Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

When the author was growing up as a secondary school student in the US, a favorite conversation topic among his Asian-American group of friends was the perceived "weirdness" of their respective Asian families.  The concrete example of "strange" were mostly bouts of what can be termed social aloofness, with awkward gift-giving during holidays, awkward presence and absence of affection, and even more awkward get-together of friends and families .  The comparisons were always with non-Asian families, were social occasions, to the Asian kids, seems always so smoothly conducted.

In the downtown areas of Iringa, there is the usual array of Tanzanian eateries serving local favorites like rice and beans, chips, and grilled meat, along with localized versions of Chinese, Indian, and Western favorites. Some of the more high-end restaurants frequented by moneyed local businessmen, officials, and foreign tourists on their way to nearby national parks try even harder to specialize those local favorites in a more higher-end setting. The result is restaurants that, while still fitting for the local environment, create more sanitary and secluded environments for foodies, local and foreign.

In his now 27 years of existence, the author has never been to a proper wedding.  To him, the pompous ceremony is cringe-worthy in its underlying meaning beyond all the obvious pomp.  The cheesiness of exchanging vows to be side-by-side forever always have that fearful element of a permanent contract between two people, one that requires enforcement through changes in circumstances and personalities.  A wedding is, beyond ceremonial symbolism, a real symbolism of newly required maturity, one that the author is be no means ready to accept .

The more one learns a language, the more one starts to notice the unique subtleties that are idiosyncratic, but can at the same time conflicting. My  journey in mastering the Swahili language  spoken in Tanzania sees plenty of previously foreign pieces of linguistic rules being understood as things that are inherently local. For instance, Swahili words don't have any consonants endings. Foreign loanwords, for instance, generally end with the letter "i" to ensure consonants do not finish any word when pronounced.

At the end of a poorly maintained tarmac road, crossing a wooden bridge that creaks a bit too loudly every time a motor vehicle drives over it, and then going up a dirt hill...a journey to a remote populated corner of the larger Iringa district brings one to, well, something a bit different. On the top of the hill is a massive brick cathedral, reminiscent of southern Europe, surrounded by a slew of carefully crafted buildings that also would not feel out of place on the northern continent. Still, the little area established by Italian missionaries sees few visitors, perhaps increasing the level of curiosity showered upon a foreigner .

Alongside the smooth tarmacked main roads leading southwest of Iringa, there are countless numbers of dirt roads leading into what seem like middle of nowhere.  From faraway they are seem quite similar: a few thatched, dirt-walled houses surrounded by small-holding farms and patches of temperate forests covering the more remote parts of the region's characteristic hilly terrain.  Each generally had either no sign or small signs that are entirely unnoticeable to vehicles passing through at high speeds on the main road.  The only exception to these were shops that occasionally placed themselves at these makeshift traffic turnoffs.

For a small town where locals do not seem to make much money, Iringa is surprisingly not devoid of nightlife spots. Blaring into the town's dark main streets without proper street lighting on Friday nights are sounds of American hip-hop mixed in with distinctive local Tanzanian pop music. Once one walks in, the joyfully dancing local live bands and DJs are joined on the dance floor by crowds grooving to tunes that are often not found in Western clubs dominated by electronic or house music.

The Chinese-North Korean border is an interesting place, and not particularly because of sighting what happens across the river in the eerily quiet North Korean border towns.  Tens of thousands of both Chinese and foreign tourists come to the Tumen and Yalu Rivers that make up the border to point fingers at the few North Korean passers-by on the other side, but few bothers to observe the border towns on the Chinese side, where Han Chinese ethnic Koreans, and many refugees of North Korean nationality live side-by-side among the influx of tourists.

As previously mentioned, traveling in Japan is an expensive affair .  This is true not only for casual foreign passers-by but also for tens of thousands of Japanese business travelers who need to keep their company’s budgets in line but get to places promptly and rapidly.  For them, staying far away from train stations and other nodes of public transportation simply is not a viable option.  To be on-time to visit their clients and return to headquarters, they need to keep to downtown areas where they can come and go quickly.

Back in the States, the Asians live with a widespread stereotype: they are the arch-typical white-collar professional set, with high salaries and stable careers but little creativity or adventurousness.  They are the doctors, the lawyers, and the engineers of America, acquiescing with parental pressures, displayed and strengthened at every opportunity possible , to pursue these subjects.  The results are an ethnic group that is almost homogeneously represented by meekness sprinkled with diligence, as they quietly toil day in and day out to further the ambitious goals of non-Asian leaders.

For some reason, Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is the transport hub of intra-Africa flights.  The country’s flag carrying Ethiopian Airlines host flights across the continent, bringing visitors of the continent to the city’s smallish but comfortable airport.  Aside from the usual assortment of foreigners (backpackers on their way to safaris, mid-level managers of commodity firms, sprinkled with a few diplomats), the demographic of the airport’s transit population says much about the state of the continent’s political economy.

Over here in Metro Manila, the construction of new hotels with in-built casinos are not at all abating.  New areas devoted to attracting high-rollers in the names of Entertainment City and City of Dreams have now finished phase 1 of construction and continue to aggressively expand into open lands next to Manila Bay (at least part of which are reclaimed from the sea).  Despite the author's frequent travels within Manila during his time of residence , this development (and the scale and pace of construction) is certainly not previously seen and can be considered unprecedented.

In America, people sometimes say that the funniest jokes tend to be the most offensive, and in a socially liberal Western society (at least in the parts of it not directly straddling the Bible Belt), decades of evolving freedoms in speech have guaranteed that not many things being said can still offend people immediately.  Comedians (and common people cracking jokes, for that matter), often take to greater and greater extents just to ensure their offensiveness (and thus funniness) can be taken to higher and higher levels, through more and more unique and disgusting ways.

説實話，著者并不非常喜歡關注中國電視。多年來，基於對官方 社會主義意識形態 的顧及，國營的中國電視基本上被單一、格式化的節目充實。新聞常常充滿政府領導活動的陳述和黨國政治在國外最新手筆的宣揚。而其餘時間完全被誇大中國歷史强盛的連續劇和有關一般普通民衆不會很關心的議論節目所占領。相似在臺灣、日本、韓國等地盛行的大衆娛樂和綜藝節目不但是寥寥無幾，還會經常被官方拿來以“無聊、低俗”之名批判。當然，官方的反對并未減少大陸年輕一代對此類節目的情有獨鍾。

Another Valentine's Day of being single, the author found himself with a group (over 150 in number, to be exact) of like-minded individuals willing to spend their romantic nights meeting up with random strangers on a rooftop bar.  Predominantly short-term residential expats with loved ones far far away on other countries and continents, the group quickly went from serious topics of working in KL to discussing a more Valentine's Day-appropriate topic of multiracial, international dating, in the context of residing in a completely foreign country with foreign dating cultures.

In the Asian-American community, one of the biggest topic in the recent days is the premiere of "Fresh off the Boat," the first Asian-starred prime-time sitcom on American television in over two decades.  Narrated by DC-born Taiwanese celebrity chef Eddie Huang, the sitcom describes how a new Asian immigrant family come face to face with a Floridan community that has little experience dealing with Asian minorities, and how each family member came to cope with the often uncomfortable dissonance they come to have with their new home.

When in China, one does what the Chinese do.  And when it comes to doing, eating takes up a huge chunk of the average Chinese's time and money.  The results of the devotion is apparent in how large shopping malls, most of which filled to the brim with different eateries, are popping up across the country.   Yet, for the Chinese, that is not enough to justify their love of food in special occasions, and interestingly enough, the author had firsthand experience of the lavish extremes that his extended family, like many others, are willing to go to celebrate their love for good food.

The Christmas markets of Metro Manila are not for the fainthearted.  The streets, usually crowded already with the high density of population, are extra packed with people doing their last-minute shopping for gifts.  Unlike elsewhere where Christmas is a matter of adopting a foreign culture into a consumerist form , Catholic Philippines are religiously tied to the celebrations.  And when it comes to Christmas, people simply let out.  A taxi driver said it the best, "the Filipinos will be impoverished after the Christmas holidays."

In the past, this blog has been unequivocal about criticizing the downsides of a particular company called Rocket Internet .  It that process, it has accumulated feedback based on derision and ridicule, most of which by different employees of the company who find themselves, in one way or the other, compatible with everything  that the company seem to represent.  This blog very much continues to stand by those comments made by the previous posts, but does concede that it has lacked the positive coverage that prompted its author to remain (and come back) for quite a long time so far.

This week the world celebrated 25th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall, an undoubtedly momentous event that signaled that the Cold War, and along with it the half-century economic division of the war, was coming to a precipitous, and some say, fortuitous, end.  News media outlets around the world spent pages of prime printed real estate to discuss the implication of the event for the modern world, especially in the context of continued economic disparities across the old East-West German border.  The reports made no qualms about highlighting the long painfulness that followed initial euphoria of unification.