Around New York with My Friends - Saturday 12/6/2008

My Beinu friends and I were on the go again, this time exploring Harlem and Upper West Side of Upper Manhattan in one day.

Around New York

The Cloisters, A branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(Devoted to art of medieval Europe)
Fort Tryon Park
(Special Tour: The Christmas Story)

The museum was built in the 1930s with the generous endowment from the philanthropist John D. Rockfeller Jr. The “Cloister” is like a Chinese courtyard surrounded by art galleries (Chinese living quarters). The works of art cover chronological periods from AD 1000 to 1500 – the Romanesque period, the Gothic era, Medieval art.

We came initially to admire the magnificent museum architecture and attend a special “Christmas Story” guided tour.

I am no expert in European art; but I must say that, an excellent guide would make a world of differences for neophytes like us. We were lucky to have an extraordinarily animated, funny, and knowledgeable lady volunteer as our guide. Watching her telling the intricacies of Western religious/Christmas/nativity stories and the art spawning from them was like watching a one-woman performance, immeasurably enlightening and entertaining. I have gained a heightened appreciation of the Christianity faith and the European religious art and as a result.

Admission: $10 (We used a friend’s museum membership ID to obtain a discount)
Friends: Agnes Young, Kathy Ding, Susie

Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
(This magnificent cathedral was burned down in 2001, and painstakingly restored to its finest form today.)

St. John Cathedral is one of the greatest urban cathedrals that blend great medieval Europe with modern New York traditions. After the fire, it took 8 years to clean and restore the architecture, stained glass, stone and wood carvings to their previous grandeur.

It wasn’t just the holy feeling walking through the restored church. It was actually a happy experience - There were public performances of edgy music and story-telling going on when we were there. We heard the fascinating stories of modern artist angst told by a poet named Master Lee, a long-hair, bearded, middle-aged man of Chinese descent in tuxedo. He was whimsical, philosophical, and occasionally even profane in his story-telling. I remembered him questioning about “out of the box” (What’s wrong with ‘in the box’? We live in the box – our houses, we die in the box – look around the church, it’s full of the tombs of deceased abbies. The box containers today enable the global trade, etc…)

Admission: Free
Friends: Agnes Young, Kathy Ding, Shan Lo, Susie

Saigon Grill – Vietnamese Cooking
620 Amsterdam (corner of cross street 90th)

I suggested this place on account of an old colleague’s recommendation, and my Chinese friends quite liked it. We didn’t know what we were ordering. So we asked the waiter to order for us.

And we ended up liking almost all what we’ve ordered, especially the Sate Vietnamese rice noodle dish, the shrimp summer rolls, and the Sate chicken dish. The price was also very reasonable. This restaurant is definitely our favorite West Side story.

Lunch for 4: $60 (4 dishes and soup)
Friends: Agnes Young, Kathy Ding, Shan Lo, Susie

(PS: We had coffee after dinner at, guess what, one of the Dunkin Donuts shops. Agnes and I both realized how Dunking Donuts meant so much to us, because both of our kids loved the Dunking donuts when they were little…now they are all grown up. This place brought back the unique memories of us as young mothers and our babies together…)


Susie
12/7/2008

One Week of San Francisco 11/9-11/14/2008

Sunday 11/9/2008 – Weather was fantastic, a sunny and brilliant fall day. I met with my Beinu friends and my daughter – Kristin, Grace, Koren and Yamei – in a famous restaurant in Chinatown, R & G Lounge, for lunch. We then took a long walk through Fisherman’s Warf, while stopping at Peet’s Coffee for a relaxed cup of coffee. We ran into one disturbed, disruptive person, loud and unruly, at a Safeway store. My daughter told me, “In SF, you’ll get a lot of this type of crazies. Usually they don’t do harm if you don’t provoke them. In New York, you can get into big trouble with similar type of people.”

Monday 11/10/2008 – My husband Steve and I went to Berkeley, checking out our old haunts (we lived nearby for one year in 1980). Not much was changed. We toured the Spral Plaza famous for the political rallies and riots in the 60s, then went on to Albany where we rented a place on the street of Ordway (We never located the house – they all looked the same.) “Walker’s Pie Shop” on Solano Avenue where old people liked to congregate and socialize back in those days, where one could get a decent size of meal and pie for a fair price, is no more. We then strolled down to Vivarian the snake aquarium, and browsed the REI where we used to do a lot.

Tuesday 11/11/2008 – Veteran’s Day and Kristin had a day off from her paralegal work. Steve, Kristin and I first went to the DeYoung Museum, but it was too crowded. So we turned around and went to the Asian Art Museum instead where they had an early Afghanistan art exhibit, mostly gold pieces from the period when Alexander the Greek occupied northern Afghanistan. Afterwards, we toured around the Japan Center which seemed a bit quieter than I’ve remembered. At night, we met with my sister-in-law and niece at an Indian restaurant, the Rotee, near Kristin’s apartment on Pierce Street (in the Haight-Asbury neighborhood). San Francisco is a beautiful city distinct with its colorful and varied Victorian or Edwardian architecture, much prettier than New York City. It also seems to be friendlier and easier for young people like Kristin to start out, except the rent is quite high for her.

Wednesday 11/12/2008 – I took the day off resting at my in-laws’, only went out at night to meet Steve’s high-school buddy Tom in Berkeley. Tom works for a prestigious architectural firm in SF for over 30 years.

Thursday 11/13/2008 – Steve went with another of his high-school friends, David Gowen, for a strenuous hike. I went by myself to explore Oakland Chinatown on account of Kristin’s recommendation (She thought Oakland Chinatown is a bit more “authentic”, less “touristy” than San Francisco Chinatown.) Indeed, I was able to take care of my mundane Chinese business quite well there: I ate a hearty Vietnamese meal; bought a pair of utterly comfortable walking shoes; picked up some nice jade pieces for my new craft projects,; finally visited the popular Asian community library sampling the large selection of Asian and Taiwanese magazines. I came back and met with David, Steve’s friend, who was quite an amazing individual in his own right: an autodidact who never went to college, but has a great love for nature and is becoming an well-known expert on Bay Area plants, publishing articles in respected journal and all that.

Friday 11/14/2008 – Steve and I went to visit the San Francisco Aquarium. Steve didn’t like it as much as the old one before all the remodeling fanfare (He thought, in an effort to make the aquarium environment feeling “more natural”, the new aquarium was becoming less friendly to the visitors – It was hard to see the creatures, and hard to move around exhibits.) I was happy nonetheless - I got to see the weirdest creature I’ve ever seen in my life: the leaf sea dragon. After the aquarium, we drove to Sausalito for a quick tour, again, not much change there – same old, same old!

Saturday 11/15/2008 – This concluded my 1-week vacation to San Francisco. Susie

Overachieving Beinu Geniuses

It has been a pleasantly busy November for me. I took a one-week trip mid-month to California, visiting Kristin, and got to see Yamei, Koren and Grace Wang – my greatest reward. Everyone seemed to be doing well, which is something to be thankful for.

It was interesting to come back to New York and talked with Agnes about the fate of the many overachievers from Beinu in America. (Her sister was one of them, and we had a couple, sort of, from the Shu class too.) The culture in Beinu was such that all we had to do was to work super hard to stay on top of the class, and we would be recognized for our “talents”. Unfortunately, once out of school, there is more to life than getting good grade. All the Beinu advantages could not guarantee success in America. In America, some Beinu achievers may succeed where others fail, and some Beinu geniuses may just get a little luckier than other Beinu geniuses.

Overachievers are by nature hypercompetitive, no matter how old they become. Life is unfair. There is surely a lot of later-day disappointments for the Beinu genius type in the Chinese quarters of American cities. This phenomenon is nothing unique about Chinese, however, we Chinese have perfected the art of jealousy and envy.

Is it necessary to be disappointed? I don’t think so. We may have spent too much time naval gazing - Time to rise above the narrow circle of Chinese and look around at this beautiful adoptive homeland, with all its intelligence, creativity, energy, interesting experiences to offer, and fascinating people to meet. I was fortunate to be exposed to the culture early on, through my American husband and his friends. I lived away from my Chinese friends back then. I had to struggle to learn new things by myself; I felt inadequate for not knowing the different forms of Western music, English literature, arts and sciences, and history in this country that made life worth living for; at the same time I was excited like a child about learning all these new experiences. Suffice to say that I have turned my competitiveness into competing with myself; I have worked hard trying to be a more cultured, broadly intelligent and happier person. Considering how far I have become, I feel personally fulfilled: This is not a wasted trip; it is certainly good enough for me; and I quite enjoy myself.

The conventional wisdom says, "If you aim higher, so will you fall harder." Ted Turner turned it around and observed, "If you aim higher than you are capable of, then you will always have something interesting to work on all through your life (so that you don't die off 24 months after you retire...)" The key is to satisfy yourself, not others.

Attached are a few Christmas gift jewelry I've recently made.



Happy Holidays.

Susie Li
11/30/2008

Around New York

I heard this story over the radio: Two friends from Philadelphia, in their 80s, after one's wife passed away, made a pact to go to a museum every two weeks within 200 miles of radius. They have visited well over 50 museums so far, some spectacular, some mundane (like traveling all the way to see a horse...granted it was some special horse of historical value.) My Beinu friends and I are doing similar things right now.


New York Botanical Garden

(Special Exhibit: The Flower Art of Kiku)

The New York botanical garden is having a flower show "The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum (Kiku in japanese)", which covers a wide range of exquisite Oriental landscape objects: flowers such as chrysanthemum, camellia, lotus; trees such as red maple, pine, bamboo (Take), bonsai; settings such as lotus ponds, rock gardens, and a monumental bamboo sculpture.



The bamboo sculpture was huge bamboos being twisted and turned into a canopy. A lot of work, but not exactly beautiful.

As far as the centerpiece chrysanthemum goes, they come in all sizes and colors. I personally prefers the small, delicate kinds, which work equally well as ground covering as show pieces (or simply as the main ingredient in the Chinese chrysanthemum tea), so vibrant and effortlessly beautiful. The large breeds were too much for my taste, like peonies. It’s freakish to see how these huge flowers were “bent” (or “woven”) out of shape in the Japanese hands, like being made into a bouquet of 230-bulbs from one spindly flower stem all precariously propped up by massive amount of wires and contraption.

After the flamboyant outdoor flower shows, the indoor bonsai displays seemed a little pale, and, a little diminutive in comparison.


Very nice overall. I had all the pictures to prove it.

Admission: $20
Friends: Agnes Young, Hsiao-Hwa Hsu, Echo, Susie

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NY

(“Meeting with Bodhisattva” – the drum dance show by the U Theater, a Buddhist inspired dance group based in Taiwan, ROC)

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is an enlightened being who postpones the attainment of nirvana in order to alleviate the suffering of others.

I guessed the show told how a person attained enlightenment through facing life’s many unknowns. I got only one act right: when the center character wielded his stick as an oar (Buddha’s path to enlightenment included the stint of being a ferryman.)

Ode to Buddha, my spiritual leader – I got that.

However, it would be quite difficult for the lay audience to understand the point of the dance without some preparation. There was plenty of acrobatic drumming and physical aerobics, but the movements were stealthily quiet, and there was no music.

Objectively, the dance was a bit too mystical and obtuse for popularity. Fortunately, it was not too long, lasting only 1 hour 20 minutes, and no intermission. On my way home, inside the Union Street subway station, a man and a woman were drumming vigorously on an array of improvised tin/plastic cans. They sounded almost familiar, and quite good.

Friends: Agnes Young, Hsiao-Hwa Hsu



More garden pictures are available at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/li.chungying/20082009Activities#

Susie Li (11/4/2008)

Six-Day (10/4-10/9/2008) Fall Foliage Drive to Maine

(It has been a while since I wrote. Life had been all work until this fall. Now that kids are gone - Jake went away to college at Buffalo, and Kristin works in San Francisco - the adults get to play...)

Sunshine everyday (high in the 60s, nighttime in the 30s), State of Maine (mind) goes like this: Shorelines (beautiful coasts, cold waters); meticulously preserved lighthouses; abundant seafood (lobsters, haddocks and shrimps); Arcadia state park has everything recreational one could ask for: ocean + Cadillac mountains + lakes + fjords + sea birds (Elder ducks, loons, puffins, American bald eagles, sea gulls) + plants (blueberries, cranberries, rosebuds, maple syrup) and fall foliage + hiking trails + rocks + boating or sports fishing, moose and miniature squirrels.

10/4/2008 Saturday (Day 1) Sunny and crisp day

- Drove 400 miles from Mount Kisco in the morning
- Arrived early afternoon in Maine: the “pine tree” state, the beautiful state, sunny
- Visited LL Bean at Freeport, ME. Not in a buying mood. Same stuff as in the catalogue. Too crowded.
- Stayed in Trade Winds Motel in Rockland dock side. Ate lobsters at the Big Fish Restaurant, my first. Morning breakfast at the motel was quite sumptuous.

10/5/2008 Sunday (Day 2) Sunny and crisp day

- Arrived in Arcadia State Park; stayed at the Seawall Motel on the Quiet Side (met Dave Loyd); met “speed bump” the cat and Dave’s daughter and guests at breakfast. It was a surprisingly warm and intimate breakfast. Lots of great conversations.
- Took a 3 mile beach loop hike around Wonderland. Ate at the “Dry Dock Café” (which was not much). Bought a cane-sugar green apple soda from Canada at a corner market, quite tasty.

10/6/2008 Monday (Day 3) Sunny and crisp day

- Visited Bar Harbor, the Sausalito of Arcadia; bought a beautiful red “father” vase at the tiny Asian/American “Eclipse” Gallery run by a lady from Beijing named Hongrun Lee (part-time resident from May-October)
- Drove to Cutler point, looked around, almost ran into a big moose on the way to the border town Lubec (the northern tip of Maine bordering the great state of Canada). Ate dinner at this cute but quite good restaurant, “Murphy’s Village Restaurant” (no more than 2 restaurants in town). Steve liked their Southern Burrito.
- The dockside motel in town is booked full. So we drove back to the next big town Machias. Retired to a roadside motel (not much of place to mention).

10/7/2008 Tuesday (Day 4) Sunny and crisp day

- Quoddy Head State Park and its Lighthouse (the Eastern most point of the US). Took a short 2.5 mile hike along the coast. Turned around at the Green Point.
- Stopped over at the Cutler Trailhead Public Conservation Land, and took a very strenuous 5.9 mile hike (1/4 along the coast, the rest was rugged, hunter trails with rocks and more rocks, not many switchbacks.)
- Had a slow leak in one tire. Went down to Machias, and stayed in an AAA-rated motel, quite nice.

10/8/2008 Wednesday (Day 5) Sunny and crisp day

- Had the tire repaired at a gas station, a very friendly neighborhood business.
- Stopped by the Jasper Beach at Machias. Jasper is a type of dark-greenish jade-like rock that forms the mountain whose erosion turned into beach pebbles. Collected Jasper stone pebbles and drift wood to complete my miniature beach garden at home.
- Back to Arcadia State Park, the Quiet side, stayed at the Seawall Motel again.
- Ate a pretty good lobster dinner at the “Gilley’s Head of the Harbor” restaurant.

10/9/2008 Thursday (Day 6) Cloudy in the morning and a little rain overnight, sunny afternoon

- Seawall breakfast with Dave: learned so much about his life story, and how he made a go of the motel business (was a Hartford Insurance executive to start out; laid off in 1999; remembered a business traveler that he met on the plane talking about Maine and Arcadia a year and half before his layoff; decided that no need for the insurance job stress, took a trip to Maine, and bought up the rundown Seawall motel on the spot and the land it sat on in 2000, renovated the place since and offered artist workshops (his wife Vicky is a painter); motel marketing through internet booking and the local chamber of commerce and word of mouth; offered breakfast as a way to communicate with guests; the reward of living in a beautiful park land with the peace of mind (in the deep winter, there is no guests, you could cuddle in an armchair, covering yourself with an afghan, with speed bump by your feet, and a good book in hand, classical music in the background, and just look out the window for the gorgeous winter coast – life cannot get any better than that.); found stage-3 testicular cancer and cured in 2006 (everyday now is a blessing, this place gives him strength to recover and fight on); final advice: follow your passion.
- Checked out of Seawall. Took a short hike of the Beech Mountain trail to the fire tower, 1.1 miles, easygoing and fantastic view of 2 autumn lakes of fall leaves (can’t be beat, like Norwegian fjord in my imagination).
- Sun came out in the afternoon. Heading home at 2pm along the same coastline.
- Arrived in Mount Kisco around 11pm.

Fearless Seagulls ..............

..... Mussel Tidal Pool

Cadillac Mountain .................

Wish all of you well !!

Susie Li (10/31/2008)

Journal -Take A Break, Really

I’ve made a pact with myself – One day a week, on Sundays, I will completely shut down my computer, my TV, my cell phone and blackberry, fully disconnected for 24 hours. I’ve decided that living a good life requires a kind of balance, a bit of quiet. I need time to think, to reflect, to find the real me (not the virtual me.)

Unfortunately, turning off the screen did not turn off my brain. I managed to walk, nap, and read the whole New York Times, without hyperlinks. Skimming through the Sunday Times, full of thought-provoking articles, I experimented with discovering my humanity, if I still have any left. I stopped to take notes of where I wanted to revisit, stories that touched me, things that interested me:

Real Estate section - Michael Heller Chu, a flamenco guitarist, and a UN humanitarian relief worker: A peripatetic musician finds a place of his own, a one-room coop on the Lower East Side, for $500,000

My Thought: Musicians are a special breed (writing good music is extremely hard); international relief work is hard work, if not hardest of all careers; super-expensive Manhattan still has a little room left for a rambling musician (His house-hunting story reads like a romantic dating story. “This is how you find good places - by chance, by random conversations,” he said. “We met in an elevator; I told her I was apartment hunting; she told me that she had one for sale. I walked into her place, and it was just what I was looking for.”)

Political Opinion section – by Frank Rich: McCain channels his inner Hillary (trumping fear of terrorism and the prospect of perpetual war)

My Thought: Obama, on the contrary, is not naive. His upbeat campaign tone speaks to American pride and idealism. His prescient anti-Iraq war judgment is not something “experience” can buy, and the organization of his campaign superior. He is smart about talking hope and change, because he may not want to be held hostage to the policy promises he made during the campaign.

Obituaries section - John Lewis, son of a Wall Street titan who became a lawyer to fight for the rights of the poor and powerless, and in December persuaded gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York to pardon a paroled convict, died at 64 of lung cancer. He deserted his upper-class way of life, giving away his generous inheritance to the down-and-out and to causes like Indian welfare, and never stopped.

My Thought: How many heiresses have the heart and brain to do the right thing?

Ideas and Trends section - Religion is less a birthright than a good fit (author Dana Jennings eloquently wrote about his conversion from Rockweiler-like Protestant Christianity to soul-searching Judaism.) More than 1/4 of Americans left the faith of their childhood, either choosing a new one (from mega-church to Buddhist monastery, or from mosque to the Cross) or easing into a life of no faith. This isn't all bad: this cross-pollination breeds tolerance and understanding, and carries with it an unexpected energy and spiritual melting pot to all traditions.

My Thought: We seem to go through the same path. Before 40, we are indifferent, agnostic, and too busy with one thing or another. What happens after 40s, we became hungry for wisdom, meaning, and purposes, even though we are adrift in relentless shallow information. Our lives begin in mystery and end in mystery. In between, we try to explain ourselves to ourselves. We became seekers. I became a Buddhist, because I believe in the metaphors given to me from the Buddhist philosophy. And Buddhist metaphor is how I choose to lead my life - it is no better than your metaphor, and vice versa - just something deep (and beyond words) that moves my soul.

Sunday Style section - Eye of the Artist. How to work a creative mind. Mr. Gondry, the French-born film director who made “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, talked about how our brains and eyes have a way of modifying reality to fit our preconceptions of it. “Your brain is very creative,” he said. “It makes up all sorts of meanings and shapes. We build up our reality from very little information.” For example, he saw an end piece of a baquette on a Air France flight, he could see only one thing: the breast of his former girlfriend (There's some sadness in it. It was a breakup that was never explained.)

My Thought: Everything has the possibility to have a different reality. If you are a creative person, or if you are forced to make things up, just use your eyes. Be assured that you will see what you want to see. With enough practice, you can harness that creative energy too.

Finally: I picked up a few new words: peripededic, pique, prescient

My Thought: English is such a rich language that never ceased to fascinate me - Reading it has the same effect on me as writing it, or speaking it out in the Toastmaster club.

I dearly love the NYT. With all its reporting on the arts and sciences, commerce and humanities, politics and religion, I don’t have time (or the need) to keep up with my virtual friends.

Susie Li

Journal - Winter Snow, Dream of Spring

>>> MY VIEW OF ASIAN HERITAGE GROUP AT WORK

I’m an equal-opportunity striver. My personal American experience has made me into a “social Darwinist” – I want to be the best at what I do (being the best business decision scientist, the data-driven strategist, and middle manager.). I want to be judged on my own merits without regard to my race or class.

At the company where I work, we have 450 (~10%) Asian employees out of 5,000 in the US branch. All Asians are not the same. There is no need for preferential treatment from our employer; we don’t need to be categorized into one cultural group which tends to promote stereotypes and group psychology of self-pity (and incite unwanted suspicion and resentment, or reinforce prejudice.) We shouldn’t ask the system to lower its standards to accommodate our inadequacies. In a competitive work environment, Some, but not all, of us Asians are perfectly capable of adapting, rising up to the challenges and succeeding within the system, whereas others may fail, and that’s just fine. This thinking makes me a “Social Darwinist” - I am for an organic growth and natural selection (of the fittest) process. Although painful at times, this process ultimately results in an enduring improvement of our conditions.

I support the idea of establishing an Asian Employee Resource group at my workplace only to offer customized assistance/resources for the Asian strivers to become successful at work, but not to offer life-support help to keep those un-prepared, uninitiated, lazy, stubborn Asians alive (they are not worth the trouble saving; and they make the rest of us look bad in the long run.)

“We’ve all grown up differently. That’s why we are different…I like the way just you are.” - Fred Roger

I’ll push the idea a bit further: We are all different and unique in our own way. So, let’s celebrate our diversity as humans, and learn from each other, rather than patronizing one group while neglecting others.

>>> SPEAKING OF FAITH – LISTENING TO ELEPHANTS AND WHALE, AND OUR MORAL CONFLICTS

Elephants and whale are the most social and intelligent (and huge) mammals on earth. They use constantly changing sounds (in the case of elephants, sub-sonic) to communicate with each other.

Interview with Katy Paine of Cornell ornithology in bio-acoustics (her book is “Silent Thunders”), “If we can restrict what we want to what we need, then there will be more for everyone. After all, this is the only planet we have to live in the universe.”

We can all do our own part. For example, if the newly rich Chinese can stop desiring ivory tusks (one of their ugly cultural traits), then there won’t be poaching in poorer countries to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the rich at the expense of destroying bio-diversity. Humans need nature to make their lives richer.

>>> CANDIDATE’S VOICE

As eyes are the window into one’s soul, so is voice the window into one’s heart. A leadership voice should convey authority, passion and empathy.

For a women leader, it poses a difficult dilemma. People seem to approve of only two kinds of traditional women voices, both non-threatening: (1) A little girl’s voice (which conveys helplessness and neediness, like that of Jackie Kennedy.) (2) a siren’s voice (conveys a woman’s sexuality and mating call, like that of Lauren BeCall.) So, what should a women leader sound like? With authority and that elusive connectedness (?)

John McCain – an old voice, warm but trembling
Obama – preachy
Hillary Clinton – an angry mother (which makes her children feel insecure).

>>> HOW TO DEAL WITH TRAGIC LOSS IN LIFE

You’ll never get over it, but you’ll get used to it.

>>> WAR

Why were American soldiers failing in the war in Afghanistan? American army was too fascinated with technology, and neglected to fight the war at a political, cultural and human level.

>>> MAINSTREAMING OR BALKANIZATION – AN IMMIGRATION PARADOX

Americans have a tough time making up its mind about immigration: Republican politicians don’t want immigration, not because the immigrants take the jobs away from ordinary Americans (which they don’t), but because the bulk of the immigrants (especially the less educated Mexicans) don’t integrate well with the rest of the society. Democrats are counting on the immigrant votes, and businessmen want the cheap labor that immigrants bring.

Immigration should be more than economics. The issue is a complex one, beyond just mainstreaming or balkanization of the Mexicans. What if we mainstream all the Mexicans in this country; and they all become better educated; and they all want what Americans want; with prosperity comes plights like those facing Americans today, the Mexicans would no longer be able to insulate themselves from the societal ills, and they will suffer the same fate as the rest of the Americans (subprime mortgage debacles, manufacturing decline, lowering of living standards.)

For me, the priority of the immigration policy should be concerned with border security and national sovereign. I have never seen any country with such a confused policy and lax control of its immigration as America.

>>> HOW TO COMPETE AGAINST CHINESE CHEAP GOODS

To differentiate your product from the cheap knockoffs from China is through superior quality and smart marketing.

Put money into R&D, quality control, and marketing, and you are likely to win over your competition. It may take a while to work, but it is not impossible. Examples: 1 in 3 of the world’s saxophones are produced in a small place in the middle of Taiwan (manufacutring high-quality products priced for the mid-range consumers, rather than the bargain hunters or luxury goods market); Toyota is noted for making quality cars with superb value.

Happy New Year!

Susie Li
February 25, 2007

Journal - Meltdown of World Stock Markets

The volatility of the world’s stock markets over the long weekend has taught me some important lessons in world economy:

>>> The emerging economies (India, China especially; less so are the developed economies) are still dependent on Americans’ spending - despite whoever told you otherwise. Therefore, their governments have been so willing to subsidize Americans’ borrowing habits in the past. The prospect of American recession has given them a rude shock and awakening.

>>> People in China or Japan are earning more than what they spend (they are countries of savers.) Their economies are cushioned by rich cash reserves and can withstand recessions. Americans are spending more than what they earn. American economy is driven entirely by borrowing and consumption; and when the credit lines dry up, Americans stop consuming, and the economy goes into a recession.

>>> America is run by “market capitalism” trumped by Wall Street financial wizards and Corporate America, while China or Arab oil countries are run by state-planned “national capitalism”. In times of duress, America will be available for sale.

>>> A nation which doesn’t produce its own goods or services for its citizens is on thin ice. A country which lives on credit (or the whims of their financial gurus) runs the risk of self-deception.

>>> George Soro was right on with his long-range economic predictions:
- Re-regulation of American financial/banking industries is needed to fix America’s subprime mess.
- FED’s lowering its key lending interest rate can only fix the problems temporarily. American recession is inevitable and cannot be solved quickly or painlessly.
- Asian economy is still healthy, and has more room to grow their own demand. Emerging economies will learn from this lesson and move on to do the right thing.

>>> It’s not so bad that the world weans itself from American economy. It’s not so bad that America cedes its economic power to other countries.

>>> The Republicans have no economic policy:
- The only thing they know is tax-cut.

Robo-Heads

A computer consultant driving a rental car drove onto train tracks Wednesday using the instructions his GPS unit gave him. A train was barreling toward him, but he escaped in time and no one was injured.

The driver had turned right, as the system advised, and the car somehow got stuck on the tracks at the crossing. He jumped out and tried to warn the engineer by waving. He got out of the way just before the train slammed into the car at 60 mph, Metro-North railroad spokesman Dan Brucker said Thursday.

The car was pushed more than 100 feet during the fiery crash. Some 500 train passengers were stranded for more than two hours during the Wednesday evening rush hour. The accident also heavily damaged 250 feet of rail, Brucker said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

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A true story that happened practically in my backyard near Bedford, New York. And the train involved in the crash was the beloved Metro-North Harlem train.

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Things like this make me wonder: Are these techno-gadgets having the effect of dumbing down human brains, or what? In the old days, to prepare for a trip, I would study the map way ahead of time, drive more attentively and cautiously on unfamiliar roads. Today, with the ever easy-to-use GPS and a car which almost drives itself (with cruise control, automatic transmission, etc), any dummy can drive anywhere with his eyes practically shut (or he thinks he can).

We always compare ourselves with our previous generations. True to tell, our fathers are handier and more self-sufficient than we are; and sadly, we seem to be handier and slightly more self-sufficient than my children.

I’ve imagined a future, from how my kids have developed, of robo-heads (no arms, no bodies, just the heads) living in a techno-bubble. They can’t eat or drink, can’t drive, can’t imagine, can’t have sex, with eyes glued to the TV and Internet. They are good for little, quite dependent, and completely hopeless without their gear.

Have you read Neil Gaiman’s science fiction, “American Gods”, where the gods are what’s left of human intellect (in the novel, gods were those brought to America from the old countries by early immigrants and then forgotten), and the evil is the modern-day technology? The novel was about the big fight between the good and the evil. I don’t know who won in the end yet – I haven’t finished reading it. But I’ll be smart enough to stay away from those mind-numbing devices: TV, mall, video games, IPOD, and GPS (mind you, I’m not above using technology to make my life easier.)

This morning, I’ve heard that GM has unveiled a new electronic contraption for their future cars in this year’s Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show. This device will allow you to eat, drink, talk, do makeup, shave, watch TV, go on Internet all while you are driving – things that you are quite capable of multi-tasking now inside your car without technology (I won’t tell.) Here is just another smart invention of a master distraction in our lives, eh?