Thoughts on Gran Torino

My SPOP homie Vince recommend Gran Torino to me one day when I was his server at Guppys. I remember seeing previews for it so tonight a couple of homies and I went to LA to check it out.

My first thought was, "Wow, Clint Eastwood squints a lot. Man, he curses a lot too. Wait, did he just say gook?" Yes he did, and lots other racial epithets about Asians, Hispanics, you name it, and he probably said it in the movie. That aside, I thought it was an incredible movie. Although it's set in Michigan, probably Detroit, it could be set in any number of areas with a large Asian American population.

Throughout the movie, I kept thinking, "Man, this movie reminds me A LOT about my life." I think my youth paralleled the movie quite a bit. First off, there's a boy by that name of Thao in the movie who's shy and doesn't really know what to do with life and is kinda whooped around the house by his mother and sister - kinda reminds me of me when I was a kid. Another thing was that in the movie was set in a predominately Hmong neighborhood with Clint Eastwood's character as the only non-Asian household on the block - a lot like my neighborhood. I think what really hit home was the gang element in the movie. The gangs in the movie, as they are here, were formed because little kids were tired of being bullied by big kids. In the movie near the opening, Thao was seen walking home from school being harassed by Hispanic gang members and all of the sudden his cousin and his gang shows up to scare them away with an Uzi. I'm sure things like that happened down the street in the 90s in my area. This same gang who saves Thao comes to be the antagonist element in the movie.

Stuff happens, you can watch the movie if you wanna know what happens, and as expected, Clint Eastwood more or less takes Thao under his wing and helps him grow up. Clint Eastwood's character is a Korean War veteran who was a part of the U.S. Army Rangers. What's almost scary is that in high school my neighbor, Mr. Parsons, more or less took me under his wing as well. Mr. Parsons is a U.S. Air Force veteran who served during Vietnam. He went to some of my football games and acted as a sort of mentor for me while in high school.

There's so many messages in the movie, so many things I could write about, I wish I could just write about all of them. However, I think the most important theme of the movie is violence begets violence and it really takes the bigger person to stand above it all. It's truly a movie everyone should see.

Regret and Failures

Experience is built up upon failures of the past and regret of previous decisions. Every choice we make now is due to something happening in the past. One elementary example is some of us as children learn that the stove is hot because our parents told us it was. Some of us, like me, actually touched the thing so we quickly went "AH! PAIN!"

Personally, I've learned a lot of my life experience with the latter method for some reason. Arguably, some people simply learn from others, some others simply learn by doing. Ever since I was a kid, everything I've learned, I've learned because I've actually done it, made mistakes, corrected those, and learned. I still remember some martial arts forms I learned ten years ago because of muscle memories, we learn our ABCs because we still remember performing that song, and in fact, I still have to sing it sometimes if I forget sometimes. Makes you wonder how we all got into college if we still have to recite a song to remember the order the English alphabet.

I never had the birds and the bees talk with my parents, maybe it's an Asian American parental thing or maybe they just plum forgot, but yeah, I never got it. I never got a lot of lessons on girls that I wish I did, other than the fact that they have cooties or something like that. Much of the experience I have concerning girls is because I think I've been through it all in regards to relationships with the other sex. My friends would ask me for advice on this situation or that situations, and I tell them "I've been there..." and I'd tell them a little bit of what happened to me. I feel sometimes I have failed too much in the past and there is too much regret there as well.

Talking to my friend today, I realized a made another mistake and that I just have to learn from it. I've always said that it's only awkward if you make it awkward, that it's only an issue if you make it an issue. And I realized that those words were truer than I thought they were.

Don't Plan, Just Do

The greatest times in my life, the most memorable times in my life, are the times in which I don't really plan anything, but rather, go and do. Granted, there is SOME planning involved, such as going here, or doing this, but other than that, it's all about the doing that really matters.

One of the greatest memories I have was when my best friend was moving into a new apartment. He was trying to find some furniture stores so he could furnish his place and luckily there was one less than a mile away. He bought a sofa from there and we were talking online about how to get it back to his apartment. For some reason, I had this crazy idea of CARRYING the sofa from the store to his place, you know, to safe fifty bucks.

It was the greatest idea in the world! Until we actually did it. Oh man it sucked, it was a sofa-bed thing so it had a mattress and more metal in it, and it was heavy, and it sucked carrying it back. It took us about ten minutes to walk there and about an hour to bring it back. But man, we always look back on it and remember it and laugh about it.

My best friend and I actually have this little motto of ours that kinda goes - "Be awesome in everything that you do." We're just trying to make every day a little bit awesome.

Thankful for the small things

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Every year on this one day we give thanks for what we are grateful for. I ask, however, why must it be just one day that we're grateful for the things that we have? Maybe it's one special day a year that we set aside to be extra thankful for the things that we have.

Face Value

It's time for my monthly update on this thing.

We , as people, have this weird need for ethnic identification right off the bat. It's especially true of Asian Americans. We have this yearning for the identification and knowledge of everyone around us. When we meet someone, we immediately categorize them in all these sorts of groups. Being a college student, these groups tend to revolve in student organizations, class year, and hometown. Being an Asian American college student at UCI, with the diversity of our campus, it also revolves around what ethnicity that person is if that person is of Asian descent.

Having a discussion about this with my other Asian friends, we all seem to do this. If we meet another Asian person, we'll immediately try to figure out what ethnicity that person is. We subconsciously have all these triggers for what it means to be Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or what have you. Most of the time, my peers and I have no problem identifying other people.

The problem comes when people start trying to figure out what I am. They'll look at me for a minute and try to figure it out.

"So Anthony....what are you?"

"Oh, I'm human yo. You?"

"No no, I mean, nationality?"

A lot of people mean ethnicity when they use the word "nationality." Nationality refers to one's citizenry. In that case, I'm American since I am an American citizen. Depending on who's asking, I've been asked if I'm part Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, white, Korean, Chinese or they just give up.

So when people ask what my nationality is, I just smile at them and say, "I'm American."

It's October Already?

I've been neglecting this blog since I created it sometime ago.

There has so much that has happened this past few months. The only thing I can think about nowadays is: "Wow, where has the time gone?" and "What's going to happen when I graduate?" Over the summer I was crazy and not only did I do SPOP but I also took 20 units through UCI Extension to obtain my TEFL - Teaching English as a Foreign Language Credential. It was intense. I was in class, the gym, at SPOP, or hanging out with the homies the entire summer.

The TEFL Certificate Program was pretty cool, we had a bunch of classes that included theory, teaching practice, grammar, and all these other classes. I still need to brush up on my grammar a bit more, however. I've always been doing my research on teaching opportunities abroad when I graduate and it seems that South Korea is the place I want to go through the most. I've heard of programs like EPIK and SMOE that the government offers. I know one the SPOP Coordinators is doing SMOE right now and that's the program the job placement assistant person at UCI Extension recommended.

I also need to get myself a conversation partner. I should do that sometime this week.

Recently, I started a new job as a server at a Taiwanese restaurant called Guppy House in Irvine. I had to train in Hacienda Heights, about forty minutes away, for three days and then we started at Irvine two weeks ago. The first day the restaurant opened was crazy. I was yelled at by customers and by my manager. Customers got up and left because of the chaos we had that first day and to top it off, we had a dine and dash. I felt so bad.

But it started to get better. Much better. I started to learn how to serve better, speak to customers, learning the menu a bit more, smile a lot more, all the good stuff. I realized that, as a server, if I don't smile - how can I expect my customers to smile?

If you don't smile, then they have won. It's amazing what a smile can do, it might even make someone's day. I hope I have while at work. Actually, I hope I do everyday.

Wading Through the Generation Gap

Being a second generation Asian American living in California, there are a lot of identities that have to be negotiated day in and day out. However, there are two in particular: at home vs. being out.

At school I'm this outgoing guy who goes out of my way to meet people and shake hands. I'm involved in all these organizations and I go out, drink, party, go work out, everything.

At home I'm still my parent's child. Who's 22 years of age and yet I still address myself as "child" to them. Who's quiet at home and stays locked in his room. Every time I go home, I always make sure my ink isn't seen and I make sure to cover it up as well as possible. My parents know next to nothing about my life outside of the house.

When talking to the parents, it's so hard to relate things to how I see them, or at least, how my generation sees them. It's frustrating. It's frustrating with my horrible use of my native language - even more horrible that I read and write a foreign language better than the one I learned growing up. It's frustrating that I cannot relate my values, needs, and wants to them. It's frustrating not speaking to them like how my American friends do it.

What's the damndest thing of it all is when it's hard to explain it to my non-Asian friends. It's hard explaining about this sort of double life that I lead. That I'm sure most of us have been through.

I remember as a kid in grade school, I was disgusted when my friends didn't finish their lunches. I always finished mine! Why? Because my mom whooped my ass if I didn't eat EVERY SINGLE GRAIN OF RICE on the plate. Because you know, my wife will have pimples if I don't. Shoot, I still strive to eat everything on my plate.

We're a generation that's stuck in the middle, between the old country, and the new country. We have to negotiate culture and meanings from the first generation and fit it in with the country in which we live in now. We have to please our parents and we also have to please ourselves and our peers. We have to grow up as individuals in an individualistic society and at home we have to be switch back to being a part of a collective society.

We have to grow up quickly. At early ages many of us have already either worked for our parents, served as translators, and more of less have been given responsibilities not given to most American children. Given this new sense of responsibility we're also NOT given any freedom accustomed to those of traditional American culture. This creates a kind of cognitive dissonance. We go "Hey, how come my friends get to do that, but we don't?" Parents never can say, "It's because you're Asian, son."

It is, however, our job to create a sense of identity for ourselves. Some of us totally take in the old culture and reject the native country's culture. Some do the exact opposite. And then the vast majority of us are somehow in the middle. It is difficult, to be sure, to navigate this aspect of our lives since no one has yet developed what it means to be this, or to be that. We simply have examples. Examples of what our parents want us to be, examples of what America wants us to be.

I argue that it's neither of those things, it's what we as individuals strive to be. Taking motivation and goals from every each area and aspects of our lives. We have to live beyond expectations. That of our family's, our friends', and especially, ourselves.