southeast asian intercollegiate summit

i'm still recuperating from a weekend of making my vision into reality and haven't really been able to jump back into the "real" reality as of yet both because i'm ridiculously sick and also because i feel i should reflect.

while the hope of the summit was to highlight the similarities of programing or projects that students were doing at each of their campuses, i guess the summit also helped to bring to the surface the differences in types of student organizing. i only hope that being exposed to a very political, progressive, and action oriented type of organizing, some of the students and organizations will go back to share this type of organizing.

however, all in all, i would call the event a success. not because of our differences in organizations. not because of our differences in our ethnicities. not because of our differences in the type of institution we attend. because regardless of whether the participant attended a private school, research institution, or professional institution . . everyone had love for their people and ultimately, OUR people and OUR struggle.

that all on its own is a success.


the fear that i have is that one day, southeast asian youth will replace the pride for the struggles of our parents and grandparents with shame. when that happens, i don't know who is going to ever be able to advocate for my mom who barely speaks english, my grandma who doesn't understand the concept of inflation, and my grandfather who still thinks he needs to work and make money at the age of 75.

because essentially, "if not you, then who?"

Cambodian Deportees Suicide

Many sent me this email earlier today while I was working on my paper for AAS 126:

Hey… One of my staff killed himself. Chan, he was 33, from Long Beach, California.

I was training for an AUSAID workshop in Kompong Som last Wednesday – Saturday and got the call Friday night around 1am. Smiley, Trip, Van and Saw found him hanging in his room. He'd been dead for over a day. Saw cut him down.

He was depressed and suicidal for a long time, he'd been here a year and had worked at Korsang for about 11 months. I kept him around because I knew how fucked up he was and that he needed support. In the states he had major depression with psychotic features and was on medication that basically kept him stable. Since his deportation out here he could never get the proper medications in Cambodia, so he went on a huge decline into some really deep dark place. And then he started smoking yama and that escalated his demise. I got him meds from the clinic, but they didn't work, I got him a counselor from the Australian Embassy, but he couldn't keep appointments.

Needless to say the staff is messed up, again. And I came back from the workshop to a critical debriefing with the staff who found him.

Chan was a very sweet, sad, gentle, fragile, quite guy. This has to stop.

I want to use Chan's death to stop the deportation of Cambodian's with a diagnosed mental health disorder. It's a death sentence. Can we try to do something?

Thanx, Holly

It made me question really, what am I doing sitting here in my living room writing some paper on Southeast Asian second generation youth when there are Southeast Asian second generation youth shoot each other and themselves somewhere in the world. How will my paper help the community? Or how will this degree help me help myself and my community?

Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are. Why do I sit here with my 23 units when I could be doing something down the street in Oakland or Richmond.

I suppose one can only be an effective advocate for the community if they are educated about the community. Otherwise, I guess I would just be another uninformed charity person who is doing work as a result of sympathy or pity as opposed to a true advocate.

Looking at the greater picture, this paper is probably very important. It's just emails like these that make me want to hop on a plane and head back to Southeast Asia.

why smoking weed is illegal

today in my social welfare policy class, my professor went into this tangent about why marijuana is illegal in the United States.

First he made the claim that the conservatives today are just pissed off at the liberals who were smoking, getting high, and fun in the 60s and now they're trying to get back at them.

Then he pointed out that before the hippies, the artists and jazz musicians were the ones that were smoking marijuana. That kind of lifestyle went againist out whole puritan work ethic thing because essentially, our country was built by people who wanted to form a country that didn't have fun.

That was great. He has a PhD.

sometimes, i love berkeley.

. . would you rather be poor in a poor country or poor in a rich country?

Reading an article by Morrison Wong about post-1965 Asian immigrants to the United States brought about this question.

It outlined the normal highlights of higher education and higher income of Asian's in the United States. However, unlike most articles that only give Southeast Asians an honorary mention in a paragraph or so, Wong mentioned Southeast Asians in every one of his highlights and even explained these constrasts in an extensive conclusion.

Asians are usually more educated than average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians generally make more money than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have tight ethnic enclaves to support them, unlike the Average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have lower fertility rates than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

More than half of Asians own houses.
Not Southeast Asians.

These past ten months here in Thailand has made me almost feel as if working internationally in developing countries is where I want to be. Now I'm not so sure.

Whats worst. Would you rather be in a developing country with no real hope of first rate opportunities or be in a developed country with no real chance of first rate opportunities? In a developing country, sometimes it's okay to be poor because everyone else is also. However, in a developed country and you're poor, you get to sit on the sidewalk in some metropolitan city and watch all the hotshots walking to work in their suits carrying their briefcases. What hits you more. Being apart of the developing world or being apart of the developed world but sitting on the side as only a second class citizen? Someone without access to the healthcare. Someone without access to the education. Someone without access to the labor rights. Someone without access to the high standard of living.

Whats worst? Not having the opportunity or seeing the opportunity just within your grasp?

I dont know.

International Relations / Humanitarian Rights? Public Interests?

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Today, my co-worker, Maliwan, mentioned to me how it must be so hard to be an Asian student in the states now – post Virginia Tech… which got me into this talk about Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and blah blah blah…

The following discussion does not in anyway mean that I agree with or support the actions that were taken by Cho Seung-Hui on the Virginia Tech campus on 17 April 2007. As a college student and as a person, my heart goes out to the students, friends, and families of the victims who have had to suffer as a result of this massacre.

What do I do not agree with, however, is the way in which the media is presenting and spinning the coverage of this incident both during and especially after the massacre.

I was sitting in the Behavioral Medicine reception office of Bumrungrad International Hospital (the most “high-so” or bougie private hospital in Bangkok) when I first heard about the incident.

I’ve come to the conclusion that anything with “international” on it in Thailand means that not only is it catered to rich foreigners, but is one instance in which illustrates very clearly the wealth disparity that exists here in Bangkok.

The waiting room had a flat screen television that was turned to CNN and on it was a man who was on the scene of the massacre. The reporter caught my attention with his zealous tone of voice speaking of the worst school shooting in history.

Great, I thought. As if people around the world didn’t already think Americans were overly violent and America as already extremely unsafe.

Then my attention was drawn when the reporter started talking about the shooter. An Asian student from South Korea.

Even better. Now it’ll be even harder to for foreign exchange students who are trying to enjoy the pleasures of living, learning, and experiencing another culture and environment.

But later I found that, yes, the shooter was from South Korea. But his family lived in Virginia. His sister a graduate from Princeton. Him, an English major at Virginia Tech.

Great. He’s practically Asian American. Well, he’s as Asian American as my sister and believe me, Malisa is pretty American.

One of the biggest issues I’ve encountered living and traveling through Asia is that I’m never seen as western. Never seen as a “Genuine” American. Always catch people by surprise by my “wonderful English.”

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is a non-American born college student in the United States… it wasn’t his non-American-ness or Korean-ness that drove him to do what he did. It was growing up and living in America… as an American.

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is Asian and NOT American (in the sense that he was NOT born here)… it only reinforces the problems of being a perpetual foreigner that hangs over people of color in the states. Whether we were born in the U.S. or not, there will always be the assumption that we are not really American. We don’t belong. And maybe we’re just Cho Seung-Hui… another Asian kid in the states trying so hard to fit in by using academic excellence that we’re really just some ticking time bomb.

In any case. I really wouldn’t know how difficult it is to be an Asian college student in the states right now. But looking through facebook and the wave of groups that have sprung up denouncing Cho Seung-Hui as not representative of Asians… not representative of Koreans… etc. It looks like there is yet another issue to divide us in the already too fractured APA or API community.

when i'm feeling depressed . . .

i dont eat massive amounts of food like most people.
instead, i forget to eat and indulge in . . shopping.

a few things i'm going to miss about bangkok:

• 7 story shopping malls
• places where there are 4 malls literally next door to eachother
• 5% off everything just for being a "tourist"
• true cafe
• how kinokuniya wraps your books in plastic for you
• bus number 511

sometimes i ask myself: how can a place with so many beggars and almost no social welfare system have such beautiful shopping malls?

okay so. it's not sometimes. i ask myself that everyday. when i ride my bus from pinklao bridge through prathunam shopping center. turning left at where gaysorn and central world shopping malls are with their prada, versace, etc stores. going straight onto sukhumvit road, where some of the property costs more than homes in san francisco. and finally making it to where UNESCO is located, thonglor . . . aka: Beverly Hills of Bangkok.

on a different subject. since i've been feeling a little down in the dumps. i've been sitting on my ass watching dvds of tv shows. i'm done with greys anatomy and nip tuck. i've gone back to rewatching sex and the city . . for like the 8324 time. but hey. today was actually nice, which is why i was motivated enough to get off my ass and get out of this damn apartment.

i talked to some of my favorites and it made me happy. my mommy and daddy are funny. i had an interesting conversation with him about highly educated men and highly educated women. aparently, he believes that highly educated men dont have to be with highly educated women. in fact, he says they shouldn't. because if the woman is highly educated, they have a chance of falling below the women and highly educated men should never let that happen to them. it was funny.

i always thought my parents were relatively "modern" in thinking. and i think my dad is just upset with my brother and is pinpointing it to his girlfriend . . who has her BA in electrical engineering from ucla, her masters degree in electrical engineering from sdsu, and is currently in law school. i asked him about what he thought my prospects of getting married were. and it dawned on me. "hey daddy. no wonder you wanted me to go to sdsu and not berkeley. you just wanted to make sure i wouldn't intimidate the boys and i could get married huh??"

at that, my dad changed his mind and supported me on going to washington dc and new york this summer to go to my SEARAC conference AND check out colleges for grad school / law school.

so with that. here's to another night alone in my stupid apartment.

updates

i was having some trouble logging into my blog a few weeks ago and i just gave up. anyway.

utube was blocked in thailand. i was trying to look at danielle's election video and it wouldn't work. then i found out form diego that thailands government blocked.

yet another readon why a military junta ruling a country isn't a good idea.

on a different subject. songkran weekend. no school friday, monday, and tuesday. i'm heading back down to krabi. alone. umm. i think its time for me to go back to the states. i seem to have exhausted all my friends here in thailand because all they want to do is stay in bangkok.

on the subject of going back home. i'm still trying to fight the fight to take my exam early but it doesn't look like its gonna happen. its shit. yet another reason why i dont like the business program. or business people. they aren't nice to me the way they are to thai students. and they dont kiss my ass like they do the westerns. its bullshit because i pay a shit ton more tuition to come to thammasat. blah blah blah. bba sucks. especially when a final is set on 19 may while i would be done with school 4 may. a whole damn two weeks.

BUT on a brighter note. i like having connections with bus companies. yesterday i called my bus company to reserve a ticket for krabi and this was the conversation:

• me: hi, i'd like to reserve a ticket for krabi for tomorrow night
• him: sure, but the price is 550 not 350
• me: REALLY? why?
• him: well, it's songkran weekend so the price is higher.
  
• me: now i dont know. i come and get my tickets here all the time but thats almost twice the regular price.
• him: i'm sorry. all the companies are doing this . . but wait. what is your name??
• me: oh, well this is monica.
• him: (in thai) MONICA! why didn't you say something? of course. you get special price. we'll charge you the 350.
• me: GREAT!

so. i guess the universe is yet again balanced. cons of being asian but american in bba. pros of being asian but american in traveling. funny thing is that it usually doesn't work this way.

well. happy new years. the real new years!