• The author has a lot of issues that go way beyond race.  I mean, who says,

  The first step toward self-reform is to admit your deficiencies. Though my early adulthood has been a protracted education in them, I do not admit mine. I’m fine. It’s the rest of you who have a problem. Fuck all y’all.

  Can you imagine a world where this guy would be happy with the state of things?  I didn’t think so.

• People tend to blame things on the most obvious reason.  Often, the most obvious reason is racial or cultural.  Remember, plenty of non-Asian people are shy, and plenty of non-Asian people are not natural leaders.  On the other hand, plenty of non-Asian people study hard and plenty of non-Asian people are drilled to take tests.  There is clearly a correlation, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and call it causality.

  This has become more evident after living abroad. I notice that often-times I see people behave in a way that I’m not used to and I’ll think to myself “why do French people do that”?  Usually on second thought, the fact that they were doing something weird had nothing to do with being French, it was just that that person did something weird.  People do weird things in America all the time too.  Now clearly French people do things in a different way than Americans, but by and large the range of variation is the same: you have shy French people, you have loud obnoxious French people, you have studious bookworm French people, and everything in between.  Again there is some correlation, but no causality.

• When one does this stereotyping to oneself (e.g. “I’m not a good leader because my parents raised me with Asian values”), it’s a red herring to try to overcome that obstacle by distancing oneself from those values.  To be sure, “Asian values” do exist, although somewhat nebulously… I would personally put valuing education, being humble, cherishing family, and a strong work ethic under that umbrella.  Others might choose a different combination, or might include less flattering qualities such as being self-effacing.  But at least for the values that I hold, I see no incompatibility between them and being a strong leader.

  Certainly, if one looks at actual Asian societies, there is no lack of initiative and strong leaders.  Especially in China, one sees examples of bold leadership in the private sector and, I would argue, also in the government.  And not just men, but women as well; there are more self-made female billionaires in China than in any other country in the world (including America).

• Following up on the previous point, last I checked, things like humility, hard work, and perseverance are still considered qualities.  There’s no guarantee that they will take you to the top, but, in the right proportions, I don’t think these qualities hold you back either.  You can be humble, hard-working, and persevering and simultaneously be charismatic and a good networker.  I think most people would agree that there’s nothing more annoying than someone who climbs to the top by virtue of politics and ass-kissing alone.  Playing the political game is unavoidable, but (perhaps this is naive of me) in most cases someone who is actually talented and a hard worker and reasonably charismatic will get ahead of a brown-noser who offers nothing else.  I’m pretty annoyed by articles like this that present the false alternative, either you can be a leader or you can hold onto “Asian values”, but not both.

• I think he’s right about the Bamboo Ceiling, there are definitely external factors that limit the rise of Asians in America.  What I wrote in the first few points is mostly about how Asians stereotype themselves, but it is undoubtedly true that the wider world stereotypes Asians in a similar way.  I think that fortunately he’s also right that a lot of people in our generation are bypassing the Bamboo Ceiling by working outside the box, starting their own businesses and stuff.  Changing the external perceptions of Asians is just as important as changing the self-perception.

• The word Asians is still annoying.  Does he mean to include South Asians?  It’s unclear; he mentions them in the section about the Asian Playboy, but then nowhere else.  Does he mean Asians everywhere, or just in America?  Probably the latter.  And what do I mean when I say Asian?  I’m not sure.  Mostly Chinese actually, I think.  In any case, we need better-adapted vocabulary.

• I’m always annoyed when I read an article about race, and usually it just talks about black and white.  The more modern and up-to-date authors include Hispanics.  Rarely, if ever, anything about anyone else.  It turns out it’s just as annoying in an article about whites and Asians where it seems like no other races exist.

I was quite sure this was not a silly question. The original motivation behind my question was more economic than anything else.  A more detailed version of my question would have been, “What exactly do the people here produce so that they can enjoy a decent living?”  We all know that the Bay Area produces high tech, Boston produces brains, and New York produces financial crises, but what exactly does Bucey-les-Gy, France produce?  The answer to that question should have been obvious, since the food and wine that all those big brains in SF, Boston, NY, and Paris consume has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was the sleepy countryside that we were driving through.

But his answer also addressed an undercurrent to the question that I wasn’t thinking of at the time, but which upon further reflection is more fundamental.  What, exactly, do people in sleepy country towns yearn for?  We know that people in cities, at least the vibrant ones, yearn for success, money, power, sex, and so on.  We, and by we I mean the privileged class that I happen to be among, namely the financially secure, educated, well-traveled, upwardly mobile, professional or intellectual class, I think we tend to think of life as having a “goal”, whether it be making lots of money, doing the best research, and so on.

But taken from a different point of view, such goals seem, if not silly, then at least misguided.  After being in France for a while, where people seem less driven by such external forms of success, it has become more and more apparent to me that it’s worth asking ourselves whether we have our priorities straight.  Maybe living itself is enough, and all those other goals that we set for ourselves are not really bringing us closer to some abstract fulfillment, but rather taking us farther away from the fulfillment that comes from just enjoying each day as it is?

Not to say that we should all move to the countryside and start planting crops.  But almost by definition the desire for something more, something better seems to imply that what one has today is not good enough.  Is there a way to pursue success and be ambitious while at the same time cherishing the moment and the way things are?  And if not, what’s the right balance to strike between the two?

Midwest:

May 9 – 11: Chicago
May 12 – 13: Urbana, IL
May 14: Madison, WI
May 15 – 19: Minneapolis, MN

DC:
May 29 – June 2

California:

June 8 – 15: LA
June 15 – 21: Bay Area

Europe:

July 14 – 18: Paris
July 18 – ??: Somewhere (Dublin? Madrid? Suggestions?)

America:

August ?? – probably taking a road trip somewhere, any recommendations / offers to crash on your couch?

Finance has attracted so many talented, hard-working people into its fold with the lure of easy money, a fast lifestyle, and early retirement.  It offered an easy route for kids who might have come from modest family backgrounds to become multi-millionaires within years of graduating from college, easily making their parents’ lifetime incomes many times over.

And the rest of the world has suffered as these bright minds were tempted into what essentially is the task of shifting money around.  Now granted the allocation of capital is an important task; money that sits in a pile collecting dust does no one any good.  But somehow the amount of money that was made doing this investment and redistribution was always surreal, and now we’ve found out that indeed it was all a mirage.

Maybe if more of the people who went into finance had gone instead into government and figured out sensible ways of regulating the investment banks maybe this crisis would never have happened.  Maybe if more of them had gone into science and worked on renewable fuels we would be one step closer to energy independence.  Maybe if more of them had gone into the civil service we would have better diplomats and friendlier relations with the rest of the world, we would have a healthcare system that isn’t falling apart, and we would have teachers who actually know the subjects they are entrusted to teach.

And maybe after the dust settles after this crisis people will re-consider their alternatives more carefully and choose one of those jobs instead of finance.  We will always need bankers and financiers, but do we really need so many?  And does finance really deserve to employ such a large fraction of our best and brightest?  Without the lure of 6-figure bonuses (that had little correlation to actual value created), maybe we will shift back towards an economy and a society that actually produces wealth, culture, innovation, and prosperity instead of producing the illusion thereof.

Unfortunately this scandal is emblematic of the entire go-go decade, as Paul Krugman so eloquently put it. We’ve been living in a fantasy world where unrealistic returns are viewed as normal and no questions are asked about just where all this magic money is coming from.  How exactly does the SEC, not to mention all the other regulatory authorities that Madoff evaded, miss such an incredibly ridiculously enormous fraud?

If Madoff is (almost certainly) convicted of the crimes he committed, what will be his punishment?  Should he go to a white-collar jail and live out the rest of his life in relative comfort?  How exactly does that work anyway?  What exactly is the “harshest” punishment that should be meted out in such situations?  We commonly hold the death penalty to be the harshest punishment available; does it fit in this situation?  Is it commensurate with the crime, or inappropriate because the crime wasn’t violent?

I’m still on the fence about whether the death penalty itself is humane or not.  I have my reservations about whether we as imperfect fallible people have the right to judge whether someone else lives or dies.  But I do believe that, assuming that the death penalty is acceptable, there should be no question that someone like Madoff, if proven guilty, should receive it.  He has caused almost incomprehensible harm to such a vast number of people that we will be picking up the pieces for years if not decades.  Maybe no one has died directly at his hands, but the number of lives that he’s ruined, the number of organizations that are now bankrupt because of his actions, the immeasurable wealth squandered because of his crimes has resulted in far greater harm to this country and to the world than any single act of violent crime could ever cause.  If this judicial system has any pretentions to justice, I hope that it lays down a punishment that’s comparable with the judgments it’s laid down for other crimes, and makes Madoff pay as dearly as anyone possibly can for his crimes against his investors and, more pertinently, for his crimes against humanity.

In fact, those bonds of family are our anchors in this age where everything moves increasingly faster, where our lives can change overnight with a layoff, a cancer diagnosis, or an order to go to Iraq, and we are helplessly swept along in the tide of vicissitudes and upheavals.  Those bonds of family are what keep us grounded, keep us sane, and provide us a bit of shelter in this cold, difficult world.

Family is all the more precious to those of who are gay because so many of us risk losing them simply because of who we are.  I dreaded my parents’ reaction when I came out to them… for a few days, a few weeks even I thought that I might have permanently damaged those bonds.  I can’t say that those bonds have fully healed, but at least the immediate danger of losing them completely is gone.  There’s nothing scarier in this world than to think your parents might abandon you simply for who you are, and it’s something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.

With very few exceptions, we are born with our family, we can’t choose them.  We can’t go down the street to the courthouse to get a new mom or dad, a new brother or sister.  We have to make the best of what we’re given at birth, come what may.

There is only one exception to this rule, one family member that we all have the right to choose.  Well, I should say that YOU have the right to choose since we don’t.  You have one choice, one chance in this life to share with someone the intimacy, shelter, love, and companionship of being married, of forming your own family.

That’s what marriage today is about.  Whether it’s just the two of you or you have kids, whatever your race or religion might be, whether you married your high-school sweetheart or found a new love in your golden years, however you choose to express your love and commitment to each other, your marriage is your choice to share your life with someone and to build one together.

Your husband or wife is the one family member that you get to pick.  That’s your choice, your chance.  Shouldn’t we get that chance too?

One point that has been made already in news reports is the degree to which minorities voted for Proposition 8.  In particular, the LA Times cites that over 70% of blacks in California voted for Proposition 8, and already angry bloggers and commentators are throwing blame and “how-dare-yous” at black voters.  Of course there is a line from the civil rights movement for de-segregation and minority rights to the modern gay rights movement.  And of course they are not of the same magnitude, since the burden of slavery’s legacy is carried by blacks alone.  But clearly many black Californians did not see the connection between the two, and the question is why.

The knee-jerk (and highly self-defeating) reaction is that blacks cling too strongly to their religion and that they’ll vote for whatever their pastors say, and that to win them over is a hopeless task.  There is a kernel of truth to this; walk around Harlem a few blocks and you’ll be astounded by the number of churches dotting the neighborhood.

But that’s only a small part of the problem.  The greater part of the problem is with the gay rights movement itself.  When straights in minority communities (be it blacks, Latinos, Asians, or whatever else) think of gay rights and same-sex marriage, the image that pops into their mind is gay white men and women marrying each other.  How many of the pictures that you’ve seen of gay couples tying the knot are minorities?  The only one I can think of is George Takei and even there his husband is white.  The problem with convincing minority communities that gay rights matter is that they think it has nothing to do with them.  Gay men and women of color are invisible to them, and so gay rights becomes a white person’s problem.

This is symptomatic of gay culture in general; although things have improved in the last few years, in general gay culture is much more white-centric than mainstream culture.  At least in mainstream culture we have black and Latino media and sports icons (Asians still get the shaft here unfortunately), and thanks to Barack Obama even political icons.  In gay culture there are few if any minority icons, and the most famous ones are not even gay (think Tina Turner or Janet Jackson).

Thus it’s not surprising that the organizers of the No on 8 effort didn’t even bother to start campaigning in minority communities until the week of the election.  When they contacted ethnic newspapers, they discovered that the Yes on 8 campaign had been renting space for months already.  Then when No on 8 ran TV ads, instead of running ads showing gay couples (especially gay couples of color) they showed Ellen.  Clearly not the right tack for convincing minority demographics.

Until this attitude changes, until gay rights are viewed as everyone’s concern no matter their race, until the day when everyone cares about marriage equality, regardless of whether they’re black, white, Latino, Asian, or anything else, because it’s just as likely that their son or daughter, brother or sister will need it, until that moment there’s no way we’ll convince minority voters to vote against discrimination.  And until that day, there’s no way we’ll have the equality we as people all deserve.

I was originally a Hillary supporter and I still am; I think practically speaking she would have made a more experienced president and would have hit the ground running even faster.  But there’s no denying that Obama is more inspirational, and what he really brings to the presidency that Hillary could not is the ability to mobilize such a vast base to the country’s service, and that in itself is quite the accomplishment.  Let’s hope that the excitement he stirs up lasts past the election itself.

But now I’m on the bus back and really it’s just a rainy day, nothing special at all.  Originally there were projecting 2 inches of rainfall but now I think they’re saying 0.5 inches instead.  I have two thoughts about this:

• Is our weather prediction ability really so poor that we can’t even get an accurate picture of what it’ll be like in 1 or 2 days?  I mean some of these Chicken Little predictions were made last night.
• Maybe the predictions are fine and it’s just that the news stations exaggerate in order to get better viewership?  After all a rainy day isn’t so newsworthy, but a tropical storm is.

Which leads to the next thought: maybe I’m not used to such exaggerated predictions because I rarely watch the weather report on the news; wunderground.com is much less sensationalistic.  But maybe the people who do watch these weather reports have gotten so de-sensitized to such reports that they start ignoring them?  Maybe Katrina wouldn’t have been as bad if people really believed that it would be as bad as people said?  And maybe they would believe it more if they weren’t constantly bombarded with alarming weather reports that turn out to be duds?

The synopsis of the story is that a late-middle-aged Japanese man goes to China, where he’s been set up with a Chinese woman in her early 30′s.  They meet and after a few days, the man asks the woman’s family to take her back to Japan.  In exchange, he gives family 5 million yen to buy a new house, and promises to take good care of her, that he’d quit drinking and they’d live a comfortable life together.  Turns out when they get to Japan that he lives in government housing (though I don’t think it has quite as bad a connotation as the projects here) but in any case he’s not rich and he doesn’t quit drinking.  So they live together and for the first few years things are a bit strained because of the language barrier and their financial situation, but bit by bit they start to understand each other.  They have a baby and he does live up to his word about taking care of her and the baby.  He even goes out of his way to help Chinese workers/visitors in Japan who are lost, appreciating how hard it is for them to be in a foreign country.  Here’s the last paragraph:

“希望两岁了，少珍将儿子送入托儿所，自己开始在盒饭店打工。“看看，我爹娘住上了新房子，我们倒住得像贫民窟。我们总也要买自己的房子呀。”少珍笑眯眯的 开始一边照顾儿子一边打工的生活，骑着自行车去盒饭店的时候，少珍感到日本春天的风很柔和，像从前在上海骑车去上班一样。不过现在她心中更安定而温暖，知 道这里有她的归宿，知道她与丈夫间满是关怀的感情。虽然那可以与爱情无关，但足够他们养育希望，过一生了。”

“After Xiwang (the son) turns two, he starts going to kindergarten and Shaozhen (the wife) starts working at a restaurant.  She thinks, “My parents are now living in a new house, but we’re still living like paupers in a cave.  We need to buy a new house too.”  Shaozhen goes about her days happily, sending Xiwang to school, going to work at the restaurant.  She enjoys the soft breeze of the Japanese spring as she rides her bike to work, just like how she once rode her bike to work in Shanghai, except now she’s more content and at peace, knowing that her home is here and that she and her husband will take good care of each other.  Even though it isn’t really love, it’s enough for them to raise Xiwang and live together for the rest of their days.”

It’s a beautiful piece but what was really shocking for me is how different it is from the Western point of view.  I think my first reaction was “poor people”, living a loveless life, just fulfilling society’s expectations and their duties to their parents.  But then again, maybe what we’re taught to value, namely love (of the Romeo and Juliet variety), happiness (often by way of material things), and fulfillment (of the tree-hugging, earth-saving kind, or even the democracy-spreading, Iraq-invading kind) are just as empty and hollow as how we view the values espoused in this story?

I think as outsiders we view the values in this story as coming from (a) tradition, (b) poverty (at least on the wife’s part), (c) lack of better opportunity (on the husband’s part).  But let’s turn the lens on ourselves, where do our values come from?  My guess would be (a) the media, (b) the belief that somehow everyone else is happier than we are, (c) affluence.  The media reinforces this notion of “happily ever after” that seems just within our grasp, even though it has nothing to do with reality; we’re conditioned from childhood to think that it’s possible and indeed that the very definition of happines is to find your own happily ever after.  This reinforces the second point, which is that we see others who have (or look like they have) what we want and we think that “well if they can have it, why can’t I?”  But we do this without taking into account that nothing is as it seems on its surface, and that those we envy or admire really don’t live fairy tale lives either.  And of course being a rich society, we have enough time and leisure to worry about all these (frivolous?) things; maybe we’d all actually be happier if we were a little more appreciative of the simple things in life, like being able to put dinner on the table.

Thoughts?

What’s even nicer is that the people here are so different from New York.  OK, fair enough Cambridge is a big bunch of nerds.  The people here are not as pretty to look at and we’re definitely closer to being in America (there are some scary waistlines here), but it’s the nerdy America.  Everywhere you turn here there are research institutes discovering the next treatment for cancer or building a better mouse trap.  And not every other person on the street has an iPhone, wears D&G, or dresses business-formal.  I miss that; I don’t meet enough nerdy people in New York and even though I appreciate it when people dress nice and walk fast, it’d be nice if they could also talk about how their work is helping to save lives or further science.  Of course you get that in Princeton, but there’s a much smaller community there and, let’s face it, living in Princeton sucks.  Living here, on the other hand, actually seems nice.

TNS had her doubts about living in Boston because of the lack of diversity.  But just walking around today I don’t think that’s a problem at all.  True the popular image of Boston is that of a very Irish-American, white-dominated city, but I think that’s very misleading.  Sure, South Boston is still very white and Irish, but the Back Bay, downtown, Brighton, Brookline, Cambridge, Jamaica Plain, all these areas are very mixed.  A lot of it has to do with the large student population, and the universities here attract the best and brightest from all across the world.

And, to venture out on a limb and say something blatantly elitist and snobby, I think people like me benefit from the diversity in Boston more than they do from the diversity in New York.  Let’s face it, even though there are Hispanic, Greek, African, Chinese, Jewish, Russian, etc. neighborhoods in New York, how often do we interact with them except to go to their restaurants?  When was the last time I met a random Senegalese person outside the context of patronizing their store, even though I live in a neighborhood filled with Senegalese people?  Part of it’s my fault, that’s for sure, because I don’t go out looking to meet them; but part of it is also that we have basically nothing in common besides sharing the same neighborhood.

In contrast, I feel like the diversity in Boston is more accessible because we would share more things in common.  Maybe we do research in the same area, or they’re studying here and want to learn more about American culture, or they work in the same building as me in the next office over.  And I guess that’s my point: just there existing diversity isn’t enough, the diversity should somehow also actively influence my life, rather than just being background noise.

And they’re right, it has.  In fact you can see two distinct ways in which it’s happening: take a look at Nanluoguxiang (南罗鼓巷) in Beijing or Xintiandi (新天地) in Shanghai, and you’ll see that the traditional architecture and style has been co-opted by Westerners, who bring in big money, expensive restaurants, cafes, bars, and trendy shops but want to house them in “authentic” local garb.  I have to admit, the mix is alluring and they are fun to stroll around, but there is clearly a certain “type” that frequents them: the expat and the expat-lover.  I find it hard to imagine that many truly local Chinese would want to mix in these crowds unless they were showing a foreign friend around.

But why shouldn’t they exist?  Just as New York has its Chinatown(s), why shouldn’t Beijing or Shanghai have their Europe-villes?  The cultures are distinct enough that the kinds of things one culture enjoys might not really be compatible with, or even comprehensible to, the other (coffee, vodka, steak on the one hand versus longjing tea (龙井茶), maotai (茅台), and chicken feet (鸡爪子) on the other).  So if one has to live in the other’s midst, why not let them have their own enclaves?  I think what we shouldn’t do is to think that these neighborhoods are the “new China”; I think that upscale and trendy Chinese neighborhoods will not look like these, but will have their own unique feel and be populated by a different mix of stores.

The other way gentrification is happening is more home-grown: yuppies are starting to buy up property in old, sometimes dilapidated neighborhoods, and renovating them.  In fact, the government is giving them a helping hand, since they’re renovating many old areas in the hope of turning them into tourist attractions.  This is happening in Suzhou en masse: many neighborhoods and townships have recently been scrubbed clean and renovated, with new shops installed and cultural performances happening in the evenings.  The one that I experienced firsthand was rather small, named Shantang St. (三塘街) and located near Tiger Hill (虎丘) in the Northwest of Suzhou city, but there are larger and more famous “water townships” in Suzhou prefecture such as Luzhi (甪直), Zhouzhuang (周庄), and Tongli (同里) that, I hear, have become pretty big attractions.  On the residential side, streets such as Pingjiang Rd (平江路), which hugs an old canal and runs through the center of Suzhou’s old city, are also being cleaned up, and since it is right next to some quiet pingfang residences, the momentum for development in this area may one day be driven by residential properties.  In fact, it’s already started, with many old houses being bought up and combined into larger, more comfortable residences.  It’s a direct reversal of what the Communists did, which was to take these residences that used to belong to a single (rich) family and split them up for use by many families.  In this respect, as in most others, Communism in China is dead.

So anyway after the background material, back to the main point: gentrification has hit China.  But is this a bad thing?  I think people in the West are a little quick to decry the lost of traditional neighborhoods because they want foreign countries to remain pretty little exotic caricatures that they can easily pin down in their mind.  But there are several things I would argue:

1. Many of these old neighborhoods were poor neighborhoods, such as the hutong in Beijing; for the locals, there’s really no reason to keep the old buildings around because they’re dirty, cramped, and in disrepair.  What they really want to preserve is the feel of the old neighborhoods, where neighbors know each other and help each other out.  As we know, even in the West this has been hard to preserve, but why not try to preserve it in novel ways?  Maybe the monotonous highrises that we associate with anonymity and indifference can be replaced by vibrant highrises where, well, neighbors know each other and people help each other out?  One way to start might be to place markets and stores on each floor (instead of just the ground floor) of the highrise so that neighbors shop together.
2. Many of these old neighborhoods were rich neighborhoods, such as the shikumen in Shanghai, so gentrifying them is really just returning them to their original condition.
3. I do agree that some of these old districts should be preserved, but they cannot all be preserved simply because there’s not enough space.  These cities cannot grow without growing vertically, and the small one- or two-story houses that preservationists adore will necessarily play a small role in the future.  You certainly can’t ask these cities to mimic, say, LA by sprawling out into a flat plain.  Oil prices will only head higher in the future and as experience has shown, dense, vertical cities fare better with higher energy prices than flat, sprawled out cities.

In any case, demolition, preservation, and gentrification have all hit China within the span of 20 years, so at the speed things are going maybe they’ll figure out how to deal with gentrification before Americans do!

I’m sure people disagree, let me hear your opinions!

When I first saw my new niece, I asked what her name was, being the Westerner that I am. Of course she didn’t have a name yet, she had a 小名 (little name) which is 柔柔 (rourou) because she’s so quiet, apparently she doesn’t cry at all. She’ll get a name when she’s a little bit older (not quite sure how much older), but for now she only has a 小名 so that “evil spirits” won’t be able see her and steal her soul or something. 柔柔 was asleep when I got there and we tried to wake her up but she was very recalcitrant about staying asleep, so we let her have her beauty rest and went to have lunch. I ended up not seeing her again that day, but since I’ll be in Beijing for quite a while longer I’ll get more chances.

Hanging out with the relatives is very odd. I guess it’s a normal thing for most people to see their cousins, uncles, and aunts but for me it’s a once-every-three-or-four-years kind of affair, and that combined with a mild language barrier makes it pretty awkward. Our meals were filled mostly with silence; obviously I don’t want to tell them about my personal life and I also can’t tell them about my studies because I don’t know the appropriate vocabulary in Chinese, and I don’t want to ask any prying questions for which the answers might be uncomfortable or embarrassing (for example, why is my cousin’s husband, the baby-daddy, currently “disabled” with a twisted ankle so that he can’t leave the apartment and they have to go bring him food, except that he can miraculously find his way down and then back up when he runs out of booze or cigarettes?), so basically the conversation is stilted and awkward all around. Things are compounded by the fact that my family in Beijing is all on my Dad’s side, and I know my Dad’s side of the family even less than I know my Mom’s side (at least my Mom talks about her family; my Dad didn’t even know that my cousin was going to have a baby!).

But I also look at their interactions and am surprised by how different their lives are than mine, simply by virtue of being surrounded by family. They’re always calling or texting each other, picking up food or running errands for one another. In the few hours that I was there my other cousin and her husband went and bought an A/C unit for my uncle’s new apartment, we went on a wild goose hunt (or rather pig ear hunt) the baby’s daddy so that he could have some food along with his booze, and of course they took me out to two lavish meals. It seemed nice and yet somehow strange to have people around that you can count on to help you out with tasks like that. Of course I know I can count on my friends when it matters, but for simple day-to-day things like these I would never imagine asking anyone to help me (especially not my parents… well, except for laundry).

But on the flip side I could also see the intra-family stress created by this constant contact. On more than one occasion one cousin would make a snide remark about the other, and people were always telling each other what to do. I’ve definitely been Americanized to the point of being fiercely independent, and I bristle every time my parents tell me to do anything, especially silly or obvious things like to put on a jacket when it’s cold or to brake at the stop sign. I guess that’s another reason I don’t feel any particular need to participate in the extended family’s life: I don’t really expect people to be constantly involved in the mundane aspects my life, whether it’s helping me out or telling me what to do, I’d rather just deal with it myself. For better or for worse, I guess.