I didn’t want to watch Crazy Rich Asians. I tried to read the first book but gave up after a few chapters because it was obnoxious. It is filled with descriptions about how rich rich people are. What am I supposed to learn from that?
I also hated it that the first time Asians are represented on the big screen, it’s about the crazy rich. I can’t relate to them. Where are all my crazy poor, hardworking, discount-hunting Asian homies at? Continue reading “[Day 836] Crazy poor Asians”
One of my favorite sayings was the one populated by Mark Twain and frequently (probably wrongly) attributed to the late British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I get slightly annoyed when accredited newspapers use statistics to manipulate readers.
This afternoon, I saw this headline on the Washington Post:
Today, I told a friend about the time I went out with a guy who told me it wouldn’t work out because he didn’t find me attractive. I was cool with it and we remained good friends until today. My friend, after hearing the story, said:
“That wasn’t very nice of him.”
“I disagree,” I said. “I think that was incredibly nice of him to tell me that.”
And then we proceeded to have a head-on discussion for almost an hour. He stood by his words that no one should ever reject another person for not being attractive enough. And I’m a believer that if it’s the real reason why you don’t want to date the other person then you should just tell them.
Continue reading “[Day 92] Is it okay to tell someone you wouldn’t date them because they are ugly?”
I have just finished reading Dan Ariel’s book “Predictably Irrational” and it haunts me. The ideas he presented in the book are not new, but it was fascinating in a way that he found a way to measure things so abstract such as distrust, honesty, and the effect of horniness on our decision making. One of the things that made me think about a lot in this book is the IKEA effect.
Continue reading “[Day 70] The IKEA effect and the writer’s disillusion”
When I did the research about the value of attention for my rhetoric class, several people asked me to share the result. Here it is. I’d really appreciate it if you have any feedback for me.
If you speak the English language—I sure hope you do, because this article is written in English—you have probably come across the phrase “It’s not worth your attention”. We nonchalantly point at things and decide their value using the worth of our attention as the benchmark. We affix the verb “pay” in front of “attention” as if it is a currency we can use in a transaction. But what exactly is the worth of our attention? Say, if you have to put a price tag on it, what number would it be?
Continue reading “[Day 64] Here is $2.50. Can I have your attention now?”
I was browsing the news today when I saw this:
Continue reading “[Day 51] Why it’s not okay to say “women and children””
Guys, I met a Knight. He shook my hand twice to demonstrate how the Queen shook his hand when he was knighted. The knight and I took a selfie–he made a funny face for a knight and I just used that ugly face I always have. You can scroll to the end to see the pic.
Today, Sir Thomas Martin Devine was our guest lecturer. In case you don’t know (tbh if you’re not Scottish then why would you), Sir Devine is regarded as the leading authority on the history of modern Scotland and its diaspora. He was knighted in the 2014 for “services to the study of Scottish history”, the first scholar to be so honored for this reason.
Continue reading “[Day 46] Sir Tom Devine on UK leaving EU and what it means for Scotland”
As millions of British youths woke up this morning to the crippling terror that the UK is no longer part of the EU, the Brit print media was still struggling with one question:
What’s it? Are we gonna leave the EU or nah?
Below are the front page of few major print newspapers in the UK as of this morning, Friday, June 24 2016.
Continue reading “[Day 45] British print media still doesn’t know what happens with #Brexit”
This essay is about those from a poor country who get scholarships to attend university in the US. I was inspired by the transition theme of NoViolet Bulawayo’s “We need new names”. The style of “How they arrived” mirrors the style of three short stories in the book: “How they appeared”, “How they left” and “How they lived”. I love the way NoViolet used the third person voice in those short stories. Her “they” sounded impersonal yet emerged to be oddly personal, with a face, a voice, even a personality I can sympathize with.
Continue reading “[Day 33] How they arrived”
As a tourist in London, of course, I went to see some of its hundreds of museums. They taught me a lot about the arts, nature, and human history, but they also made me really sad. We all try to create happy memories, but have you ever thought about how our history is made up almost entirely of sad ones? When we learn about history, we learn about wars, crusades, holocausts, slavery, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, epidemics, sultans murdering their younger siblings to consolidate power, powerful nations imposing their rules on the less powerful.
Changes are not driven by happy people dancing in the village squares. They are driven by people in chains, in pain, in famine. Revolutions are not driven by people who still have a lot to lose. They are driven by people who have lost everything.
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