestioningly that black women are less physically attractive, and thus straight away focuses on why this must be so, rather than whether such a highly controversial statement could be true, or how such a conclusion could be reached.

It's also interesting that such an article comes from a member of another group - Asian men - that is frequently perceived as undesirable and less attractive. The same study cited by Kanazawa that indicates that black women are seen as less attractive also paints a less-than-rosy picture of Asian male attractiveness. Would Kanazawa be so quick to accept the conclusion that Asian men are "objectively" less attractive than others? I wonder.

In any case, Kanazawa's approach is problematic.

Firstly, "black women are objectively less attractive than other women"? How the hell does someone measure black women's beauty, objectively? By popular vote, perhaps?
I would have no problem with Kanazawa writing a post about how people tend to find black women comparatively less attractive than other women. If surveys show that, then sure, write about it if you wish. But to treat this as some objective means of measuring the physical attractiveness of anyone is deeply suspect.

So how did the study come up with the objective evaluation of beauty?

"Add Health measures the physical attractiveness of its respondents both objectively and subjectively. At the end of each interview, the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively on the following five-point scale: 1 = very unattractive, 2 = unattractive, 3 = about average, 4 = attractive, 5 = very attractive. The physical attractiveness of each Add Health respondent is measured three times by three different interviewers over seven years."

Oh, I see. So the opinion of three different interviewers constitutes objectivity.

If you're smart, you might surmise that it might just be possible that these interviewers' judgement of beauty is subject to their own prejudices and preferences.
Even if there were not three but three thousand interviewers measuring people's beauty, it still wouldn't be worth a damn.

You could poll the entire world on their racial preferences in beauty, but what would it prove, in objective terms? A similar approach to music and food might reveal that Lady Gaga is "objectively" better than Aretha Franklin, and a hamburger and fries is "objectively" the best food in the world.

The other problem is one that you can commonly observe amongst the HBD crowd: treating social phenomena as if they have a basis in human evolution or genetics, and disregarding the importance of social context.

There are plenty of different social contexts that will affect the way we perceive the relative attractiveness of different races. But let's start with this one: since the dominant forces in global popular culture are mostly white and American, most of us are conditioned by a standard of beauty that is mostly white and American.

So rather than leaping straight to the assumption that black women are less physically attractive probably because they are dumber and have more testosterone, as Kanazawa does, he might reflect that the results represent the predictable outcome of a study conducted in a predominantly white country.

Does Obama’s brownness have any impact on Islamic radicalism?

2011-05-22T09:27:00.000+10:00

Question: Does having a brown man in the White House do anything to shift hardline Islamists' hatred towards America?

Check my post on this over at Brown Pundits.

Race and Representation: Idris Elba in "Thor", and why it's nothing to complain about

2011-05-21T00:18:00.002+10:00

This. Watch this. That is all I have to say.

Courtesy of The Escapist.

What I've been doing this week...

2011-05-20T23:54:00.000+10:00

This blog has been unattended for almost a whole week, because I've been as busy as a bee with a deadline. I'm back now though. I'll give you a moment to rejoice before reading on.

I'm studying to be a teacher right now and the last couple of weeks have been my teaching rounds. That involves full-time work and plenty of after-hours preparation, which leaves little time for ruminations on a blog. But I thought I'd share with you one of the highlights of my teaching experience, which came out of my humanities lesson focusing on the Antarctic.

Me: "So why do you think dogs proved to be more successful than ponies at pulling sleds in early Antarctic exploration?"
Grade 5 boy: "Because ponies are for girls."

Love it.

"Kung Fooled"

2011-05-15T09:08:00.000+10:00

The new short film from Wong Fu Productions has fun with racial stereotypes while also turning them on their head.

Like.

Blogging and cross-posting elsewhere...

2011-05-08T21:36:00.001+10:00

Obviously one blog is not enough to contain my blogging mojo, and I'm writing at a couple of other blogs at the moment.

I'll be posting some stuff over at Brown Pundits, a South Asian-focused blog run by Razib Khan and Zachary Latif. My first proper post is up, in which I look at the family-centric approach of so many Asian and African cultures and question whether it has negative implications on a broader social level. You can read that here.

I'll also be guest blogging at Peril, an online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine, and my posts should appear sometime in the next month or so. Keep an eye out, the content will be exclusive to Peril, but I'll link to my posts from here.