Mike posted about presidential candidate Obama having a profile page on Asian Avenue, which now goes by Asian Ave, and that prompted me to sign up for an account. Not because I support Obama as President, but because I used to have an Asian Avenue account in high school and wanted to see how the site may or may not have evolved in 10 years. So I register with the alias I always use when I go undercover: Paroxya. (I suppose now I have to think up a new alias…) I debated whether to post a profile photo of my cat or me, and went with an overexposed photo of me where you can’t see my face.
After an hour of checking out hot Asian chics (I would have checked out hot Asian dudes, but there weren’t any), I tired of the site and logged out. That was the end of that, I thought.
class of six women in Chang’s Cupertino living room 14 months ago has cha-cha-cha-ed into eight weekly classes plus a “Saturday Night Social” at two strip-mall studios that attract nearly 400 students. Not to mention the 106 videos of their dance classes on YouTube, which they say have netted 200,000 hits from as far away as Australia and Singapore. Their secret to success? Tapping into a niche market, they say. Their students are mostly people like themselves: first-generation Chinese women, many with advanced degrees, who need a hobby to blow off some steam. Plus, they grin, line dancing has an added benefit. “You don’t need partners,” Chang said. “So that’s why all the Chinese women take this. They don’t need their husbands to come with them…
Last week I watched Frontline’s episode on Cheney’s Law. It was an investigative report about how Vice President Cheney and his minions sought to change the Executive powers of the President. You can watch the full episode on Frontline’s website under 
been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton… And Clinton’s success in gathering money from Chinatown’s least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins. Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Fujian province… Many, on the other hand, said they gave for reasons having more to do with the Chinese community than with Clinton. He Duan Zheng, who gave $1,000, said of the Fujianese community: “They informed us to go, so I went. “Everybody was making a donation, so I did too,” he said. “Otherwise I would lose face.”
month in more than 12 cities, bringing together professionals in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, New York, Portland, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Business lunch hours and China industry tours are also in the works….Linda Kong, the group’s business development manager, said many members are affectionately referred to as “BMWs” — bilingual, mid-career, Western-trained professionals. “They are some of the most active movers and shakers in their communities, because they understand the importance of networking and building partnerships,” Kong said. “Through our online services and offline events, we have effectively created a global guanxi that is helping people to find jobs, new business opportunities and new friends, all over the world.” Guanxi means “network” or “connection” in Chinese…The group partners with businesses and organizations that serve Asia’s international business communities. “
