Sephy’s Platzish

This week’s Hump Day Hmm… is about race and the role it plays in our modern society.

Personally, I’ve lived, with the exception for the time that I was at college, in an almost all-white community. To us out here, one minority in the vicinity would be considered diversity. I remember back in 1998, I was having a discussion with a relative about diversity, and I made the remark “We’re getting more of them out by us now”. Without realizing it, I basically made it sound like I was regretting the fact that our corner of the world was becoming integrated. And I was rightly chastised for saying that.

Today, I don’t mind that the area becomes more integrated. Supposedly, we live in an area where the major city is a “minority-majority” city, with about 55% of people living there belonging to one minority group or another. It’s just a natural progression that, as they become more affluent, they would want to come out to my area for a number of reasons - a lower crime rate is one, but we also have slightly lower taxes out here. In fact, until the new store opened up, it wasn’t uncommon to have folks take the long drive out from the city to get to the Wal-Mart Supercenter located out in this area.

While I like to think that I’m not totally biased when it comes to race and ethnicity, I think there is a part of me that, because of where I was brought up, has some racist tendencies. It certainly shouldn’t be confused with someone who has no tolerance for other groups, or the Klan types who think that the only society that is right and proper is white society. What I experience are the little ticks that come from being insulated from other groups.

For example, while I was at the mall yesterday, I’d see groups of young black folks walking, and my natural tendency was to build in some distance between me and them. Naturally, they probably didn’t care if I was there or not, but I noticed them - they were keeping to themselves, yet I had some kind of instinctive reaction to put that distance in. I don’t know if that’s exactly racist or if it’s just a case of being aware of my surroundings and wanting to avoid making contact with people, but it’s an interesting reaction when you think about it in this manner.

On the other hand, I don’t think that there should be institutional thinking based on a person’s skin color or heritage. One story that was in the news last week was how the University of Wisconsin was going to change their admission guidelines. Everything sounded fine, including adding a provision about looking at a person’s socioeconomic background. Where the problem came in was the inclusion of a person’s “racial and ethnic heritage”. In other words, if you’re from a minority, you’re going to have a better chance of getting in than a potentially more-qualified person from the white community.

Personally, I think that is reverse discrimination. I think that programs such as affirmative action have led to many minorities thinking that they are entitled to almost anything even if they do not qualify for it. What the standard should be is equal access - if you’re in a competitive environment, like college admissions, or in the business world, it should be the qualifications you have which lead to you getting that position, not your race.

A great example of that, I think, is the internet. While there are definitely bloggers who are minorities who notice the “institutional” problems from people like marketers, it doesn’t matter to me what color a person is, provided they have good content. One thing that came to my mind when thinking about this idea is that a couple of my favorite blogs are from people with East Asian backgrounds. My favorite podcast is the mrbrown show, from Singapore where, from time to time, you will have some Cantonese spoken. I always enjoy listening to it because it’s fun and I get an insight into another culture far away from here. The other blog that I thought about was The Food Pornographer. TFP is an Aussie of Chinese descent, but I wouldn’t have ever known that if I hadn’t read the FAQ page, because I like reading her posts and always like looking at the food that’s available in her part of the world. That’s the kind of information that is interesting to learn, but it doesn’t change my opinion of them, if anything, it makes me respect them even more.

This is something that I think you’re going to see more of as the Arabic world starts to get involved in the internet, where great content will start to come out of different places and it will be the content of that person’s writing that comes to mind first, and not where they’re from. That is the great thing about the internet because here, there is no need to reveal your background, but for the most part you do because it is what you are, and there is no reason to hide it.

Are we a long way from solving the race problems in this country and in a lot of the world? Definitely, but hopefully the Internet is taking the role of the “great equalizer” for everyone - no matter your race, no matter your income - so hopefully we don’t have to have these discussions anymore and be a single nation of many faces.

The topic for this week’s Hump Day Hmm… is a pretty wide topic - Too much of a good thing.

For me, the thing I’ve always had too much of has been food. While I was in college, I had access to the dining hall, and almost always would fill two or three plates of food. I can remember having a plate filled with chicken nuggets, and eating them all. If it was breakfast, I’d have two eggs, and a whole bunch of sausage links and bacon. Generally, if it was there, I’d take it. Some days, I’d have a salad, but that was in addition to the full lunch or dinner I’d have. Along with that, I’d have a glass or three of soda, and they’d also get finished. I would also bring my own cup along so that I could fill up with soda before going either back to my dorm room or out to classes.

In my dorm room, the situation wasn’t improved - I’d have candy and snacks of all kinds available for myself, and the vending machines weren’t far away, so that I could get myself a candy bar (though it was usually two or three at a time) and take it back to my room.

Of course, my overeating goes to before college. I’ve always thought that I needed to have two of everything - two steaks, two pork chops, two hamburgers, two chicken breasts - for it to be a meal. We would have fruits and vegetables here, but it wasn’t a constant supply and I would regularly ignore them in preference to having the junk food.

All in all, it is too much food. On top of all that is the fact that I would drink way too much soda. There would be days where I’d drink four cans in a day - or more. I’d have soda with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and then have one at night.

However, there is good news in all of this - the first thing that I’ve done is weaned myself from drinking soda. First, it was two cans a day - lunch and dinner. However, I was still drinking diet soda. One day in May, I was given a couple of links that showed the effects of aspartame (the sweetener in diet soda) - Health effects and Dorway. Interestingly, one of the effects seen in people who consume aspartame is depression. Another thing that I learnt is that if it’s let to sit for long enough, Diet Coke disintegrates partly into turpentine.

From that day until about two weeks ago, I was having one can of regular Coke a day. The first couple of days of not having Diet Coke, I was a bear - almost as if I were quitting smoking after doing it for years. However, that passed within a couple of days and I was feeling better. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was given a link to 9 great reasons to drink water, which led to me drinking more water, and now I’ve gone over two weeks drinking pretty much only water - the only other liquid I have is milk with a bowl of cereal in the morning. To think that I’ve gone from two sodas a day to none in such a short time is amazing, considering that I’ve had soda around me all my life. In fact, not 10 feet from me sits six 12-packs of Coke, purchased when it was on sale on the thought that I’d have a supply to last about two months or so; honestly, I’d now rather walk to the kitchen, fill my glass (or my bottles when I’m walking) with tap water than grab a can of soda.

Now, with the eating, I’ve started to cut back on that as well - the basic thought being that when you go to a restaurant, you don’t order two steaks or two chicken meals, and yet you leave there feeling pretty full. For a while now, I’ve had a lunch of a chicken breast with either just an avocado or a salad. Alternatively, I will have a Lean Cuisine meal. For dinner, I’ve just started cutting back on the quantity of food I eat, and so far I’ve done quite well - tonight, I had almost a whole pork chop before I started feeling full - a little while ago, it would have been two full ones, no matter how full I felt.

It’s just another step in my changes, and stepping away from too much of a good thing - changing it to good things, just in moderation.

This week’s Hump Day Hmm discusses something that bugs me quite a bit, and I’m not that old - Political Correctness. Naturally, it doesn’t bother me that it does actually exist, but I feel that there is a sense of paralysis that results from the supposed need to be PC.

The paralysis comes in one of two forms - either you change what you say to practically negate any true meaning you’re trying to achieve, or you just don’t say anything at all for fear you might offend someone. I know that I’m guilty of doing both, more the second than the first. However, it’s not all concerns of offending anyone that would keep me from saying anything - I would always assume that someone else would come along and say exactly what I was thinking.

I’ve now learnt that this isn’t always the case and that there are usually people who are in the same spot as me - they want to say something, but are afraid to do so or just don’t bother because they assume that someone will pick up their slack. However, there are some circumstances - such as when the person you’re speaking to just doesn’t like you, or they think that you have some kind of secret agenda - where it is best to say nothing because if you do, you know that the discussion will likely wind up being one of the past and of the present.

In fact, that was one of the reasons why I started blogging again - so that I could say whatever I wanted whenever I want. There isn’t the worry about my words having direct consequences over my participation in one site or another. I’ve also found that, more recently, I’m not visiting the same sites that I used to before I started blogging - for example, I find that I’d rather be reading through various blogs in my Google Reader where I have a wide variety of viewpoints, rather than in forums where it’s seemingly always the same four or five people posting their ideas.

However, where you really see the paralysis is out in the political world. However, it’s not the bloggers or the talk show hosts that show the paralysis - it’s the politicians themselves. A lot of the blame for that probably should be shifted onto their staff as the reality of politics now is that it is a show run behind the curtains. It’s best shown toward the end of season 6 of The West Wing, where the election is ramping up and all the candidates are getting their names out there. In a couple of episodes, there are situations where a candidate chooses to say what he is thinking and gets raked over the coals for actually saying it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who will never have seen that episode as they felt that the whole show was just a vehicle to promote “liberal” ideas. I’ll admit that I thought the same thing myself, but once I watched three or four episodes, I was hooked and haven’t looked back. In fact, I even found an old episode on a VHS tape and watched it (at least until the tape ran out because it was part of the overrun recording that I had done).

The reality is different of course for our politicians today - they are all concerned about polling numbers, and making sure that they vary their message depending on who they are talking to. There is an element of this as well in the West Wing, but the writers did give the characters the opportunity to speak their mind.

Where do I stand on being PC and saying the right thing? I certainly think that if you’re comfortable with saying something, you definitely need to. Otherwise you might not have another chance to say it. Even if you don’t think you’re comfortable, you should write up what you want to say and possibly run it past a friend - they’ll likely give you tips on how to improve your message and possibly remind you of things that you should include as well. I also think that you should, within reason (as in not making a direct personal attack or resorting to racial or ethnic slurs) say what you want to say in the manner that you wish to say it.

There’s a lot more that could be said, not only for the words we say, but also for the actions we decide to take - especially when it comes to shielding ourselves from things. However, that’s a discussion for another time.

There’s a theme to my posts lately - that of getting myself sorted out. One of the things that this involves is getting rid of the old habits that I carry with me - such as blaming myself for small things and not being honest with myself about my feelings.

It just happens that this week’s Hump Day Hmm is about letting things go. I am at a point in my life where I must let the “old” me go. If I don’t, I’ll wind up in a much worse situation - one where I am completely alone and probably more depressed than I have been ever. As in not wanting to get out of bed depressed.

Something that I’m doing to help keep myself focused on changing things is putting Post-It® Notes around my monitor. Right now, there are 9 of them. They are as follows -

• I will not put off things I can do today
• I will hold myself accountable for following my plans
• I will not beat myself up for anything
• I will not make excuses for anything
• I will make a to-do list every day
• I will walk every day for at least 30 mins
• I will drink more water than I have before
• My world will change when I change
  (Taken from here, point number 2)
• I will not hide my feelings

The most important one is the note about changing my world. So far, I haven’t done enough to change my world. I’ve made starts, but I always manage to throw myself under the bus for no good reason and put myself back to where I started. One of the things about me (and I think this can be extended to a lot of people in my situation) is that I know what to say, how to say it, but then five minutes after I say it, I get rid of it. The problem with knowing what to say is that after a while, the people you say the same things over and over to will begin to not believe that you’re going to do what you say. I now know that it is squarely on my shoulders to do what needs to be done, and to be proactive with changing things.

That’s exactly what I did today. I told my mother that I needed to get myself sorted out, and the suggestion was given that I look into some of the free healthcare options in the area. I don’t know if they can do everything I need, but it’s definitely a start, and they can probably point me in the right direction to get things going.

Also, I contacted an organization about the possibility of volunteering for them in their offices; I haven’t heard back from them yet, but the fact that I actually contacted them is going further than I had in the past.

It will be a long road, with ups and downs. However, I have to have confidence in myself to know that I can change, and that I can improve myself. Part of that is accountability, thus the posts about my walking, and also you’ll see it come up in my weekly This was the week that was posts, updates on how I’m progressing on my way to making myself better.

This week’s Hump Day Hmm is about what we carry with us. Not so much the physical things, but the little tidbits, stories, etc. that we all keep in the back of our minds.

For me, and I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I am still young, most of my baggage consists of memories and not so much the “life lessons” that most people have. However, I do have a couple of “mangled” sayings that I do keep in there, mostly because I like them

One of the items in my memory stash are the trips that I took during my Senior year in High School. That year, we had the opportunity to go to the first Inauguration for President Bush. While I didn’t march, one of the things that I remember was that while going over to the Old Post Office to pick up something to eat (I wound up getting Panda Express, if I remember correctly), I spotted then-Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura interviewing a radio station. What I also remember about that day was that it was a chilly and rainy day and that a late parade didn’t help things much at all, but in the end it was much worth it even if we had to leave right after seeing our group march by. The reason we had to leave was that we actually had to get back to the Rosslyn by Metro so that we could take the bus back to our hotel (which, incidentally was about a half mile from another Metro station which would have gotten us to Federal Triangle without having to chase all the way up to Rosslyn) so that we could get changed for a boat ride on the Potomac.

And since I’ve opened that can of worms, I may as well finish the story of the day (there is something about these Hump Day Hmms that brings back these memories to me, almost in their entirety very a) interesting and b) cool effect). While we were riding the train to Rosslyn, I had rewound my camcorder to play back the video of our band going by, but I hadn’t played it back. I then started to record the trip up what seemed to be the longest escalator out there. Luckily, I stopped and didn’t lose the whole band’s performance.

So, we get back to the hotel, and it’s a quick in-and-out so that we can get changed for the boat trip. After yet another trip up I-395 into the District, we get to the boat. Now, remember that this *is* January 20th, but nevertheless, we go ahead with the trip. I don’t remember all the details about the trip, but I seem to remember that they encouraged folks who were couples to have photos taken. I also don’t remember what was served for dinner, it might have been a beef dinner, but I’m not sure. What I do remember, however, was that they had some dancing afterward, and I wasn’t feeling up to it - I was feeling a bit blah and was getting crabby; mostly, I think, because of having had a long day and just wanting to rest. Yet I was coaxed out onto the dance floor, and I had a hell of a time; someone even managed to take a photo of me (a relatively difficult thing as I like to duck cameras) and it got onto the CD slideshow that they gave all of us. After that, I walked around a bit and next thing I knew, we were back at the dock and back in the hotel.

The other trip that we took was a couple of months later, in April, and this time was a trip that was in the planning for a little bit longer than the other one (the Inaugural trip wasn’t even confirmed until the very last minute before we were to go off on our Christmas vacation; that’s another story that I’ll have to tell later ;)), and it was a trip out to Los Angeles. This was definitely more of a vacation than the Washington trip, yet we still had to put in some work, such as marching in the Main Street USA Parade, a clinic with some Disney musicians, and a clinic at USC. One of the more interesting things that happened was that I was approached by some tourists to take their picture, which I obliged to, and to mark that, I didn’t take their picture with my camera, I took a picture of the banner that they stood under.

It was also on that trip where I had a lot of fun - the only place that wasn’t totally fun was Knott’s Berry Farm. To be honest, if you’re travelling in the Anaheim area, and want to know where to go, if you have young kids or really love rollercoasters, go there; otherwise it’s kind of a disappointment. But, of course, your mileage may vary, and the person who didn’t quite understand the concept of 2¢+3¢ = 5¢ and gave me all 5 pennies has probably moved onto another job ;). The other attraction there is the chicken - to me, it was a chicken dinner and I didn’t notice anything special about it. Maybe my opinion of it would be different now; I don’t know for sure

There is a lesson to be had in this though - if you have the opportunity to do something, go for it. It was on that trip that I missed out on a couple of cool things - one is the ride at California Adventure called Soarin’ over California - I was either slow through the gate or something else so I didn’t get a pass to go into there and from what I’ve seen, I missed a heck of a show. The other opportunity that I missed was where some of the chaperons went to the Crystal Cathedral for a tour. I would have loved to go to that instead of Knott’s Berry Farm mostly because it’s something that is very amazing to see on TV, but in person is about 100 times more beautiful.

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I had mentioned some sayings that I keep in my head, they’re fairly logical, one’s meant to be somewhat funny yet true, one’s a mangled idiom, and the other one is theoretically true.

The first one is the mangled idiom. I don’t know why I started saying it, but I did one day and it’s stuck. Meant for those times when you’re left “out to dry” or when you’re in a situation with no fix, it’s “(You’re) up a creek without a river“. Of course, changing river to paddle fixes the quote, but the sentiment is the same - if you’re in a creek, you don’t have a river’s more powerful current to pull you along.

Next up is “Wherever you go, there you are“. A very true sentiment which really doesn’t mean anything. The main reason I keep it in my head is that it’s something that my band director told all of us. This is the same band director who, upon seeing me listening to a radio while walking in the morning before school, christened me with the nickname of “Nuclear {Sephy}”. The reasoning? Because I was “radioactive” (rimshot or crickets, your choice ;)).

And the other saying is “Never underestimate an idiot with a bad idea“. I’m not sure where exactly I picked it up from, but if I had to guess it was from somewhere on Deviantart; I’m not a member there, but all the search results come from there.

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As far as the things I physically carry with me, if I go anywhere, I usually carry three or four things - my wallet, cellphone, camera, and if I think I’m almost out, extra batteries. I used to carry my scanner with me, to listen for incidents that might be out there, but I’ve stopped carrying it with me everywhere because it gets kinda bulky to carry with me all the time. Not only that, I need to bring headphones for it so that I can listen without having it so loud that the sound gets distorted.