NPR Piece and "Hapa"

Saw this NPR piece.

Hapa seems to be simultaneosly gaining and losing relevance. Some people like its all-embracing gloss, others get tripped up with its smell of cultural appropriation.

I don't think "Hapa" has legs. 

The fatal flaw with "Hapa" is something that stands for something too broad risks standing for nothing at all. "Hapa" has nothing it stands for.

But who would've guessed that the question of "how do we offend the fewest people possible?" would be the stumbling block?

That the most threatening undoing will come from those who see it as an imposition and theft of a Hawai'an concept and I.D. tells you all you need to know. This article reminds us "Hapa" was the stuff of faddish picturebooks- it was never worth struggling for.

 

Mixed as Absurd and The Inn of The Sixth Happiness

He is a fictive character who serves our purposes. The following dialogue reveals some key details about the Colonel:

Col. Lin Nan: “You’re white. You shouldn’t be in China at all.”
Gladys Aylward: “How can you say that, when you’re part white?”
LN: “I’m half-white. In your world, I can only be a second-class citizen. I chose China because here, I’m allowed to be of value.”
GA: “That’s why I came here. To be of value.”
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ATV and More Thoughts on Personalization

This is me on an ATV in FNQ (Far North Queensland). 

image.jpg

I've been thinking that I need to personalize this blog. Its fine and good to have these abstract thoughts, but to connect with a readership that readership needs to be assured it is me hitting the keyboard. 

So I've published my book. And I care about the issues. Let's make this a more practical and as 1:1 a discussion as possible. I will be less abstract. You give me as much and as frequent of feedback as possible, how's that?

What Should This Blog Be About?

Do I want to get more personal? 

The structural editor of my book, Sam Holmes, advised me not to make my blog about "me."

In other words, don't make it about the nuttiness of my branded muesli that morning.

As far as I can see, there are three areas I could cover:

  1. My startup, microascetic
  2. Bothness and the being mixed Chinese-Western
  3. Everyday musings and a writing scratchboard for my next book

What do you reckon? 

What about the balance between words and images? More images? More volune of words? 

 

 

What the 2016 Trump vs. Clinton U.S. Election will come down to

Yes, Trump has had his post-convention bounce... But I think most Bernie supporters will still get in line behind Clinton. Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC was extraordinary. I think it will do more to unite the Democrats than Bernie's warm-tepid-warm endorsement of Hillary.

In the end, Clinton will get her own post-convention bounce (which is not guaranteed, mind you, and especially in this age where attention is so fragmented) and top Trump in the near-term polling. At the time of writing Trump was ahead in the polls-- CNN/ORC had him up by 3 points. 

My prediction: if there is a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil leading up to election night Trump will win; if not, Hillary will win. I think that's what it will come down to.

I remain cynical about cynicism.

I want to live in the Both/And world. It is a great place. A secular land of milk and honey. It is where legends will be made. It is the world where things may have binary roots, like the zeros and ones in software code (maybe not much longer with quantum computing around the corner though), but have positive sums, that people can gain without someone else necessarily losing.

The Both/And world likes abundance, where more and more information is available and cheap, where storage and distribution are afterthoughts. It is a world of multiple roles, multiple careers, of crossovers and mashups; it is valuing thoughtfully remixed work as wholly original. This is the Both/And world and I love it.

We have all these dichotomies: black/white; fat/thin; rich/poor; young/old. You can’t blame a cynical person for saying “you can’t have it all.” Around the corner though, there is a creative and reliable person. Crossfit challenges one aerobically and anaerobically. I have seen people lose weight and gain muscle. To quote Voltaire: we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I do think the world can be messed up. I do believe there is a crooked timber in people. But that is not to say that if someone does well, they necessarily cannot do good. And to foreclose that possibility is to live in a dark place. I remain cynical about cynicism.

Chefs don’t just make tasty food that they always have, for the expectation today is to dine with a chef who knows the underlying science underpinning her or his gustatory creations. We expect a chef to scoff “too easy” at allergies or fine-tuned dietary restrictions; we expect them to tempt us with new textures and flavors, and synthesize all these new requirements into cuisine, and present it to us as if we were at the theater. The greatest fear of Hong Kong parents is that their child enters the wrong profession, (the mandarin for which is ru cuo hang). The concern centers on getting all the details right, whereby you have the right grades, academic pedigrees and credentials...But what if you do everything right by precedent, and by consensus... but unwittingly enter a sunset industry? 

Detail and context is important.

Detail and context is a cornerstone of this both/and world I'm talking about. The dream of any architect is to erect a building that gets right the threading, fastening, pouring, cladding, of course. But can people get in and out? That is the question. To achieve detail and context is the dream of dreams. It is the fable of the forestry guy who knows trees, the legend of the electrical engineer who gets the physics. 

Commoditization

I have been to no fewer than five Cirque events and can report that they are not just bold, but memorable; I can actually recall color schemes, particular villainous costumes, and riffs from the live music from each and every Cirque I have been to. The theme song from Alegría is hard-wired into me, for better or worse.

Cirque du Soleil is not just spectacular from an entertainment point of view.

Software that isn’t necessarily just designed to aid humans, but also to strip us of bargaining power, is a reality.

The future is a dichotomy between those like A-list movie actors who can exert genuine bargaining power over the producers, and those like B-list and below actors who are replaceable. And the line between them is razor thin.

At that very moment you are like the Cirque performer who says, “phew, well, at least I don’t have to manage a stinkin’ twitter account” or a gym trainer who says, well “that client was a pain, in a way I’m glad my hour with her is done and someone else’ll tell her she ain’t gonna lose that ‘babyfat’ on treadmill setting ‘2’.” It is a small setback toward commoditization. Especially in our photoshop world, beauty is a commodity. The fundamental point is that beauty is easy to replace, and “beauty talk” is not harmless. If you sip that sake you make it harder for others to see you for what is not easily replaceable, namely a distinctive mind.

In a similar vein there are many "beautiful linguists" out there. I.e. those who make it a point to show you how brilliant their language skills are. “I have great command of the Chinese language, unaccented by the way, and I have this on my resume, and I have all these friends.”

But I think you lose when you play the “look at how great my Chinese is game.”

By uttering how good your Chinese is you have lost the game before you can end the sentence. First, because learning the underlying values and culture is more important than mere language. If you learn language as a Mormon missionary does you will grasp quickly grammar and syntax. You may build an edifice of a vocabulary. And a good linguist does. Secondly, no Chinese person will ever tell you their skill is “fluent” or “great,” even “good” comes out waffled. This is because of opacity, of inclinations toward the group- in that deference toward others comes into play, and certainly the unknowable presence of seniority in the group (i.e. wealth, legacy, community service, academic titles, all these could imply higher seniority but are not always knowable). 

Just as Marc Faber said the current and future lingua franca of the world is "bad English," we face an accelerating and inevitable environment of commodization. On a strict economic calculation the Queen's English may even be a liability. All the movers and shakers of the developing world speak bad English. Who cares that you can outdo people over a threshold where statistics aren't counted, where no one cares. On an absolute basis you may have a point, yes your Chinese is good, and you deserve credit for your individual merit. But what about on a relative basis? How good is it really? Basking in the spotlight about what you may think are rare skills will continue to be shakier and shakier for three reasons: 1) too many people in aggregate hungry to match and then exceed you; 2) they are making higher percentage gains on you when you rest on your laurels; 3) when there is saturation people will eventually just agree to some normalized equilibrium of fluency, and any glory that you have for achieving a very high, absolute level of competency (above the equilibrium), well, will be "wasted," at least in economic and practical terms. 

The work that you do, the job that you have, the vocation you pursued, these used to be fundamental aspects of one's identity--but not anymore. Commodization means these markers of identity will be stripped from people; in other words the welder has to be "Bob," he will have to continue to go deeper inside who he is to find a secure anchor for his identity. I reckon that the first step to combat commoditization is sincerity, which is itself, and by definition unscalable. Maybe Bob should start there. Maybe this tension between commodization and sincerity is something he should get ahead of.