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The Malaysian gang had a gathering last night for hot pot to celebrate Chinese New Year. For the first 5 minutes of the food fest, I was still in the meat-eating mode since hot pot gatherings are rarely vegetarian. So I accidentally ate a piece of meat… [chiils]… After that, I started becoming more conscious about picking what to eat from the pots (there were two pots going… In fact, there were so many people at Michelle’s house that Widodo had to bring his table over to make room!).

At the hot pot gathering, Hanny also announced her pregnancy… Her baby is due in August. Just a couple of weeks back, Su-fei also announced her pregnancy at Jai’s birthday gathering. And interestingly, her baby is also due in August! I guess October/November must be a good baby-making season. Hah!

Bryan was being unusually fussy at Michelle’s house. I think it was because we changed his daily routine by skipping his bath because we were at Michelle’s place when Bryan usually would be taking his bath. We also noticed that Bryan has started to recognize people. He refused to let anyone else but Grace and I to hold him. Days are going to get longer as Bryan grows older…

After coming home, I called my grandma in Taiwan to wish her happy new year. But I got an earful about how my brother and I should go back to Taiwan and stop avoiding the compulsory military service… blah blah… She thinks we are doing the “immigration jail time” by trying desperately staying out of Taiwan. Maybe she’s got a point. This whole immigration thing sucks.

I have been writing so much about vegetarian stuff lately, maybe I oughta add a new section called “veggie treats” or something…

After having hunted for vegetarian stuff exclusively for the past few days, I realized something (something Jason and “A” probably knew all along) — some cultural and ethnic food are more vegetarian friendly than others. Take for example, Thai, Taiwanese and Japanese food are definitely veggie friendly. The same can not be said about Korean or American food (entries; excluding side salads or appetizers)… or more accurately, Korean food in America since I have never been to Korea. Maybe to some cultures, being vegetarian is a practical thing (a lot of Buddhists in Taiwan, Thailand and Japan), but not others (Christians are not known to be vegetarians per se).

If I woke up early enough, I could see street sweepers quietly sweeping the streets of Taiwan when I was younger. They quietly collected all the garbage from the day before and dutifully tidied them into trash liners. Maybe it was because no one else wanted that kind of job, or maybe it was really tough work, the sweepers were almost exclusively elderly women or retired soldiers from the Chiang Kai-shek era. And that’s been going on for a long time.

Fast forward to my arrival to the United States. I started to notice that nobody actually sweeps in their homes in America — they vacuum. In fact, it was pretty tough to find brooms at Walmart. But cheap vacuums were everywhere. As for the outside yard work, Americans use these blowers to blow the leaves around. Is that laziness or ingenius at work? Is it that much more efficient to use gasoline to blow the leaves, dusts and garbage all the while generating polution? But then I realized that some people simply blow the trash into their neighbors’ yards. So the trash actually never gets picked up… because the next time the neighbor’s out cleaning his yard, he’s going to blow them right back!

On the industrial side, Americans have invented these huge street sweeping machines to help clean the never ending streets of America. In fact, these machines are so big and mean, if your car is ever in the way of it cleaning, you get a ticket (in humble Savannah, GA, a ticket of that sort is worth about $12; but in NYC, I think it was $65 or something rediculous like that). But the thing is, these damn machines don’t actually clean the streets either. All they do is sweeping trash from one corner of the street to the next. And a lot of times they are cleaning the streets when the traffic is the worst. Nothing’s more frustrating than to be driving behind one of those monsters. But again, I question these machines’ efficiency and usefulness. Is it really that much cheaper to purchase hordes these expensive machines, and to maintain and insure them, and then to have to hire someone and train that person to do the street cleaning? Is that an attempt to glorify what the society deems a “low paying” job (by driving a machine like that, they become “operators”, not street sweepers anymore)? Or maybe the government just doesn’t want to have to deal with the labors and the unions?

There’s probably more politics and “corporate economics” behind all this than meets the eye. But it sure makes America look all advanced and futuristic having monster machines sweeping the streets and men with blowing devices blasting dirt and leaves everywhere. Long live Land of the “Free“.

It really pisses me off to see monthly charges on my bank account when the balance falls under a certain amount that my bank sets. I am letting them to use MY money to loan to other people for a much higher interest. And yet THEY want to charge ME money for letting them having MY money? Crooks!

And I love how the poorer you are in America, the more happliy the banks are willling to rob from you, legally. See, in the United States, most banks place a set of restrictions on most checking and savings accounts. Some accounts limit how many checks you can write, other limit how many visits you can have at the counter. Yet others charge you a “monthly maintenance fee” for letting your overall account balance dip under a set amount (varies from 500 to $1500 depending on the bank).

It’s precisely because I am f*cking poor and that’s why I can’t consistently keep a strong balance, but somehow the bank has to labor over the fact that I have no money and charges me a “maintenance fee”?! What the f*ck is there to maintain a broke man’s checking account? Seriously?! While they are charging me for having too little money in the checking account, “premium” accounts, where people have tens of thousands of dollars, get this, receive free checking with no penalties. If you asked me, it takes more effort to manage and monitor THOSE accounts than someone who’s life depends on the social service. It should be the other way around! Crooks.

And what’s the deal with all the limitations on check writing that certain banks impose? Why do they care if I wrote more than 8 checks a month? Sure, the bank has to process them and post them. But isn’t that the bank’s job? And how come they are loaning money out to people anywhere at 5% to 20% depending on the terms, but yet they will only allow you to make a meager interest of far less than 3% in most cases — across ALL banks!?

And don’t even get me started on ATM fees and outbound and inbound service charges! Why does MY bank charge me $1.50 if I use someone else’s ATM machine? It’s bad enough that THEIR bank already charges me $1.50! And then how come they charge me for incoming wires as well as outgoing wires? Shouldn’t the bank be happy that I am getting money INTO the account? Hello? The worst part is, it costs $10 to recieve money via wire. TEN WHOLD DOLLARS!! WTF?! In Taiwan, a wire transfer costs NT700 (roughly $2) to send and nothing to receive! ARGH! CROOKS!.

All of these things, of course, are legal under current U.S. banking laws. Just like Howard Hughs once said of the U.S. Senators, “I don’t want to bribe them. I want to do it legally — I want to own them.” Banks pretty much own the United States Senators and Congressmen (as do the major corporations). Laws are passed in favor of those corporate entities and the people who run them, not in favor of the little guys who are struggling to make ends meet. And THAT, friends, is what’s wrong with America today. When lobbyists and corporate executives can call the lawmakers’ private numbers in the middle of the night to sneak a provision into a bill while ordinary citizens can’t even get an appointment to meet their aids.

Big, socially unconcious corporations suck. But worse are the lawmakers who are had by the balls of those corporations. Voting in most countries these days seem to have lost its meaning. Everything’s bought with money and corporate favors. And nothing is being done to address them (this is even more visible in Taiwan where the president is involved in many publicly known and visible scandals but yet it’s clear that he’s not going to get in trouble for them).

God, I hate banks.

Finally got a hold of a beta version of Google Earth for Mac and found where I currently live… It doesn’t seem like much because the stupid tree (big one too) cast a shadow over the one-story house…

WICKED!

And this is my grandma’s home in Taipei up on the Mt. Yang-ming…

This was our last [tiny, dinky] apartment in NYC (where Jason and Alicia were among the few who have visited and actually spent the night at!)

One important lesson I learned out of using Google Earth was, it’s fricking tough to find places through the bird’s eye view. It was relatively easy to find places in the U.S. since everything is nicely correlated to addresses. But looking for my grandma’s house in Taiwan was very hard, even though I knew how to get there from various points ON THE GROUND. Literally flying around trying to locate the exact location from a different perspective totally screwed up my orientation. I ended up having to use longitude and latitude coordinates I found from another site to locate her relatively big house.

I have a new found respect for birds, pilots and Superman.

My brother wrote an blog entry about MacGyver. Ahh~ What fond memories I have of that show.

Back in the days (80s), almost all the cousins would be visiting my grandparents, and Saturday at 8PM, we would all gather around the TV and tuned in to MacGyver religiously. Right after it was “The A Team“, which wasn’t quite as good ad MacGyver, but we were kids; we didn’t know any better. I think our parents didn’t mind us watching MacGyver mostly because of the show’s non-violence approach towards solving conflicts. But all we knew was, that guy was wicked cool.

I got so into that show I even spent my Chinese New Year money on a similar wallet that MacGyver was using in the show, and one year, I took out all the money (around NT$2,000… about USD$50 at the time) and bought a watch just like his (I had a picture to compare it with!). But shortly after I got that watch, the show revealed something about his watch which mine didn’t have. I felt cheated by the guy who sold me the watch. I bet that was the easiest $50 he ever made. Crazy days. Gosh I was such a dork.

My brother reminded me about trying to watch MacGyver after we moved to Thailand. The Thai cable aired the show in Thai (of course). I can’t remember how I found out that while the show was being aired, they also broadcasted the English dialogues over the radio!! Holy cow… that was one happy day. I mean, it was ghetto as hell, but we were happy. One time I taped the show on video tape (and on cassette tape). But the playback speeds on video and cassettes are different, so we had a lag on the cassette every 10 minutes or so… What a life…

Come to think of it, me insisted having everyone calling me “Chu” may have something to do with that show… If you haven’t made the connection already, I will not be available for comments when you see me in person.

In 1994, the year I came to the U.S. for college, I stayed with my cousins in Seattle for a month or so. I missed a two-hour MacGyver special for Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas?)… Until this day, I still kick myself for forgetting to watch that. Chu’s stupid memory (lack thereof).

Years later, I read/heard somewhere that the show had actually be discontinued for a couple of years in the U.S., but due to its enormous popularity in Asia, the producers made two more seasons just for the fans in Asia. Come to think of it, that was probably a rumor.

Image shamelessly taken from rdanderson.com (not related to Richard Dean Anderson) without permission.

Taiwan makes some pretty bad teen dramas, especially those that feature the latest young idols the record labels or model agencies try to make money off of. One of them was “Meteor Garden” featuring the famous F4 boy band. The show effectively demonstrated that not only can’t the members of the band sing, those guys can’t do much else except looking pretty. But apparently the show was so popular that it became the first Taiwanese TV drama to have been imported to Japan and Korea, which was a big deal in itself. Before that, the relationship was one way: Korean and Japanese soaps have made millions of dollars from clueless and gullible Taiwanese teens for decades.

But just the other day, my theory that Taiwan makes the worst TV shows in Asia was broken. Singapore, despite its self-proclaimed better-than-the-rest-of-Asians status in the world, makes absolutely the crappiest and worst TV show ever. “The Hotel” (【 大 酒 店】) has a faithful following with an active forum (Simplified Chinese only) of fans with bad taste. The stereotypes and awful acting, script writing and pretty much everything else makes the sitcom impossible to sit through.

The good news is, Singapore’s investment on a bold new series “The Singapore Short Story Project” paid off with some decent acting and script writing. One thing I would like to comment on the project, though, is that I’d forgotten just how funny “Singlish” sounds (not to say that Taiwanese English is anywhere close to being better; but Singlish is, hands down, WAY funnier). Apparently Singlish is now a “recognized” slang of English that everyone knows what it is. Embarrassed, the Singaporean government is now trying to push for proper English to rescue its image.

Since I am on the topic of making fun of Singaporean English, there’s also “Manglish“, referring to Malaysian English. It’s just about as funny as Singlish but with a lot more “flavors” added in (Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, Tamil… etc). Because parts of it you can’t understand, it’s not quite as funny as Singlish. Another funny (maybe funnier than Singlish) variation of English spoken in Asia is “Engrish“, really really terribly bad English spoken by the Japanese. I mean, Japanese is a serious, no non-sense culture. Naturally, they take language learning seriously. So mostly, Engrish is just a series of misunderstandings, misinterpretations or misuses of the English language by the Japanese when they attempt to reinterpret Japanese meanings using inappropriate English words or pronunciations. And sometimes it’s funny as hell. Engrish.com is a famous site with countless funny examples (tip: try not to laugh out loud at work). Austin Powers has its fair share of puns on Engrish.

Taiwan contracted the world’s most ambitious “Build-Operate-Transfer” (BOT) jobs of its kind back in the late 1990’s to build a high speed bullet train project. The construction has been cursed with political scandals and corruptions ever since.

The total cost of the project has been estimated at about $2 trillion Taiwan dollars (or roughtly USD $61,538,461,000) by the time the construction is completed in late 2006. It will be 2 years late and billions of Taiwan dollars over budget — a laughing stock in the world of construction business.

The interesting thing about the scandal is, it’s an open secret of corruption and political favors. The Taiwanese media has repeatedly reported the details of the scandal. But yet nothing has been, and, with the way things are, ever will be, done about it because it involves both the sitting and previous presidents of Taiwan and their cabinets. It’s also clear the people of Taiwan fell asleep at the wheel having reelected the same morons who blindly passed the provisions of the project in the legislature. That’s why I think the South Koreans really got their shit together when they arrested, tried and convicted their former president for his criminal acts. As conflicts of interest continue to taint the construction, it’s not hard to see those elected morons will continue to gain the support of the businesses working on the project.

This sort of mirrors Enron’s ties to Bush Jr.. And it also echoes how Dickhead Cheney’s former company easily won the bids on the reconstruction projects in Iraq.

On a related issue, even though Taiwan has projected itself as a democratic and free society, the lawmakers in the parliament continue to demonstrate their shameless and childish ways of resolving political issues by literally brawling each other. I mean, if they truly care about their issues, I dare them to really challenge each other over a duel, like the good old days of America. That Alexandar Hamilton had some balls; in comparison, most of the Taiwanese legislators are a bunch of legalized criminals whose brains are the size of peanuts with no room for EQ.

In the old days of school bullying, you gotta pay to get protected. Bullies don’t protect you out of goodness of their hearts. And that was just the way it was.

For years, Taiwan has been buying used, outdated and retired military equipment from the United States for almost the price of brand new ones.

A research report titled “Trade in Conventional Weapons by Developing Countries” released recently by a research department of the US Congress lists in detail stage by stage the amount of money spent on arms purchases by principal countries and regions of the world. The report shows that in the eight years from 1996 to 2003, the total amount of arms purchase by Taiwan approaches US$20 billion, ranking second in the world.
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Statistics show that over 95 percent of various types of weapons purchased by Taiwan came from the United States.
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Ku Chung-lien, Taiwan’s former “navy commander-in-chief” and current “legislative council member”, was indignant at this, saying that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities only know how to latch onto the Americans, thus turning Taiwan into the “Americans’ salvage station”.

The United States has been shoveling aging American military equipment down the throats of the Taiwanese people in the name of keeping the Taiwan Straight safe. At the same time, the military sales representatives never forget to tell the people of Taiwan to shove the peace, or, wait, democracy, up in their own asses if they don’t keep buying.

An excerpt from the Washington Post:

Richard Lawless, the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for Asian and Pacific affairs, told a Taiwan television network Tuesday that if the purchase of planes, missiles and submarines is not approved before the end of this year, there will be “serious repercussions” for the United States and Taiwan.
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The delay and uncertainty have become a sore point for the Bush administration, which first approved $20 billion to $30 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in 2001. Since then, with growing frustration, Pentagon officials have been urging the island to come up with the money to make a purchase.

So when America talks about spreading democracy to every corner of the world, it’s only valid if whoever they are helping to keep the “freedom” is willing to pony up the cash for it. After all, freedom and democracy always come with a “price”.

I don’t know a whole lot about international arms trade or politics around it, and I don’t mean to oversimplify, but it looks like unless Taiwan pays up, United State may be conveniently preoccupied with other things when Taiwan is in trouble. Is the freedom in Taiwan, in essence, bought? Without money, would United States have protected Taiwan in the name of protecting justice, freedom and democracy? If Taiwan spends 95% of its arms purchases with other countries instead of with the United States, would the United States still fuss about this whole issue about Taiwan not defending itself?

I may be biased. But something smells fishy about the Bush Administration being so pushy on something the United States obligated itself into doing, which at the time, was for the interest of truly protecting the freedom and democracy of Taiwan.

After three months after my Thai police certificate arrived, Grace finally got her Malaysian police certificate earlier this week.

So it took three months to get the Thais to get something done; it took six months to get the Malaysians to get exactly the same thing done. All it took was three days for the Taiwanese… What the hell is so different about processing a damn police certificate in the three countries that there’s such discrepancy in the time it takes to do the background check?

Grace said the last time she obtained a police certificate from Malaysia took only days when she was physically there. Why does it take so long for a Malaysian citizen, whom hasn’t spent the past 5 or 6 years in Malaysia, whom also obtained a police certificate once before, to get a stupid piece of paper that was issued by the Malaysian Consulate in the U.S. anyway with only three lines of sentences? Is it because she’s Chinese and not Malay (let’s face it, racism IS a problem in Malaysia where Malays run the show)? Or is it logical to say that Malaysia is a bigger country, thus it takes longer than Taiwan to do a background check? Bogus. Thailand is similar in size and population.

I can’t even begin to imagine how long it’d take a foreigner trying to obtain a police certificate from them…

I stumbled onto an essay (Chinese version here) on a proposal to best mend the tension in the Taiwan Straight by Taiwan’s National Policy Foundation. The heart of the essay is a proposal made by the NPF to reunite China and Taiwan under a concept pioneered by the British Empire, a Chinese Commonwealth.

The idea is that commonwealth nations behave as independently run and governed countries. They have the rights of an autonomous nation. However, under the umbrella of the commonwealth, these nations are actually “nation states” that pledge their ultimate allegiance to one power (in the case of the British Commonwealth, the Queen). The paper argues that, with this arrangement, Taiwan would retain all of its autonomy while enjoying one-nation status with China. Taiwan would be free to negotiate its own treaties, appoint its own ambassadors, regulate its trade and hold elections without interference from China, just like Great Britain does not interfere with any of its commonwealth nations (Canada, Australia, Malaysia… etc).

The paper also revealed that China had already considered such possibility back in 1997 when its supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping was still alive. But Taiwan had always held the position that unless China became demarcated, reunification wouldn’t be possible. The relationship with China worsened when a pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bien was elected (twice!).

Many scholars believe that the next century is going to be the Chinese century. And the reunification of China and Taiwan is going to be a key element in strengthening that position. Personally, I think Taiwan would be silly to go it alone in the next 50 years. Its people has the insight, cultural similarity and language to play a decisive role in being an active participant of the next economic wave through the success of China.

今天在電視上看到台灣的立委雷倩到美國來訪問。她在灣區一個華人電視上談到個蠻有趣的東西, 就是 “中華國協”。其實這當中的精髓是直接向大英帝國時期沿留下的 “大英國協” 作為樣本。後來上網找了一下才發現這玩意兒是由連戰啟辦的財團法人國家政策研究基金會所發表的一篇論文。其中提到了一些兩岸統一後的假設及建議。

論文中提到如果以國協的方式統一, 台灣就可保有它現在的自主權, 甚至可以以國協的方式申請加入聯合國。國協的前提當然就是一國兩制。就像英國現在也從來不會介管加拿大, 澳洲或馬來西亞等國協聯盟的任何大小國事。雖然這些國家名義上都已是有自主權的獨立國, 他們最終效忠的還是英國的皇后。

我覺得台獨這東西太不為台灣兩千多萬的人民著想了。台獨對台灣一點好處都沒有。雖然大陸和台灣的文化和習俗上的確是入差很大, 但是回頭想想, 美國東, 中, 西岸也都有不小的差別… 更別提到北部和南部的差異了。所以以一個大國來講, 也許這是無法改變的形態。人家都說在不久的將來會是中國人的世紀。在這時候搞台獨未免也太不會挑時間了吧… 台灣在大陸有他國沒有的優勢, 包括語言, 文化, 背景等等都把台灣的人民擺在這個中國人世紀改革的最前線。如果時機錯過了, 台灣在百年後可能連在教科書上也只能當附註罷了。

Because of the unique composition of our family, I was intrigued to find out what citizenship possibilities there are for my son.

U.S. Citizenship — this is a given since my son will automatically get a U.S. Citizenship when he’s born within the borders of the United States. United States does not allow dual citizenships with very few exceptions.

Taiwanese Citizenship — this is not a particularly useful citizenship in terms of travel, but it probably beats having a passport from China since Mainland Chinese have an extremely high “disappearance” rate when they travel aboard. But for the sake of comparison, I found out that Taiwanese citizenship is extremely easy to get if either one of the parents is a citizen of Taiwan, which I am. Another downside of having a citizenship from Taiwan, particularly for a male, is Taiwan’s compulsory military service for one year and six months (or extended civilian service option) for all males before the age of 40. Taiwan allows dual citizenships.

Malaysian Citizenship — Malaysia is really a funny country. On paper the government claims it does not discriminate anyone. But in practice, it’s probably one of the most discriminatory countries in Southeast Asia (it’s hard to beat Indonesia in its mistreatment toward Chinese though). In this case, unless a child is born in Malaysia to a Malaysian parent, the father must be Malaysian if the child is born outside of Malaysia. But… what about the right of the mother? Why can’t the mother enjoy the same right for her son if she’s married a non-Malaysian and the child is born outside of Malaysia? That’s one f*cked messed up rule. Messed F*cked up, yes, but consistent with most Muslim-faith based countries I guess. More information can be found here and here. So does Malaysia allow dual citizenships? My knee tells me “no”.

We haven’t had too much pleasant experience with Malaysia and its policies as of lately. Hopefully this will change as Jai, a friend of ours, swears by the government’s efficiency. But for now, Malaysia isn’t giving too many reasons for some people whose children may consider Malaysia as their home. If Malaysia wants to be able to compete more aggressively in this global climate, it has to do more to allow qualified people to be part of its society more indiscriminately.

Just my two cents.