Japan

Global Feminism

~ Chau ~ Leave a comment

Women hold up half the sky. – Chinese proverb

I had quite a liberal upbringing, thanks to parents who were more spiritual than religious, who weren’t very interested in politics, and who were less tiger parents and more “as long as you don’t get into trouble, you can do whatever you want.” Yet, as I grow older and know more about the world, there was a huge rift between them and I. They want me to aspire to marriage. Sure, a successful career and financial security are nice too, but they want me to find a nice man to take care of me.

For the longest time, I could not fathom how my well-educated, liberal parents could have such a backward view of women and their potentials. I could be anything, an engineer, a doctor, a writer, a politician, a Fortune 500 CEO, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But I also had to be a wife and a mother. It wasn’t that I could have it all; it was that I must.

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A Cynic’s Guide to Life

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15 RULES TO LIVING YOUR LIFE WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE AN IDIOT (aka A Cynic’s Guide to Life):
 

1. wake up early and go to bed late. it will look like you don’t care. you will seem detached and cool.

2. everyone is out to hurt you. protect the face.

3. anxiety is not sexy. always be proud and confident, even when you don’t know what the fuck you are doing.

4. quoting from psychotics like Edgar Allan Poe, sexists like Sigmund Freud, arrogant creeps like Allen Ginsberg and smart-ass mystics like Kurt Vonnegut will make you seem cultured and worldly. who cares if they are all dull and you only read the title page?

5. tell people you hate Woody Allen films even if you’ve never seen any of them.

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The Crimson Queen of the Night

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I walked through the crooked corners, rubber soles padded on the cobbled stone street, sat down on an uneven wooden bench with three fourth legs to look at dying light over the old oak tree and cry.

My grandfather came on a rusted red bicycle, and sat beside me, with his old French pipe and his worn suit jacket and the smell of smoke, oranges and regrets.

We were companions, sharing our souls and tired sighs and bleak gazes into the endless stretch of the night sky, surrounded by the low squeaking of the bicycle, with its nuts and bolts and chains sliding together, falling apart, trying to keep itself going.

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Train Stations, Runaway and Self-esteem

~ Chau ~ Leave a comment

Some words are better spoken. Thus I did just that. It was enjoyable, so follow me on SoundCloud and hopefully I will be making more of this.

Every time I find myself at a train station, I am hit with this overwhelming urge to run away, start a new life and not messing it all up this time around. But then just like almost every other dreams I’ve ever had, that running away fantasy ended up in the same old dusty attic.

Music: “The 49th Street Galleria” by Chris Zabriskie

Red – a poem

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                For Hiroshima
red

I woke up to

a deformed sky

doused with the sunrise

the warmth lingered on my skin

the cold flame

chilled me to the bone.

 

I looked out the window

to see a blinding red

coming closer

I wondered

what the divine wind saw

coming closer

cherry blossom farewell

send the sinners home

to mothers

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Walking Forwards Backwards

~ Chau ~ 1 Comment

Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds…It always seems to me that I’ll be well where I am not, and this question of moving is one that I’m forever entertaining with my soul.’…’poets’, who could not be satisfied with the horizons of home even as they appreciated the limits of other lands, whose temperaments oscillate between hope and despair, childlike idealism and cynicism. – Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel.

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I, for all of my almost-two-decade-long life so far, have been walking forwards facing backwards. Partly because I want to remember what the past was, and to hold on that whatever that is that made me the person I am today. But mostly because I am an adrenaline junkie. Not in the sense that I want to go zip-lining every waking moment, but more like I want to always have exciting things happening in my life.

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Tabloid-tify a News Story

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Words on the streets are, THINK Global School is REALLY into place-based learning. So much so I think they might need professional intervention. But for now, here’s a daily fix of the juiciest stories on the block.

(Actual explanation: As part of Part 2 of our IB Language and Literature course, Mass Communication, and since we were located in Hiroshima, we were tasked with finding a news story on Japan and then turn it into a tabloid story, complete with a tabloid cover and silly sounding name. As you can see below, I might have had a little too much fun with that.

Disclaimer: None of these stories should be taken seriously, especially not the main article. Macklemore, however, is really rumoured to lead a double life as an IB History and Theory of Knowledge teacher.)

Eye-Pop-Tabloid-cover

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