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It seems like recent protests in Taiwan have garnered some international attention. Taiwan woke up one day to a corrupted president whose presidential campaign, ironically, promised to eradicate corruption from an corrupted era*.

It’s been estimated that as many as 750,000 people showed up in a demonstration, forming a human wall circling, and enclosing, the Presidential Palace and his residence. The images from the news were quite impressive as the demonstrators each wore red clothing and red flashlights that represent anger. Surprisingly (to me anyway), the entire demonstration was peaceful.

* KMT ruled Taiwan was often cited as a corrupted government; but then again, KMT took Taiwan from being one of the poorest nations, having been a colony of Japan for quite a while, to among the most prosperous in the world; KMT has also been “credited” as a reason China turned communist due to excessive corruption at the top levels of the party and government branches.

In an effort to further investigate what my options are regarding my passport status, I wanted to find out if I was eligible to obtain a passport from the People’s Republic of China (not to be confused with Republic of China, a.k.a. Taiwan). Common sense would dictate that I should easily be eligible since China contends that Taiwan is part of China, hence, anyone who’s born in Taiwan with Chinese ancestry is eligible for a Chinese passport. With a Chinese passport, essentially I would solve my “expired passport” issue and be able to go on to Canada to get my PR there… I wish things were always as simple as “common sense” though.

So today I made a trip to the Embassy of China located in San Francisco. When I got there, I was stunned at how many people there were, waiting in line, just to drop off applications for passports and visa. The wait was easily 35 to 45 minutes. Compared to the lack of line at TECO, it makes sense that China is now the popular kid on the block. But then again, nobody gives a rat’s ass about Taiwan anyway…

After having dealt with two information desks and wasted 45 minute of my life waiting in line, I noticed the ladies behind those bullet proof windows were rude as hell. They yelled at people and freely expressed their annoyances at the first sign of what appeared to be “stupid questions” to them. And when someone wanted to make sure what he’d heard by repeating that information back to them, those Embassy bitches ladies would get angry and told them off! Wow! Talk about being backwards in culture and basic respect for others.

At the end of the day, I guess my question was too tough for anyone at the lower level to answer. And as my luck would have it, the persons who would know the answer to my dilemma weren’t available at the time. So finally a nice man said I could write the Consulate a letter to get my answers if I wanted to (no, no emails. A letter written by hand!).

So my first dealings with Chinese officials left a really bitter taste in my mouth. I pondered if I should even consider taking the plunge of becoming a citizen of such public disgrace. Much of what I saw today at the Embassy of China would probably never happen in a Taiwanese “consulate”. Having dealt with various TECO offices in the U.S. and in Thailand, I have yet had one person expressed any signs of annoyance no matter how stupid some questions may be (including my mom’s infamous inquiries).

So maybe I should just play the cards I am dealt and take my chances that the current president of Taiwan won’t say anything dumbass to piss the world off, prompting China to stick it to Taiwan’s butt. Every month passes with more and more of my options being eliminated from the table. Short of becoming illegal, I am cornered by the conditions events around me have created.

Speaking of being illegal, it seems like maybe being illegal in the United States is not such a bad deal after all! Even illegal, ahem, “undocumented” immigrants’ children are eligible for scholarships! WTF!? So a hardworking, previously tax-paying LEGAL immigrant like me gets punished for doing all the right things? How screwed up is that? Like me, I’d say, those kids should just deal with it and find ways to become fricking legal first, damn it!

OK. Enough rant for today.

I found this via digg and felt glad that I, among a few of my friends, am not the only one noticing this.

It’s frustrating to know that the majority of American news stations are feeding garbage news to the people of the most powerful country in the world, the same people who put an idiot like George W. Bush in power, twice…

I used to think this whole Middle Eastern thing was too complicated to get into and thus tried to stay as neutral on the issues as possible. But the recent crisis between Lebanon and Israel made one thing clear in my mind: The United States is clearly biased towards the militarily superior (thanks to the U.S.) Israel, a Jewish State, than the rest of the region (mostly Arabs). I wish I don’t have to sound so anti-semitic. But it appears that every policy U.S. has had in the Middle East favors Israel!

Not that i have anything against the Israelis, Jews or even the United States in this case. But I thought a Superpower probably shouldn’t play favorites in a sensitive region on sensitive issues (what’s being projected as Arabs v.s. Jews, or Muslims v.s. Christians/Jewish)… Take for example, nuclear weapons: Why is it that Israel can have it but not Iran? To me, Israel looks more like a terrorist state than any of its surrounding neighbors. If Saddam was taken down for suspicion of having Weapons of Mass Destruction, why not North Korea? I mean, it was clear that UN couldn’t find any WMD in Iraq even prior to U.S. invasion. But it’s now obvious that North Korean HAS WMD. So what’s the argument for not taking it down?

Anyway… enough of this stupid rant. It must be the heat getting to me… The apartment is so hot that the thermostat is confused again.

The past few days in the Silicon Valley have been unbearable. Record high temperatures appear to be everywhere on the map. But of course, that’s no global warming, just the nature… The White House says so.

Bryan has been having trouble sleeping at night because it’s so hot and humid at night. So we have had to mobilize fans in the apartment — one to move cooler air into the apartment when the sun sets and another to cool Bryan off. The strategy is to give him a nice and cool bath before bed time and try to keep him cool with the two fans going… But last night was so exceptionally hot that we had to use THREE fans!

So now Bryan takes 3 cool baths a day to stay cool… Or else nobody gets any rest in the apartment…

While watching the news, the reporter mentioned something about FamilyWatchDog.us as a good resource to see if there are any sex offenders around any neighborhood in the U.S. The result for my neighborhood was a little alarming…

The red dots are offenders against children, yellow for rape, blue for sexual battery, and green for other offenses. The pattern is also very interesting — It seems like some neighborhoods are possibly more “tolerant” of certain types of sex offenders than others. I did a couple more searches on some friends’ residences, the results were slightly better; but it seems like they are just EVERYWHERE!

The map is supposed to be able to tell you where they work as well as where they live. But I failed to find any dots representing their work address…

When I first moved to California, I also found another map that tells you where all the latest crimes are happening in your neighborhood. Internet is truly a great resource for things… I wish the government could spend more money on solving domestic issues instead of spending billions a month in the name of solving someone else’s problems. But hey, what do I know. I am not even American!

We live in a day and age (and specifically in Western Worlds, a society) where almost everything we do needs some kind of proof, certification or license to show that we are capable of doing what we say we can do.

Job hunting — diploma or relevant skills,
Driving — driver’s license (different license types for different vehicles!),
Teaching — teaching certificate for k-12,
Owning a pet — pet license,
Owning a gun — gun license (boo!),
Fishing — fishing and gaming license,
… etc.

So, if something as trivial as owning a pet needs licensing, I don’t understand why there isn’t a license for being parents?! If we need a license and proof to take care of someone else’s children (in the case of K-12 teachers), is it not important enough that we get a license that shows we know how to take care of our kids as well?

Children are probably the single most important asset a society has for its own long-term survival. But yet we do everything we can to trivialize childrearing and children’s education. Ever since I took those Early Childhood Education classes, they’ve opened my eyes on just how typical parents (mis)treat their children in all kinds of circumstances.

That’s why I believe that before becoming a parent, everyone should attend compulsive but FREE government funded childrearing and education classes and pass a basic “parenthood competency exam” to receive a license. Having observed what some people do to their children, there has to be a comprehensive understanding on just WHAT children are and how to give them a healthy life. This kind of law will probably never fly, but if you think about it, the society as a whole will be a better place if one were implemented well.

Take, for example, abused children are more likely grown up to be abusers themselves. If the society can spend the initial dollars and initiatives to make sure these kinds of problems are fixed in the beginning, it wouldn’t have to spend millions of dollars later trying to patch the problem — and the “problem”, of course, is what started as an innocient child. I think I wrote about this before.

I guess issuing licenses for the right to become parents is a little too extreme. And I guess that won’t stop idiots from getting licenses either — considering how many drunk driving violations there are every year despite driver’s licenses.

When taken with a broader definition, “toy” can mean a lot of things — gadgets for geeks, frivolous and over-priced show-off transporations, relationship between two people, or, simply, just something to play with.

Adults seem to have no problems treating ourselves with “toys” of all kinds. Of course, all justifiable in the name of productivity, utility and convenience (but seriously, when can a Rolax do that a $50 Swatch can’t?). We are also compulsive buyers who crave for the latest and the greatest model of everything. But what it comes down to is this: We are no more childish than the kid standing next to us, sobbing from the cold rejection of his parent for that Pokemon “toy” he really wanted. The only difference between us and him? Cold, hard cash and a parent standing in the way. We are no more clear-headed than he, nor are we more logical or reasonable than he.

I think males have a worse tendency in this than the female species, too. Just think about that for a moment. (Though ladies do have a tick for different types of things).

So I wonder why adults subject the double standards on kids when they themselves can’t control what kind of “toys” they think they ought to have and sometimes for unexplanable reasons. Raising kids takes a lot of responsibility. And everytime when I see a parent dragging his/her child away from a toy with unqualified reasons, I can’t help but wonder what kind of lessons s/he is teaching the child — that it is OK for me to impose this on you even though I can’t really tell you why.

When implied in a social order, this kind of subjective non-reasoning can take a toll on how we solve problems socially and politically. When a whole generation of kids growing up thinking it’s OK to have double standards, as long as it’s enforced top-down, we are going to have problems in the society. I guess I could argue that the same thing goes to raising children in general. But that’s a whole other topic altogether.

While driving to my consulting gig today, NPR aired an interesting piece on how the composition of the U.S. military personnel today has affected how the military and its engagements around the world are reported, portrayed and politicized.

The thesis of the book the program was based on is that everyone should serve in the public services to really fully be a citizen of a country, but the authors of the book happened to choose the military service because of their personal ties to it and using it as a magnifier to put a few interesting ideas in perspective. One of the examples used was the contrast of the number of students from Princeton enrolled in the military 20-30 years ago (about 50% of all undergrads) v.s. today (exactly 10). The premise of the argument: Should the United States keep a military? If yes, who should serve?

It turns out that back in WWI and WWII, the Rich and the Powerful and their children were drafted to serve in the military for those wars. And as such, those who were in control, namely the politicians and other stakeholders of a war, were very careful on what to do with military deployment, precisely because they had someone very close serving in the military. Even the media reported wars differently because of own personal ties. And as a whole, the society took it personally when the nation waged wars.

While the book does not try to bash the Republicans or the Bush administration*, it points out that because today’s political and economic leaders don’t have a personal stakes and connections to the military (the example was that 70% of the Senate members 50 years ago were veterns v.s. only a handful or so today), when they wage a war or deploy troops to protect U.S. political or economic interests, they tend not to take it personally the human consequences of such actions.

I remember there’s a scene in Bowling for Columbine where Michael Moore was going around the Capital Hills trying to enlist children of the Senators and Congressmen, but nobody dared to so much as to talk about the subject. The underlying message was clear: we need a military to protect our interests as long as it’s somone else’s children doing it.

One caller mentioned a book, “Starship Troopers” (which was made into a 3rd rated movie in the 90s), where the social structure only allowed a person to become a “full citizen” after s/he has engaged in some kind of public service. I thought that idea is pretty interesting and intriguing. It’d force each individual to partake in the business of the society, not just selfishly minding one’s own business from birth to death. That kind of experience would make someone more conscious about grander social issues than pathetic personal problems (boo-hoo, Jane broke up with John).

Sometimes I wish I can just keep driving to enjoy the road and listening to NPR when they have interesting programs on….

* One of the authors is a Democrat while the other is a Republican, but both have someone they are close to serving in the military

After getting off of Skype with Brian ealier this morning, I started reading an article (Million-Dollar Murray) he sent me from earlier. The article is so fricking long that I had to break it up and read it thoughout the day. But it was more than worth the time it took to read. I haven’t read a powerful article like this in such a long time.

It started with a powerful story of a homeless man, Murray, an ex-marine, whose medical bills came out to an estimated million dollars over the years he’d been homeless. Quite simply, for the sake of economics, maybe it’s cheaper to just solve the homeless problem than to ignore it. But then on the ethical stand point, simply treating the homeless issue as an economic problem is almost immoral and unfair (unfair to those who work three jobs to put their kids through school but still makes too much to qualify for social services). And politicians on both sides don’t want to touch this issue precisely because of that — Republicans want to be fair, and the Democrats want to treat the issue with more dignity.

The article is broken up into five parts. If you don’t have time, at least read part one and part five to get a closure to Murray’s story. But if you can spare 20 minutes, the article will enlighten you on the issues of homelessness, economics and politics (and even pollution) in a way that you’d never thought about before.
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For those who have been in at least an Econ 101 class can probably still recall why rent control actually puts more people out on the street. The same reason applies to the very basic question as to why millions of people still live in hunger EVERYDAY even though there’s an over abundance of food collectively in the world. I used to think Economics is such a dull subject, but my instructor constantly attaches a human face to every single concept we learn in class, making each theory we learn unforgetable. The more I learn about the truths of how the world operates through the goggles of economics, the more frustrated I am about how the system operates. Malcolm Gladwell puts it best in the article:

Our usual moral intuitions are little use, then, when it comes to a few hard cases [referring to the hardest cases of the homeless people]. Power-law* problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both.

* Power-law is a systematic way to prioritize solving social issues using economics. We take care of the people who cost the system most resources first and then others later. This is what causes outcry from people who think this methodology is unfair.

Harsh realities versus principles of our ethics. What a predicament.

At least Nixon had some integrity when he was caught with the Water Gate incident. Now that Bush and Cheney are caught with their pants down, what will they do (again)?

US President George W Bush authorised the leak of secret intelligence to a newspaper to help defend the Iraq war, a former White House aide has said.
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… in the past the president has said he does not approve of such leaks and would sack anyone involved.

How many lies does an administration have to tell for its members to be impeached?

Excerpt direct from Slashdot:

“Facts and science collide with tribal loyalties, the Washington Post reports: ‘Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.’”

WTF?