Posts

Are "Our" Problems Caused by "Them"?

The Livingstone Museum, in downtown Livingstone, Zambia, has an interesting way of chronologically displaying the area's history.  It starts with the natural exhibits of the land, so famously shaped by Victoria Falls and the Zambezi River, move on to the local ethnography, and finally to the more recent history of the town itself.  In this chronology, there is an interesting section that display a model of the pre-modern African village, with its semi-naked residents and thatched huts, immediately followed by the town of Livingstone at the turn of the century, with cars, shops, and a multiracial population.

ANC and Racial Relations: a Story of Political Hijacking for an Increasing Incompetent Party

On the touristy Vilakazi street of Soweto, right across the street from Nelson Mandela's old house, was a distinctively colored car.  With large black, yellow, and green stripes visibly painted to the back and the side, the car's origin is only too obvious to anyone who knows anything about South African politics: it is a car belonging to the African National Congress (ANC), the formerly undergrad political organization started in opposition to apartheid government's unequal treatment of blacks and their political disenfranchisement and have led the national government ever since multiracial elections were introduced in 1994.

Homey Feel of an Inner City American Ghetto

For those who do not know, the author first landed in the US at age 12, in a neighborhood called Roxbury in Boston, MA.  Any Bostonian would timidly tell you that this is one of the city's roughest neighborhoods, a classic inner city African-American area with high crime rate, poverty, and plenty of dilapidation in a formerly industrial neighborhood.  Despite being almost directly south of the city's downtown areas, the 'hood that is Roxbury sees little sign of gentrification that has made restored the historical glory of the downtown, only helping to accentuate its continued obviously rundown nature through contrast.

Can Some Residents of a Modern Society Stay Permanently outside of Modernity?

From looks the main urban areas of Cape Town is no different from anywhere in the developed world.  Coming from Tanzania, where paved roads and street lights are luxury even in the main city of Dar es Salaam, the immaculately maintained main streets of the city, flanked by vibrant shops, hotels, and malls,, is, by no exaggeration, the envy of sub-Saharan Africa.  The suburbs immediately surrounding the city center and hugging the Atlantic coastlines are home to first-class expressways and homes with modernistic architectural designs that are not out of place in the most moneyed American residential areas.

Brexit and Immigration: a Non-European View

For the non-European student in a UK school, visa has always been somewhat of a bureaucratic hurdle.   Getting the student visa to start is already an issue , but what is worse is that by the time the student is ready to graduate with a prestigious degree from a elite British school, getting a work visa to stay and work is next to impossible.  By the time the author finished his Master's degree at the LSE in 2012, foreign students are no longer even entitled to the one-year post-graduate visa, instead facing the prospect of getting kicked out of the country immediately after getting the diploma.

The Specter of Socialist Bureaucracy

More than a year ago, when the author was still a high-flying businessman for one of Southeast Asia's most hyped-up e-commerce startups , he made frequent business trips to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from his homebase in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  At the immigration check area in the Ho Chi Minh City airport, there was always a familiar sight.  In an area with a couple of dozen booths for passport stamping, only two or three are staffed with grim-faced immigration officers in uniform, doing their inspections at a leisurely pace while the line for entry in front of the booths get longer and longer as more passengers arrive.