2 cultures in 24 hours

Every time I travel back from China to the US, I'm smacked with the reality of just how different the two cultures are. It's a telling picture of how society affects how we interact with one another and how we dictate the kind of society that we have. In order to be unbiased, I'll leave out any terms that will lead to identifying which culture is which.

"We will begin boarding for flight 090. Will those sitting first class please come to the desk please?". With those words, the airport rep opened the floodgate of many tired travelers to crowd around the desk. No line, no waiting, no courtesy. And it seems like the older grannies are the ones most guilty of pushing and impatience. Their jagged little elbows always seem to hit their mark as they make their way to the front of the line.

Upon finding my seat in the plane, I was surrounded by two very different people. My left was a younger (20's-30's) man who looked like he had encountered both culture. To my right was a slightly older (40's) woman who had only recently moved from one culture to the other, but still clung tightly to attitudes and actions of the older culture.

This was my first flight on Continental, you gotta love the personal entertainment screen for each seat. It's a good thing they were on when we first boarded, because train taxiing and other complications delayed our flight by an hour. So we were sitting on the plane, waiting for takeoff. The guy on my left just put on his huge noise-canceling headphones and adjusted his seat. The woman on my right was up and down about 5 times per minute, asking me to help put up her heavy suitcase and bring it down. I finally asked her polite, "there's space under the seat in front of you, why don't you put it there if you need it so much?". She agreed and the plane soon took off.

I think she started a few conversations with me but most of them were questions that were too blunt, personal or offending so I ended the interchange and started a long movie on my screen, hoping to show her I wasn't interested in talking.

The first meal came and it's always interesting to see how people treat the flight attendants. This treatment of people actually is bigger than just what culture you are from but it's obviously that our views of service and what flight attendants do are very different. The lady was at it again, loudly asking and interrupting the attendant what options we had and placing her order while the attendant was serving another passenger a few rows ahead of us. The food service began a few hours after the flight, so many passengers were watching movies or had their seats reclined for more comfort. When the flight attendant set the food on the tray table in front of our good friend, she decided she didn't have enough room. She forcibly struck the seat in front of her and loudly demanded, "I have no room here! Put your seat up!". The flight attendant was embarrassed and assured the passenger in front that they did not have to do anything. Throughout this flight, I tried to stay detached to this woman and make it clear I had no connection with her.

Of course, arriving at my first stop didn't mean that everything would get better. I did have to go through security where everything but your underwear is scanned, felt or x-rayed. And the people like to gripe. My connecting flight was also delayed about an hour and many people waiting in the gate were complaining and short on patience. I struck up a conversation with a nearby passenger and I said "we're going to get there eventually. This is just the last 2 hours of my 20-some hour travel day. Just wait it out."

So far, my time back has been a good refresher of the good and bad points of both cultures. Stay tuned for more stories.

The king is dead

Most of the sports world yesterday turned into "The decision" by LeBron James on ESPN. With the news of his departure from Cleveland to Miami, sports fans all over the US and the world (except for Miami) cried in agony, groaned in disgust or just turned their focus back on the World Cup. Everyone talks about history being made, how the NBA will be changed forever, but really it's about a 25 year old kid who doesn't know how to make mature decisions.

The most aggravating part of the decision isn't that he left Cleveland or that he's joining Miami. He said he's all about winning, so yes, Miami does field a team with 3 all-stars. It's how he handled the process that rubs people the wrong way. The self-centered egomaniac self-promotion in holding an actual hour long special on TV to make his decision. He didn't respect the other teams pursuing him or even the Cavs organization enough to let them know from his own mouth what he's planning on doing. This self-absorbed hour of BS only shows how immature he is and avoids taking the responsibility of such a momentous decision. And he was clearly shaken up by the Cavs fans that burned his jersey. What does he expect? This season will a long one for LBJ, he'll most likely receive boos whenever he's not in Miami, but especially in NYC, LA, Cleveland, Chicago and NJ. And he deserves it.

Quick, here's a practice SAT analogy problem:
Wade:MJ as
a. LBJ: Pippen
b. LBJ: Toni Kukoc
c. LBJ: BJ Armstrong
d. LBJ: Dennis Rodman

The point is, LBJ < MJ. Actually, it's LBJ<<<
And where does that leave Bosh?
a. Bosh: Ho Grant
b. Bosh: Luc Longley
c. Bosh: the late Brian Williams (aka Bison Dele)
d. Bosh: John Salley

The claims of Bosh being a HOFer is laffable. He's talented, got skill and speed but he still hasn't shown much in his career. He's a louder version of HoGrant. He's just excited that people are paying attention to him now. Let's see him do well in the playoffs before we consider him a world talent. Right now he's a servicable PF (like HoGrant), but he sure isn't a Malone or a Duncan. And if he steps up, he can hope to be a Shawn Kemp. But for next season, he maybe be getting about 14-16 pts and 10 boards - much like our goggled friend Hoarce.

All this crap about LeBron staying humble is absurd. Since losing to the Celtics in the playoffs, he's been looking forward to being the center of the basketball world on July 1st. He's soaked in making each team come court him and helping him get so much face. He even jointed twitter, which I think is a big waste of time. Athletes are tweeting from the sidelines... stupid. "Coach called a timeout, I have leg cramps." LeBron, you need to change that twitter account to CourtJesterJames. Nobody bows down to you anymore, not even in Miami.

Last point is about Shaq wanting to join Miami. He's going to be good for 20 minutes a game, 6 fouls, maybe 6 pts and 8 boards. But he will definitely bring a lot of attention and help stoke the egos of LBJ and Bosh. So if only look at his stats and age and what he can actually bring to a team, you have:
Shaq: Bill Cartwright

Who's idea was this?

I was on amazon today looking to get some songs for the wedding when I came across one of the stupidest things ever. So, finding music for a wedding is tricky because you want to find hip songs that everyone knows but you want to make sure that the language and content isn't too offensive for your guests. Boom boom pow by the Black Eyed Peas is one of those songs that needs to be softened a bit for easier listening. So here I go, do-do-do, type in Boom boom pow in amazon and look at my options.
okay, one option from the album "The E.N.D."... no good, lots of offensive language.
second option, remix, sounds interesting but not as nice as the original.
third option, from the series of CDs "Now that's what I call music". This is a friendly series that compiles the popular music from the last year and puts them all on one album. Usually it contains the radio edits so it takes out the swears. Good choice, let's see what other options are left...
fourth option, boom boom pow - KIDZ BOP version... what is that? I click on the preview song button and ......... IT'S A BUNCH OF KIDS SINGING THE SONG! WHAT? and there's a bunch of kids kind of just chanting and singing together... I click on the album... it's KIDZ BOP Vol 16. WHAT??? THERE'S 16 VOLUMES OF THIS CRAP? Other popular songs on the CD include "Heartless" by Kanye West and "If I were a boy" by Beyonce... Out of curiousity, I click on a few more previews... worst idea ever.
Seriously, anything can get sold in the US. "Hey Steve, let's market a CD that takes all the good popular songs, get a bunch of kids who can't sing and Youthenize them". Actually, that's a bad word to use, because in this instance, you are taking the songs and killing them painfully.
I apologize if any of you buy this or buy it for you kids - on second thought, no, I don't, it's pure junk. And I can't believe there's 16+ plus CDs (I think I saw a KIDZ BOP vol 18) out there being sold. There's even an 80's version. The kids on KIDZ BOP were barely alive in the 90's, let alone know any 80's songs. And what 80's songs will they use? Angel is a Centerfold? Physical (by Olivia Newton-John)? Like a Virgin? Yeah, those are appropriate songs for kids to sing.
I'm not making this up, KIDZ BOP is an actual series of CDs sold in the US. After doing a little more research, they actually do have a censorship policy to help change even references to drugs, alcohol, sex to more appropriate themes. Children will be singing the new lyrics only to be exposed later on in High School that they had the "clean kidz bop version" and be ridiculed then. Examples:
replace the word "tipsy" with "silly"... I guess they mean the same thing, though tipsy may be more messy than silly.
In Tik Tok, Ke$ha has the lyric, "brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack". Nope, can't have that, let's try "brush my teeth and then I go and pack"... clever that it rhymes, lame because it sucks.

Parents, just let your small children listen to normal songs intended for their age. Trying to make them "hip" by listening to pop music does NOT equal to buying them kidz bop. This is only going to get beat up later on. Let me paint you this scenario: You'll be at a party and a popular hip hop song comes on. You are a little bit "silly" and decide to sing as loudly as you can because you think "hey, my parents bought me a CD with this song when I was 8, man, I'll be the coolest guy since I know all the words". WRONG. You sing loudly all the wrong lyrics and skip the versions that refer to drugs, alcohol or sex. Afterwards, all your friends leave you, the girl isn't impressed and the frat boys make you go back to your dorm in your underwear.
All because of kidz bop.

coming back

Now that I'm in the land of the free, where websites can go unblocked, I am able to get on to blogspot on a regular basis again. Yes (pronounced the way Kip from Napoleon Dynamite does it).
I also found about 5 posts that I started writing but never finished. How unfortunate. Let's try to finish them this summer.