F.D.A. Defers Final Decision About Implants (New York Times)
In a story about the F.D.A. holding off of approving silicone breast implants:
Many people expected the agency to follow the recommendation of its advisory committee, which is its usual practice. But the implant issue was particular fractious.
“This was a very visible product, and we had input from almost everybody and anybody,” Dr. Feigal said.
[Dr. David Feigal is an official of the Food and Drug Administration]
I was talking to SSW15 on the phone the other day and I was commenting on tourist guide books. Try this: go to your nearest book emporium (Barnes & Noble recently triumphed in my neighborhood, forcing the long-standing Waldenbooks into retreat), go to the travel section, and pick up guidebooks for your hometown and other places that you know well. See if you agree with their treatment of sights, places to stay, and restaurants. I sampled guidebooks for New York (hometown), Honolulu, Walt Disneyland, Las Vegas and Hong Kong. I gave bonus points for any guide that mentioned, let alone described fully, the following: Brooklyn, the Hakka Chinese dialect, food or location of settlements, locations in Orange County outside of Anaheim, Ali’iolani Hale (the judiciary building behind the statue of King Kamehameha I), and Red Rock Canyon.
I found that Frommers were generally the best overall in terms of accuracy and usefulness. Fodors tended to be not as good. Unofficial Guides were best for planning strategy in limited environment areas, such as theme parks areas and Hawaii, where time management was important. Rough Guides were better in non US areas. Insight Guides had the best pictures and great history, but were next to useless for actually planning a trip. For those places that had it, Lonely Planet Food Guides were really good for understanding cultures. Unfortunately, I find that no one guide can completely cover any particular area, but I guess that’s what reading the books in the coffee cafe is for.
Kosheen, “Hungry” (Windows Media)
The Food Network has been using a catchy dance number for their promo music. A memorable montage includes the flashing of dim sum on the screen, and then an Asian (Chinese?) mother and daughter looking down Victoria Peak to the skyscrapers of Hong Kong. I thought it was something that they came up with themselves, but I saw a public television promo for I think some sort of report of starvation in Africa which used the same music. Curious, I hunted down who it was: a UK dance group called Kosheen. The rest of their album, Resist (which you can preview on their website) is really good. The lead singer, Sian Evans, has been compared to Annie Lennox. I want to get a copy.
There are many other instances of sound recycling. The theme music for Iron Chef, for example, originally came from the “Backdraft” movie soundtrack. The most egregious case of sound abuse is the “Wilhelm Scream” which was mentioned recently on Slashdot. The unmistakable “scream and fall off a cliff” sound has been in continual use since 1951 in many major motion pictures, including the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Lord of the Rings series. If you look at the bottom of this Star Wars fan’s page, you can download the Wilhelm’s video portfolio to prove it is the same sound.
[Many of you will have come to this message from my Plaxo email — welcome! I invite you to read what the other Triscribe writers have written on the front page. If you would like to write for Triscribe, please read About Triscribe in the upper right column. The Triscribe web site rules prohibit the naming of anyone that isn’t in the public view, so you won’t see a whole lot of names used, but if you read the descriptions, you should know exactly who you are.]
I’m already late in this, my traditional new year’s message. Every year for the last 10 years or so I get on my soapbox and rant about a few things and make resolutions for the upcoming year. My delay in writing this was because I threw out my back getting some FreshDirect boxes (recommended if they deliver to your area and you actually buy $40-$50 of groceries) down the stairs. Part of this was just reviewing my photos and emails in such an incredible year in terms of experiences.
There is something essentially wrong with the way email is being used nowadays. This is the part of the message where I mention how much email I received last year. My collection of email for 2003 is 1.19 gigabytes, and that is with weeding out a lot of spam and bounced messages (real and bogus bounced messages added up to 286 megabytes, which are not counted in that total). That is two orders of magnitude over this time five years ago. On a weekly basis, I can say that no more than one-third of the emails that I receive are emails from people that I know or do business. I don’t believe the solution has anything to do with charging people postage to send emails, or slowing down email, or placing limits on the email received. Baysian filtering has been 95+% effective, but that 5% is still rather annoying. Two ideas have the most merit in my opinion: verifying the identity of the sender, or verifying the identity of the sender’s server (the SMTP server, for those techies out there). Yahoo’s proposal to use public key encryption and the draft Authenticated SMTP standard are the ones that are most likely to work.
I want to remember Usenet, which was the original Internet community bulletin board system. These days, I only refer to the newsgroups via Google, as the actual Usenet is routinely overwhelmed with spam and people nowadays don’t know how to stay on topic without “flaming” (insulting) each other. However, some of my longest-time friends are from the “Joy-Luck Club” of the New York branch of the soc.culture.hongkong newsgroup, whom we have shared dim sum or another meal together on a regular basis for the last ten years. (One of the first events was a viewing of The Joy Luck Club when it came out). Back then, it was dueling among which of the four “Sky Kings” or “Sky Queens” of Hong Kong entertainment would reign supreme this week, and when our next chance to go to Hong Kong would be. Nowadays, it costs about 50% of what it did in 1991 dollars to go to Hong Kong (1991 was my first trip to Hong Kong) and we have real jobs with real vacation time, but we are terrorized by SARS and are mourning the loss of a quarter of that HK entertainment royal family. Life goes on, but I am thankful for the schk Gang of Four that still keeps together.
While I didn’t do quite as much flying as I did in 2002, I did travel over 18,000 miles mostly for work: visiting my cousin in Kansas City, going to a convention at Duke University in North Carolina and driving down to a college friend in South Carolina, a $10 Chinatown to Chinatown bus ride to Boston (recommended – I was actually only one of two Chinese on board and it was far cleaner and efficient than Greyhound, Peter Pan, or even Amtrak), presenting at another conference in Anaheim, California a week after the forest fires and visiting friends from my law school study abroad in Hong Kong, and going to Honolulu for an Asian bar association meeting (lawyers’ convention). Happily, airline security, while I’m not sure it is more or less effective, it is more or less run with uniform standards, so much so that you know what you’re supposed to be doing when while crossing the checkpoint, whether you are in Durham, NC or Los Angeles, CA. Also, as a consequence of my 2002 flying, I had American Airlines Gold status during 2003, and it is quite a difference in treatment — having the card is like the Fast Forward in the Amazing Race – it lets you and your companion skip most lines and go through special shorter security checkpoints. I actually managed a 30 minute run to the gate at JFK from the Howard Beach A train station and I made it with 3 minutes to spare. I’ll really miss it this year.
What I learned is that living in these places is harder and easier than they would appear. I stepped into Walmart and Target for the first time and realized how easy it is to shop there and how incredibly expensive shopping for groceries is on the East and West Coasts. Houses that we in New York would consider multi-million dollar mansions go for under $200,000. On the other hand, the people who live in paradise actually work really hard. On Oahu, the island Honolulu is on, there is a second rush hour at about 3 PM for those workers who go from their office jobs to their second jobs working in the tourist industry. On that island, SPAM canned luncheon meat is $1.50, while milk is $6.00 a gallon.
As for my resolutions last year, I decided to start an online journal and keep better contact with my friends.
Establishing Triscribe as a blog (online web journal) has been rather successful. It took a while to figure out the parameters of the site and what would the ground rules would be. I realized — as one of a dozen “stunt bloggers” for the conference at Duke University in June — that it is very hard for just one person to contribute on a regular basis, but it is a lot easier when there are others working with you. There is something to “peer pressure” – it actually works.
SSW15 and YC have been contributing on a regular basis on many different topics, and it has helped me to keep touch with them in a more concrete manner in what is going on in our lives than instant messaging or even a phone call. If you’re Asian and have a JD (or if you just know me in real life and can write well), I invite you register and join our group. The other thing is using Plaxo to automatically update contact info. It really works well. Even if you don’t end up subscribing to Plaxo, please update your info for me by writing back.
So what about resolutions for the next year? The first one is to go to the gym on a regular basis. I’ve been very good in paying for the membership; I’ve been very bad in keeping with the program, and my physical fitness has suffered for it. The second is to stop being a packrat and reduce the clutter in my life. The New York Times recently had an article about how literally life-threatening hoarding is. In taking the first step in a 12 step program, I have to admit that I am a hoarder. P- has been helping me work on these two together, and for that I’m grateful. I’ve been pretty successful in my resolutions over the years, so hopefully when 2005 comes around, I can report these conquered also.
Thank you for your kindness and friendship, and I hope to share in your happiness in the coming year. Keep reading here for updates to the continuing saga. Happy New Year!
In One Suburb, Local Politics With Asian Roots (New York Times)
According to the article, 9 out of 28 local elected officials are Asian American. That’s amazing! The question is how to encourage public service from Asians.
A legend lost with Mui’s passing (The Star Online), Hong Kong star dies from cancer (BBC News, video)
Listen: Xi Yang Zhi Ge (MIDI)
For those of you that aren’t Cantopop fans, Western audiences know Anita Mui as the shopkeeper in Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx. Those that are more familar with Asian film remember her as Wonder Woman in The Heroic Trio . What has to be remembered is her long time generosity in support of charity and of younger performers that followed her path. I don’t know too many people who have the strength and willpower to do an 8 night in a row solo concert series while suffering from the final stages of cancer.
I knew nothing about Cantopop before my first trip to Hong Kong in 1991. By then Anita had already retired from singing for the first time and was well into her second career in movies. However, one always knew about her career as the running theme and the continual reinvention of Hong Kong entertainment; she wasn’t called the “Madonna of Asia” for nothing. She was part of my education, in my playing catch-up in Asian culture. I know some people snicker when you mention Cantopop and culture in the same breath, but you miss the romance of the Hong Kong people without it. Thank you, Anita.
According to the Star’s article (Malaysia), Anita had said if she had the chance to further her education, she would rather have been a lawyer.
[Scene: The A train to Brooklyn, Christmas Eve]
Panhandler #1 (male, caucasian near side exit): Can anyone spare a dime, nickle, quarter? If you have food, any left overs, or sandwich would be cheerfully accepted.
Panhandler #2 (stocky female caucasian, dressed for the cold, jumping from handicap seat): Sandwich, I want sandwich!
#1: Huh?
#2: Sandwich, I want sandwich!
#1: No, I don’t have any food, I want food.
#2: Sandwich!
#1: Here, you can have the change that I got.
[#2 waves off the money. #1 walks off to the other end of the car, shaking his head. #2 sits back down]
Panhandler #3 [black, boarding train as #1 leaves]: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, I’m collecting donations to help feed the homeless… If you have food, put your money away and give the food to me. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, and do me a favor, my little sister Lisa is in the next car — look out for her.
#2 [jumping to her feet]: I want food! I want food!
#3 [shocked that someone would actually take him up on the food]: OK, I’ll come back for you.
[#2 keeps standing at the door. #3 goes the length of the car collecting money and food and gets off at the next stop. #2 goes out her door following him.]
You can’t make this stuff up.
I want to wish you all a happy, safe, and blessed Christmas. Thanks so much for the cards and emails! If you are reading this, you’re really die-hard, or really curious. I really appreciate it. I’ll work on my customary end of the year message later on today.
I’ve been kind of bummed out because one of my co-workers in another department died in a bus accident during the holiday. The funeral is tomorrow, and it looks like I’m not going to be able to go because it is so far away, and I’m covering for three other people at work. It’s one of those terribly improbable things – she came and visited my office on Friday before she left for vacation. Anyway, as said in Hill Street Blues, “let’s all be careful out there.”
Thinking about the shrimp tortillas that I had yesterday ….. tempura battered jumbo peeled and cleaned shrimp that’s such a delicious cross-cultural metaphor. As confirmed by my co-worker, there’s no such thing as a shrimp tortilla in Mexico. If you ever look closely enough, you have to realize that most of the fresh taco places, including this one, are actually run by Chinese. Some of them look and dress ambiguously enough that you aren’t sure until they call out their orders to the kitchen.
I had gone earlier in the week to pick up some other stuff for the office luncheon and realized that they are doing gangbuster business. They got the Mexican food, they do Chinese food, and they do fried chicken, and people in the neighborhood can’t get enough of it. The thing that is really bizzare is that, two doors down, there is an authentic Chino-Latino place (with real Chinese from South America that speak fluent Spanish) that’s been there since the ’70s, and they’re getting creamed by these guys that probably never set foot in Mexico. Talk about mindblowing!
While in the process of cleaning up my apartment, I collected coins that fell out of pockets and onto the floor. Commerce Bank has a neat coin counting machine called the “Penny Arcade”. You dump the coins into the machine, the machine counts the coins and gives you a receipt, and you just go to the teller to collect fresh green bills. The really neat thing is that unlike CoinStar, which does the same thing at supermarkets, Commerce Bank does not take any commission for the service. There is also a guessing game — you get a free prize if you guess within $1.99 of the counted amount. I guessed $35, but it turned out to be $51.47 — what a find!