Turn Me On

...........I am just sitting here....waiting for you......come on.....to turn me on, turn me on.... (Norah Jones)

People Who We Should Not Forget (I)

I bumped into this from Willblog:

It's difficult to understand why someone would take their own life. It's even more difficult when that life has been so well-spent, with so much more promise to come. Similar tragedies in the past month make me pause and try to appreciate this moment, every moment, before it's gone forever.

Iris Chang, an extraordinary writer and alumnus of the University of Illinois College of Communications, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on November 9th. Her first book was Thread of the Silkworm, which told the remarkable story of the Chinese scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, founder of the Chinese rocket program who emigrated to the United States only to be isolated in America. Her second book, The Rape of Nanking, earned international acclaim and served to announce Iris Chang as a ground-breaking scholar and human rights advocate. He third book, The Chinese in America, told the extraordinary narritive of her own ancestors in a way that revealed America's own identity.

I had a chance to interview Iris Chang in 1995, and was immediately struck by her intelligence and humanity. Apparently she had a similar impact on everyone she met. About 100 people attended a recent event in her honor at the University of Illinois, where her former professors, friends, and colleagues spoke movingly about her life, her work, and our loss. A scholarship in honor of Iris has been established by her family, with information available at the University of Illinois College of Communications, 217-333-2350.

Iris' description of the recent genocide of Chinese in Indonesia:
It is important in all these cases to tell the truth, to refute the denials. .......In fact, the denial in Indonesia are considered as a part of the last stage of genocide. First the victim is killed, then the memory of killing itself is killed.

Starbuck's

A Grande Latte never fails to awake my otherwise retarded and dull brain. But of course, you don't have to get a Latte in the Starbuck's. A Starbuck's and a Royal Cafe's tastes not much different to me. Hey, don't get me wrong, this article is not intended to be an eulogy for either Latte or the Starbuck's.

Liping threw a question at us: how soon do you think Starbuck's will go out of business? What a question! I was stunned for we just watched a brief video about how Starbuck's created a business model and a wave of coffee culture awareness globally! The class went quiet and nobody dared to give an answer. Seeing this, he asked another question: how often do you go to the Starbuck's? Carol, Grace? (We were two sitting closest to him.) How could I tell him that I go there almost everyday that an alarming amount of money of mine went to the Starbuck's yet I am addicted to it? Still, nobody answered. "I believe it would go downhill shortly,within at most 5 years. After all, who would like to pay a coffee at $3-$4 dollars? I would prefer a coffee at $1.00 in a gas station", he commented. Only me and Carol protested his prediction (maybe because others were international students who didn't go to the Starbuck's often or maybe they agreed with it). I was shocked by how much Liping did not know about American's coffee culture and coffee prices. Yes, a Grande Latte is $3.4, but a Grande expresso is only $1.5! Besides, they are only a few cents more expensive than those sold in other cafes!

Abruptly, a lot of words and sentences all came into my mind, suffocating me to death. I didn't want to argue with him in class. On the other hand, how was I able to verbaliz my experiences and let him feel the same experiences in the same way! To me, a cup of Latte in the Starbuck's was a refreshing, cozy and hearty moment, keeping me wondering my life could be lead in such an easy and light way in the voice of Norah Jone's. Just as what was revealed by the video, a lot of people working in the Starbuck's were graphic desingers. Graphic designers in a corporation selling coffee! Apparently, what the Starbuck's strived for was the creation of an experience-aromatic, invigorating, lively,cultural, etc. I was always so eager to read"the way I see the world" on the back side of the cup. All ingredients combined integratedly to create an experience with an esentially middle-class taste. I'm not defending this taste nor do I allow myself blinded by this superficiality of middle-class life. But I still treasure the feeling sipping a Green Tea Frappuccino, looking at designed coffee cups and pots with pretty graphs, browsing CDs, in a Starbuck's.

The class I took with Dr.Liping Cai was in the fall of 2005. It seems that the Starbuck's is still doing well. Liping might be right - it will go downhill in a short period. Or he might be wrong. Who cares? The event simply illustrated too much obssesive concerns on business/money issues and too little on human dimension- a big part of the reason that I left Purdue.

Words

"It doesn't matter how much you are in love with someone. What matters is who you are when you are with the one."- The Accidental Tourists

"It only takes one generation to lose Chineseness.How many does it take to gain America?"- Le Ann Schreiber