Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

There were two young female DJs in the middle of the nightclub.  Pumping out electronic and house music for hours at an end, she was in the clubbing mood herself, completely ignoring the gaze of the massive crowds thronging around her DJ table and perhaps even forgetting the fact that they are in a mega-club in which the clientele did not really dance.  Instead, a massive elevated performance platform, lighted from the bottom, surround the DJ table, showing female dancers at work.  The mostly male clientele looks on as the dancers display energy and surprisingly good choreography.

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.

A couple of years ago, there was a South Park episode that made fun of the late Steve Irwin,  Australia's famed "crocodile hunter."  The episode characterized the nature of Irwin's TV documentaries as mere attempts to gain viewership by intentionally pissing off wild animals while fully knowing that the animals will be pissed off by the human intrusions.  By skirting serious physical danger in his pretty much unnecessarily violent interactions with the pissed off animals, Irwin somehow gains a status of folk hero in the process.

"It's only 3km away, that's only a short walk from here," many Sri Lankans met on the road often says something of this sort to the author.  No joking, no exaggeration of self-pride, but just stating what is to them a simple matter of fact.  And they certainly back up such talks with action: the author, on his bus trips, has seen too many locals, in their simple worn-out flip-flops, walking next to major highways, appearing in the middle-of-nowheres between towns that are not particularly close even by driving.

About a year ago, the author spoke to a newly joined foreign coworker of his on the conditions of his current residence.  "It is a very organic place," the coworker remarked with a polite smile, continuing on to mention how cheap the local neighborhoods are for renting out living quarters.  As far as the classic spectrum of safety vs cost is concerned, this coworker is probably taking one extreme end, and in the process internalizing certain risks of personal well-being.  The author, at the time, questioned the wisdom of such decision.

"Ideals are harmless, its the human aspect that makes it lethal," the main character in the WWII-themed war movie Fury (played by Brad Pitt) uttered to his subordinate as the two walked through a small German town hall, filled with corpses of Nazi loyalists who committed suicide.  The comment, especially with the gruesome background of dead bodies and massive portrait of Adolf Hitler on the wall, reflects so poignantly on the role of ideology in modern-day conflicts.  From the haphazard American invasion of Iraq to the violence-filled conquests of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the power of political principles lead to death and destruction.

On a rowdy Friday, the author found himself talking to a 15-year veteran of Malaysian residence hailing from the Mother Continent (Nigeria to be exact), running a business importing, selling, and installing surveillance and security systems to local clientele.  Asked about the briskness of business, the elderly gentleman unequivocally announced that competition is heavy but market is big for a small country.  The reason, he theorized with the author, is the mentality of Malaysian people.  Specifically, the locals, he said, are convinced of their country's array of dangers, so much so that the level of trust for anyone remain low.

It is more or less common knowledge that those who are hungry do not have capacity to think about anything other than their hunger.  Those who are poor are too focused on making their ends meet for survival reasons, with no time to divert attention elsewhere.  Thus hunger and poverty unfortunately correlate to lack of sophisticated arts, deep-level thinking, and a non-pluralistic society where the needs of everyday life overwhelm all else that the human mind is capable of achieving.  Unfortunately, in many part of Southeast Asia, as is the case for elsewhere in the world, lack of economic development maintains such harsh reality.

The author's new apartment in the outskirts of Bukit Bintang is a noisy one.  With the open balcony directly facing the train tracks of Kuala Lumpur's Light Rail line, the sounds of each train passing through (at about one train every three minutes during the peak hours) are loud enough to wake a light sleeper in the middle of the night.  Along with almost intimate proximity to the constant concert venue that is Stadium Negara, it kind of explains why the place seem to be cheapest one in this pricey neighborhood.  Not that the author really cares, considering the romanticism he constantly associate with running of the trains .

The 2014 Brazil World Cup is now down to the last few games, but here in Taipei, the sudden soccer fever among the younger residents only seem to grow stronger by the day.  Every night when the game is on, multiple bars advertise showings and multiple social groups and official gatherings emerge to indulge in all-night binge-watching, replete with the usual face-painting of national flags and wearing of soccer jerseys.  This is all happening in a place where the national soccer team has never made it to the World Cup (nor has any chance to in the foreseeable future).

Once upon a time not that long ago, inserting the "social aspect" to the fast-growing industry of online shopping was considered a no-brainer.  Integrate the likes of Facebook and Twitter functions to product pages on ecommerce outlets, and the words of the mouth from one's friends and families, increasingly merging into one biggest online networking presence , will as a collective provide the necessary persuasion to get potential online shoppers to click on those "check-out" buttons.  After all, just as people take friends to go with them on trips to brick-and-mortar retail outlets, they also should for their online counterparts.

It was 1am on a rainy day when the author got into a casually parked cab for a post-drinking ride home.  The cab driver seemed rather tired, prompting a question from the still energetic author to figure out the reason.  "I had like 3 rides from Xizhi to Banqiao just in half a day today."  The driver quipped, nonchalantly exposing the sense of surprise even after completing those 40km, 40min (without traffic), 20 USD (quite a sum for a single ride on a Taiwanese taxi) journeys.  "And all of them were young ladies by themselves...but during the day when the MRT is still operating."  The driver elaborated, referring to Taipei's subway system.

Two years ago today, this blog posted on the meaning of the Tiananmen Incident for the ethnic Chinese populations living around the world, noting that the failure for resolution, reconciliation, and above all, lack of official apology, continue to be a painful patch of darkness in the minds of millions.  Certainly, this point is all the truer today on the Incident's 25th anniversary than it has ever been.  But as that two-year post has also noted, today's China is no longer the China of 1989, a much more complex place where sheer weight of economic development has wrecked havoc on the very social fabric.

It is a disturbing time that people seem to live in nowdays.  The fury of one person is casually unleashed upon the innocent passerby, making them the cannon fodder for social frustration that are not only not caused by them, but not even really related to them in any way.   The bloody mess in a subway carriage in Taipei recently is followed by a drive-by shooting in the UC Santa Barbara campus in California, in both cases instigated by young man whose unique concerns with their own, rather different forms of social disgruntlement were suddenly exposed to a society unprepared to receive them in the way it did.

It has been a few days since one of the most talked about violent crimes in Taiwan's recent history took place.  A 21-year-old student, allegedly neglected by both parents and society at large, stabbed through carriages full of innocent commuters on Taipei's subway, killing four in what people can only dub as a psychopathic assault.  Since the incident, both mass and social media here are filled with speculative reports on the background of the 21-year-old, with discussions ranging from how to detect anti-social behaviors early in a person's life to how to properly punish violent criminals of this sort.

"You know, after going to those kinds of places often enough, you feel that anywhere else you go, the girls are just not pretty enough, and you would not feel any sense of attraction," the young Chinese-Canadian quipped to the author outside the restaurant/bar as the usual crowded Saturday night meetup went on at its rooftop, "It's just, when you know getting girls of even better stature than what's on offer here at this event, it makes you feel like a loser just to put in so much effort for trying to hit it off with them."  The guy, apparently, is just meeting up male friends with whom he can have interesting conversations.

The author has seen drunk people at nightclubs in his various partying experiences in previous years , but never thought that a nightclub's entrance can come to look like entrance to the emergency department of a local hospital.  It is three o'clock in the morning, and the true casualties of the night was starting to appear at the 5th floor mega-club.  It is no longer a steady stream of excited but still conscious and stumbling happy faces streaming out...it was, instead, the fully unconscious, being brought out the establishment, literally, in wheelchairs, assisted by the club's suited, poker-faced, and potentially highly annoyed resident staff.

Someone who lives in an ethnically homogeneous society ( or at least one that claims itself to be ) often requires a visually exaggerated definition of race in order of make sense of distant peoples they often cannot meet in real life.  Oh ok, Italians eat pasta, Japanese eat sushi, Americans eat hamburgers...thats all harmless and well if one never gets to meet an Italian, a Japanese, or an American.  Whatever it takes to help people remember different peoples and their practical differences, then, would prove somewhat valuable for, say, watching TV or going for short tourist visits in foreign countries.

Recently, a massive cruise ship accident off the coast of Korea has become the latest human disaster, quickly overshadowing the still nowhere-to-be-found Malaysian Airlines flight 370 to become the global headline-grabber.  Global attention and sympathies proved easily to obtain in such combination of circumstances: a holiday cruise of young high schoolers enjoying the last vacation before exam studies, a country supposedly leading the world in a technological manufacturing, and a rescue procedure so inept-sounding, incompetent-looking, and punctured with a story line so full of holes that the casual observer can only be shocked.