Last Friday night, ABC News’ Nightline profiled Nobu Matsuhisa, better known as just “Nobu,” who prepared some of his signature dishes and spoke a little bit about his background. To be honest, I have never ever eaten at a Nobu restaurant, but I have heard of him and his reputation precedes him in the world of fine dining. Nobu comes from humble beginnings – he tragically saw the death of his father in a traffic accident at a young age and the failure with his first restaurant burning down to the ground. Today, Nobu runs 25 Japanese restaurants that employ more than 3,000 people on five different continents–but none in San Francisco! I wonder why? Well, the next time I am in Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, San Diego, or a number of other cities, I will have to check out one of Nobu’s restaurants. Have any of you eaten at his restaurants? What do you think?
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I realize that the 2010 Winter Olympics ended last week, and you might not care, but I do, so I’m going to keep on writing about it until the cows come home. Whatever that means.
I love the Olympics. We already covered that. My second favorite Winter Olympic sport is Short Track Speed Skating. My fandom of this sport is in large part to a certain cutie named Apolo Ohno who makes speed skating look like the hottest sport ever invented. I’ll admit that I’m pretty biased when it comes to Ohno, because even if he makes ungracious comments, I’ll overlook it, chalking it up to his good looks impairing his social graces during interviews.
I’m sure you’ve been aware, but ever since the 2002 Winter Olympics, it seems that those living in South Korea have hated on Ohno over his controversial medal.
Ohno finished runner-up to Lee Jung-Su after two other leading Koreans, Sung Si-Bak and Lee Ho-Suk, collided and crashed into the boards around the final turn in the men’s 1500m final on Saturday at the Vancouver Olympics…[The] Korean media slammed Ohno’s post-race comments that Korean skaters deserved to be disqualified in a fresh flare-up of the antipathy which surrounded him after he won the same event at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
Anyone who has watched the sport understands that the races are intense, and that at any given second, things can take a turn for the worse or better for any or all of its competing athletes. The nature of the sport forces the contenders to skate in close quarters, where accidents are bound to happen.
So maybe you can understand my incredulousness at South Korea for singling out our Ohno as the sole contributor for things not working out well for their countrymen. Let’s just accept the fact that it is what it is in Short Track Speed Skating and let bygones be bygones. I mean, are we, America, going to hate on Canadian Short Track Speed Skaters because we had our own bit of tussle at this year’s games?
Shopping With GASP!
We’ve had movie versions of Mortal Kombat that was kinda campy but watchable, and we’ve had movie versions of Street Fighter which were pretty bad to downright terrible. Now video gaming males from ages 18-35 — and Moye, ha ha — can rest tight knowing that there’s going to be a movie about everyone’s favorite four button fighting game that incorporates corporations and demon possession, Tekken.
Tekken will be centered around Jin Kazama, played by British model and wushu martial artist Jon Foo, and will have some of the characters from the latter series, including one scary-ass lookalike for Craig Murduk and Chiaki Kuriyama, who as Ling Xiaoyu will be able to stay in her “I kill people in a schoolgirl outfit” roles she took on for Battle Royale and Kill Bill. (Update: Nope, not true.)
Who won’t be in the movie? Paul Phoenix, which attests to the fact that they were not able to convince any 45 year olds to get a Kid-N-Play haircut and be a cheap asshole. (In this movie, that role goes to Eddy Gordo. “Hows it going, Eddy Gor-” [gets leg swept]) So what’s the verdict: will this movie be bad good, or bad bad?
Taijicho, the Japanese whaling town profiled in the documentary The Cove, has criticized the movie’s win at last night’s Academy Awards for best documentary, saying the film is intolerant of cultural differences. ”Documentaries are supposed to accurately report facts. But the film had an agenda,” Taijicho Mayor Kazutaka Sangen said. “I’m extremely disappointed that a film that ignores tradition was given the award.”
Recently, the Taiwanese American Citizens League (TACL), TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Taiwanese American Foundation, TACL-LYF: Leading Youth Forward, Taiwanese American Professionals – San Francisco (TAP-SF), Taiwanese American Federation of Northern California helped produce this Public Service Announcement (PSA), advocating for all Taiwanese Americans to self-identify for the 2010 U.S. census taking place in April as “Other Asian” and write in “Taiwanese.”
For more information about the PSA, check out http://taiwaneseamerican.org/census2010/ , where you can learn about the Taiwanese Americans in the PSA, including California State Assemblyman and California Attorney General candidate Ted Lieu.
According to TACL, the 2000 estimates of Taiwanese Americans are 1.12 million (in the census 2000, only 144,795 Taiwanese Americans were recorded an under count by almost 90%. The U.S. Constitution requires a national census once every 10 years and census forms will be mailed to every household in March & Census Day is April1, 2010. The census counts EVERYONE residing in the United States (including non-citizens & international students.) The census is confidential – your responses are protected by law under Title 13, U.S. code, Section 9 and only takes 10 minutes to fill. The census data is important because it directly affects how more than $300 BILLION per year in federal and state funding is allocated to communities & non-profit organizations. That’s more than $3 TRILLION DOLLARS over the 10-year period.
After the jump, you can read more about my rant on being a Taiwanese American and why it matters.
“What are you?”
asked the Chinese graduate student, looking at me. We had hired him and a Korean graduate student to intern in my research group. They knew I was some kind of Asian but they couldn’t figure out what kind from my name and my appearance. In the rarefied academic world of research and graduate school, they had never encountered any fellow graduate students, researchers, or professors who were Filipino. I wasn’t surprised. When I was in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, I met very few Computer Science grad students of Filipino descent like myself (none, actually), and only a few other Filipino or Filipino-American graduate students. There were plenty of other Asians and Asian-Americans from other ethnicities.
NAM education workshop from New America Media on Vimeo.
An upcoming report from the think tank Education Trust-West, described here by New American Media, confirms my experience. This report will reveal significant disparities in academic achievement among different Asian ethnic groups in California. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian and Vietnamese students often scored better than their white classmates while Cambodian, Laotian and Pacific Islander students fell farther behind the longer they were in school. Filipino students’ performance tracked closely to whites.
Details can be revealing. 72 percent of Asian students in eighth grade were testing at grade level in English in 2009, outperforming their white peers by 6 percent. Chinese students scored highest, with 81 percent achieving grade level proficiency. Only 46 percent of Cambodian and 40 percent of Laotian students scored well, however. The differences get worse as time goes on. Only 6 percent of Laotian and 11 percent of Cambodian students reach college-ready level English proficiency by high school graduation, while 41 percent of Chinese and 38 percent of Korean students reached that same level.
Ling-Chi Wang, professor emeritus in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, said Ed Trust’s findings show that the mainstream media image of Asians as the “model minority” image is incorrect. Wang spoke at a news briefing organized by New America Media. The briefing was part of a half-day training on education data research (video embedded above) for ethnic media reporters.
To me, this is another example of how diverse Asian-Americans are. While elite colleges may look at Asian-Americans as one big homogenous group, data from this report makes it clear that they are not. As Wang points out, “the needs of certain Asian groups have been overlooked and under-funded.”
A recent press conference by Golden Boy Productions about the Floyd Mayweather / Shane Mosley fight allowed media groups access to the press conference… except for Filipino media. Did they fear answering the possible questions that would arise about Mayweather’s and his team’s actions towards Manny Pacquiao?
I shake my head at this — xenophobia towards my brethren is not tolerated. This is not 1920’s Stockton California, when Filipinos weren’t allowed to go into certain locations. It is 20-MOTHERFUCKING-10; this shouldn’t be happening.
So I guess 2010 won’t be the year of the Asian American Idol with 21 year old John Park being voted off the show last night with 3 other contestants. Even though I’m not one of those AI fanatics who text in their votes every week, I was still excited to see Park’s singing skills on the reality show because hey, who doesn’t love a good looking Korean male crooning songs on live television?
I caught Park’s performance on Tuesday night, where he sang John Mayer’s Gravity and though I was rooting for my fellow Asian American, I’m not surprised to see him go. The combination of a poor song choice (I think my eyes glazed over in the first five seconds before he was finally able to sing) and his lackluster stage presence, as well as the judges’ criticism, didn’t make John memorable enough to keep the audience interested. I had a sinking feeling during the song that night that he wasn’t going to make the cut, because even I was more into eating my dinner than paying attention to him on stage.
Judging from EW.com Popwatch’s exit interview with Park, the Northwestern student seems to realize his mistakes.
A lot of it were nerves. Not necessarily nerves, but just distractions. And thinking way too much about what people are going to think. My voice coach told me something that kind of hit me. He said, “Don’t sing to people. Sing to God. And if you’re singing to God, then you can truly just pour out what’s in your heart, and not have to worry about what other people are going to think.” I think that’s one thing that I lost sight of — coming from the heart instead of thinking about all of these things, these distractions in my head.
Park’s statement makes a lot of sense, since he clearly didn’t look too comfortable sitting on that stool but kudos to the young man on his final performance last night! He’s got talent. And it’s okay. He’ll still make a great doctor, lawyer or…well, that’s about it, right?*
*That was a joke.
Our internal e-mail lists have us discussing all kinds of stuff: Asian American identity, representation in the media, the experiences of activism in an academia setting and its progression as we transition to the working, adult world. And sometimes, we talk about chubby babies. Chubby, chubby babies.
Moye: 2-Year-Old Chinese girl weighs as much as an adult. I think she’s adorable!
Jee: I should post that photo on my fridge to prevent over-eating. She does have adorable cheeks Moye!
Efren: Ok I’m gonna be the party pooper in this. It looks like she has a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome, and one of the symptoms are having normal birth weight and poor feeding, but then as the kid grows up, the kid gets an uncontrollable appetite since the body doesn’t tell them they’re full and they end up extremely obese. The parents are usually advised to lock all available food in the house and make the kid exercise. Most of the kids with this disease also end up mentally retarded as well.
Joz: Efren, you’re not going to Pharm School. I think you’re getting your degree in Party Poopery.
Ernie: [sad trombone]
Last night, Apolo Ohno was on The Tonight Show (now back with Jay Leno) to talk about his 2010 Vancouver Olympic experience to an audience seemingly filled with heart throbbed teenage girls. While I do enjoy watching the short track competitions, it seems like there’s a lot of random chances where one skater can fall down at the last minute and take another competitor down unintentionally. Apolo agreed that the very nature of the sport can lead to a lot of unexpected outcomes, but that is also part of the reason why not winning a gold medal like he did in 2006 in Torino didn’t bother him – so long as he trained and prepared as much as he could, that he was happy with whatever the outcome.
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