Category: En route

The phone rings at 5 am in the morning. It’s car service. “Can you be picked up in 5 minutes?” No way, we just woke up 5 minutes ago and the appointed time is 5:30. There’s no way we can be ready by then. We hurriedly wash up and get down stairs by 5:30 on the dot.

And we wait. And we wait. And we wait for 10 minutes to eternity.

The driver makes a quick turn from the opposite side, and then a U right in front of us. “Sorry I was late, I was on the wrong street.” He calls in our ride and the dispatcher says 10 dollars extra – we were late. I tell the driver that he had to tell him he was late, which he did , and he got the fare knocked back down.

After a mad-cap ride careening through the Grand Central that only New York cab drivers can pull off, we make it to the brand new Terminal 9 at JFK. American Airlines’ new domestic terminal looks a lot like Terminal 4 (the one in Tom Hanks “The Terminal” movie). Sterile, but much, much better than the old terminal. The only down side is that there are a lot more gates, so that means a lot more walking, if your gate happens to be number 42.

The plane is 20 minutes late departing because it got in late from LAX, and we know we’re not getting food on board (all the carriers are going to a free liquids-only diet, $3 for a snack box, $5 for the emergency K rations with bizzare combos like “ham and cream cheese on a cini-raisin panini”) so we get the Au Bon Pain egg mcmuffin on a bagel contraptions. Never had a jalepeno bagel before, but it was actually pretty good.

The on-board entertainment was “October Sky”, which I never heard about, and the usual CBS shows. They finally smartened up and got Phil from the Amazing Race to host the on-board videos, which included a behind the scenes clip from the production staff. According to the piece, they have 25 camera crews and nearly 2,000 on the ground staff members around the world following the teams, who have to go between 30,000 and 75,000 miles within 28 to 34 days. The guy that has to race the hardest is actually Phil, who has to get to every road block to shoot the stand-up explainations, and then get to the Pit Stop before the racers get there themselves.

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originally uploaded by triscribe.

I’m now no longer digitally cameraless!!! P- got me an advance b-day gift – a Kodak P850 digital camera. It’s only been out for 2 months in the states, and it’s supposed to go head to head with the Canon S2-IS. It’s a 5MP 12x zoom with image stabilization, and it also has video. It’s very very nice. Check out my test photo – it’s so clear you can read the label on the orange, and there’s no red eye or reflection on the glasses, even using the flash. You can say I’m very happy!

I really ought to sleep (“v. , v. bad,” as the fictitious Bridget Jones would say). It’s a combination of writers’ block (regarding certain writings I’m working on) vs. excess creative overdrive/ineffective creative overdrive in the fiction writing side of me.

So, I checked out Google, typing in “asian americans and gulf region,” as I was curious to see what’s the news on Asian Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina (and I recalled watching Nightline’s coverage of the New Orleans convention center disaster and noticing Asians in a clip; and, yes, disregarding the fact that typing in “Gulf” was more likely giving me Persian Gulf stuff). I mean, really – Asians have lived down there for awhile, dating back to the early Filipino sailors who got stuck in Louisiana back in the 1700/1800’s. But, anyway, so I found some interesting stuff. Dallas Morning News has this great article, by an Elizabeth Wu:

For days now, we have been watching news reports of how Hurricane Katrina has ravaged the Gulf Coast. We have seen pictures of the tens of thousands who have been relocated throughout Texas.

The evacuees include Asian-Americans, who have a long history in the coastal region.

One of the first known Filipino settlements in America was established in the 1700s in St. Malo in the bayous near New Orleans. According to historians, these early settlers were called Manilamen and may have been deserters from Spanish galleons that sailed along the Gulf Coast. Newspaper accounts of these Filipino enclaves were reported as early as 1883.

The first Chinese arrived in Mississippi during Reconstruction immediately after the Civil War. Relations already were strained between the black freed men and the white landowners. Because the labor system had been broken, planters recruited the Chinese as possible replacements for slaves. By 1880, census records showed 51 Chinese living in Mississippi.

Those early settlers opened the door for many other Asian-Americans – including many Southeast Asians who, in the 1970s, were lured by the fishing industry to the coastal region.

Today, according to the census, Asian-Americans make up 1.2 percent of Louisiana’s population. Of that estimate, 2.3 percent lived in New Orleans and 2.6 percent in Baton Rouge. Mississippi reports less than 1 percent of its population as Asian-American. But in Biloxi, Miss., one of the cities hardest hit by Katrina, 5.1 percent of the city population is Asian-American. [….]

Apparently, one of the big concerns is a need for translators.

Google also popped up a link to this APA blog, which posted some interesting stuff on South Asians down in the Gulf region – the Bangladeshi foreign students of the universities of the region, among other members of the Bangladeshi community, are getting anxious as to their status and to rebuild their lives. The blog also posted concern about what’s happening to the Vietnamese community.

Since a number of the Asian American evacuees have made it to Houston, the APA groups of Houston are setting up funds to help.

The Skyscraper Museum’s survey indicates that the Chrysler Building is a popular skyscraper (just in time for the Chrysler Building’s 75th birthday). NY Times’ David W. Dunlap writes:

Happy 75th birthday, Chrysler Building. New Yorkers in the know think you’re the best.

One hundred architects, brokers, builders, critics, developers, engineers, historians, lawyers, officials, owners, planners and scholars were asked this summer by the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan to choose their 10 favorites among 25 existing towers, from the Park Row Building (1899) to the Time Warner Center (2004).

Ninety of them named William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building of 1930, which may come as close as any – despite or because of its ebullient eccentricity – to expressing New York’s cloud-piercing ambitions. [….]

“These are irreconcilable choices if you try to evaluate them by one single system,” said Carol Willis, the director of the Skyscraper Museum. Rather, she said, the voting showed that people judge some skyscrapers emotionally, others rationally.

Ms. Willis’s own favorite, the Empire State Building, tied with Lever House, behind the Flatiron and Woolworth Buildings. The most recently built of the Top 10 was Eero Saarinen’s CBS Building of 1964. [….]

Donald J. Trump checked off none of the buildings proposed by the museum but instead nominated Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower and 40 Wall Street. Yes, that would be the Trump Building.

There were some exceptions to self involvement. I. M. Pei did not chose 88 Pine Street, which his firm designed and where it has its office. [….]

The World Trade Center was not on the list and did not appear as a write-in on anyone’s ballot. Leslie E. Robertson, a chief engineer of the twin towers, chose the Woolworth Building as his personal favorite. It, too, was once the tallest building in the world, 40 years before the topping out of 1 World Trade Center.

Curious that the article ended with that above last paragraph. I don’t think Dunlap meant to editorialize, but there’s a hint of poignancy in that paragraph. I’ve heard that architectural critics never quite liked the World Trade Center – it was more of a technological feat (the tallest buildings in the world at the time of their completion) than masterpiece of art. I had a fondness for the WTC mainly because I spent more time visiting there than I ever visited the Empire State building. Guess the real question is how do you define “favorite” skyscraper? What makes them your favorite? It very much is tied to emotion and experience. I like the Woolworth as a pretty nifty looking thing (very ornate even on the inside), and I can see why Chrysler is popular (I always saw its top as a hubcap looking design), and I like the Flatiron for being unique. But a “favorite”? That’s hard to decide.

Slate.com’s Jack Shafer was probably among the first columnists/journalists considering the issues of race and class in this New Orleans situation, having posted his column on Wednesday. Nightline and others ended up covering the issues by Friday night. Oh, and of course, so were various politicians discussing this topic on Friday. Talk about timeliness – or maybe everyone’s finally deciding they couldn’t ignore this. Hmm.

I watched “Nightline” on Thursday night – some of Ted Koppell’s classic stuff – he ripped the FEMA director, questioning him about how the heck did FEMA not know that there were people inside New Orlean’s convention center. I think I winced with Koppell when the FEMA director responded “Well, we factually didn’t know until we got there…” or words to that effect – although, let me say that he definitely said “factually.” Factually?! Come on! You need to see with your own eyes, as if watching the major news networks, CNN, etc., wasn’t enough? Everything’s just so heartbreaking.

And, in Friday’s column, Slate’s Shafer observes this development of the Angry Reporters. He observes that when the reporters get mad, the story or the interview gets more interesting – if not making a point (rather than no point at all). Shafer links to this amazing clip of Anderson Cooper ripping out Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisana (and I will, too, [video/transcript] since it’s quite interesting). I don’t think what Cooper did was nearly as entertaining as Koppell’s ripping the FEMA guy, but Cooper was passionate and, well… clearly an Angry Anderson Cooper. Methinks that not only Cooper really empathizing with the deeply troubled New Orleanians, but being in New Orleans the last several days must have really gotten to him; he needs a break. It’s obvious from the video – the stress and heavens know what else.

But, as Shafer notes, maybe anger in a reporter isn’t a bad thing – it puts a spotlight on a story, recognizing that this situation is dire, so dire it knocks the supposedly imperturbable reporters off their pedestals and make us feel this madness no less – that there is indeed something wrong with the pictures of tragedy we’re seeing versus the words out of the mouths of politicians (not that I’m necessarily slamming the politicians, but these are not pleasant times we’re living in).

Tim Russert notes:

Second-guessing is easy, but it is also, I think, a requirement of those in a free society to challenge their government, when the primary function of the government is to protect its citizens and they haven’t been protected.

At least Friday night’s Nightline ended on a good-news story, about the town of Houma, Louisiana, helping out their fellow Louisianians.

Finished reading “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Well written; incredibly sad.

What am I thinking? Go out and get some cheer; we all need it.