Bad Feng Shui: House at a "T" intersection
Every day I drive by an unsold house near my home. It’s been on the market for months. It’s not that the economy is stopping sales – the house next door to me sold in a week. The problem is that the house sits at the top of a T intersection – a house whose Feng Shui is unacceptable in my predominantly Asian neighborhood. This article from the San Jose Mercury News talks about a seminar that is designed to teach realtors in Silicon Valley how to better serve local Asian-Americans. One point from the seminar that I see every day: many Asians rely on feng shui principles when selecting and decorating a home.
Asian-Americans influence much of the real estate market in Silicon Valley, and dealing with Asian-Americans is becoming more important for realtors across California as Asian-Americans are becoming an increasingly greater percentage of home buyers there. My brother-in-law (BIL for short) who lives with me is a real estate agent, and he has told me about many of the points such that are made in the seminar. Some highlights from the article:
- Asians are very family-oriented. They appreciate your taking an interest in their family. Living arrangements may include extended family.
- Asians place great value on education, music and the arts.
- Asians are very value-conscious and like to feel they got a good deal when purchasing a home.
Some of the most prized houses are ones with a first story bedroom with full bath – usually for parents who make up an extended family. The Wife and I were shopping for one of these when we were shopping for our last house. BIL knows the API (California Academic Performance Index) scores for almost all the schools in the general area – many Asians shop for houses by looking at local school API scores. The last point includes not paying a lot of interest or reduced commissions, as many Asians often pay cash or have huge down payments and will demand credits from realtors, even when using them as a buying agent. “Many Asian buyers will save up to 50 percent of the down payment and/or pay cash for a home because to them, ‘interest’ is a dirty word,” says seminar leader John Fukuda of the Asian Real Estate Association of America. That’s the case even in expensive Silicon Valley.
Realtor Nicholas Pham sums it up well: “You may not always agree with these cultural traits, but it’s important to just accept them and keep them in mind when working with Asian clients.”
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We’re wrapping up another week over at GASP!, our sister site that focuses on products made by and for the API community. Here’s some of the stuff we covered over the past couple of days:
- Street Fighter Nike Dunks
- You Are Awesome necklace from Yellow Goat
- Pek Pek T-Shirt from Tony.PSD
- Limited edition & signed Multigrain book by Martin Hsu
If you’ve got a store of your own or have a friend who should be featured, send us an email!
Shopping With GASP!
How many times do we need to tell you about Tuesday Night Cafe before you decide to show up for yourself? This is your final reminder to come down to tomorrow evening’s TN Party!
And now, a couple more videos from Greg Watanabe and Umamiya inviting you to the TN Party!
Taiwan’s Apple Daily does it again with another animation news reel account of their take on former Alaskan governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her prospects for a presidential run in 2012. If you ever wanted to know what an Asian looking, winking Sarah Palin looks like, here is your chance. I think the animators captured the essence of Palin with her winks, her rifle shooting, her notes on her hands, as well as her invention of words. However, I do think the animators go a bit too far by portraying Palin as a stripper on a pole dance raising money for her Political Action Committee, SarahPAC. If it weren’t for the comments on You Offend Me, You Offend My Family on the topic, I would have missed the news scroll on Fox News reporting that “Hell opens gate for Cheney.”
Food Network’s Iron Chef America is much like the original Iron Chef: have two chefs complete courses revolving around a secret ingredient, with a campy actor as a host. While the original Chairman Kaga took the show to campy levels of ridiculousness, the “Chairman’s nephew,” actor Mark Decascos, tries to prove that he can be just as ridiculous by dramatically screaming out every single ingredient on Iron Chef America.
But when the Chairman’s nephew starts yelling “CHICKEN!” and “FROZEN PEAS!” is when you start realizing those producers are less about using secret ingredients and more about getting the leftover stock from Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals. The Japanese show featured natto and live turtles slaughtered on camera, and for the American version we get “chicken?” Really? Tune in next week, when we can hear the Chairman scream such mysterious ingredients like “FROZEN PIZZA!” Or “MASHED POTATOES!” Or for the series finale: “HIGH! FRUCTOSE! CORN! SYRUP!”
A bunch of people sent this video to me saying that I’d find it funny, but I just watched this in horror. Basically this video is of a cute little bear cub being scared out of its wits by a baby lion, monkey and monkey’s shadow. Ok, so maybe that shadow thing was kind of funny. But overall, I thought it was pretty cruel what they were doing to the bear. Adding in the facial reactions of the Japanese variety show folks and the soundtrack of the audiences saying “Kawaii!!!” didn’t change that, but maybe I need to see the full version of this, which evidently shows the bear cub exacting its revenge on its (previous) terrorizers. What do you think?
By Kristina Wong
Kristina Wong delves deep into the sky high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American Women to make ‘Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’
“I’m Definitely Not Crazy. But I Probably am Lying.”
My earliest memories of even thinking I might be depressed were met with warnings by my mother that if I ever dare seek professional help for depression, even as a kid, my employers would one day find out and fire me. It did bother me that being depressed-but-employed versus happy-and-unemployed was the better of the two (and only two) options, but I heeded her advice and never sought professional help. God forbid anyone know I was once a crazy 12-year old kid.
So I hid it for years. And not very well. Even into my college years, I managed to turn club meetings, sleepovers, friendships and intimate relationships into my own impromptu therapy sessions. Anything to avoid the stigma of actually seeking professional help! When I introduced myself to a circle of new friends, somehow unsolicited emotional clutter would always spill out with it. Sometimes my friends were halfway decent at playing Freud, but very often, they were so mired in their own messy lives that my problems just exhausted them.
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Filipinos, rejoice! World famous DJ Qbert, he of Invisibl Skratch Piklz and Scratch, the synonymous documentary on turntablism, will be converted into CGI-generated goodness and will appear in Activision’s music based video game, DJ Hero 2. Which makes sense, right? The game is essentially Guitar Hero with turntables and fader switches and sampler buttons rather than an electric guitar, and what better way to showcase a turntable than, oh, the three-time DMC World Champion? I mean, I love Daft Punk — the stars of the original DJ Hero video game — but if we were really had a video game where we tried to emulate how they perform for crowds of tens of thousands, there’d just be a Mac laptop and all you would have to do is press the PLAY button on the one-beat. (Oh, snap! I went there.)
(Hat tip: Eric I.)
I just came across this hilarious commercial for Huggies after watching a fascinating segment on Nightline about the diaper industry, which is apparently a $7 billion industry annually in the United States. I watch a lot of TV, so I’m surprised I haven’t seen this ad, but then again, I’m not exactly the target audience. The commercial is for a limited edition ‘Jean Diapers‘ from Huggies with the tagline, “The coolest you’ll look pooping your pants.” I have no idea why Huggies decided to have an Asian dude on a scooter watching a baby walk on the street in his jean diapers, especially since the commercial looks like its supposed to be in Western Europe.
If you haven’t seen Inception yet, then I advise you to stop reading this blog, put some pants on, go outside and check out its next screening at the local theater. If you have seen Inception, then you’ll probably enjoy this 30 second summary done by actor and YouTube filmmaker, Shyaporn Theerakulstit. It explains everything so perfectly.
Needless to say but I’ll still say it, SPOILER ALERT!
Curtis Chin from APA for Progress asked me to share with all of you in the Los Angeles area who may be interested in this great opportunity from the Asian American Writer’s Workshop!
Apply by Friday, August 13th for UCLA scholarship for AAWW (Asian American Writer’s Workshop) members in Southern California!
AAWW participates in the Community Access Scholarship Program offered through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Each year, AAWW nominates one aspiring writer from a diverse background and/or culture to receive three complimentary creative writing or screenwriting workshops. This writer is able to choose any three courses at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program to be taken at any time during the UCLA 2010-2011 academic year (e.g. Fall Quarter 2010 to Summer Quarter 2011).
Application deadline is Friday, August 13, 2010, but sooner the better because applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. The application process includes committee review of submitted materials as well as phone interview of all applicants. Email cover letter, cv / resume, digital headshot photo (high quality / resolution) and as many writing samples of any and all genres that you desire to [email protected] The more writing samples you submit, the better. In the past, most applicants submitted at least three writing samples.
Open only to members of the AAWW who reside in the greater Los Angeles area, obviously who can attend the UCLA courses. AAWW membership status will be verified of all applicants. If you are unsure if you are an AAWW member, then most likely your membership has expired. Contact AAWW directly regarding membership.
Questions? Email us at [email protected]
- Do language speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently, simply because they speak different languages? (WSJ)
- Super Sad True Love Story: “Within a few pages, Lenny has fallen hard for Eunice Park, an 80-pound Korean American girl half his size and age, and their titular love story is on – a cross-generational chess game playing out over 330 pages of intrigue, idiocy and crisis. (SFGate)
- Olivia Munn says she’s “brutally honest to a fault.” (LA TImes)
- A Duke Scientist is suspended over his claims of being a Rhodes Scholar. (NYTimes)
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