Gaki N Me If you love to talk about the world, love Asian idols, this is the place.

Welcome to this gakinme blog which has been moved from WRETCH blog of the same name in its entirety, comments and photos and all. This blog is about me, my interest in film, drama, Asian male actors, social and political issues in Asia, predominantly dumping on China , and my paranoia as an Asian mom raising American born Vietnamese Chinese in the US. This blog also houses many articles that I have translated for my Asian entertainment forum la creme d'asie which I closed to make time for my other new interests. But as I maintain a keen interest in entertainment, I will continue to post links, articles, news of interest.

To read all the topics of a particular category, say, Junichi Okada, click on his category in the navigational bar. Then on the top under the banner is LIST MODE, click on that you will see the entire list of articles to choose from.

To comment, which I hope you would, since there are not 1000 comment limit as in WRETCH, click on comment and then the Chinese characters (開放留言).  It will give you a popup box to comment. You only need to fill in the red items.



Happy reading!

Sandra

Note: Please go back to WRETCH blog for updates for now. I have a couple more people telling me they couldn't access this blog.

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/gakinme

Welcome to this pixnet blog which is a transfer from my WRETCH blog.  This blog is about my views on Asian entertainment, my paranoia as an Asian mom in the US and general commentaries on Asia, predominantly China dumping (haha). This blog will house many articles that I have translated for my forum la creme d'asie which I have closed in June to make way for new interests.  

To read listings of articles of say, Junichi Okada, click on his category and then under the banner click on LIST MODE. The entire list of articles would be displayed efficiently.

To comment, which I hope you all would, click on comment and then click on the Chinese characters (開放留言). You just need to fill the the red items.


Happy surfing!

Sandra

Ah! I'm in a good mood again. I don't know how the day passes by so quickly.  I spent an hour pulling weeds up and usually it's an annoying task for me but these days, I'm so relaxed that I don't even need to plug earphones in and drown myself as I blunt and blacken my fingers.  And I even have the leisure to illustrate some news articles - something I always wanted to try my hand at - social commentary in pictures. So happy.  If I had known life is so relaxing without the forum, I would have dumped it 3 years earlier...hahaha....but then, I wouldn't have known Kimura, nor Goro, Jang Dong Gun, nor Kinki Kids...and ultimately, Junichi Okada. HA! 

Anyway, my husband is talking about converting our 100 feet by 200ft sloping backyard into terraces of 3 levels and grow trees so that he wouldn't have to mow the lawn every week.  I'm all for it.  But I want a zen garden.  I've already given my husband a desktop zen garden like this one.

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Thank you to ladyusagi, usami chan and ct_cat5 for leaving your messages over here. Appreciate them. These few days I'm already enjoying myself, relaxing away from intensive surfing. I thought I would sleep for 20 hours straight this last Saturday after these 4 1/2 years of fatigue but surprisingly I did wake up at the normal time.I don't think I would start a brand new forum ever again. Not only translating takes a long time, surfing to find the news is even longer and the worst heartache is when members attack each other. *faint*  Criticism of stars' choices of work is fine but personal attacks are mean spirited and my forum seem to attract a fair share of that. Thank goodness there are only 2 more days. For starter, for the next few weeks, I am just going to listen to American music and write essays in Spanish.  Here's Brian Mcknight Back at One to detox from the forum.

Posted May 29, 2007:
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I am really winding down in my Japan interest at the moment and really want to go back to just plain Chinese movies, a few Korean artists and that's it. Japan drama and movies have been so kids oriented these days that I don't see any attraction. The fact that Japan price their movies with English subtitles and albums way above all other countries is making it very inaccessible to a lot of people.  Some of their music is still decent but it is still relatively expensive. It is no wonder that those who go for Japanese entertainment has to resort to illegal downloads. I'm just going to listen and watch all these stuff online from now on.  It's too expensive a habit.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms reading this blog and my forum. Here is a song that I hope all of you would come to enjoy as I do over the years.  This is a song that my husband and I love to listen to at night, all quiet, by ourselves. He is soothed by the romantic tones to it though he didn't understand the lyrics, but I am soothed by the lyrics because it is about the promise of a husband to a wife. I wish the same for all of you out there.


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I tried once with my mom's suggestion by writing them on the squared paper to count how many Chinese characters I know and after writing one hour, falling asleep constantly, I was at around 800.  But now, I found a better method.  I went to this Clavis Sinica site and did this test by clicking on the Take the Chinese test link. I'm totally impressed with myself. I was rated to be an advanced reader with approximately 3258 characters in my head. Wow! haha...not bad!!! I suppose I could recognize most Chinese words but can't reproduce them in writing without a dictionary.

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It has been another busy day of driving my daughter around for the state math olympiad competition. Her team this time is grouped of the best of the class but believe it or not, they forgot to write their names on their team paper in one section despite them finishing it in four minutes...and it sunk them.  This would be a good lifelong lesson for them. But at least we had fun driving to the nearby school in another district and she took a few photos. Then in the afternoon, I took the kids out for a long walk at a nearby beach.  Then shopping and a treat for her effort in any case. We talked about garnishing order, bank accounts, credit cards over a smoothie and a milkshake, and bio-engineered durians. Dancing and drawing aside, she wants to be in genetic engineering creating new breeds of food and animals. It was a fruitful day afterall. But I think we are all bushed already, too tired to even yawn....Yawn!!!

  
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Regular readers of this blog would have heard me lamenting how my little American borns would have to compete not only with the white Americans but with other Asians. This is a good example. A few weeks ago, my 7th grade daughter took a statewide Math Contest that draw students from 6th grade up to 12th grade in teams of four from every corner of our western state. They first do individual tests to determine the individual champion in each grade, and then they gather in groups of four students and tackle test papers as a group. Out of the 60 plus groups, a certain Chinese school dominated the lower grades this year winning all the prizes. My daughter's team came 42nd because she was the only one who was serious about answering the questions and the other classmates assigned to her group were just there having fun.  Her other class team was placed below her group because there was only one white boy who was a serious student. And finally, another team from her class got 17th position because one of the contestant was the daughter of a mathematician.

The school obviously should have been more careful in placing the serious kids in one group and not mix the slower ones with the bright ones even though they were all trained for the math team. But this is not the point of my posting.

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Not sure how are things going. Yesterday my husband had a good day with lowered blood pressure hovering between 145-160 but today it's back to 176-180.  Our days go up and down just as the digital numbers jump up and down. It was a surprise, a nice surprise, that his eldest brother read this blog last night (as he said he does from time to time....*faint*...am I glad I didn't say anything strange in here...haha) and so called this morning to find out what's happening. It feels good to be assured that he would be there for me if anything happens.... But I'm hopeful that the medication will kick in soon to help him readjust his body to healthier state....I spend my day hovering around in and out...checking on him...I need to get a few funny films to cheer him up...definitely....

But yeah...I'm not surfing....
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I would not be going online for this week because my husband just came back from the hospital with a blood pressure of 190. He may suffer a stroke anytime and ....etc.... He has been ordered off work for the week.  This is scary business....I am not even sure what or how I should feel...If you don't see me, you know why.....

I have been so busy these few days. My kids wanted to play, and draw, and cut paper models...on top of homework...Then on Monday night, my youngest found 2 ants on the table and we were on a hunt for any ant trails.  The next day, I cleaned the entire house inside out, including wiping down all crevices with bleach. And since it was the only day with sunshine for the last 7 days, I hurried to clean up the yard. Man, I could hardly walk after that. That's why I haven't been surfing.  I needed down time.   

Anyway, I was listening to Jacky Cheung's new album 在你身边 By Your Side and it has 4-5 slow songs that's quite decent. The title song track 3 By Your Side is good but I like track 4 , 有一个地方 There is a place, the best. As I listened to it, I remember my dad always countered me that if he had wanted to listen to a soft song, he would listen to a female artist. Why would we need to look so hard to listen to a male voice singing a soft song? I chuckle when I hear track 4. But that's exactly why I like a male voice singing soft melodies. A female always sings them softly. When a guy sings that way, it's different.

This is not a brag post. My mom is perpetually ridding her house of stuff. Perpetually is the only term I could use because her small flat seems to be jam packed with stuff for some reason. Not only does she have to send off my father's photo magazines, clothes, camera gear, gadgets, she has to throw away all the pre-school books that she bought to help raise my brother's 3 kids, our clothes, our old keepsakes, her knitting needles and yarn...and books and more books...and kitchen ware, crockery and cutlery that she thought she would pass to us when we married and of course neither of us wanted them. Now she sent me a box of my past ...my swimming medals.


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Excuse me for not updating the last few days. Perhaps it's because my kids are getting older and my daughter has friends who are always constantly boy crazy that we suddenly sat up and realized that she too is growing up quickly and in a few years would no longer be with us. This summer, we plan to send her to Switzerland for a month and in 5 years, she would be in college and onwards to young adulthood. So my husband and I suddenly started spending more time with everyone of them. My weekends are fully occupied. He with the daughter and I, the more active one, with the boys literally running around. (Well, they bike and I run.hahaha).At dinner time, we have long talks with the kids, as if we had served a 10 course dinner. (They wish...haha...but the conversation makes up for the simple fare.) It's politics, medical field, space age, robots, boys, money, family relations. Our combined experience of 98 years plus their ancestor's hundreds of years of experience all slowly imparted. Then of course there are the homework time that the boys drag on for 5 hours every night. It's more intense during March and April because of testing requirements. 

Good thing this year my husband decides not to host a graduation party at our house. This is one event that I have nightmares of every year for the last five years. 150 people in our house. Upkeeping my house and yard is already a monumental task every week (yeah, I don't clean it spic and span everyday. You think I'm crazy?) let alone making it in immaculate condition for 150 pairs of eyes? The other night I had dreamt that my house has transformed into a Mandarin Oriental Hotel likeness, and me running all over looking for my boys.  Phew! Thank goodness it was only a dream.
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This is about 5 mins by car from our house.