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

This book Golden Arches East by James L. Watson is such a piece of crap. I usually pick up books on business related subjects and research because I want to see what they have to offer and stack them against my husband's research and gosh, this got to be the most useless book I have read. This is a second edition of a 1994 copy published in 2007 and I should have been warned right there but I was hoping for some new data. No, they maintained their 1994 data. All the book tells is one thing. McDonald's clientele is mostly kids and parents in Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong and Japan may not like it but their kids would bring them there weekly if not monthly. For Beijingers, back then, it is a big deal, but not for cosmopolitan cities outside of red China. There's nothing new there. The only thing I learnt is that in Japan, people prefer Mos Burger because that chain offers meat, fish plus vegetables between slices of pressed rice and not seeded buns because the Japanese prefers rice. The book went on and on about how long each family stays at McDonald's (25 mins on average compared to US around 15 mins) and in Japan, 50 mins. Old folks now hang out at McDonald's, as my mom and her Tai-Chi friends do. In Taiwan, they deliver McDonald's to schools. What irritates me is that for an Asian familiar with the Asian setting, this is such a non-book. They must be writing for the Americans.

Man, talk about a messed up family.  I remember reading news about this American boy who was taken to Nepal to be a monk a few years ago and this weekend, I saw this book Comes the Peace : My Journey to Forgiveness by the son finally published. Daja Wangchuk Meston was 2 years old when his rich hippie mom and hippie dad wandered into Nepal and she felt connected with Buddhism so much that she became a nun. The husband freaked out and went crazy and was found wandering homeless, dirty, shoeless in India many years later. She in the meantime placed her son in the care of a Tibetan family to raise.


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I have just finished The World is flat by Thomas L. Friedman. If you are an American or live and work in America, you really ought to read this book. Mr. Friedman is a three times Pulitzer Prize winner for his work at the New York Times as a foreign affairs columnist. In 469 pages, he tells you that because of 10 reasons, the world is getting so small that it is flat. Skilled techinicians, hungry for jobs from American firms, are now able to secure these jobs overseas in their home turf because Americans could not upkeep the supply of scientists, researchers, engineers and technicians for the American employer.  America basically needs to change.

I'm not going to detail the changes we need to make and the formulae for success. If you are American, you had better read the book.  But I as an Asian parent was recognized at what we are doing for our American born offsprings as doing something really right at the moment as over half of the enrolment of all engineering and science college students are landed Asians' offsprings like mine or newly immigrated Asians.   

If you are at all interested in how a cook gets to become a chef, and discover all the ins and outs of the kitchen, then don't miss Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.  When Bourdain writes, he writes as he thinks along with all the necessary swears and expletives in normal conditions. He tells you not to order fish in a restaurant from Saturday to Monday because you are basically eating fish sold on Thursday. The bread basket on your dining table very likely is recycled bread, bread that previous customers have not yet consumed. It's an industry wide custom to reuse bread.  My husband blushed when I read aloud Bourdain's diatribe against anyone who dares peel garlic days in advance or put the garlic through a press to ooze out something unrecognizable. He recommends the Japanese knives made by GLOBE, light and handy. His description on the politics of the kitchen is so hilarious!


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Update: Last night, my husband sent me this link to watch. It is a 6 mins video by a consultant hired to present to all the education departments of the states to seriously invest education in the US.  While much has been written in many news articles before, the figures are more staggering when presented in a video format. We have all known that by numbers, China and India will overwhelm the world as their development match the developed world. The US companies have to start being less price driven and think about the social responsibility they have for the American citizens lest one day, we no longer have the jobs as they export all jobs overseas. 

But that is not the only reason I'm posting it here. If you watch the video carefully, you will see how soon the computer will be faster than the human brain. It is the Ray Kurzweil push or you can call it scare.  Many scientists believe that we are at the crossroads of technological advance that is accelerating so fast that  humanity would be downgraded in importance. Our jobs would be taken away, our life would be controlled by machines as we fall behind technologically. I could already see this happening in Japan, Europe, and the US. Perhaps the populous countries as China and India may be smart enough to stop technological advance in their own country where the population is more than they could handle.  When human becomes redundant, it makes us think at once at the following scary scenarios if some crazy leaders come to power:
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If you are middle aged and Christian, then this humorous book would be fun for you to read. It takes the scariness of being old out and replaces it with humor. Basically, Barbara Johnson believes that we should just laugh our way till the last day and throughout the book, she cracks jokes about being old, not being able to see below her waist, having dentures, and above all, being forgetful. Some humorous soul put their "Excuse my dust" on her own tombstone. I think only Christians are so positive about dying and returning home to their Father. Here's an anecdote that is not too Christian nor age related but funny nevertheless. I'll just retell rather than retype.


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My husband has been giving my daughter books that he really enjoys and he knows that if it has adult situations, it should not be passed on to her. So far, she has been enjoying his selections of mysteries of searching for lost books and lost artifacts. I glimpse through them from time to time to make sure they are suitable for her.  So when my husband gave her this book The Eternity Artifact and highly recommended it as the best book he had read so far in science fiction, I paid a bit more attention. I'm the one who usually brings back non-fiction from the library and dish it out to everyone. For my husband, out of 10 he would find over half of them good.  He recommends many fiction that he reads and I never managed to go past one chapter. I can't stand fiction. I can't stand people standing around chatting away in a story.  It's too slow for me.  But I opted to stick it out and read this highly recommended book since he said the conclusion was superb. Okay, I'll read one book a year at least from his recommendations, I told myself.


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Jimmy Carter used to be called the peanut man in Hong Kong because he came from the Plains of which peanut farming was a main economic activity.  During office, he might not have been very popular but I think his popularity really came after his term as President of the United States.  His humanitarian efforts are truly noteworthy.  In my neighboring city, Habitat for Humanity is one of his projects in the US that is practical and meaningful. Volunteers go around cities to build houses for the poor and the houses are sold to them at no profit. The Carter Center, his vehicle to help the extremely poor in Africa and other countries, help the undeveloped countries in agricultural needs and know-how and simple hygiene to combat illnesses. 


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Banana Yoshimoto starting winning pirzes at 22 year old with her short stories and to date, her short stories have been adapted for movies in Japan and Hong Kong.  I happened to have picked up this book Hardboiled and Hard Luck, a book of two short stories translated into English by Michael Emmerich. Neatly done.  The first story Hardboiled is about a girl who went for a hike to where her girlfriend and her last visited before the girlfriend died and it talked of her grieving process.  It's actually quite spooky because she added elements of the spirit returning and ghosts visiting.  No wonder. Ms. Yoshimoto likes Stephen King's works.  The second story also surrounded death. It is a younger sister coming to terms with her elder sister's vegetable state and final goodbye and during this difficult time, she met someone special.  The second story rings very true in many ways in the process of grieving and letting go and sharing in the end.  The portrayal of the new friendship during this difficult time was very heart-warming.  Sigh....good story! You could check out her official site via here.


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This is exactly the type of book you need when you are trying to raise intelligent children.  Hahaha...My husband frowned at the title but he was chuckling along as I posed the questions to my two boys and all three of them fought to answer.

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During the power outage, I had the opportunity to finish reading this book Life Lessons by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the expert on death and dying.  I remember when I was in high school, I was greatly affected by her book, Life After Death where she researched on those who were near death.  The patients would travel through a dark tunnel towards a warm bright light at the end and were turned back because their time was not ripe to die and their soul on returning would hover above their body, medical personnel or others looking on as though they were dead or fighting to save their life.   Her book On Death and Dying details five stages of dying: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance.  In this book, she herself paralyzed and dying, was in the anger stage. At the end of the book, she has accepted death.

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I was browsing through the bookstore and saw a copy of A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen. A short book you could look through in 5 mins. I'm not sure why it sold over a million copies because what she wrote was nothing spectacular.  She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her New York Times "Public & Private". Perhaps Americans do enjoy daily doses of reminders how to live while gulping down their sugar laden donuts and caffeinated coffee.  Anyway, I explored a bit more on her books and found this book Being Perfect readily available at the library. Hmm...really not much. Just sentiments of how one should not strive to be perfect. But since I spent the time reading it, I'll just quote a bit from it that means something.

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Last week while we were visiting a park, I showed my two youngest a chestnut tree and the chestnuts that were around their feet.  My children in general know all the animals and fishes by name at zoos and aquariums.  But plants wise, they are not so familiar with.  I babbled more about how when I was growing up, when reading English poetry, I had no idea what a fuschia or a violet looks like.  What is the knarled trunks of oak and what does the leafy shade of a sycamore look like? My young school mate in Form 1 (Grade 7) loves English poetry and she wrote them beautifully but the teacher didn't believe her and thought she plagiarized. The teacher couldn't believe she knew what were cherubs with rosy cheeks or verdant slopes and mossy grass.  She couldn't believe she could rhyme every other line...so much so that my schoolmate was brought to tears.  What's with these teachers?  That's how you smother creativity in Hong Kong.  


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I have a few minutes and get to write this entry. My husband told me to write it for my dear readers because it spoke of him and his generation now.   Actually, it should be happening everywhere around the world where the educated middle aged middle class are underworked if not underemployed or unemployed.  Many years ago, when my 50+ husband was between jobs, it was a scary experience as corporate America  continues to pride itself in downsizing, smartsizing, bottom line and cost control. In America, if you are over 40, you are a goner. No one wants to hire someone with experience, high salary, and an opinion that challenges the existing hierachy.  The writer of this book , Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream,  Barbara Ehrenreich changed her name in 2003 to be undercover reporter to compile her experiences as a 40 year old PR lady looking for a job. After 7 months, she has only two offers - sales in supplemental insurance and sales for Mary Kay products.  But along the way, she met the frustration of highly educated Americans nearing to living on the streets because no one wants to pay for them. The higher up they were, the easier they got fired in an effort to save cost and streamline. 


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When I think of Al Pacino , I only think of him as Michael Corleone even to this day.  Do you know that Al Pacino loved Godfather I the most, followed by Godfather II and finally wished his character didn't go through retribution and guilt in the Godfather III. Pick up this book Al Pacino In conversation with Lawrence Grobel and you could find out more.  


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