where? if you wanted to lose yourself, to hide as far away from yourself as possible, where would you go?

maybe i've been compromising with indonesia and jakarta. maybe i should go to nairobi or moscow or calcutta or shanghai or mecca or jerusalem or cairo or goa or manila or seoul or hong kong.  ¶ 12:06 AM 2 comments

  relief international i began my short internship at relief international today. oh man, that commute sucks. i like the people, though. i've neverhad a job where i actually enjoyed my coworkers before, but my fellow interns seem like a lot of fun...

when i was in school one of the main teaching fellows in the social studies department got fired for writing derogatory stuff in her blog.

work was funny. i refuse to write any more.  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 comments

  CNN.com - Settlers�leave last Gaza outpost - Aug 22, 2005 CNN.com - Settlers�leave last Gaza outpost - Aug 22, 2005


i'm not going to say much about this - except to say that i completely agree with the decision to withdraw. i think this is a big step in the right direction.  ¶ 11:17 AM 0 comments

  BBC NEWS | South Asia | 'Half Asian children' in poverty BBC NEWS | South Asia | 'Half Asian children' in poverty  ¶ 11:14 AM 0 comments

  better luck tomorrow so i'm watching better luck tomorrow right now... and i just saw that the main character's name is ben. i remember that, after i first watched it, my friend ben tried to tell me some crazy shit about how he really understood where ben the character was coming from; how he really connected. and i'm wondering if there's something to seeing characters that you can relate with that makes their not-like-you traits more believable... i mean, i've got a really bad individuality complex (really big ego), and i can't remember the last time i felt touched the way that ben so unforgetably was after that movie. but i know that ben saw a lot of himself, his own asian-american experiences in that dude, and i guess i'm hoping that's the only reason why he relates.  ¶ 2:21 AM 0 comments

  'reading lolita in tehran' and 'red corner' I was reading 'reading lolita in tehran' the other day when i came
across a particularly striking passage basically stating that one of
the worst things about the fundamentalist islamic state was that it
forced its citizens to be complicit in its bastardization of life:
women through their acquiescence to the crazy laws and the inhumane
restrictions of freedom, and even men through their enforcement of
these laws... i hadn't thought to understand men as anything more than
the oppressors in such a society, but they really have no other choice
than to be oppressors when such dogma is so woven into the structure
of their society. even the men who accept the dogma... are they doing
it because they truly and faithfully believe in it and its essential
message? or is there some twinge of a need for personal or familial
gain that could come from full alignment with government policy, or,
even worse, could it only be because that is how they were brought up
(propagandized!) to think. how many muslims would concoct the same or
similar set of of laws if they had been raised in a moderate society?

these questions have been mulling around in my head for the past few
days, and i just saw them addressed in a different context on TV
tonight. plot for 'red corner': richard gere is an international
businessman and a financier. while closing a deal in china he spends
a night with a beautiful chinese model. he is awoken the next morning
by chinese military officers yelling at him, accusing him of murder -
the girl is dead. over the course of the rest of the movie we slowly
piece together the facts of the death and a plot for power within a
highly bureaucratic chinese government. of course, the pieces come
together just as the trial reaches a climax and richard gere is saved
by the intelligent, passionate, captivating chinese female lawyer.
they have a special bond, everything works out for the best.

so many of the chinese military and courtroom personnel are portrayed
as corrupt and ill-intented in the movie. thinking about this from
the reading lolita level, though, i see these people as actors within
a corrupt system. 'actors' especially because they do not personally
choose the plot or the structure, they simply play their roles and if
they did not, somebody else would. there is a poignant scene at the
end of the movie where the low-level officer who committed the
physical crime on behalf of his big-shot counterpart confronts him in
the courtroom, telling him not to lie (or he seemed to be saying
something like that). In this scene my opinion of the character
evolved from an initial understanding of him as a violent thug to a
revised understanding of him as one who, though morally indefensible,
is a victim of the structure of this society... just like the iranian
men.

hmmm, still thinking about it. (and i know this isn't necessarily what chinese society is really like.)  ¶ 12:13 AM 0 comments

  Indonesia as an idea of indirect opportunity jotted down in my notebook yesterday:

"Not constructed in my anticipating imagination as a utopic neverland where a directionless graduate escapes from the troubles of real life into a mgaical worry-free kingdom where dreams come true. I think of it more as an alternate world in which I can hone my ability to confront the myriad obstacles of the direction finding process. To deal with my problems tangentially: by giving myself a completely new slate of interim problems and learning from the process of dealing with them."

still working it through, but i wanted to publish this to expose my highfalutin bullshit for scrutiny  ¶ 3:00 PM 2 comments