I'm in Beijing. Apparently China now blocks xanga. I was able to xanga the last time I was here in 2005-06. But no matter; I was going to forward everyone to my new blogs anyway. Georgetown Inc. has hired me to blog about life in Beijing on its site http://www.beijingwassup.com/. The site isn't completely finished yet but I've begun to blog on it. So, that's the place to visit if you'd like to learn about Beijing/China and my adventures in this crazy place.
I've also started a new blog at http://zenvuong.wordpress.com/. I haven't really posted anything yet but I will probably do so within the next month. In the meantime, the page links you to my Flick'r and YouTube.
Enjoy vicariously stalking me. =)
(Random info: China semi-blocks Flick'r so don't mind if some of my images are messed up. I could upload images but I'm not sure if everything came out alright because I'm unable to view the pictures.)
View from Tantalus. Pretty impressive considering this picture was taken with a Canon point-and-shoot.
Baby picks you!
Snippet of the Thunderbird Show at Waikiki. It was a bit short. Rumors spread that the show was shortened because it started to rain.
Random thought: People do many pointless things in the name of fitting into society and making others feel good. There were explosions of applause when the Thunderbirds did something especially daring, but to what end? Neither the pilots nor the people in charge of the show hear this praise; yet, we still freely give it out because we're conditioned robots.
I watched a lot of movies/films this Labor Day weekend.
1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - mediocre but it reveals a little about the craziness during the Cultural Revolution and includes some beautiful Chinese landscape (I read the book a while ago and that was mediocre also.) 2. Red Doors - a humorous reflective piece for all you Asian-Americans out there 3. SuperBad - cute, funny penis drawings 4. Fracture - creative twists, worth two watches. 5. Hot Fuzz - funny satirical piece. Memorable line: "Oh, fuck off, Grasshopper."
My coworker, John, introduced me to Thien-Bao Thuc Phi. His writing is lyric with a somewhat broken-record theme: Asian-American (and other minority) suppression. The same examples of racism and stereotypes thread many of his works. It has a street edge to it and, annoyingly, sometimes uses modern-Internet spelling. Here's an excerpt from his essay, Reverse Racism:
"I'm going to run for office, promising equality for white men, then when I get elected I'm going to pass laws that forbid white guys from marrying Asian women. Then I'm going to hit on every single white woman I see and spread rumors about how white guys got small dicks and how white guys are no good for women because they come from such a male dominated society."
