English-Only is for Chumps

A couple years ago, I was reading an Asian American lifestyle website. I stopped reading it abruptly when an author and a bunch of commenters came out strongly English-Only, and cited some ignorant arguments; ignorant of demographics, ignorant of bilingual education, ignorant of bilingualism. I wanted find the people and physically puke on them. Below is what I wrote in the comments of the post in question. I had forgotten about the whole episode, but somebody who read that page found their way to my blog, and the link showed up again in my analytics. My opinion on English-Only policies remains the same to this day.

Heritage languages are a birthright.  Tagalog and Pangasinan were my birthright, and I was cheated out of them.

______

Why is it that white kids learn a second language to get ahead, and brown kids learn English to keep up? Aren’t kids language learning machines? Why aren’t they all seen as potential bilinguals? What extra resources does it take to make someone well-spoken and literate in two languages… teachers and books?

Growing up bilingual is a perfectly normal human state; being able to speak, read, and write in more than one language is not harmful. There are plenty of places in the world where bilingual education is the healthy norm.

Why can’t we get it right in the US? A) Because it’s politicized. B) Because education is underfunded. C) Because monolinguals don’t understand bilingualism.

Listen to me: “new immigrants have to work hard and learn English just like the rest of us” is NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT about bilingual education, it’s about ESL. If your school’s “bilingual program” is an ESL program in disguise, yes, the kids are getting the shaft. But that doesn’t mean you have to eliminate REAL bilingual programs, or go to an English-Only policy! Come on, children!

“Having multiple translations and teaching people in their own language” is not bilingual education, either, son. It’s monolingual. Think about it. If you’re not teaching kids to speak, read, and write in two languages, IT’S NOT BILINGUAL.

Bilingual ed is not about giving immigrants a break; it’s about giving kids an edge. And bilingual services (voting, DMV, etc.) are not meant to pamper the immigrants, they are meant to allow people to participate in society. Speaking English is NOT a prerequisite to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no language requirement to “all men are created equal.” Sure, not being able to speak English well can limit your achievement in this society, but it cannot limit your civil rights!

Which brings me to my final point, before I unsubscribe to this website and stop reading [your website] forever. And that is this: don’t you for a second think that English-only is some kind of real ISSUE, that poor, decent people are being victimized by the specter of Foreign Language taking our American identity away and giving our precious tax dollars to skinny brown thieves who refuse to speak English. And don’t you tell me we have to argue over a fistful of dollars for educational funding for bilingual education and services when this country is involved in two wars overseas and trying to build a rocket to Mars. No, kids, no.

English-only is about discrimination and xenophobia. They’ll make it sound reasonable, they’ll even make it sound like it’s deadly important. But it’s not. It’s about scaring white people into voting conservative. And I’m not buying it.

I won’t be back to this website, I’m too disgusted with this post. I wish you well, I respect your right to disagree with me. I’ve dedicated my career to learning and teaching foreign languages, and it’s brought me success, but I would give it all back if I could go back to the 70s and punch my pediatrician in the face for telling my parents to speak only English to me. I would give it all back if I could communicate with my family.

Cultural Blindspot: Noodles.

“Chicken. Noodles. Shrimp.” The customer was baffled; jaw hanging half-open, eyebrows high and tense.

R and I walked into Dinersty, a shoebox of a restaurant in Manhattan’s Garment District, just around the corner from the office. It’s run by nice enough, though quick tempered, bunch of folks from Fujian Province. They’ve got a hot wok, a quadruple deep fryer, rice cookers… all the necessities for Chinese food, but the food that comes out is the kind of Chinese food that could only come from the imagination of a New Yorker. It smells vaguely of pork grease.

Anyway, we walked in, and this baffled customer is down to just nouns: Chicken. Noodles. Shrimp.

The kid behind the counter is just as exasperated; I’m not sure if he was about to scream at the customer or crack up with laughter. “What do want,” he says, just on the verge of yelling, “soup? Chow mein? Chaw fun? Mai fun?”

The customer broke it down again… I want chicken. Noodles. Shrimp. That’s all.

And then the kid behind the counter opens and drops his hands, “Yes! What do you want? Soup? Chicken soup? What kind of noodle?

Yes… chicken. Noodle. And shrimp.

The kid behind the counter readjusts his hat out of frustration and tries again. “Ok, chicken noodle soup… and a shrimp in it?”

The customer looks at the wall disappointed, and then says he’ll be back. He walks outside to cool off.

R orders his lunch; I order my beef with string beans, NO SAUCE. “You want me to steam the beef and beans?” No, I answer, you can 炒 it, but I don’t want it sitting in a pool of sauce. Ok, he replies, just a little sauce so he can 炒 it.

It took me a just a little while to figure out what was in the cultural blind spots of the frustrated customer and the exasperated kid behind the counter. The customer wanted was chicken, noodles, and shrimp, period. That’s what we call yakisoba, which you get at a Japanese restaurant, not a Chinese restaurant. His cultural blind spot was an assumption that noodles are stir-fried. Why shouldn’t he expect them to be? In his world, he’s totally right.

What the kid behind the counter was hung up on was a lesson Davidico taught me back in Shanghai; if you say you’re eating noodles to a Chinese person, they’re going to assume it’s soup… unless you specify that it’s a non-soup noodle dish, like cold noodles, fried noodles. His cultural blindspot was that “noodles” is a soup dish… what else would it be? In his world, he’s totally right.

On top of that, there are regular noodles, egg noodles, rice vermicelli, wide rice noodles…. Walking into a Chinese restaurant and asking for “noodles” is like walking into a Baskin Robins and asking for an ice cream, and giving no further information.

Anyway, to my surprise, as I was waiting for my sauce-less (and yet somehow, still overly salted) lunch, Chicken Noodles Shrimp came back in the door. He repeated his same three nouns, and the kid behind the counter said SOUP? CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP?

I should intervene… I’ll chime in and say “he wants chicken chow mien, add shrimp.” And then I think, wait… I’ll say it Chinese! How do I say it… 他说鸡肉炒面加一点虾仁。 Is that right?

But by the time I figured it out, the customer had acquiesced to the soup, and 30 seconds later there was a plastic container of chicken noodle soup in his hand. The chef had dropped in a couple of cooked prawns. I think it was less than $3.00.

English Pork Pies

The iPad Haiku Festival is still happening here! Go leave your iPad Haikus!
_______

From What I'm Eating

My English friend J in Singapore doesn’t eat pork anymore, but he told me he occasionally missed English pork pies with a spot of mustard. So I googled around to see if I couldn’t find myself an English pork pie here in New York, and I found Myers of Keswick, a British grocery store in the West Village. So I took the A-train.

They had a variety of English pies, so I bought four; a lamb curry pie, a chicken and mushroom pie, the pork pie you see above, and a pork pie with applesauce and cheese on top. I had a hunch that cheese on top is not quite cricket, but I thought the pork and apple sauce was a stroke of genius. The apple sauce was not day-care sweet, just enough to compliment the pork. Here’s the picture….

From What I'm Eating

The chicken and mushroom and lamb curry pies were a little bland to me… and J pointed out that there should be no carrots in the chicken mushroom pies… and I had found a carrot. Oh well. At $3.50 per pie, it’s still a pretty cheap lunch option.

Hard Habit to Break

The iPad Haiku Festival is still happening here!  Go leave your iPad Haikus!

______

So my friend S blew through town, and ST grew up in Oly, just like me.  It’s cool to see someone from your home town once in a while, to remind you what you sound like.  I’m sure it’s a linguist thing.  I felt the same way when SB showed up in Shanghai.

Anyway three things that surprised me.

1)  He used “hella” all the time, more I think than my regular 206 crew.  Aww, felt like home.

2)  We were at lunch, and we had finished eating, and his cell phone rang.  Immediately he APOLOGIZED and EXCUSED HIMSELF FROM THE TABLE.  I was left chuckling to myself, and explaining what had just happened to the Chinese ladies, who were a little baffled.  I told them in Chinese:  ”this is our Seattle culture, eating rice time, make phone call, must go away.”  We had a laugh about it later.

3)  Somebody asked me directions, and I told ST about how in New York you don’t say “excuse me, I have a question, could you help me” or any other kind of polite preface to your question.  You shout your question at someone and that’s how you get things done here.  I told him about the time Amber was left standing in the street after trying to ask politely for directions; the SUV peeled out in the middle of her sentence.  If you say “excuse me” here, it sounds like you’re begging for money.  Anyway, ST enjoyed that story, and then experienced it himself when asking about SNL broadcast.  He said the lady rolled her eyes and looked away uncomfortably when he started with “Excuse me, I just have a real quick question…”  It’s a hard habit to break.

Big Weekend

The iPad Haiku Festival is happening here!

I had a big weekend.

Friday was going to be one drink with the crew and then home to bed early, but I ended up out until midnight.

Saturday morning S blew into town.  S and I went to the Mandarin summer intensive together in Hangzhou back in 2007, and he was traveling with two of his coworkers.  Met in Times Square, Ethiopian food for lunch, walk around midtown, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Rockefeller Plaza.  There was also some American diner food, some Guggenheim time, and a return to Times Square to see it at night.

We ended up leaving the girls at Times Square for a couple hours, as me and S returned to his hostel to try to solve an NSF problem.  I went along to play a supporting role, and ended up lecturing in a loud voice the manager.  There really is not the same culture of customer service here in New York as there is back home.

After that, we retrieved the girls at Times Square, and then walked to Japas 38 for some karaoke.

When it was time to go, I sold the idea of a corndog to everyone.  One of the girls who I had been teasing joked, oh great, I’m walking with corndog over here.  ”Did I just get called corndog?”  I asked.

“Is there a problem?  I think that’s a pretty cool nickname.”

“It’s an awesome nickname, but I gave that nickname to a friend of mine… oh never mind.”

This morning there was the WTC tour, and some pizza at a pizza deli.  We went to Wall St., saw the Bull, and Battery Park.  There was some drama getting back to Chinatown for the bus back to Boston, but they were able to catch the 4:30.

2010 Haiku Festival: the iPad edition

It’s been a while since I last hosted a poetry festival; there were haiku festivals in 2007 and 2006, limerick festivals in 2006 and 2007.  I hadn’t thought much lately about staging another one, but this one was requested personally by the Head of the Blogging Department BitchPhD and her henchwoman Delia Christina.

Originally, it was conceived as an iPad joke festival, but guh, the by now those tweets are hella old by now.  By now everyone’s seen the MadTV vid (extra points if you saw it on Twisty’s page).  So I’m repackaging it as a haiku/senryuu festival.

Haiku and senryuu, of course have the same three-line formal structure: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the last line. I like to have one line (doesn’t matter which one) that has an imperfection of plus-or-minus one syllable, just because imperfection is tragic, and tragic is beautiful. So I’d live to see your 5-8-5s, your 5-7-4s, your 6-7-5s…. whatever, as long as it’s only one imperfection. Perfect 5-7-5s will be accepted as well, but they are a little obvious, don’t you think?

Of course, free form haiku are welcome as well; heavy on the imagery, as stingy as possible when it comes to the syllable count.

As you know, the haiku form is related to seasons and nature. Senryuu, while sharing the same formal properties of haiku, are supposed to be funny. They can be witty political satire, golf-clappy high brow social commentary, or a juicy fart joke.

Post your haiku and senryuu in the comments section of this post, and tell all your friends. Don’t forget to title your poems!

Here’s one to start us off:

Hold me, Steve Jobs, by JP Villanueva

email thrills now!
magical experience!
does it cut and paste?

The iPad and my big questions.

So we all saw the iPad today, if you haven’t here’s the video.

Now the presentation was pretty compelling, and it’s hard for the gee-whiz-technology folks (the likes of which I’ve been working for for the last 3 years) to not start drooling.

Yes, of course, the first version is flawed, and just in case you all haven’t made your own shortlists now, here’s mine:

• no video camera
• no multitasking
• no flash support

And the list continues.  There will be upgrades, there will be price slashes, there will be competition… There will be choices in size and speed.  There will be revolutions in the way we use the tool… think of the 5 revolutions we’ve seen in Twitter use we’ve seen in the last 2 years.  The iPad is going to be a game changer.

For some people it will be.

You know who doesn’t need the iPad?  Office workers.  Most professionals.  This device is not going to change the way people work.  It’s going to change the way people study, and the way they do their personal computing.  The iPad is not a small laptop; it’s not a big iPhone… what it is is a big iPod touch… a gee-whiz toy that’s awesome for travelers and students.

So who wants an iPad?

The gee-whiz-new-toy people, first of all… today’s announcement  was all about them.  They’ll buy this product because it looks cool, because it will make them interesting to talk to, because they have to have the latest thing.

Business class travelers will want this, natch.

Book readers?  Maybe this will be a Kindle killer, maybe not… These people sure think so (ps.  ”rooted” means “f***ed” in Australian.  People love their Kindles…, but this today’s announcement is the 5 o’clock whistle on new Kindle sales.   Seriously, do YOU think the Kindle is going to change with the times?  Are YOU looking forward to Kindle 3.0?  Are you?

And the last group… university students.  Digital textbooks are suddenly less annoying.  Publishers are onboard, but on’t expect textbook publishers to get it right, though, at least not at first.  You can digitize an existing textbook, but the publishers that are going to succeed are the ones who understand the new media, someone who drops the paper and ink metaphor and understands the virtual learning environment.

In my day, a university student had to have a computer.  The next batch had to have laptops.  Does the current batch of university students really NEED netbooks and smartphones?  You might not think so, but if you’ve seen a college lecture hall in the last few years, you know that they absolutely think they do.

So here’s the question I need to ask… who is going to develop language-learning media that understands the tool?  And naturally, the follow up question… will I be working for them?

Brooklyn Saturday

I spent most of Saturday in Brooklyn; Memo and PDP claimed that they had found ‘another Chinatown.’  I begrudgingly left Manhattan to meet them at Atlantic, where we took another train deep into Brooklyn… to Sunset Park.  We found Chợ lớn on 8th Ave.

The phở was good, a little better than Manhattan phở, and a couple dollars cheaper.  The crew and I have come to accept that in NYC the phở is just served with lemon instead of lime… for now at least.  I’m hoping limes will accompany our phở when they come into season, whenever that is.

As usual, we went to spend the afternoon in a café, working our our respective projects.  We tried to go to sNice in Park Slope, but they’ve got a ‘no laptop’ rule on weekends and holidays… so the place was full of smug hipsters sitting silently in pairs, wishing there were less small children around.  We parked at Ozzies III, which was fine, full of laptops and small children.

On the way to Park Slope, Memo couldn’t contain himself…

Later we walked a few blocks down to the famous ChipShop, the fish and chip/English food place that is known across America as the people who will fry anything.

Besides fish&chips, there was also the beast below:  it’s a deep fried New York Cheesecake, battered served with powdered sugar and a berry syrup.

On the inside it looks like this (below) and it was way better than I had expected.  The cheesecake inside had gone molten.  That is some evil genius.

Afterward, Memo and I met KFox at Yello, at the very south end of Chinatown, near Federal Plaza.  Karaoke there is free, but it’s also not hosted, and the computer crashed a number of times.  Meh.  We were there with a bunch of boisterous rookies who had celebrated a bar mitzvah earlier in the day.

Back in the Day

From some photos to blog about

Catherine, Mateo, and me.

June 2009, Cotton’s, Shanghai, China. Photo by Edna Zhou.

I’ll enjoy it for now.

From some photos to blog about

My friend and former co-worker C sent me some Hawaiian salt… from Hawaii.  We haven’t seen each other in years, but lately we’ve been tagging each other on our Facebook food porn shots.  One day he said “send me your address, I’m going to send you some Hawaiian salt.”  Of course, like hell am I going to pass that up.  It arrived in the mail today and… well it’s not like I cried or anything, but I did have to catch my breath a little… I had no idea there was going to be seasoning salt as well…

I had a lovely dinner of delicious fancy chicken curry at S and O’s place.  S and I had a nice talk on the balcony about work, life, the future… and it occurred to me how thankful I was for my new life in New York.  It has been a difficult move from Shanghai, but I have never doubted for a second that moving to New York has been exactly the right move for me, in terms of my career, my sanity, and my soul.

I was contacted by a couple of listeners today, one who knew me from QingWen, the Chinese grammar show I did with Amber for a few months at Praxis.  The other was an sPod listener who moved to El Salvador in July, right about the time I showed up back in Seattle with my life in suitcases.

This listener wrote:

I don’t know why, but I have this morbidly curious as to the real reasons why you left spanishpod — were they a bad company? You were Spanishpod’s Conan for crying out loud! (I mean the red haired guy, not the savage)

I’ve mostly said what I have to say about leaving sPod, but I’ve been thinking about the comparison with Conan O’Brian, which is one of the cooler compliments I’ve been paid.  I’m not sure I measure up to that analogy, but about 20 minutes ago Conan gave his farewell speech, in which he thanked his staff, NBC, and his viewers.  Then he played lead guitar as Will Farrell sang “Freebird,” and spun out a pretty respectable noodle as the song, the show, and his dream job all came to an end.  It was a pretty cool way to go out, and no where near the end of  his career.

I’m the Conan of SpanishPod?  Maybe it’s a stretch, but for now I will enjoy it.

Disappointing Riddles

Here are some bad, riddles.  They are original.  You don’t have to read them.  In fact, don’t, I’m telling you not to.

_____

What did Madeline the codependent calico cat say to the quiet roomful of attentive pigs who were all in town for a toilet bowl conference?    (Click here for the disappointing answer)

What did Chad the Angry fish say to that clam that wouldn’t stop talking?  (Click here for the disappointing answer)

What did Kelly the Camel say when her cell phone bill was handed to her while she was eating a spoonful of peanut butter?  (Click here for the disappointing answer).

Dr. King and the Weihnachtssingfest

Photo from the Seattle Times.   I’m thinking right now about Dr. King, the greatest American who ever lived.  Tomorrow we celebrate his life as we observe his birthday.   I wish I got the day off.

Back when I was a high school Spanish teacher, I enjoyed whipping my students into a frenzy for the Weihnachtssingfest that Frau Z proposed one year; she taught her German classes some German Christmas carols, and I taught my classes some villancicos; we got our classes together the day before Christmas break, the Germans would sing their little songs first, and then my class would go second.

And when I say “whipping my students into a frenzy” what I mean is that I demanded that my students go hard or go home.  If they’re going to slouch in front of the Germans hiding behind songsheets as they moused out the lyrics off key and with no energy, then I’d sooner give an exam, because I am not going to be any part of a borefest.   They would have to memorize their lyrics, sing hard, knock out some choreography, and costumes… oh yes, costumes.  I was happily surprised to see my students rise to the challenge, and it made me realize… nobody wants to suck.  American kids want to be the best.

The most important thing of all that I required of them was to be gracious to the Germans, including providing them with delicious snacks and cheering enthusiastically for their presentation… even if it sucks.

So in the week before the Weihnachtssingfest  my students were studying for their quiz and learning their counts and their harmonies and deciding who would give the “Welcome Germans” speech, who was playing  Jesús, María, y José in the Nativity, and whose mom could make “Welcome Germans” cookies.  Of course my students saw Frau’s students around campus and in the cafeteria, and that’s when the smack talk started…. who was going to have a better presentation at the Weihnachtssingfest.  The Germans thought they finally had a shot one year, it turned out their top secret strategy was to wrap a tall boy in some Christmas lights during “O Tannenbaum.”

Anyway, smack talk is not in the spirit of the Weihnachtssingfest, let alone Weihnacht itself, so I put the kabosh on it:  NO SMACKTALK.  My students were like “but but but they are hating on us and we’re going to be so much better than them!”

And that’s when I dropped Dr. King on them.

Dr. King said only love can conquer hate, children.  You fight hate with hate, you get more hate.  You fight hate with anything but love, and you will not conquer hate.  Love conquers hate.  I don’t care if they talk smack, I don’t care if they hit you with water cannons and attack dogs.  You let them hate you, and you repay them with love.  That’s what Dr. King taught us.  They are not the enemy; their hate is our enemy.

So my students started answering the smack talk with “I can’t wait to see you guys sing in German, I know it’s going to be awesome!”  which infuriated the Germans even more, and the temptation was to step it up.  That’s when both classes started to realize, though, that repaying smack talk with love was not only Non Violent Direct Action, but it was also hilarious.  Repaying hate with love, and then watching someone get more furious is a laugh riot.  Because escalating about Weihnachtssingfest is totally ridiculous.

Just like segregation.

Let’s get to the Promised Land together.

19 Seconds in Nolita

How is “Pinche Taquería” an appropriate name for a Mexican restaurant?  Let’s extend this formula to some other cuisines…

• Crêperie Putain Merde
• Μαλάκας Γύρος
• Pizzeria Sporca Puttana
• 你妈的兰州面
• Putangina Pinakbet!
• C**ksucking Fish & Chips

SECRET! How to make JP’s Chicken Adobo

From What I’m Eating

Filipino food doesn’t have very standard recipes, so everybody’s chicken adobo tastes different. Everybody has an auntie who makes it the way they like best, and nobody nowhere is ever satisfied by chicken adobo from a restaurant. That’s the rule.

For me, it’s my mama’s chicken adobo that I like the best, but after 30 years of cooking it, she has gotten bored of her own recipe, I think, because she nowadays she adds things like wine and herbs, which is post-adobo, rather than adobo. I have done my best to recreate my mama’s old-school adobo, with a few twists of my own.

The classic recipe is to use a whole chicken cut into parts, with the breasts split three or for ways for even cooking. However, you can use a bag of drumettes, a bunch of chicken legs, I’ve even been known to do boneless/skinless thighs when I’ve got people coming over who might be skittish of skin and bones. However, skin and bones do make a better flavor. Anyway, here’s the procedure:

Put your chicken parts in one layer in an oversized sauce pan. The big 16 inch cast-iron skillet will do nicely, but I actually prefer a wok. The can go in a cold pan; light the flame to medium. Splash in some salty soy sauce, enough to dress the chicken pieces… enough to make every bite just salty enough. Pour in a few good glugs of vinegar; apple cider vinegar will do, but I’ve used rice vinegar as well. Drop in two bay leaves, and SECRET! a squirt of tomato paste. The tomato paste is optional, but it gives you a nice reddish hue.

SECRET! Put some whole peppercorns in a mortar and pestle, and crack each one. Do not pound them, do not grind them into dust. Just crack each corn once. No, a pepper mill is not the same. Use a mortar and pestle and crack yourself a fistfull of peppercorns, and you will understand why it’s worth the trouble in about an hour from now.

Break your garlic bulb into cloves; we’re going to use half of the bulb. Slice off the end where it is attached to the base and then lightly crush each clove under the side of your knife. Remove the papery peel, but SECRET! leave the whole garlic cloves in tact. Toss them into your pan.

Take at least three fat inches of fresh ginger to your SECRET! microplane grater. Grate, grate, grate… grate more than three inches if you want, the more the better. If you want to peel your ginger first, use the blade of a spoon (but it’s not necessary). That’s the end of the ingredients. Let it simmer on medium for 40 minutes.

Now hold on a second. If you want to make fancy adobo, becuase you have fancy guests coming over or something, simmer the chicken in the sauce until it’s fully cooked. Then take the chicken out of the pan, turn up the flame and reduce the liquids ALL THE WAY DOWN. If you used the skin, there should be plenty of chicken fat… the vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic will have reduced to a thick paste. When you’re down to mostly oil, return the chicken to the pan to toast it. Make sure the chicken browns on all sides and gets coated with the paste.

If you’re not making fancy adobo, just Tuesday night adobo or something, don’t bother removing the chicken. Turn up the heat and let the liquid boil ALL THE WAY DOWN with the chicken in the pan, you’ll get chicken pieces that fall off the bone.

Serve with steamed calrose rice, a green vegetable of choice, and JP’s diced tomatoes.

Oh, JP’s diced tomatoes… Dice tomatoes. Mince a clove of garlic on your chopping board. Gather the garlic into a nice pile, and cover that pile with kosher or fat sea salt, and mash the garlic and salt into a paste with the side of your knife. Mix that garlic/salt paste into your diced tomatoes. You can toss in some expensive olive oil if you want it to taste a little more expensive.

Did he say “Negro Dialect?”

So online linguists everywhere are reposting John McWhorter’s article from the New Republic, where he tells us to give Sen. Harry Reid a break, for praising then Senator Obama for not speaking with a “Negro dialect.”

A younger me would have chimed in with a one-two punch decrying injustice and lecturing extensively on African American Vernacular English (which is what we linguists call that variety of English, at the request of our African American colleagues).   A younger me would have written a long boring rant.

But nobody wants to read that post.  When it comes down to it, people don’t want to change; white Americans want to continue to hide their fear of Black people, hoping they don’t get in trouble… Black activists want to yell aha! at white people who let their fear slip… and most of all nobody wants to hear what linguists have to say, certainly not the linguistics of the matter.

So here’s what the new me says…  the idea that we all talk the same is a joke.  We talk different, duh.  The morality that some people attach to “the Queen’s English” or even “Standard American English” is laughable.  Homogeneity has no place in the United States of America.

I have a cousin who is in law enforcement in the Philippines.  He confided in me once… apologetically… that he had a hard time understanding African Americans.  You have to remember that our families in the old countries… they’re not minorities the way we are; we American-born cousins dispatch issues like that before breakfast.   Anyway, he says “I don’t understand Black people,” and I said, well duh, the Philippines wasn’t colonized by Black people.

I saw that my answer made my cousin feel better; he was worried that fear of the Black people was part of the colonial legacy of that the largely white  American military and the American missionary corps left in the archipelago.  Luckily I was there to remind him that linguistic variety is acquired by exposure.  In a country with 80 languages, they know this, but for some reason people forget that it applies to varieties of English.

I have to end this post now, because all I can think about is what life would have been like in the Blackapines… yah, better end it there.

Three New York Sketches: Jan 2010

On the House
I had heard from my friend M that New York bartenders often give out drinks on the house, and last Saturday I experienced that myself at King’s Head. Thumbs up to that.

However, I’ve also experienced many many more times getting extra shots of espresso in my drink from Seattle’s Best Coffee in Midtown, and although I appreciate the sentiment, I definitely end up with a drink I didn’t order, and a case of the shakes. Affection shots on the house are definitely a no-no in Seattle…

On the Town
So when you’re walking in New York without headphones, it can be difficult not to sing the New York songs. Lately it has been Empire State of Mind, but I’ll admit to On Broadway and On the Town as well. Note: It’s never been “Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today.” I sang that one in China and Seattle, but now that I’m here it’s just not appropriate. Anyway, the point is that the music was in my head. In my head!

On my way to the office this morning, I was walking up Broadway, and passed man, a middle aged business man, not a suit, but just a dude in a leather jacket who was thinking to himself and walking fast. He kept his eyes straight ahead and as he passed me, he uttered a bright “Up-town-girl…“

He couldn’t keep it in his head. I hope that doesn’t happen to me….

On My Back
This morning I was lying shirtless in a dimly lit room. It was a pleasant enough experience, but I couldn’t help thinking it could have been more fun, as the pretty sonogram technician said “we’re finished!” and handed me some paper towels to clean the lube off my chest.   I’ll have to meet with the cardiologist to interpret the scan, but to me it looked good. I made some jokes to the sonogram tech (“wow? I have a heart? A human heart?”) who laughed as if she hadn’t heard them a thousand times before.

To Each His Own

Saturday I got up around 10 or 11 and met the crew for some congee at Congee.  We all ordered our own separate bowls of 粥， which made the lady stop wanting to talk to me in Chinese.  I was like, are you all sure you don’t want to share a bowl and then order some vegetables or something?  And the answer was “No.”  Whatever.  I guess that’s what they mean when they say “to each his own.”

Anyway, we took a train up Union Square and hung out at Think Café for a few hours,, sitting at the window seat and watching the sun trace it’s arc in the still blue of the winter sky between the rooftops of the Lower East Side.  I had a cup of tea and a pear cake.

After a few hours my blood sugar came crashing down (sitting in a café listening to Prince’s greatest hits apparently still doesn’t burn off the glucose) so I declared an emergency and got a rescue snack at dogmatic… this time it was a pork sausage in a ficelle baguette toasted inside and out, with chimichurri.  Not a bad rescue for less than $5.

PDP wanted to to take us to Beauty Bar happy hour (warning:  landing page has loud music).  He had been there the night before and said it was all women except for him.  So we trekked back across Union Square down 14th street and found that it didn’t open until 7pm.  It was 5pm.

I wanted to go home, but I agreed to get one drink.  I though about trekking back across Union Square to the Coffee Shop Bar, but we saw the King’s Head Tavern across the street.  It’s a dark room; the long bar runs most the length of the building, and then where it ends there are some benches, a grand (gas) fireplace, and a projection screen.  It is very homey, and for the most part, pubby, although the candles they used were definitely the 50 cent Mexican veladoras, that you often see with the Our Lady of Guadelupe.  My one drink became two ($20 min. for credit cards) and then people started buying their rounds.  At one point, the bartender Pat Maloney treated us all to a shot of Jameson.  I am now a fan of King’s Head bartender Pat Maloney.  But as the night progressed, the bar started filling with people, and I wanted to get away from the whiskey.

So we asked ol’ Pat Maloney where to go, and he said St. Mark’s place was just a few blocks down.  There we found YakitoryTaisho, which managed to remind me of Yakitori Fukuchan in Shanghai (a Jim spot), even though it was nothing like it.  We ordered some shiso wrapped in bacon, some agedashi dofu, some karaage, and some deep fried octopus legs.

This morning I got up late, and met the crew again for a porkchop lunch at Tudo, where we have become regulars.  The sun was out again, so I walked there… I’m finally starting to realize just how small Manhattan is.  Anyway, they had phở, I had a pork chop, and then it was up Bowery for a photo shoot  and then some coffee and a lemon bar at the Bleeker St. Think Café.

From What I’m Eating

We stayed for a little, but then PB and I ditched PDP and walked back through Soho to Chinatown (don’t ask) and I got my hair cut.  Afterwards, PD and I came back to my place, took care of the photo shoot photos, and then we went to Bengal Curry & Kebab for some beef curry on rice and a surprise.

Then we went to see Avatar 3D.  I flinched a couple of times at the 3D, but I’m pretty sure I flinch at regular movies as well.  Avatar was fun to watch, although it was basically the ol’ broken-white-man-goes-native-saves-world formula.  People have been saying it’s Space Pocahontas (down to the magic tree!), but PDP says it’s more like the Last Samurai, and I think he’s right (never saw it, though).

Anyway, the most fun I had at that movie was listening for Sam Worthington’s Aussie accent to come out.  Jay Leno said he never heard it, but I did,  (I can also hear Mel Gibson’s when he’s playing American… not so much in pronunciation, but in intonation).  Anyway, the first time I heard it I thought, aha!  The second time, I thought, aha!  The third time… Ok, by the 5th time, I thought “just watch the movie, jackass.”

Not that I fault him for it… it actually made me miss my Aussie friends, who usually booed loudly when I attempted an Aussie accent myself.  I’ll get it someday.

Top 5 Tips: How To Make Great Podcasts and Conquer the Feed!

From Me

I’m not claiming to know how make great podcasts, but that’s how we write copy nowadays; an answer to a how to question, a war metaphor, and a top five list. Snappy snappy SEO!

Tip number five: Be prepared. Do your research, have all the notes you need at your fingertips, so you can know what you’re talking about. If you’re not ready to go when the red light is flashing, you’re going to piss somebody off.

Tip number four: Record when you feel good. Don’t bother giving the record signal if you’re not feeling up to it. People hear your discomfort. This is one of the reasons I hate having to rent a studio with a burning passion; when you rent you have to record whether you’re feeling it or not.

Tip number three: Have a personality. It helps if you’re naturally colorful, but if you’re not, then step it up and be colorful. Some people get behind the mic and try to be perfectly well spoken and perfectly fair to every last listener. These people are called bore-asaurs. We hate them.

Tip number two: Edit yourself. I don’t care if you have an engineer to do it for you. You don’t hear how irritating your voice is to the listeners unless you listen to it yourself. The good thing about hearing yourself as an editor is that you can fix all the irritating, disgusting stuff you do with your mouth with the click of a mouse. Also, when you’re editing yourself, you teach yourself to perform better behind the mic; i.e., cleaner retakes, less verbal ticks, less overtalk, etc.

And the number one tip to making great podcasts and conquering your feed: Love your cohosts. People can hear it, and that’s what they want to hear. Love your cohosts unselfishly, they’ll catch your flubs, you’ll catch theirs, everyone shares the goal of everyone sounding good. I’ve been in the studio a few times with someone I hated… it felt like being carved with a chainsaw. In that case you still have to find a way to love them, at least until the recording is done.

How to end the week.

The weather forecast is dismal, but have put in my time, an honest 40 hours this week. Just at the last second I heard some good news that’s going to make my life easier. I also got a text from my boy about dinner… so now I’m off to meet the crew for a cheap porkchop!

Disturbing

I watched this once… ONCE… and I hope I never see it again.

I’m not even sure why I’m linking it here.

But apparently I am.

Remarkable Night

I’m watching PBS This Emotional Life, and I am tripping out.   This episode is Anger, Anxiety, and Depression, and I’m totally fascinated.  The one study, where depression shrinks the hippocampus, and antidepressants cause neurogenesis… WILD.  Electro convulsive therapy causes even more neurogenesis?  Conclusion:  depression should be treated, NOT toughed out.

______

Since I’ve gotten home, I’ve heard from:

• T in Peru–he’s got it handled
• J in New Zealand–as goofy and confusing as ever…
• JJ in Singapore–he’s missing his meat pies, which I can buy here in Manhattan
• B in Shanghai
• M in Sydney

I really enjoy hearing from my friends around the world.   I also heard from D in LA, and someone who may have a job for me in the Fall.

______

I made beef adobo tonight, along with creamed spinach and long grain rice I boiled in chicken stock.

From What I’m Eating

Skating anyone?

The answer to the question in the title is NO.

There’s a neighborhood skating rink two blocks from my house. E, who I met at a Halloween party, came down for an afternoon on the ice.

Long story short: I didn’t happen. It ended up being a movie “Nine” which we both hated (did C like it?) and then dinner at Baluchi’s.

The wind was just too damn cold for skating.

How to take great foodporn shots

From What I’m Eating

I look at foodporn, because it’s beautiful photography.  Honestly.  The honest truth is that I’m not as affected by it as viscerally as some people are.  I look at foodporn as an achievement; can the photo convey the texture, the moisture, the weight, the soul of the food in question.

That said, I love it when people get mad at me for foodporn.  Love it.  When people have an unplanned gastronomic response to a photo, and then get mad at me for showing it to them… that’s good photography.  That’s 10,000 words.

1)  Sunlight is best.  Using the flash will give you bright spots and dark spots; your food will look dead.  Not using flash in a low light situation might give you something salvageable in post production, but you’ll have to keep the camera hella steady, often more steady than is humanly possible.   Sunlight will give you bright, true colors.

From What I’m Eating

2)  Get right up in there.  Put your camera on the food.  More than a few inches, and you’re too far.  One time, C got so upset at me for some ambush food porn of apple pie (we used to put food porn on the desktop of the recording booth computer, to torture the next person to use it).  She came out of the booth distraught, nearly in tears that she could see the ground cinnamon in the apple pie crust, and the vanilla specks in the ice cream.

From What I'm Eating

3)  Set your camera to super macro closeup.  You’re camera probably won’t give you the crystal clear superclose-up focus that’s necessary for food porn unless you take it off automatic and set it to super macro closeup.  Read the manual, or just poke around in the menus like I did.  On Sony cameras, there’s a tulip with a magnifying glass.

From What I’m Eating

That’s it.  There might be more to be said about composition or post production, but then I’d have one of those five item lists the SEO guys are always gushing about…

From What I’m Eating

The End of the Year of JP

A year ago, a listener declared 2009 the Year of JP.  On facebook even!

I was in China, in a job that was going in the wrong direction.  Luckily, I was in a cool band and had some new friends who brought some joy to my life as I counted the days until I could leave that company.   Also, I was able to reconnect with my friends from the past.

Last year, the idea spending another Christmas away from my family was had me scraping bottom (actually, it was the dread of it that had me down; Christmas day was actually a highlight).  But the highlights were Chinese New Year back in Seattle, and a glorious April; the highlight of which was Spring Scream in Taiwan.  Or maybe it was opening the Jz Club.

Ok, that’s enough linking.  May was ridiculous, because J had quit his job to start a year off; parties erupted everywhere.  June was all about getting the hell out of Shanghai.  July, I spent in Seattle and Vegas; it was down time actually.  And then August I started the new job in Midtown Manhattan, and it’s all a blur from there.

One thing I’ve learned…. in 2008 I remember telling a friend of mine that I was post-friendship; that friends were nice but they weren’t that important.  In 2009 I was very much NOT post-friendship; I learned to rely on people, and in turn learned who the people are I can rely on… and unfortunately who I can’t rely on.

Now I’m in New York, and I’m so thankful for Amber and Steph and the 206 Crew (and all the folks who I know through them).  It’s also great to know that I’ve got friends all over the world, although I’ve never been good at collecting friends and keeping them–I’m prone to forgetting about people, and then rediscovering them 15 years later.  That’s embarrassing.  There are a few people who have made an effort to stay in touch, which I really, really appreciate; I hope I can live up to their loyalty.

So 2010… I hope this is the year I save some money, get ahead of my mortgage, find some career satisfaction.  I already know it’s going to be a good year for health; it’s too expensive to over eat in New York, and my apartment has a gym, which I’ve learned to appreciate.  I have an expectation to see New Zealand.

I don’t want to ask for too much, want to keep expectations low, nothing crazy outlandish.  Ok, maybe New Zealand sounds crazy outlandish.  But I’m going.

Murderous Wind

It is murderously windy out today, the kind that blows right through your clothes.  Happily, it’s warm inside, and there’s wireless internet and cable.  I thought about lighting up the crew, but together and freezing doesn’t sound as good as alone and warm.  Not tonight at least.  I got a lot of stuff to do tonight anyway.

I had a great time with the fam in Vegas.  I accomplished a lot of relaxing and perspective regaining.  It’s cool to chat with all the folks who check in for Christmas too.  Coming back to a murderously windy New York seemed a little like stepping into a past I never experienced… somehow it felt like a step backwards.

Anyway I’m back to my life of a lot of work (which I don’t like to blog about… or lately, to talk about)  and some occasional low priced fun.  Tomorrow there will be groceries, and maybe laundry.  For now I will enjoy the search terms that have brought people somehow to this blog over the past two days, and wonder who the hell is searching for me by name.

Today

Search	Views
male dogs	3
tai chi watermelon rhyme	1
chicken part	1
anyohaseyo	1
john patrick (jp) villanueva	1
naked filipinos	1
hermes yogurt	1
is breathing heavy weird in sex	1
taiwanese counting drinking game 5 10 15	1
what language do you dream in if you’re	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
honey walnut shrimp	2
jp villanueva spanishpod101	1
kangding lu massage	1
jpv206	1
cheers, mates	1
seattle polite	1
bobba street v20	1
stocky dudes	1
spanish tenses	1
niko niko rice small grain	1