8 Asians

Posts by Tim

I'm a Chinese/Taiwanese-American, born in Taiwan, raised on Long Island, went to college in Philadelphia, tried Wall Street and then moved to the California Bay Area to work in high tech in 1990. I'm a recent dad and husband. Other adjectives that describe me include: son, brother, geek, DIYer, manager, teacher, tinkerer, amateur horologist, gay, and occasional couch potato. I write for about 5 different blogs including 8Asians. When not doing anything else, I like to challenge people's preconceived notions of who I should be.

Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents

If you’re more Chinese (or Asian) than you are American, you know exactly what I mean when I say it’s expected the kids will take care of their parents when they are older. Confucius called it filial obligation, even the Chinese government passed it as law. As an immigrant to the U.S. myself, I [...]

My First Protest: Asian Americans and Activism

Bao Phi wrote a recent blog post in the Star Tribune, which was a compilation of several local and national Asian American activists writing about their first protest. His definition of “protest” is broadly defined as “an action to stand up for what you believe in”, and does not necessarily mean picketing or marching. [...]

Shirley Tan: Advocate Person of the Year

I wrote previously about Shirley Tan’s plight of possible deportation and separation from her family, and followed up later with a post on the act of Congress that let her stay with her family in the United States. Tan has been busy testifying before Congress, meeting with White House officials, and speaking to the [...]

Cancer: Asians and the Big C

If you’re a regular reader of 8Asians, you already know I lost both my parents to the big C – Cancer. Toan Lam writes this week in the Huffington Post about a phenomenon in the Asian community surrounding Cancer, specifically the inability of Asians to talk about Cancer and Cancer prevention. Lam details [...]

Leave it to the Taiwanese to think of wrapping a donut inside another donut

When I came across a blog article with the title above, I knew immediately what the author was referring to. The food known in Mandarin Chinese as yóu tiáo 油條, but which in Taiwanese goes by the name 油炸粿, is basically a fried stick of dough, similar to a cruller, but puffy, rather than [...]

Sesame Street’s Asian Muppets

Google helped bring attention this week to Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary by publishing Google doodles with various characters from Sesame Street. For those of us in the U.S. we saw Cookie Monster, Big Bird and other familiar muppets integrated with the iconic Google logo. But in other international markets, Google came up with [...]

Disneyland: Next Stop Shanghai

As someone who grew up in the U.S., I never really got the Disney bug as a child. Maybe it’s because I grew up in New York, far away from either Disneyland and Disneyworld. My first experience with Disneyland wasn’t until I was in college and visiting an aunt and uncle in Los [...]

Finding Your Roots

As someone who came to the United States when I was only 2 years old, it was always expected that I would go home to visit the “mother” country. It was never hard to imagine doing, as I had plenty of relatives who still lived in Taiwan. But, my parents never had the [...]