Undiscovered Bum

Listening to: Carly Jae Jepsen, “I Really Like You.” Carly does it again! Hello early summer jam. I’m ready for her latest hit to take over my life. Also I’ve been concurrently listening to a lot of Enter the Wu-Tang. So, you know, I’m either skipping or poseur-ing down the street. Same look.

Ah, so many Wu memories. Remember the Wu Name Generator? I used it to create the conference names for my long running fantasy football league. So the two sides are named “Inscrutable Drama Kings” and “Spunky Misunderstood Geniuses.” It might be time to update those after more than a decade. But nostalgia you know?

My introduction to Wu-Tang was at the hands of JMZ, when we were seventeen. At the time, he was really into doing all the lines and especially the movie open from “Liquid Swords.” “When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire…” I didn’t know Wu-Tang, I didn’t know hip hop, I barely knew JMZ. I didn’t know anything about New York or its boroughs until years later. It took me many listens of De La Soul to figure out that their "Strong Island" was not the same as Wu-Tang’s "Shaolin" aka Staten Island. Rap is geography.

Another one: Loading up Raekwon’s "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx” on the drive from San Diego to Santa Cruz to see my first girlfriend. It was, and still is, the longest I’ve ever driven to see someone. I remember just feeling pumped and wondering what would power me through this epic, and romantic, drive. Mainly it was just Raekwon on repeat and repeat and repeat. We broke up three months later.

Lasting image: Watching three upperclassmen people dance to "Da Rockwilder” at a college diversity show. One was the coolest girl in pretty much all of life (still is and I count one of my major life achievements being able to call her “friend”), the second is an award winning chef in L.A. as well as a MFA grad, and the third is a hardcore political dissident for Taiwanese independence. And I believe he works for the company that makes all those Taiwanese animation videos as well. Basically, if you can dance to “Da Rockwilder,” you can do most anything.

Carly Rae, Wu Tang, and I'm finally discovering the greatness that is Fleetwood Mac. Basically my entire (current) music game has fallen off completely since being in Taiwan. Who is Schoolboy Q? What are collard greens? Why did I not know that "I'm in love with the coco" was in reference to cocaine? Because I'm lost, that's why.

Also because I'd prefer to think that the "coco" in question is in reference to the ubiquitous Taiwanese boba chain that expanded to New York last year. My drink of choice at Coco is the "three brothers 三兄弟" which is boba, grass jelly, and custard all in one cup. It's a tall glass of delicious.

• Wu-Name Generator
• Enter the Wu-Tang, 20 Years Later: Who Ya Got? (2014)

Broken Promises

Currently pushing: Did the LA Times lift my idea for a publishing board game and make their version of it? Of course they did! I guess they added an interactive die and actually made a whole game so they win. So go ahead, try out How to Be a Writer.

Did I totally fail on my stated goal of blogging daily in March? Did I not even post once? Of course I did! In a hilarious attempt at resuscitating my writing habits, I figured I'd start from the beginning: blogging a lot. Instead I find myself digging through half written posts, Evernotes with mysterious phrases randomly scattered around, and trying to reconstruct things I was trying to talk about weeks ago.

The obvious solution is to just back date every attempted post from this month, because blogs are basically time travel. In related time travel news, watch Predestination. It’s not as good as say, Looper or Edge of Tomorrow, but it’s better than most. Plus, Ethan Hawke in sci-fi stuff is generally good. Evidence: Gattaca.

Advanced analytic stats on my blog: A high of 140 posts in 2009 to 23 posts in 2014. And then a whopping one post for the first three months of 2015. It's been a precipitous decline; I'm the Deron Williams of blogging.

So I think I’m going to put myself on a blogging schedule. Something I’ve never had to resort to. The mere idea of a schedule is anathema to me. But once I catch up on March, it’s onward with three posts a week. I mean, can I even call myself a writer if I can’t produce three sloppily written posts a week? Of course not right?

Also, I’ve been thinking of what the grace period is for when you should stop calling yourself a writer/author after your last book comes out. Number twelve on Simmons’ rules for being a true fan says that you can’t complain about your team for five years after they win a championship. I think that five year window is also a nice way to delineate when you're not an author anymore — this is in contrast to my ten year rule for things you used to do.

After those five years, you go from “I'm an author” to “I wrote a book once.” So basically, the clock is ticking. My last published thing was almost exactly a year ago so I have four years and counting to produce something else. Hurry Jon, hurry!

In the meantime, I bought this highly recommended Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 keyboard at Guanghua Digital Plaza the other day to increase my mobile productivity. Of course, I don’t have an iPad to use it with yet, but this is how I do things. First a keyboard and iPad stand, then the actual iPad. Because backwards is forwards.

• 750 Words: Writing Every Day
• Bill Simmons: Rules for Being a True Fan
• Wirecutter: Best Bluetooth Keyboard and Superlum review

Concept of School, Seems So Secure

Currently pushing: The mysterious and ancient frilled shark. Of, um, ancienty. And the blue bull of India, the nilgai. You’re welcome.

Well, school started again, in early March. After initially thinking I would only stick around Taiwan for one semester, I wasn’t nearly ready to make future life plans yet so decided to continue on for another exciting three months of learning Chinese at Shida.

This time out though, I was going to drop the intensive course and take regular classes because I felt like the three hours of class plus studying and homework were providing me with little time to do much else. (Perhaps only semi-true, since I’m not the most efficient time manager ever. But many of my classmates agreed.) So my big debate for spring semester was which time slot to pick: 12-2pm or 2-4pm? Clearly the latter was my preferred option but then I decided to be responsible and go for the earlier than noon wake up.

Plus, my new-ish apartment was only a seven minute walk to school, cutting my commute time by at least half an hour. No more rushing to hail a cab to class...and then sending Snapchats to classmates that basically said "I'm coming!"

Also this semester, upon suggestion of my teacher, I demoted myself down a few levels, switching from the classes with mostly ABCs (American Born Chinese) to ones with mostly expats. Which meant that I went from one of the worst students in the class to one of the best — at least speaking-wise. I spent most of the first few days of the spring semester hopping around and shopping for a new class as being the best speaker was of little use to me.

As I discovered, in language classes, it’s far better to be one of the lesser students, because you are challenged and can learn from everyone around you. For example, my initial class was made up of people who had only started learning Chinese for six months. There was one ethnic Chinese, aside from me, and he was from Europe. Everyone else was straight foreign. Technically I’d been learning Chinese for twelve to fourteen years, plus I spoke Chinglish at home. Actually I’ve been quite impressed with how fast people can learn rudimentary Chinese — as most of the Shida beginners have their writing and reading skills comparable to mine — but it was a struggle to have basic conversations and that wasn't the challenge I was looking for.

So I went up a level and found people — still mostly foreigners — who’d been studying for maybe nine months, and while my listening/speaking might still be one of the higher ones in class, their overall proficiency was definitely higher than mine. Perfect.

One thing I do miss is my old classmates who, being mostly raised in America, were brought up in educational environments that stressed participation. Ironically, the bane of my young educational career was speaking up but now I find myself wanting a classroom setting where I won’t be the only one volunteering answers.

Having the teacher ask a question and then hearing crickets make for dull classes. Part of the silence is perhaps due to people not being as expressive in a language they are still learning, part of the non-participation comes down to individual personalities of course, but in general, the students from Asian countries tend to be quiet as mice unless called upon. Without classroom dialogue, two hours can crawl by pretty slowly.

One day I should post about the entire educational experience at Shida but for now I can say that its pedagogical model is exactly what you would expect: the Prussian one most of us are familiar with. It’s an effective method (debatable) but can be boring as hell without the right teacher and classmates. So I kept shopping around and settled for two out of three: Right coursework, right teacher, right classmates. Which would you choose?

Seen in the image above: I kept a sketch log of my classmate's earring selections. I was jealous of her many fine birds so this was the next best thing to actually owning them. And yes, I was paying attention in class. I just need to keep my hands busy when I sit down, otherwise I zone out.

• The Prussian-Industrial Model: The Roots of Modern Public Schooling
• Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?

Twilight Struggle

There’s a lot I’ve been wanting to share with you. Like Eddie Huang’s post about his upcoming TV show, Fresh Off the Boat. Or Dave Chang’s State of Ramen essay, and Lucky Peach’s new ramen issue. But I decided that’s probably what my Tumblr’s for. So I’m gonna try to make that a separate space. Just words here, words! But you know, habits are hard to break. I just want to link everything.

But I won’t because that’s now one of my New Year's declarations: no linking. Or rather, minimal linking. I need to return to my roots. “Just the words, ma’am, just the words." Other lofty goals for 2015 include blogging more (posts have dwindled from 140 to 105 to 91, and on down to 23 in recent years), returning communications in at timely manner (it's getting worse), and of course, figuring shit out (always high on the list). Also, it may be time to start thinking of embracing the “middle aged” label. Nah, not yet.

They say that your cells are replaced every seven years or so, in which case I’m near the beginning of my fifth cell cycle. Whether this is apocryphal or not, I’m just gonna go ahead and believe it. I mean, 1994 was Pulp Fiction and I was officially a teenager. 2001 was 9/11 and my dad passing away. 2008 was a/the major breakup. Seismic life changes you know?

And so, counting seven years back from now, it the beginning of my nomadic period. I had just started the Bermuda Triangle living arrangement of going between San Diego, San Franciso, and New York. I grew new friends, met the person I would probably call my best friend now, and basically came to learn that everything is transient, especially me. Outside of a full year in New York in 2013, it’s been running running running.

And now we’re here, two thousand fifteen. Et tu, Brute?

I watched The One I Love a few weeks ago. With Peggy from Mad Men and one half of the Duplass brothers. It's pretty great. Simple and brilliant. I don't know who to credit, the writer who conceived the script, the director who put it all together, or Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass. All of them I guess. You should watch The One I Love because it's a trip. And I wish I had seen it last year to include it in my "best of" list.

Speaking of bests, from this article naming "the best books of the 21st century (so far)," I've read eight. And since I'm obviously one hundred percent gonna finish fiftyfifty.me this year, I'm just going to start by going down this list. First up is Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend because I've been dying to read it.

And oh yeah, the wedding! Over the holiday break, I flew home and married George and AMR. Now we are officially and forever family. I stood up in front with three pages of stuff to mumble out -- tucked into a Calvin & Hobbes anthology -- and then before I knew it, my job was over. AMR and George spent more time going over what alcohol to order to insure a great party than the actual ceremony itself, but that's why they're great. They knew what kind of wedding they, and we, wanted and they delivered.

It was ten minutes of walking in and ceremony-ing, followed by five hours of drinking and dancing. A few quick toasts, lots of snackables on-hand, a wonderful live cover band, and then boom, over. I think I signed the marriage certificate in-between sets. And I might have signed it a little bit outside of the box, so the certificate might have to be re-done. But still, my most important task of 2014, accomplished! Congrats to them both and to my oh so happy mother, whom I've never seen beam so radiantly.

I should have asked her for the keys to the kingdom right there.

Stuff I've Been Consuming: Sep - Dec 2014

[fiftyfifty.me | Pinterest | Google Doc]

Here we go, the annual recap of all movies watched and books read. Let’s not bury the lead: I failed fiftyfifty.me again. Somehow I ended up with only twenty-two books read, which is even less than last year’s total. Movies also dropped, from eighty-nine to eighty-seven this year, but who’s counting movies at this point? I knocked out the requisite fifty by July. It's the books that are every year strugg-ling.

Sidenote: How to use hyphens and numbers.

The good news is that this upcoming year’s addition to fiftyfifty.me -- now in its fourth year -- will feature the addition of "buddies," or team ups. So now you can (pre-)call how many movies and books you’ll aim to finish, splitting a total of 200 books/movies between you and a friend. More details about 2015 fiftyfifty.me+BUDDIES at the site, so come join up because it'll be just as fun with a more flexible challenge!

Anyway, while quantity of books was a total bust, there were somewinners. I’ve already talked about Saga, the Vaughan/Staples graphic novel. And then there’s Sister Mischief by Laura Goode, which is a YA novel about four girls in Minnesota who band together to start a queer hip hop group at their religiously conservative school. Yes, read that again.

And not only does Sister Mischief feature a Desi co-lead, with passages about white privilege and the sexuality spectrum, but it also drops references to rap artists that I can’t imagine most YA readers get but which I absolutely loved. (Unless there's a big crossover between Atmosphere or 9th Wonder fans and the YA audience that I don't know about. If you fall into that narrow category, let's be friends?) Either way, I can’t believe Sister Mischief exists. And author Laura Goode also had a film come out this year, Farah Goes Bang, which I have yet to watch because I missed it at all the film festivals. But at this point I'll consume anything Goode puts out there.

I also finally bit the bullet and read one of George R.R. Martin’s books: A Song of Ice and Fire. We went heavy into GoT during Season Four, including buying the board game which I’ve only been fortunate enough to play once. A long flight served as the perfect opportunity to dive into the GoT novels. Verdict: It’s good! As if millions of rabid fans could be wrong. But I just had to know for myself. Because, you know, many times millions of rabid fans are absolutely wrong. I think I’ll stop at the first GoT book though, since I’m already deep enough into the GoT rabbit hole as it is.

Over the summer, I recommended three A books in a row to a new friend: Americanah, The Goldfinch, and The Golem and the Jinni.  Afterwards, this beautiful human gave me the greatest praise I could ask for, "What do you recommend next? I'll read anything you say!" Life peak reached, it's all downhill from here... And even though I recommended Goldfinch and Golem and Jinni, they did fall a little flat for me. The setup in the latter was so great too: a story about the two titular supernatural creatures who meet in turn of the century New York and become semi-soul mates. But ultimately the book petered out. Goldfinch I couldn’t even all the way finish even as I recognized that it was pretty good.

As 2014 is winding down, I’m finishing up Meghan Daum’s Unbreakable, which is captivating. Daum's voice and writing are spectacular and even if I wasn’t already a sucker for essay collections, I would highly recommend it. And again, Bad Feminist, my favorite book of the year and a must-read for everyone.

And although I’m not reading many books, I still tend to read about books, which is almost like the same thing right? Okay maybe not. Here's my new favorite book site, The Oyster Review, which features posts like Choire Sicha's "Everything you ever needed to know about the work of Ursula K. Le Guin and where to start." And here's Electric Literature on "Why 2014 Was the Year of the Essay."

I watched a record tying thirteen movies in August, tied with June 2012. Perhaps next year I’ll really achieve in life and break that record. Dare to dream! Even though I sucked in a ton of films this year, I feel like I missed most of the good stuff. Excepting the Marvel blockbusters that I basically auto-A, my list of recommends boils down to Her, Le Passe, Edge of Tomorrow, 9-Man, Obvious Child, and How to Train Your Dragon 2. Sure, Gone Girl and Boyhood were good too, but I admired the directors and behind-the-scenes more. Also, being in Taiwan, I think I missed a lot of the late arriving stuff like Whiplash, Nightcrawler, Dear White People, The One I Love, Inherent Vice, Citizenfour, and Wild. So there’s some serious catching up to do.

I think my favorite movie of 2014 was Her, which I saw on the fourth day of January, and it wasn't even released this past year. Basically there wasn’t an overwhelming movie that just knocked my socks off in 2014. Maybe Edge of Tomorrow for sheer enjoyment? I pushed that on a lot of people this summer. Guess I’ll just leave movies behind with a recommendation for Arvin Chen’s two Taiwanese rom-coms, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and Au Revoir Taipei. Chen is a Taiwanese-American director from the Bay who moved to Taiwan in 2001 and made Au Revoir Taipei despite not being fluent in Mandarin. Like what?! *Insert super jealous eyes* Anyway, here’s Au Revoir Taipei's end credits library dance. Ugh, so cute.

Also, a note about TV shows, even though they aren’t counted in fiftyfifty.me because TV is eminently more consumable than movies or books. (But if you want to do fifyfify+PLUS for TV series, go for it.) This year I was all in on Sherlock S3, the phenomenon that was True Detective, GoT S4, Orange is the New Black S2, and of course, all three seasons of Deadwood, which vaulted into one of my top TV series of all time back in February. There’s a lot of great TV for me to still catch up on, namely The Americans and Transparent, but until I figure out this foreign VPN situation, I’m stuck without my trusty Netflix or HBO Go. Quelle horreur!

Pedagogy of the Privileged

Listening to: Zombies, “Summertime.” At Vinyl Decision, a listening lounge in Taipei a few weeks ago, a friend of a friend got on the turntables and put on this band. I went gaga. “Who is this?!” Turns out, I’m 110% a Zombies fan. Fifty years late maybe but I’m on-board now. Currently pumping "She's Not There" on repeat! And while I’m here, try my favorite zombie related track: Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s a Zombie For You.” Oh yeah, Ryan Gosling is the lead singer...

So school started a few weeks ago. You know, that Chinese school I’m taking. Voluntarily. Nevermind that my entire childhood was spent cursing the many wasted Saturdays we were forced to attend Chinese school. Nevermind that I also took two years of Mandarin in college. I’m in Taiwan now and ready to begin anew. Without cheating or slacking this time. That’s right, I’m taking classes at National Taiwan Normal University aka Shida and I’m enrolled in the intensive class. Hardcore!

What "intensive" translates to is three hours of class a day, along with an intimidating four hours of homework. Or so the syllabus says. In practice, it’s been more like two hours a day. You know, only a mere two hours. For those who scoff, it’s seriously been legit school. I mean, once you’re in a classroom setting, being quizzed daily and tested weekly, the academic mindset kicks right back in. (I haven’t been in school since reading One World Schoolhouse but I keep thinking about how those principles might apply.) Also, as an indoctrinated model minority, it’s hard to let go of trying to get good/decent grades. Luckily I’ve decided that I don’t care about learning pinyin, I’m just here to learn words, words, and more words. I’ll take a B or B-, thank you very much.

My classmates are mostly from similar backgrounds. We can all understand and speak -- albeit mostly with horrific childish accents -- but none of us can really write that well. It’s mostly ABCs (or close enough), with a Brazilian, an Indonesian, and a Venezuelan thrown in for diversity. It’s a self selecting group of people who are in the arc of their life where they can spend three months dedicated to studying a language. And because my fellow students are invested, that motivates me to stay on top of my shit.

During the first week, my friend and I hopped around trying to find the right class for us to possibly be in together. After crouching by doors and listening in, basically spying on everyone, we decided that what was important, beyond even the stuff being taught, was the vibe the teacher imparted on the classroom and your fellow students. If your classmates were cool, then you were golden. A boring teacher with a room full of people who didn’t participate would make the hours drag on. Luckily, I was placed in the creme de la creme by default so I decided to just stick with the intensive class, after contemplating a move down to regular. So yeah, wish me luck. 加油, 加油!

Here’s the thing about learning Mandarin: It’s just straight memorization. There are no tricks, there’s no alphabet, the radicals only do so much, and there aren’t any cute mnemonics to help you out. It’s just rote and grind and push vocab into your brain. Enter Pleco!

Basically Pleco is a free Chinese to English dictionary but for an add-on of $19.99, it turns into an awesome flash card app. You can organize your cards with touch screen ease and there’s something very satisfying about drawing Chinese characters into your iPhone and testing yourself while on the go. I totally love it and combining just a dash of tech geekery into language learning has made it that much funner. (I’ve tried using Duolingo to learn Spanish, and the gamification helped there too, but only up to a certain point.)

There’s other good flash card apps out there, namely Anki, but Pleco is the only Chinese specific one. And I’ve found that even though there’s no online support -- it’s all iOS or Android -- Pleco's features are superior to what Anki can offer. Also, Waygo is a Chinese, Korean, and Japanese text translator app that uses image recognition to read stuff frighteningly fast. It's mostly effective for menus, and it’s not very accurate sometimes, but overall Waygo is a nice tool to have around. So until an actual Babel fish comes along, back to the iPhones and books!

• Video: Learn to read Chinese...with ease! (2013)
• The 9 Levels of Mandarin Study at NTNU's Mandarin Training Center
• Discover Chinese: Which flashcard program? Pleco vs Anki