Hills of Hayward

I have been tallying a little list of videos on YouTube that scare the bejesus out of me… not because what is said, but the blind emotion or manipulation behind it. It makes me question the meaning of being American.

Second GOP Debate - Topic is Torture

Instead of asking the candidates to take a firm stand on US’s current usage of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, we are given a false frame of a one in a million domestic terror scenario worthy of a Hollywood movie.

Romney support “Enhanced interrogation techniques… not torture.” Giuliani supports “Every method they can think of, shouldn’t be torture.”

Yes, in the context of imminent threat, use of torture may be more justified, BUT…. what about the rest of the 99.99% of the time when the US is torturing (oops I mean enhanced interrogating) suspects? That is the hardball question that was avoided.

It is never above FOX Network to play games with news, now it is playing games with the debates.

Ron Paul vs Giuliani @ SC Debate

There is a historical context in Ron Paul’s answer, yet the audience doesn’t care, and supports Giuliani’s reactionist answer. Even the impartial moderator boxes Ron Paul into a corner with his follow-up questions.

After the debate, many talk shows, websites, and pundits played Giuliani’s brief and forceful answer over and over again, and many others crowed that this solidified Giuliani’s then front-runner status.

But what about Ron Paul’s boring historical facts that were conveniently edited out of our news stories in favor of Giuliani’s sound bite?

Bill O’Reilly debates Phil Donahue on Cindy Sheehan

Ann Coulter debates Liz Edwards on personal attacks

Granted that the Ann Coulter clip is a low blow. Ann is probably the Republican version of Rosie O’Donnell. What do we do when even our news helps people waylay rational discussions into an emotional war?

Democratic candidate Edwards elaborates on this in his segment with Chris Matthews:

And her [Ann Coulter's] response to any effort to raise the dialogue and talk about things that people care about is to attack in a mean-spirited way.

… I think there is a segment of the population that responds to this hateful craziness. It has always been true, it has been true my whole lifetime.

… People will say the most outrageous demeaning things about good human beings and there will be a response.

… There has always been hateful language in this country. … It doesn’t mean that we have to tolerate it, we have to do something about it. We have to speak up.

On a lighter note, even Asian’s are capable of hate speech here in the US. This was published in AsianWeek opinion section.

The recent drought of Asians in tv and movies makes me yearn for the “good-old days” when Russel Wong and Margaret Cho had their own, albeit awful, TV shows. I even miss Garret Wang in his stereotypical portrayal of an Asian engineer lacking in self-confidence in Star Trek Voyager.

It is not often that we find Asian-Americans that break through on the national stage, so I was inspired to see recent news reports about General Taguba who is the first Asian-American general in our US army.

Back in the middle of 2004, General Taguba was sent to investigate reports of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. He diligently uncovered the issues and tried to escalate the problems to the highest levels, and was punished for surfacing this information and forced into retirement. An excellent article titled The General’s Report - How Antonia Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties by Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker details these events.

The article chronicles YET ANOTHER cover-up by a Bush administration insider. There has been so much evidence of immorality by Bush and his cabinet that I glossed over the details of how Rumsfeld refused to acknowledge the evidence, and how Rumsfeld lied on multiple instances to knowing about the sexual abuse and torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

What I wanted to read more about is Taguba himself. What was it like being an Asian American in the US army. It must have not been easy. How did he persevere against racism? Why did he join the army? How did he feel about his forced retirement?

There were a couple of paragraphs in the article that helped shed a little more light on Taguba.

General Taguba is a slight man with a friendly demeanor and an unfailingly polite correctness. “I came from a poor family and had to work hard,” he said. “It was always shine the shoes on Saturday morning for church, and wash the car on Saturday for church. And Saturday also for mowing the lawn and doing yard jobs for church.”

… “I’ll talk to you about discrimination,” he said one morning, while discussing, without bitterness, his early years as an Army officer. “Let’s talk about being refused to be served at a restaurant in public. Let’s talk about having to do things two times, and being accused of not speaking English well, and having to pay myself for my three master’s degrees because the Army didn’t think I was smart enough. So what? Just work your ass off. So what? The hard work paid off.”

This last paragraph especially sounds like the attitude of some of my friends when we talk about race and career development. I also hear echoes of my parent’s voice in there as well.
In some other passages, Taguba explains the consequences of his actions:

“Here … comes … that famous General Taguba - of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

… “They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal - that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Again, in Taguba’s explanations, I hear echoes of past conversations with friends about workplace unfairness by Asians in the corporate work force. What does this all mean? I am trying to figure it out myself. Ostracization… misunderstanding of context? Going with the flow or not? Standing up for fixed values or following the herd?

Technically and academically, Asians are often well qualified to do the job, but do we do our job well? Too well? Do we understand the context of our job well enough to prevent blowups and the feeling of betrayal? In Taguba’s case where there is a clear moral line that needs to be defended, and Taguba chose to be a hero; however, in the average work environment, sacrificing a career to defend possibly a more efficient methodology or credit for an idea cannot be justified.

What is the parallel here? Is there even a parallel here?

Our previous owner of our house installed a Rainbird watering system for our lawn controlled by a single interface on the wall in the bowels of the basement. I have been pretty hesitant to try to fiddle with this device, following the mantra, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

All I know is… in the “On” position, the our lawn is watered regularly, although I do not know what the schedule is. The “Off” position is for rainy season and winter, when no watering is needed.

That is the extent of my extensive interaction with the device.

Prompted by news that this summer may be one of the driest in Californian history, I decided to confront my Rainbird timer, and begin a deeper relationship with it. The conversation was initially rocky, due to my inexperience with its native language; however, I used “The Google” to find a handbook that outlined its vocabulary and protocols.

This was the breakthrough that the bilateral talks needed. Ten minutes later, we reached an accord. It would only spread water on my lands every two days and only in early morning. In return, I will continue to provide energy for its operations as a sovereign republic with its own currency and language. It was a win-win negotiation.

According to this Water Conservation Tips page, this would save 750-1,500 gallons of water a month. I wonder what else I can do in the next 10 minutes….

For the last half year, we have undergone a kitchen remodeling project whose scope started off to be just the kitchen, but soon enveloped the dining area, living room, and even the basement as well. I found Christine’s first reference to the remodeling project back in December 29, 2006. She said:

Our kitchen remodeling project expanded to “home” remodeling project and it is finally coming close to an end. We purchased all the special items ahead of time and left out the most common item, a microwave oven. We needed a 23.5″ wide black microwave oven to match our oven. How hard it could be?

Apparently, we were overly optimistic about the end date… ohh half a year ago. Most of the time has been spent waiting for Ikea to ship us a handful of panels from their factories. What happened was that we ordered a newly introduced wood color. The situation worsened when it became a popular color, and the factory that made the panels for Ikea had manufacturing problems. This caused a multi-month backlog of orders for specific panel pieces.

So…. dramatic drum roll. Our kitchen looks like this:

Just kidding, that is picture of our kitchen when we first considered buying our home almost two years ago. Notice the cramped kitchen, tiny refrigerator, and country mosaic motif.

This is what our kitchen looks like now during the day.

and at night with “mood” lighting mode.

My old buddy Chuck, the cheap camera great photos guy, introduced me to a photo stitching program that you can use to make panorama pictures. Unfortunately, there is some distortion because the camera is too close to the subject matter, but you get the idea of what the kitchen looks like now!

Big kudos to Christine who project managed this entire effort and kept the entire kitchen project within our budget. Pat on the back to our contractor Mr. He, he did a fine job. Christine… does this mean that we can finally have our housewarming party?

• Andy stopped by last weekend, and we had a nice get-together with old friends. I found out that Jie and Linda, as well as Julia and her BF are all heading out to Hong Kong for work. Andy himself is also planning a transfer to the Asian audit team. The back to Asia current has officially taken hold of our community.
• I took personal glee waking up to the Paris Hilton news requiring her to go back to jail. It was reported on MSNBC that the very day her house arrest ended, there was a truck parked outside with heat lamps, silverware, and glasses for a party that night at her residence. What took me especially by surprise was Fox News’ defense of Paris. I thought the conservative agenda was all about personal responsibility and family values… so confused by what Conservative Values are anymore.
• Caught some pictures of some interesting wildlife at home. Who has the biggest tummy?