Posts by Efren
Efren is a 30-something queer Filipino American guy living in San Francisco. In the past, he was a wanna-be academic even teaching in Asian American studies at San Francisco State, a wanna-be queer rights and HIV activist, and he used to "blog" when that meant spewing one's college student angst using a text editor on a terminal screen to write in a BBS or usenet back in the early 90s. For all his railing against the model minority myth, he's realized he's done something only a few people can claim--getting into UCSF twice, once for a PhD program in medical sociology which he left; and then for pharmacy school, where he'll be a member of the class of '13. He apologizes profusely for setting the bar unintentionally high for his cousins. blog twitter
Asians Behaving Badly: Woman Accused of Vandalizing Luxury Cars
From SFGate.com comes a report about a woman arrested numerous times for vandalizing numerous BMWs and Mercedes all over the Bay Area, and is now being held on $1 million bail in Santa Clara County Jail. Nancy Ni apparently had already been facing numerous charges in Alameda County as well when she was arrested at a mall in San Jose. At first, when I read the article, I thought it was some rather misdirected message [...] Continue »
Asians Behaving Badly: Hostage Taker Arrested at Discovery Channel HQ
CNN, along with a number of other news organizations, has reported that James Jay Lee has been arrested at Discovery Channel’s headquarters near Washington, DC after taking hostages and demanding that the discovery take a more “enviromentalist and anti-capitalist agenda.” Lee has had a beef with the channel for years, as CNN has reported that he has been trying to encourage the channel to have game shows promoting an environmentalist agenda — although his rants [...] Continue »
San Francisco Chinese Counterfeiters Busted in Fisherman’s Wharf
There are lots of things one expects to see when one walks around San Francisco’s tourist trap, Fisherman’s Wharf: smelly noisy sea lions along Pier 39, people eating New England clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl (which I’ve still never understood why it’s a SF tourist must-do), and tons of stores selling counterfeit knock-offs of famous brands such as Ray-Bans, Coach, and Gucci. Now it looks like the last might be changing. According to [...] Continue »
Math Whizzes Help Find Obama’s, um, Foci
In yet another example of inadvertently promoting stereotypes, six junior high math geniuses — most of whom happen to be Asian American — visited Obama in the White House to talk about math education. Apparently, the bulk of the visit was spent on finding the foci of the White House, thrilling Obama and annoying his aides. For all you people who’ve forgotten your algebra/calculus, the foci are what define a shape called an ellipse. Personally, [...] Continue »
Vicki Manalo Draves, The First Asian American Female Gold Medalist, Passes Away
Vicki Manalo Draves, a biracial Filipina American diver, who was also the first Asian American female Olympic gold medalist, passed away a week ago. In 1948, nearly 40 years before Greg Louganis, the first male Olympic diver, who won both springboard and platform diving events, Vicki Draves was the first person to win both titles. Check out this article from Hyphen Magazine about her, and this article from SFGate about her experience in the 1948 [...] Continue »
Wow. Just, wow: Half-Drag on Pilipinas Got Talent
The Philippines has their own version of the now infamously popular America’s Got Talent called Pilipinas Got Talent (obviously) with their own Pinoy spin on things. Mostly cute kids and talented male and female singers and dancers but once in a while something just makes you go, “Wow” and “WTF,” usually both at the same time. Check out this gem done by a Reggie Ramirez from Davao City in the Philippines. I’m not sure what [...] Continue »
80s New Wave and Vietnamese Americans
In yet another sign that I am WAY too old, the blog You Offend Me You Offend My Family writes about the 80s New Wave scene and how the Vietnamese American immigrants embraced it as their own. According to them, the music AND the fashion style is coming back. I still remember in my high school most of my Vietnamese and Chinese friends listening to the music, and having hair at least 6-8 inches off [...] Continue »
Are Asian American men really small, or just insecure?
As most of you have noticed by now, I’m always interested in posting stuff about Asian American (straight) men’s issues and the rather annoying paradox of representation in American media: Asian American men bitch about not being represented in the media, but when they’re called out to actively participate, they’d rather not put themselves out there, thus exacerbating the problem. Jeff Yang in his regular sfgate.com column today does a great job talking about this [...] Continue »
Filipino Food & Assimilation
So my Filipino Facebook friends have all referenced this article today about Filipino food in American culture in the Los Angeles Times discussing how Filipino food has remained “unassimilated” despite the relative prominence of Filipino chefs in various parts of the country who cook at highly regarded restaurants. All throughout the article, I noticed some rather interesting observations about Filipino food by these chefs: that it’s a “home cuisine”, bound by apparently monolithic cultural traditions; [...] Continue »
LGBT Vietnamese Americans March in Tet Parade in Orange County, CA
For the first time ever, a contingent of LGBT Vietnamese Americans will be marching today, February 13, in the Tet Parade in Westminster, CA in Orange County, which is also known as Little Saigon and one of the epicenters of the Vietnamese American community. Unfortunately, they have come under fire from many Vietnamese American religious right groups, with many of them threatening to boycott the event. According to Thanh Do, co-chair for Gay Vietnamese Alliance, [...] Continue »
NSFW: Keni Styles as a (Straight) Sulu in a Porn Movie
Honestly, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done sooner: on the heels of the awesome Star Trek remake that was done last summer, a recently released porn’s just been released parodying Star Trek called This Ain’t Star Trek XXX 2. (Note: This link is NSFW — so do NOT look at this at work — or at least where people will wonder what the hell you’re doing.) What’s cool about this porno is that there’s someone [...] Continue »
Disulfiram: Anti-Alcoholism Drug Acts Like the Asian Flush
So we’ve talked WAY too much about the Asian flush here on 8Asians, meaning the immediate flushing response one gets when certain Asians–ahem, Ernie–drinks alcohol, where the symptoms can often include nausea, vomiting, and other not-so-lovely side effects when one imbibes even a half-glass of wine. According to an article featured in one of Time magazine’s blogs, however, it looks like the Asian flush is actually seen as an evolutionary response– an advantage, even. According [...] Continue »
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