8 Asians

After managing to alienate significant numbers of Asians, Asian Americans, Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics,  overweight, and disabled people, Abercrombie & Fitch has found – surprise – that declining sales forced it into a quarterly loss.  In an attempt to regain some lost sales, the company has slightly retreated on its position of catering only to what the company’s CEO calls the “all American beautiful people” by now including sizes for larger people.    Abercrombie & Fitch is a case study of what happens can happen when a company doesn’t pay proper attention to the diversity of its potential customers.

Diversity can apply to many facets of people.  Racial diversity is one aspect.  In 2002, these Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirts playing on stereotypes managed to infuriate many Asian Americans.  Asians were upset by this model (shown below) brought into South Korea to open up one of their Hollister subsidiary’s stores and who later mocked Koreans over twitter.  Lawsuits have been brought by Hispanics and African Americans who say they weren’t hired or were only to work away from customers because they didn’t have the “right image.”  Abercrombie & Fitch targets 18-24 year olds, but that demographic is increasingly non-white in the US, not to mention already that way in the rest of the world.  Why would they want to alienate a growing segment of potential customers, especially one that has large and increasing buying power?

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8$ is a series which occasionally highlights interesting crowdfunding projects. Every day, the 8Asians team is inundated by many worthy pitches. We are unable to highlight every one that comes our way, or even the ones we might individually support. The projects selected for 8$ are not endorsements by 8Asians. (To be considered for 8$, we highly suggest you not harass the writers or the editors of 8Asians.)

WHO: Scott Won Choi and Jim K. Song for Caffe Borsa. (See their entrepreneurial profile from OC Register this past week)

WHAT: Kickstarter project: Caffe Borsa: Single Serve Pour-Over Coffee (no machine required!)

Although Caffe Borsa is already on the market (available at Whole Foods or on Amazon in Premium Sumatra, Premium Guatemala, or Decaf), their customers have been asking for flavored coffees. This Kickstarter campaign has been launched so that they can develop a more advanced filter which will allow them to bring new flavored/blended coffee lines to the market.

WHEN: Deadline to contribute is Wednesday, Dec 18, 8:18pm PST.

WHY:

Scott Choi and Jim Song are two co-founders, who are passionate coffee and tea connoisseurs. We thought that conventional single serve coffee system was cumbersome and expensive as well as bad for the environment. We believe that coffee should be enjoyed without boundaries.

What is Caffe Borsa Hand Drip Coffee?
Caffe Borsa Hand Drip coffee is made using a special paper material technology, “Borsa Filter,” designed to create gourmet-quality coffee in your cup, each and every time. The speed at which the water slowly drips through the filter has been scientifically perfected to ensure each cup has the ideal coffee flavor.

• Benefit #1: Convenience
  No messy & difficult machinery. No storing filters, and No decanters to clean. No pressure to brew within 2 weeks from purchase, and No hassle to store in a vacuum container – It’s already air-tight & sealed. No need to worry about spooning the right portion size of ground beans every time.
• Benefit #2: Portability
  Great for the office, for traveling and even in the great outdoors
• Benefit #3: Green
  How many cups do you actually drink out of a 1 lb. coffee bag before it goes stale? With Caffe Borsa Single Serve Hand Drip Coffee, there is no waste of beans. Since you brew a single cup on demand, Caffe Borsa coffee is always fresh, and there is no need to keep the “over-brewed” coffee warm in a coffee pot and waste electricity for hours at a time. The Borsa filter and box are also recyclable.

With Caffe Borsa Hand Drip Coffee, You Can Skip All Of These Steps:

How does it work?
As you saw in our introductory video above, you pour hot water into the drip filter, and it brews the coffee beans as it’s dripping, so when you remove the filter from your cup, the coffee is already finished. All you need to do is drink. The difficult steps have been removed by the nature of our “Borsa Filter” technology.

Okay, there are like a million boba shops all over the place in LA. Sometimes the most random shops will sell boba milk tea, so you literally can get it anywhere. Most boba specialty shops are really purchase-and-go places. They don’t really encourage you to stay and hang out because they’re often small and have few seats, and the ones they have are not really that comfortable.

Some of the most common chains are:
Lollicup
Quickly
Boba Loca Juice & Coffee

A specialty chain is Half & Half Tea House, which has higher grade choices and ingredients in a big fat cup.

Also, there’s Ozero and their matcha jasmine green tea float that I just can’t get enough of.

Next up, Part 4: 85C.

As always, the arrival of end-of-year mash-ups reminds us that is truly is almost January. In case the Christmas lights (up since before Thanksgiving) and the carols on the radio hadn’t clued you in, it’s that time of the year.

Inspired by DJ Earworm’s annual epic year-recap-mixes, Daniel Kim creates his own musical masterpiece, Pop Danthology 2013. It has arrived and it is spectacular. A reminder of all the popular music – both loved and hated – that has graced your ears this past year. 

You can (freely) download the 68-song mash-up and read more about his process here.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know I am a big fan of Din Tai Fung. Back in October, I happened to have made a last minute trip up to the Seattle area and was lucky enough to eat at the Din Tai Fung in Bellevue, Washington. Well, by chance, in November I had to fly down to Los Angeles for work the same week that Din Tai Fung was opening up a new restaurant in Glendale, California and had a chance to eat there.

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Suffering from Attack on Titan season end withdrawals, I was searching through Youtube for that show’s soundtrack music to listen to while working, and I stumbled upon these piano versions of the songs that were just absolutely enchanting. I get a lot of my music interests from watching Japanese anime and other media from Asia, so I started searching up other soothing piano performances based on Japanese anime or video games and created this little playlist. It’s about 37 minutes, but I thought I’d share it so that if anyone needs a moment of beauty in a hectic life, press play, and I hope it brings you a measure of peace. Best enjoyed with a cup of cleansing tea or heartwarming coffee.

Recently the NYTimes ran a piece celebrating a significant milestone in North American Western Hollywood TV; two of the strongest and most interesting female leads are being played by Asian-American actresses; Maggie Q as Nikita and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson on Elementary.

*throws confetti*

However celebratory this milestone may be, the following quote almost strips it away:

“… the truth is that they resonate with two of the most common sets of images — or clichés — about Asian women: the high-achieving, socially awkward Dr. Joan Watson is a refined example of the sexy nerd, and the lethal, sometimes icy Nikita, able to dispense violence while wearing tight, microscopic outfits, evokes a long line of dragon ladies and ninja killers.”

It’s like we can’t win.

Despite the complex fleshed out characters of Nikita and Watson, they still seem to fall in some sort of spectrum of stereotypes … or as I’d like to look at it, HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS.

I suppose I should give kudos to Kale, while enjoying the programs, still managed to catch that regardless of ethnicity, these two characters managed to reach for an Asian stereotype. He goes on to mention other Asian-American/Canadian actresses, who are not particularly playing front and centre characters, but seem to find themselves plotted on some weird Venn Diagram of Smarts (re: Nerds) over Sassy Dragon Lady antics.

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I’m no fan of the Miami Heat, but was happy to see the Heat’s Head Coach Erik Spoelstra, a Filipino American, join the NBA, NBPA, and Miami HEAT in support of UNICEF and their ongoing relief efforts in the Philippines in this public service announcement. For links to donate, click here. Unless you’ve been asleep for the past few weeks,  the Philippines was hit by the most powerful typhoon in history.

Arsalan Iftikhar, senior editor at The Islamic Monthly, posted a picture of this defaced Gap advertisement on his twitter account.  This ad featured Sikh-American designer Waris Ahluwalia and model/filmmaker Quentin Jones.  What, if anything, would the Gap do?

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As I was browsing MMA videos, I came upon this hilarious video of Michelle “Karate Hottie” Waterson on martial arts comedy webseries Enter The Dojo Show. Waterson gives a little instructional on how to do the axe kick, which is then ridiculously re-interpreted by Master Ken. It wasn’t long before I had devoured the entire two seasons of this brilliant martial arts comedy series.

Master Ken is a caricature fashioned after the classic McDojo’s that have been endemic across the American martial arts landscape for the past few decades. Anyone who’s ever taken any martial arts can appreciate the ways in which he takes real life dojo experiences and just runs with it. Imagine The Office but with martial arts and Michael Scott as the dojo’s master. Genius. I laughed till I cried.

During a press conference (about her recent stint on “The Bachelorette India”), a female journalist from India accused Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat of giving India a bad name abroad because of her previous statements on the topic on the state of women in India to worldwide press in other interviews. The journalist says that Mallika had given an interview at Cannes saying that “India is regressive and depressing.”

Not one to let her statements be used against her, Sherawat fired back, clarifying what she had previously said and then this:

“Indian society is regressive for women.”

“With female feticide, infanticide happening on an almost daily basis; with gang rapes making the headlines of almost every newspaper; with honor killings…”

“I think it’s a very, very regressive state for women.”

“And I stand by it!”

“As a woman, I should lie about the state of women that’s in our country? So I didn’t lie. I said the truth.”

The original interview of Sherawat was actually done a few months ago (before “The Bachelorette India” had even come out), and evidently drew some “internet trolling” in India at the time because of her “fake accent,” but has gone viral worldwide this past week.

Whereas the video was “NBD” when it first came out, part of the reason this video has gone viral now is because of the brewing debate on feminism in India that is happening in the light of a major rape case against news organization Tehelka founder Tarun Tejpal. Tejpal stepped down for six months from his organization after a female colleague accused him of sexually assaulting her. This case is receiving much public scrutiny because Tehelka has been on the forefront of urging Indian society to confront sexual violence with its coverage. However, as Tejpal’s rape case began to receive attention:

[T]he magazine’s managing editor, Shoma Chaudhury, sent an announcement to her staff that “there has been an untoward incident” and that Mr. Tejpal had apologized and would “recuse himself” for six months. A remorseful letter from Mr. Tejpal, which was leaked to other publications, described “a bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation.”

An account in an email posted on a social media site shortly afterward, evidently written by the victim, described two episodes of assault that took place when she was cornered in a hotel elevator.

Many journalists and activists fumed over Ms. Chaudhury’s treatment of the episode as an internal matter, especially because the magazine, Tehelka, has pushed for Indian society to confront hidden cases of sexual violence. [full story from the New York Times]

After attacks from all directions, Chaudhury resigned from the paper, drawing further ire for “not really being a feminist” when push came to shove. In contrast, Sherawat is being championed as a feminist for standing up and speaking out about women’s issue, leading to various editorials comparing the two.

The actor, comedian (and yes, doctor) Ken Jeong recently guest co-hosted SportsCenter on ESPN. Having grown up in North Carolina, gone to Duke for undergrad and UNC for medical school, it’s no surprise that Jeong is a big basketball or sports fan. As a Duke grad school alum, it brings me great joy to read:

“I was one of the Cameron Crazies back in the day. I’ve mellowed out now. You’d have to … you can’t stay crazy for that long. One of my neighbors went to Duke, so he gets some people together for the Carolina games and we all watch at his house on the big screen.”

But I can’t even imagine what Jeong was like at Duke if he considers himself mellowed out now – maybe as a sports fan, but certainly not in most of the characters he portrays in television and film. ESPN put together a nice montage of Jeong’s best moments as guest co-host which is fairly entertaining. Enjoy!