I'm not an Asian, not yet American...

There have been many books written about the subject of growing up Asian in America, but I feel like they don't really convey the reality of what it means to be an Asian American: nothing. My sister has done a great deal to help advance Asian Americans in academia and medicine, but I'm disappointed in myself (like a typical Asian would be!) that I haven't been able to help out at all. Part of the reason I can't help is that I don't even know what the problem is. Sure, there is an identity crisis...you're not fully adopted into Asian society because you're raised American, and you're not fully deemed as American because you look different. But I've found in my experience that the American culture in general is more able to accept people regardless of what you look like or your background, than the Asian culture being able to accept someone as their own when you speak English without an accent.

I don't even know if I CAN call myself Asian American because I feel like I don't do the Asian side of myself justice...I don't speak the language well, I don't know anything about the history, I don't cook or eat Asian food all that often...I'm basically useless. I know white people who speak better Chinese than I do. So does it even mean anything that I'm ethnically Asian? I guess I'm pretty much American through and through. It's not that I'm not willing to learn or that I don't know. Contrary to what people may think, I do speak and read and write a limited portion of the language and I do know some of the culture (at least all of the things my parents and Chinese school have taught me). But still, that small amount of knowledge can never buy me a ticket into the "native Asian" club. At least that's how I feel from my personal experience. Many native Asian people I've met think I'm an idiot because I don't speak Chinese to them when we pass by in the hallways and they're actually dumbfounded when they find out that I know what the Lunar New Year is and how to read some of the lame phrases on the backs of fortune cookie fortunes.

I think the reason for that attitude against Americanized Asians like me is that they, as first-generations coming to the US from other countries themselves, had to undergo the struggles that my parents went through for me...the cultural differences, the language barriers, the discrimination...whereas people like me get born into this American culture and don't have to undergo many of the hardships on a daily basis, only occasional run-ins with ignorance. And I don't even think many of the first-generation people I know have to live today with a lot of the harrassment and misunderstandings that there used to be like 20 or 30 years ago. But I could be wrong.

I feel funny when I get counted as part of the Asian demographic when I'm clearly American. Is it really my bloodline and my heritage that determines who I am? Or is it my upbringing and education? What makes me Asian? What makes me American? Can I be both? Do I need to be?

Someone else is always responsible

I was listening to NPR (I think I should stop listening to it because something on it always riles me up) and they had this report about blind spots in SUVs and how there's a serious safety issue with small children getting killed because people back up their SUVs and don't see the kids behind the vehicle. There are people lobbying to change legislation to force car makers to do something about the problem, like forcing all cars to have cameras in the back so you can see behind when backing up.

Not once did people say that maybe the problem was that parents should keep an eye out on their kids so they don't get run over. Most of the incidents of kids getting run over by cars occur in the home, not in a parking lot or on the street, as people might think. Most of it happens because a stupid parent goes out to pull the car out of the garage and they leave the house doors wide open and their kid wanders out and the parent runs it over. It annoys me that people don't want to take responsibility for something so damn simple (WATCH your children and be aware of them) but instead want to force big corporations to make changes in order to perpetuate parental stupidity and to make technology solve all of their problems.

I actually started thinking about this earlier in the day, when I was talking about spell-checking at work. People all want inline spell checkers like Microsoft Word that auto-correct your misspellings so you don't even have to think about what you're typing, because Word will correct everything for you. To which I said, "Why don't people just fricken LEARN how to spell and how to type and how to proofread stuff?" I rarely use spell-check because I'm a good speller (5-time Spell-a-thon winner at Gomes Elementary) and because I read and re-read things I type before I send them. Spell-check can fix misspelled words but not correctly spelled words used in the wrong context. Only a human reader can catch that. And as for instant messages, I could care less whether everything there is perfectly typed or not. A machine is never going to do exactly for you what you expect. If people don't learn to recognize their own mistakes first and fix them, how are they ever going to learn?

If you could, would you choose to be a jerk?

It seems like most people would choose to be jerks, if given the opportunity to, for the sake of self-advancement. The other day a bunch of us were in line getting lunch at the same sandwich place we go to every Tuesday (two for Tuesday!) and there was this lady behind us. At one point while the last two of us were still waiting for our sandwiches to get wrapped up, she scooted in front of us (ok, so she DID say "excuse me") and proceeded to get herself a fountain beverage. When she was done with that, our sandwiches were also done but there were people who had ordered stuff by phone and they got to curtail the line and pay for their stuff so they could get the heck out of there. So we waited. And waited. And finally it was our turn, but since that line-jumper lady had scooted out of line to get her beverage, she was basically at the register when the guy was ready to ring us up, and of course he sees her first and there she is, paying for her sandwiches.

It totally shocked us that someone blatantly cut in front of us, just so she could get out of there like A MINUTE before her regularly scheduled time. Why didn't she choose to wait behind us like any normal person? Why did she think she was special that she could cut in front of us to get her stinking beverage and to pay when we were standing there waiting like idiots in the thing called a line (or queue, wherever you're from) that someone invented to make sure that everyone gets their turn when it's their turn? I felt like maybe I should have said something, a la that movie Party Girl (when she's yelling about the Dewey decimal system to some guy who just shelved a book in any random place), and yelled something like, "WHAT are you doing? Did you just CUT in front of us? Well, YOU'VE just given us a great idea! Let's all just cut to the front of the line and get helped WHENEVER we want! Why are we wasting our time standing in a LINE when we can all just get helped WHENEVER we want?"

Don't be a jerk. I've chosen not to be one.

Women and men are different, end of story

I heard another report on NPR about the whole gender wage gap thing, I think the number went down from 80 cents to 70 cents per every dollar a man makes. Is this real? I keep thinking back to that "Gimme a break" 20/20 report (I know, everyone hates that guy, but sometimes he's right) where the guy asks, if women did the same work for less money, why would anyone hire men over women? Maybe it's not really the same work. Maybe it's not the same quality of work. Maybe it's not the same number of hours. Now if they mentioned something like people who worked the same shifts at McDonalds getting paid differently based on their genders, well, then that's something to talk about. But they're talking about high-paid professional jobs like CEO. How many women CEO's are we really talking about here? Are any CEOs of any two companies making exactly the same amount anyway?

I started thinking about how maybe women should just give up the whole fight for job equality because it really is going nowhere. I was thinking about this the other day as I was coming home from work. I work a full day and when I'm on my way home from work, I'm thinking about what we're going to eat for dinner. I don't think my husband is worrying about that when he's coming home. Or maybe he's worrying about what I'm going to make for dinner. I'm sure once we start having kids, I'll have to be thinking about when to pick up the kids from school, what to feed them, etc. I don't see a man thinking those things and having to worry about those things at the end of their work day. That's the real difference between men and women. Women are innately caregivers and they need to worry about other people before they can start worrying about their job. Men would probably worry more about their job than their family because they're always thinking that their wives are taking care of business at home, so it's ok to not worry about them. Or maybe men just don't worry in general. I don't know.

I don't care

When I was a kid, my mom used to yell at me for saying "I don't care" all the time. I think I still say it all the time, but sometimes I really mean it. Sometimes it's just something to say. I don't care that your phone company can give me a better deal on phone service than what I'm currently paying. I don't care that the computer program I spent ten years writing doesn't do your laundry or wash your car. I don't care that your gas station's gas is 0.0001 cents cheaper than the one down the street. I don't care that you are so insecure about yourself that you need to hold out an empty cup for people to drop in their daily affirmations of you. I don't care that there is a huge crop of poison ivy growing in the yard. I don't care that you don't get to buy another Porsche because there are kids out there that are downloading and sharing your music. I don't care to hear people make up excuses for their own personal shortcomings. I think I can go on and on. But I don't really care to.