India Reserving Seats for Women

Interesting bit of news. The upper house of the Indian Parliament passed a bill today with only 1 dissenting vote, which reserves a third of all seats in the parliament for woman. The bill will then be sent through the lower house where it has much support as well. This reminds me of affirmative action (while it was still popular) in the US. I hope it will serve its purpose of increasing the status of women in India, and then when the equality is better, this law can be repealed.

Part of what I hope this bill will accomplish is to reduce the sex ratio disparity in India. The disparity is thought to be caused by infanticide of female infants since they are not worth as much to the family, and the birth of a female is sometimes considered a drain on resources. With higher perceived worth on a national level, female infanticide may become less common as part of the trickle-down effect. Whether this occurs or not, I believe it is at least a step in the right direction.

Sweet Snacks Part 1: Japanese

I want to introduce you to some of my favorite sweet snacks from East Asia (of course). There are so many of them that I'm going to split this up into a few posts so as not to overwhelm you. This one is going to cover the ones from Japan since the Japanese seem to make a lot of snacks which are suited to my palate.

Pocky is a fairly popular brand, and they have all sorts of crazy flavors. It's basically a pretzel that has been dipped in chocolate.



Koala Yummies have an image of a koala stamped on the outside of a cookie shell which is filled with a chocolate cream. This seems to have become less popular in recent years.


Yan Yan is a butter cookie stick which is then dipped into the chocolate cream that is included in the package.



Kasugai Gummies have a lot of flavor which makes them irresistible. With just 2-3 people a bag is gone before you know it. The flavors include apple, grape, strawberry, and peach



Morinaga Milk Candies are these chewy candies that have a hint of milk in them mixed with the taste of caramel. They're also incredibly addictive.



Melty Kiss is basically a chocolate candy that melts really quickly in your mouth. The speed with which it melts gives a feeling of luxury that you don't find in many chocolate candies.



Cigare Cookies are deliciously crunchy, buttery crepe cookies rolled into the shape of a cigar. The Japanese definitely make the best versions of this cookie.



That's all the Japanese snacks I really enjoy (they're also quite popular in Taiwan)! These snacks can in general be found at Asian supermarkets like Ranch 99 although some of the more popular ones like Pocky are carried by your local supermarket.

Formosa Betrayed

I want to talk about supporting Asian-American artists in a later post, but for now I'm just going to pimp a movie that I have some interest in seeing. They have an official site here.

"Set in Chicago and Taiwan in the 1980s, the story follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent investigating the murder of a Taiwanese professor at a midwestern college. The search for his killers takes the agent to Taiwan where he discovers there is more involved in this murder than he ever anticipated." -blurb from Wikipedia

Taiwan, as you may or may not know, has an interesting status as to whether it's a country since China still believes that it owns Taiwan. This stance has made various countries wary of recognizing Taiwan as a nation because China is the 800lb gorilla in the room and no one wants to piss them off. The film explores some of the more shady happenings to people who are pro-independence for Taiwan.

Family Structure or An Introduction to Terms

One of the things that always confuses me is when people ask about my family. Are they referring to my nuclear family? or all of them? To me, family means parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles, etc.With all the asian cultures I've come in touch with (korean, japanese, chinese, indian, vietnamese). We tend to refer to the extended family structure as all just family.

Any elder of the same culture but not within the family is referred to as Auntie or Uncle if they can reasonably be considered a part of one's parents' generation. If the elder is a part of the generation older than one's parents, the term has no English equivalent, but it conveys more respect than Auntie or Uncle.

We don't refer to elders in the family by name because we refer to the person by their relation to us. This doesn't turn out to be as confusing as one might think because the relationship is often condensed to 2 or 3 characters which is unique for each relative.

Here is an explanation of terms. I can only give an in-depth explanation of the Chinese versions since I haven't studied the other Asian cultures but I'm told they also do something similar.

There are 3 broad categories for names in the family

Immediate Family:

Mother and Father are the same as in English, but there is a distinction between an older or younger sister/brother.

Older brother is ge ge (哥哥)
Older sister is jie jie (姊姊)
Younger brother is di di (弟弟)
Younger sister is (妹妹)

Mother's Side of the Family:

Generally speaking all the terms on this side of the family denote that they do not have the same last name as you followed by their relative family position to you. The mother's side of the family is not considered to be as "close" because they do not share a family name. To illustrate I will give a few examples.

-Grandma is wai po (外婆) the first part means that she does not have you family name and the second part is that she is your grandma.

-Your female cousin that is older than you is biao jie (表姊) again the first part means that she does not have your family name and the second part essentially says that she is your older sister. So, we have brothers and sisters in this extended family instead of cousins. You can also refer to her by name because she is within your generation, but because she is older, there is a tendency to add "jie" to the end of her name as a sign of respect.

-Your mom's second oldest sister in a family with 3 sisters is er yi (二姨). The first part is the number 2 which signifies that this aunt is the second oldest girl in her family, and the second actually serves both to say that she does not have the same last name as you and that she is your mother's sister (aunt). Her husband is not really called an uncle and is instead referred to precisely as the husband of the second oldest female immediate sibling in your mother's generation, which can all be fit into 3 characters in chinese er yi zhang (二姨仗).


Father's Side of the Family:
Generally speaking this side of the family is referred to by the fact that they have the same last name as you and then the family relationship. This side is considered to be "closer" because they have the same last name. I won't belabor the examples because the terms on this side are similar in format as the ones on the mother's side of the family.

Food and I

I have a great interest in food, and can generally be considered a picky eater. This means that you will be seeing some blog posts on here about food and hopefully some food photos (lovingly referred to as food porn). For sure there will be lots of photos after my upcoming trip to Taiwan which I am eagerly looking forward to.

I also enjoy cooking so hopefully I will get around to posting some of my creations here although I will focus on the asian dishes that I create to be in keeping with my site theme.

Also, if anyone knows of any places serving great Japanese curry. Recommendations are very welcome!

Some curry for your viewing pleasure from when I took a trip (spent a semester) in Singapore.

White People Just Don't Understand

I have friends that aren't asian, and of course my other asian friends had friends who weren't asian. This really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. What these non-asian, generally white friends had in common was not understanding how our home life was different. Many of them understood that it was different, but would attempt to apply solutions which were relevant for their situations rather than ours. Amongst the asians this is really brushed off as just "white people don't understand." We would tell our white friends that they just couldn't understand the enormity of the differences.

Now, I feel that this was unfair and lazy of us. We used this as an excuse rather than try to explain it more thoroughly. I do still believe that to some extent the understanding can't be had without actually having lived through it, but a close approximation of understanding can be obtained. I hope to give an explanation of the situations here and give other asians a basis to explain their own situations.

Doing something that is considered inappropriate. That basically sums up all the transgressions an asian could have.

This includes staying out late, dating, smoking, drinking, not greeting elders appropriately, making faces, getting bad/mediocre grades, being loud, not being manly enough, not being girly enough, being lgbt(qqa), living with the opposite sex and any number of other shameful things. Now, these things in various white families are also considered shameful and can't be discussed especially the lgbt population. The difference is in an asian's attitude toward the problem. We must hide any and all deviant behavior from our parents because to reveal to them that these things are going on is not opening a door to any sort of discussion. It is in fact opening a door to lectures, shame, and guilt.

I'm not talking about your average I feel bad that I've done something wrong kind of guilt. Guilt and shame here equate to your whole family being bad people. Let me unpack this for you. Most people agree that they don't want to be a bad person and that their family is generally nice with some crazies here and there. In an asian family, what you do is a reflection of who you are (this is pretty standard in non asian settings I know). What you do and who you are is a reflection of what kind of people your family is(I'm talking you, your siblings, your parents, your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins). Now when you do something wrong, it is ingrained from birth that it's because you are not good enough. If you were good, you would not be doing things that were not good. This means you are a bad person. Because you are a bad person, your parents must not have done a good job in raising you. Therefore, your parents are bad people and none of their kids could be particularly good. Follow this logic, and suddenly you've tarnished everyone in your family. Everyone in a family is connected

Another part of this guilt cycle is that respect is very important. By not acting in an acceptable manner, you are being disrespectful to your parents who deserve respect because of all they have put into raising you. They in turn are unable to show their parents (your grandparents) that they've lived up to what is expected from them and have in essence failed your grandparents. If you can picture the amount of weight and pressure this has, then you can begin to understand why we don't just talk to our parents about these situations.

A Bit of Intro

Before I get too deep into explaining things, I feel a bit of introduction is required to give you some perspective of where my views come from.

I am a second generation Taiwanese-American. This means that my parents immigrated to the US (they are considered first generation), and then I was born here. There is sometimes some confusion about what the consider children who immigrate to the US. I would say that a child who immigrates here before the age of 10 could be considered to have a mindset similar to a second generation although they are technically still first generation. I digress.

I consider myself to be more Asian than not although that is certainly not always the case, and is largely dependent on how Asian the population in the area that a child grows up in is and how traditional/insistent the parents are. I feel I had a greater degree of freedom in terms of career choice and being able to go out with friends. I had a few Asian friends who had a lot of restrictions in those regards. I also had Asian friends who had a lot more freedom to go out all the time, grades were not a huge concern, and generally didn't seem to have too much pressure at home. The latter type really wasn't the norm. The spectrum between mine and the first type of family is generally the reality.

So it is from the second generation perspective of a not too restrictive household that I set off to explore some issues.

Apologies

So, obviously I didn't get very far with the blog post a day goal. The second day of the challenge I didn't even sit in front of the computer besides at work since I came home and fell asleep. I will have to write more posts in advance and schedule them to be published in order to meet goals like I set before.

Since that post, I have been thinking about what I want to write about, and I have decided to write about Asian-Americans although for the most part it will be may be more focused on the Taiwanese-American community since that is what I am. I feel that some of the things I write about will be relevant to the whole community. I hope what I write will be useful to someone somewhere.

Programming - I'm a coder?

There has obviously been a lot written about programming, and I'm not looking to add anything technical of interest. I can write small programs and pseudocode. I don't think this makes me a coder, but I peruse Ycombinator on an almost daily basis and every once in awhile there will be an article about how many of the people who apply to programmer jobs simply don't know how to code. I look at the coding examples that these companies have posted and note that they are very very simple problems that even I, the barely ever wrote anything "coder," could solve. Yet, I would never consider applying to any of these positions because I know how ill-prepared I would be. Being able to solve the problems almost makes me think that I should be applying for these positions although I'm sure the later rounds would soon show my incompetence.

Perhaps I really should just take the time to do some coding, and then I could apply and be the 1 out of 200 that apply who can code. I lack the determination at this point, but if I can make it through this month of posting, I think I will have leveled up enough to take that on.

Well, wish me luck.

(post 1 seems a bit unorganized, I will get better with more practice)

Credit to: Joel on Software for providing the reading which led to this post.

Goals

I am going to try to write one post a day for the next month to exercise my writing muscle (which is significantly underdeveloped/atrophied. There won't be any specific topic for the month so I will be writing about whatever strikes my fancy.

I almost feel like this exercise will be completely pointless in the way that I feel Twitter is pointless as I'm not sure I have anything interesting to actually say. This will not count as the first post. I will write that in another post.