The place where Broadway and musicals are located.
The place where I will begin the next chapter of my nomadic life.
The place where I turn into an eccentric academic out of sync with normality.
NEW YORK.
Welcome.
The place where Broadway and musicals are located.
The place where I will begin the next chapter of my nomadic life.
The place where I turn into an eccentric academic out of sync with normality.
New York.
An aspiring hikikomori/ gomiyashiki owner who will get 3 dogs, 1 cat and a herb
garden when she is in her 40s.
Currently a second year Phd student in East Asian Studies, NYU; a self-proclaimed OTAKU; a
clumsy but avid snowboarder; and absent oneechama of Variel.
8 Sept 2010: West Side Story, WICKED
19 Sept 2010: Chicago
8 Oct 2010: Promises Promises
29 Oct 2010: Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
14 Nov 2010: American Idiot
18 Jan 2011: Billy Elliot
8 Feb 2011: La Cage Aux Folles
6 Mar 2011: Paul Taylor Dance Group
5 Apr 2011: Catch Me If You Can (Broadway preview)
2 Dec 2011: La Boheme
9 Jan 2012: Rent
22 Mar 2012: Phantom of the Opera
23 May 2012: Avenue Q
26 Sep 2012: Newsies
2 Oct 2012: Turandot
4 Oct 2012: Once
15 Oct 2012: Sleep No More
28 Nov 2012: Lion King
7 Feb 2013: Book of Mormons
14 Mar 2013: Jersey Boys
25 Mar 2013: Sleep No More
21 May 2013: Kinky Boots
26 Sep 2013: Big Fish
Sunday, December 07, 2008
1:47 AM
OMG!!!!!!!!!
Ok, trying to be distracted in more productive manner, so went to check out the indigenous peoples summit blog and found the comment below:
(Basically, the author, a Wajin (means non-Ainu Japanese lah), talked about how he respects Ainu people, think that they are people who respect nature, and hopes for their independence. Then...)
'However, I have a question on your fight against discrimination in marriage. The survival of a ethnic group is dependant on marriage. If you fight against the discrimination encountered if you marry a Wajin, it means a miscegenation, in other words, you become a Wajin. This runs counter to your fight for respect towards your ethnic group. If you do not protect yourself as Ainu, Ainu will turn into Wajin and become a fake Ainu. I am sure that the important DNA of minorities will be useful in to future for the history of humankind.
Perhaps, unfortunately, there are no pure Ainu within young, unmarried Ainu people. Perhaps they are totally or mostly gone. Even so, it is better for mixed bloods to marry each other.'
OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!! People, read this and don't ask me why I am sick of Japan. Why I am sick of hitting my head against this wall of ignorance. And you can't even blame them. Can you blame a non-educated person for being stupid? This person is educated, but in all the wrong ways. So he is unable to perceive the world in any other way than this, even though he 'supports the Ainu cause'. They might be well-meaning individuals, intending to help.. but at the end of the day, they are a bunch of hard core RACIST.
PS: Should I post this in facebook? Cos not all my 'friends' bother to read this blog. Also having an influx of 'non-friends' due to me playing a game on facebook. hmm...
In case anybody is interested. It is actually one sentence...
The highly idealized Ainu images created out of the need to justify the existence of Ainu people in a homogeneous country like Japan, while dynamic in its own right, still pull references from historical discourse and resulted in an image that is simultaneously divorced from one’s everyday life and idealized to the degree that it takes a certain amount of work to attain for the Ainu and deepens the boundary between the Ainu from the Wajin (Japanese).
Onto another note, I am feeling quite pleased with myself. I managed to get a membership fee waiver on my Lady's card... for the 2nd time. Call me biased, but I LOVE UOB!!!!!! Ahaha!! To be honest, I don't really use this card in Japan, since it is in SGD, but I loved the perks and discounts this little card holds. So I am not letting it go.
For those friends who has never worked in a bank before, let me tell you that it is not difficult to waive membership fees. I did it for my customers in the past. But don't call the bank and ask them to waive it for you. Precisely because it requires very little amount of work to waive the fees, you are creating less work/making life easy for bank people by simply sending an email. Most importantly, DO NOT call them to shout, rant, rave like a xiao char bor.
In case my dear friends think that I am MIA, I just went to the Marimo fest at Lake Akan from 9th~10th. Have not yet uploaded the pics onto facebook yet, since I have 2 presentations this wed and fri. Basically, it was a smokey experience, since I stayed in a room with 4 smoking obasans. I was greeted with a puff of smoke first thing in the morning too. Otherwise, everything was fun, interesting and lots of thought provoking conversations with the Ainu obasans.
For example, a 58 yr old obasan only got to know that she is a Karafuto Ainu from a relative a mere 4 years ago. Her daughter is married but is keeping this a secret from her husband.
Most of the obasans I stayed with are worried about endangering their kids' future marriage, cos they are Ainu and future parents-in-law in Japan might not want their children marrying an Ainu.
The previous generation's, in other words, the obasans' parents' desire to dilute the Ainu blood as much a possible. So much so that their mothers always tell them to marry Japanese and not Ainu. In other words, they want to delete their existence in Japan.
Nobody will ever understand their troubles and problems as we are not born into that situation. Even I have difficulty understanding...
Anyway, I am going to pull myself out of any distractions (namely 'Skip Beat', this new manga I got hooked onto) and really concentrate hard on completing my presentation. This presentation will be the skeleton of one of my chapters, and i want to be fast in finishing this piece of work so that I can reach the pot at the end of the rainbow (namely 'Skip Beat' vol 14 to 19 currently in my bookshelf). The art of delayed self-gratification was successfully performed during my honor thesis days. Unfortunately, I find that I had lost the knack for this. Especially since my supervisor don't really care about me and does not give me any deadlines to meet. However, reading Skip Beat while under the constant stress of my masters thesis lessens my enjoyment. So I shall GAMANN!
2 phone calls that really made me happy. Made me feel that I did not waste my 2 years here. Made me feel happy and warm all over.
Phone call 1 from Shoko san: I met her months ago. We did have a good chat in a smoke filled room. But no contact after that. I did catch a glimpse of her 2, 3 days ago. But no chance to talk.
She called me today! Asking me to the Marimo festival. Who cares even if she needs ppl to fill up seats in the bus. As least she remembered me.
Phone call 2 from Kyoko san: Went to Kamuy nomi with her and a few other friends some months back. I did send her the pics we took together and she did call me. But nothing after that.
She called me today too! Asking me to an event next Monday.
Two calls in a day. I can't believe it. I had been griping and grousing about what a closed in-group the Ainu people are over here. But to get two phone calls in a day! My oh my!
IPS (Indigenous Peoples Summit) 2008 celebration party (9.8.2008)
Personally, I am bogged down by the sheer amount of pics and stuff that I wanna say. Not to mention the various admin stuff that I need to do. Add to that is the dilemma of where, how I should organize my pics between my blog and facebook. The question is... do YOU wanna know whats up in my life? It mite be exciting to me but boring to u.
Anyway, IPS 2008 celebration party. Ann-elise thought it will be a reflection party, to think about the mistakes and possible remedies for the future IPS 2010 to be held in Canada as G8 will be held there too. Unfortunatly or fortunately, it was a celebration party. Cos this means most of the top people, esp the Ainus, will not know what the Japanese (Wajin) supporters and international team think. On the other hand, some ugly truths are really not meant to be spoken, esp from my mouth cos I wanna be in their good books.
UGLY TRUTHS: 1) I gleaned that most Wajin supporters felt totally left out. They were the outsiders, simply roped in to help wif the nitty gritty details of the summit and thrown out like refuse after it ended. (Ok, they got a piece of paper thanking them for their efforts. But what they really want is to continue to help. They wanna continously support in action and not in spirit.) 2) Tons of work heaped onto the 2 leaders of international team. they had to handle the logistics of the overseas indigenous guests, plus interpreters etc even though they had other commitments leading up to the actual summit. 3) Horrible treatment of Ann-elise's interpreting team of which I belong to. The students interpreters from International Christian University (ICU) were given better treatment than us. We did not know when we can have our next bath, meal and did not have a good place to sleep.
I really am confused on whether I should put this up in my facebook account or blog. I had to balance my desire to spread this info to others and the need to respect the deceased and privacy of the people involved. In the end, I choosed my blog.
In a nutshell, Hokkaido Uni medical dept basically 'stole' or 'borrowed' more than 1000 remains of Ainu people all over Hokkaido for research. They did not really release the results of their research and actually kept the remains with the bones of animals. There was a big hooha when the Ainu people found out about this. So Hokudai/medical faculty built a small building at the back of their carpark to house the remains. As they only recorded the area where they unearthed the remains and not the names, nobody could claim the remains. So, an Icharupa is held in front of the small building every year, with Ainu from different parts of Hokkaido participating. Horrid? Think about how Western medical scientists conducted researches on the skulls of black and asian men to justify their inferiority and you will realise that this is an oft-practised strategy in the name of colonization.
