New candidate for the White House

The search is on by the Obama family for the new First Puppy.

The press is abuzz with speculation. What kind of dog will they get? The American Kennel Club is hoping they'll get a rescue dog, and has even offered to pick one out for them. There are lots of factors at play here which will be scrutinized like any other political decision. Pure-bred dogs are equated with elitism. Rescue dogs are usually mutts. And, Melia is allergic to dogs, so a dog that is part poodle is high in the running since it would be hypo-allergenic. Rumor has it that the Obamas are considering the goldendoodle, which is like a retriever with bad hair, or a cockapoo, a classic fru-fru sort of dog. Have I got the perfect candidate for the White House.



Being part poodle, she's hypo-allergenic. She's good with kids and loves to snuggle. Her father was a rescue dog. As the only black puppy in her litter, she's dealt with the struggles of her color. All her other white brothers and sisters used to push her out of the feeding zone, but she persevered. She's a mutt, just like Barack called himself at yesterday's press conference. She's overcome barriers and brings people together- dog haters, cat lovers, scared parents. Even Paul's grandma likes her. We think Sasha and Melia would love her.



The only problem is that we would never give her up. But Aiko dreams of one day getting to Washington. The warm weather out here gets monotonous.

America!

I have always had a deep love for the story that is American history.

I anticipated that this could happen, hoped and prayed that it would, and yet when I heard the projection on NPR while driving home from school tonight, I couldn't help but feel a huge wave of emotion come over me. Relief, disbelief, pride, humility, joy, and anxiety. Tears streaming down my face, I drove through the streets of downtown LA marveling at the stories and journeys that have made our country what it is and the President that will represent them beginning in 2009.

For the last 8 years, I have not felt pride for the only country I have ever called home. I haven't felt that our government was functioning wisely or honestly. Every trip I've taken abroad, I've had conversations about the incredulity that others have felt toward our policies. A distancing from politics in my own life occurred, a cynicism developed, an excuse formed in my mind that it doesn't matter much anyway. A long journey from the younger version of me that once considered a career in government service, spent a summer registering new citizens to vote, and organizing election monitoring.

And now I feel as though I've reawakened. An amazing thing has happened in our country today that proves that America is never static. We can judge a candidate fairly, we can think for ourselves about what is best for our nation, and we are still the land of the free and the home of the brave. Free because we spoke today for a candidate that we believe represents our story, and brave because we stood up for him despite the opposition's attempt to otherize and distort him.

Barack Obama is a brilliant, eloquent, amazingly gifted man, but he is not our savior. He will not make all our problems go away. But he has fought to achieve an extraordinary moment in extraordinary times, and the pride I feel to be a part of this moment has overwhelmed me in a way that I did not expect. That my own father, a 1st generation Taiwanese immigrant, saw in this African-American candidate a man worth casting his vote for after years of telling me that votes cast in California don't matter, so much so that he would bring his ballot with him on a business trip to China and mail it from distant shores so that his vote would be counted- that tells me that something amazing has occurred. We are still a country that is righting the wrongs of our past and making the world stop and wonder at the endless possibilities that could occur on our shores.

God, bless America.

Who poked me?

I finally convinced Paul to rejoin facebook. It stemmed from me shouting out random things about our friends that I knew and he didn't. Like, "Hey guess what! So and so are engaged!" or "Did you know that this person moved to this place?" or "Let's go to this thing that's happening at this place on Friday night." Every time he would ask, "How did you know that?" and I would respond loudly, "FACEBOOK!"

This was followed by Paul asking me lots of funny questions about how it works. Such as:

"So if this person requested me to be their friend, does that mean they can see me?"

"What does wall-to-wall mean?"

"Why did they poke me? That's not very nice."

Now I don't update my status every single day, or constantly update and change everything on my profile, but it's pretty crazy how many people are on it these days. I think I know people from virtually every circle of friends I have ever had on facebook. I do value it for certain reasons, if not for the extremely impersonal way of keeping track of people these days. But seriously- I suppose that if people don't really call other people anymore just to say hello, and if even a personal email is hard to come by these days, blogging and facebook have replaced all other more personal forms of communication, and if you hold out on either, there is a whole world of contact that you are not a part of. How did we come to this?

I've realized that I really like impersonal forms of communication too. I like that sort of voyeuristic way of keeping tabs on people I haven't talked to in eons and probably would not ever think of calling up personally. I like that element of surprise when you find out someone you know is doing something totally bizzare with their careers (like a very shy high school classmate I discovered is now a hand model!). In short, I suppose I like knowing what people are up to, think about, or are doing with themselves without having to ask them them about it personally. I don't really think that's a good thing.

Maybe I should actually commend Paul for holding out this long.

An update on life

Life has been whizzing by. With school in full swing, I haven't been blogging as often as I used to. But here are some fun things that happened this month.

I turned 27. Paul took me to Providence for my birthday. It was unbelievable. Might be the best meal I have ever had. I think the foie gras ravioli with truffle shavings sealed the deal for me. This is also the place where they make the world's best chocolate chip cookies and Paul had the waiter bring me a box full of them to take home at the end of the meal. Score!



The SDGQ had its first two full-length concerts! Here we are at San Marcos Lutheran Church. This was a great crowd and even gave us a standing ovation. It's a lot of fun to play with these guys- they are all really wonderful people.



I gave a solo recital at Point Loma Nazarene University, a small Christian college in San Diego that has a special place in my heart. It isn't because their campus overlooks the ocean, although that certainly doesn't hurt. The students that I've met are appreciative and gracious, and the faculty is wonderful as well. I played a full-length recital in their beautiful hall on Friday night. Boy, was it tiring. By the second piece I really needed a water break and a massage. Overall, I think it went pretty well. The audience was small but sweet and I sold a few CD's too. And with a little bit of sucking in, I somehow I managed to fit into this dress, which I wore for our Chinese wedding banquet in 2006. I haven't been able to fit into it since we left NY. Magically, I've lost 5 pounds since we've moved to LA, which doesn't make any sense to me since all we do is eat!



We've settled on a church, we think... NewSong Community Church, which a new friend of mine from school introduced us to. So far, it has been awesome. They are really living out a few of the important things we look for in a church- multi-ethnicity, strong teaching from the word, social justice, and community. We are hoping to join a commnity group soon.

And there's home life. We had a pretty chill weekend after my recital, and recovered from all the driving to SD we've been doing lately. We had an awesome brunch at Comme Ca, discovered The Farmer's Market, cleaned the apt a bit, and made our monthly Costco run.

Paul works from home now and loves it. Here he is being super productive.

Will the minivan reach the White House?

I usually choose not to blog about politics, mostly because I don't want to offend anyone. But I can hold it no longer. I've been in a pretty angry mood this week and it's for one reason: Sarah Palin.

Yes, you've heard all the commentary and heard all the speeches. The debate swirling around her is centered on a number of issues- inexperience, gender, privacy of family. I had to really sort out what I disliked most about her. Was it the sarcastic one-liners, the parading of the baby around stage, the joke about the pit bull, the fact that she has no idea what a VP actually does? The feeling that I got as I watched her speak that I was in the middle of "Mean Girls- 20th Reunion"? That this woman could possibly be elected as second in command of our armed forces and nuclear arsenals when she just received her passport in 2006 and has visited just 4 countries? (I wonder if Canada was one of them.)

And I realized that I am a sexist. I dislike her because she is a woman. An underqualified woman that takes the feminist movement back 30 years. A woman that undermines everything that well-qualified, intelligent, educated women have fought so hard to achieve. That her inexperience and lack of knowledge about everything that one in her position should know make women in power out to be laughable. And that is a disgrace.

Women in this country have worked too hard to allow someone as inexperienced as Palin into the White House. To think that Hillary voters will be won over is offensive. I can barely believe that she had the audacity to reference Hillary, as if she had something in common with her besides X chromosomes. Hillary's battle was long and courageous, and those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling were a result of her tenacity and determination and not from being hand-picked by her party to be its personal cheerleader. But to have Palin come along and claim that she will be the one to shatter the ceiling when she possesses zilch of Hillary's education and experience makes me sad beyond belief.

And that's where we see how hard it is even today to be a woman in leadership. We put all of our political leaders under scrutiny. But if you are a minority or a woman, you still have to work twice as hard to get to the level of authority that white men have had in our country for over 200 years. If you are going to help run our country, show me that you know anything about the issues that matter- the economy, health care, the housing crisis, foreign policy. Being the closest state to Russia is a pathetic excuse for foreign policy experience. And being the governor of a small state that has requested nearly $750 million in special spending from Washington during her two years in office while keeping state taxes low for residents is an easy way to win popularity.

I believe that one of those 18 million cracks was for me, and I will keep working as hard as I can to shatter the ceiling in my own way. But thanks to Sarah Palin, women will need to work doubly hard all over again to prove that we can be chosen for positions of leadership because we are qualified, hard-working, educated people, and not just because we are women. Palin's candidacy is the result of foolish political strategy and the GOP's desparate attempt to reach evangelical and small-town voters. Thanks Karl Rove, but no thanks.

I refuse to vote for a candidate that is unqualified to run our country, even if she is a woman, a Christian, a mother, pro-life, or the president of the PTA. The thought that Palin could be next in line to the most powerful job in the world makes me scared beyond belief. Hope that sports journalism experience will come in handy when you're sitting down with Ahmadinejad.

I also can't believe that people at the RNC were wearing "My VP is a Hottie!" buttons. Who in the world decided that it would be a good idea to duplicate those? Who ARE these people?

Vote Obama.

The Multi-Something Church

This past Sunday, we visited a new church plant that has a vision of reaching downtown LA, an area which is notorious for the vast amount of urban poverty it houses on what is known as Skid Row. I've recently taken an interest in learning more about Skid Row after a variety of resources brought my attention to it- particularly, reports on NPR, my sociologist friend Naomi who studies urban poverty, Michael Moore's Sicko, and from reading The Soloist by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez. I was shocked that a city with as much glitz and glamor as LA could be so neglectful in its urban planning as to close mental hospitals and government run social programs, leaving thousands upon thousands of mentally unstable and sick homeless people on the streets. We were curious about what a "multi-ethnic, multi-socioeconomic" church in downtown LA would be like.

The experience left me with a lot of questions about the concept of a "multi-something" church. Especially as a result of going to Ethnos in SD, I love the idea of the multi-ethnic church, though there is of course the need for culture-specific churches also. Something about the thought of worshiping with other believers where you have little in common but your love for Jesus is really exciting to me. I really believe that God's heart is for all people groups, languages, and cultures, and if that's the case, I want to be part of a church that pursues this part of God's heart in a society where being in community with people different than yourself is completely unnatural. And, the call to be multi-socioeconomic is an important one too. Jesus' ministry obviously reached a wide variety of demographics- tax collectors, fishermen, lepers, prostitutes. I have far less experience on this one though.

I suppose the challenge of building diversity socioeconomically is even harder than building a church that is multi-ethnic. There are often some signs of ethnic diversity in neighborhoods of the same income level. But this doesn't change the fact that neighborhoods and physical communities are often built along socioeconomic lines. So how do we expect, say middle to upper class folks to be in spiritual community with people who might be classified as poor- people who don't have homes, cars, live off welfare or nothing at all, and spend their days looking for a decent place to sleep?

I like to think that I'm an open-minded person, that I hold few biases in my mind, and that I care about things social issues and urban poverty. But here's my confession: when I really think about it, this is the most unnatural concept for a middle-class American like myself. Being in spiritual community with others implies vulnerability and brokenness together, living life together, sharing in each other's struggles, loving each other, supporting each other. At least, that's what I want from being in a church community. I picture myself in this kind of setting, trying to understand the struggles of being a homeless person in downtown LA, being in community with them, being friends with them. I think it is safe to say that I have no idea what that's like. And I think I can also say that even though I say that I care, and I think I care, when I really think about it I'm not sure that I really care enough to let it invade my "safe zone." In fact, when I really think about it, I realize that I primarily go to church for selfish reasons- to meet God, yes, but also be fed and cared for and find people that I have things in common with. When I really think about it, I'm willing to care about the poor until it inconveniences me. I guess I want my Sunday mornings to be comfortable and not have to deal with the burden of poverty and homelessness every week. I want to meet people that I get along with, like to hang out in the same kinds of places I do, and have similar interests and goals. I came to this conclusion after a very unsettling feeling in my heart told me that somewhere in my supposedly liberal, compassionate, and open-minded thinking, there is hypocrisy.

Another thing left me with a funny feeling as we left the service. Comments from a few people we talked to casually- questions like, "Do you guys live in the lofts?" and "We need people like you at this church!" What were these comments based off of? There was very little small talk about what we did for a living or what we were doing in LA. Mostly I felt that many assumptions were made about our socioeconomic background based on our ethnicity and appearanace. Did Paul and I scream that we were a well-educated, middle-class Asian-American yuppie couple just by the way we look? Ok, fair enough. I made a half-joking comment to Paul on the way home- "We must look rich today or something." He pointed to a stain on his shirt and the fact that we were both wearing flip-flops and we laughed. But it was true. They made assumptions about us based on a combination of first impressions, whether it be race/ethnicity or the way we dressed, talked and carried ourselves. The assumptions were correct to some extent (although we don't live in the lofts downtown) yet seemed to go against the very spirit of the community. It made me feel that there was already a division in the church between those who obviously have and those who obviously do not. Because in reality, they don't need us at the church. We need the church. We need to be reminded that poverty is not something you can tuck away and not think about on Sunday mornings, or every other day for that matter. If you really do care, then you don't care if it makes you uncomfortable and inconvenienced. If I really believe that God's heart is for all peoples, I should want to see some of that shalom that Tim Keller always talks about on earth, right here, right now.

I wonder if it's really possible to create the kind of community that this church is envisioning. A place where yuppies who live in the new downtown lofts come to worship with people living on the streets. This church has great intentions and my purpose in writing this is not to knock their vision or the execution of that vision. I really believe their vision is a big part of God's heart. I shouldn't be looking for a church where I make friends easily and have a ton of things in common with the other people there. I should be looking for a place that helps me live out Jesus' teachings to their fullest. And while we're not certain that we're going to go to this particular church, I'm thankful that it forced me to think honestly about what goes on in my heart and the natural biases and fears that exist there.

Family Time

It was great to hang out with my parents and brother this weekend. Moving a little bit north means that we are now only about 5 hours from my parents house, and 20 minutes from my brother. Danny got baptized at his church here in LA the day after his 20th birthday! There was a lot to celebrate. And in our family, that means food...



We discovered the awesomeness known as Monterey Park. Here, some of the delectable dishes that landed on our table. Prawns and walnuts, spicy jellyfish with asparagus, and the house special crab, which was seasoned with some sort of salty tasty goodness and fried. YUM.



Danny gets dunked in the pool at the Marriot! His church meets at the hotel and they used the swimming pool as the baptism place. It was pretty funny to see some tourists in the hot tub watching the whole thing. It was beautiful to see a full immersion-style baptism again. I feel like it communicates a lot more about the symbolism of baptism than just the sprinkling on the head. I was so proud of my brother for making this decision on his own.



Us with Danny after his dunking



This is generally my expression whenever I eat really good dim sum. I did a little dance after our meal and sang my "I love LA" song.



All you can eat Korean BBQ for dinner. The LA style is to wrap it with rice paper crepes, kind of like won-ton wrappers. SO good. My brother is a monster at these places and easily polishes off two platters of meat.



My parents sitting on the curb outside our place. A nice quality weekend together.