Yeah, so anyway...

When I first visited the States, I judged American girls quite harshly because so many of them seemed so incredibly simple and shallow.  But after awhile, I realised that most American guys seemed quite uninterested in what came out of my mouth anyway.  Any deviation from the usual mating script was met by a blank stare, followed by an announcement that he was going to get another drink or use the bathroom & then a cloud of dust would appear where he had just been standing.  I came to see why girls might not see the value in developing a part of their anatomy that the opposite sex showed little interest in.

While it did seem to me that the situation was particularly dire Stateside, the differences were probably more attributable to my going there straight from university, to my living in a ski-town, and to American snowboarders being way more like jocks than Kiwi ones tend to be.  And to be fair, I remember finding many conversations with my NZ tertiary-educated peers quite wanting; wondering how people could do so much talking without ever really saying anything at all.

I guess it could all be blamed on youth, alcohol and sexual urges except that explanation just doesn't sit well with me.  I'm not saying I think that none of those factors had any influence.  Just that I find, across the board, a lot of people seem to switch their brain off as soon as they open their mouths; have the most slippery grasp of reason and logic; and are most uncomfortable if you try to challenge or discuss all but the most basic concepts in any detail at all.

And I don't flatter myself at all when it comes to my intelligence.  Once upon a time, I was a very bright kid but ultimately I placed way too much importance in my natural ability & never really applied myself, preferring to see how well I could do with the bare minimum of effort.  Combined with the most feeble memory and retention of actual facts, in particular statistics, I turned out to be quite the underachiever.  While I have not consciously ripped off anyone's ideas for this blog, I'm under no illusion that many, if not all, of the conclusions I have come to, have not been arrived at before.

Which is why it astounds me again and again how easily I am disappointed. How dull and unimaginative people seem happy to be.  How few of the constructs and paradigms, that make up their reality, they are willing to explore.  How content they are to be spoon-fed.  And of the ones happy to challenge, they often seem unable to differentiate between being critical and being cynical; taking the lazy path of refusing to believe in anything at all; casually waving off any suggestion, that something might be worth standing for, with some vague anecdote about how they heard an unsubstantiated rumour that it's all bullshit anyway.

Godzone.

By now, some of you may be aware that I have another blog that features NZ-made clothing labels (and hopefully soon, stores that sell mostly NZ-made clothing labels).  So it can be correctly surmised that I am fairly patriotic.  And I do love this country & started the blog, in part, because of concerns about employment, small businesses, and how community and economy affect each other.

I think we have a very special deal in this little country of ours.  It could use a lot of work though & we could stand to be a bit more protective and appreciative of it.  I think this country lends itself to more boutique-style enterprises, as far as customer demand is concerned, but unfortunately the government seems uninterested in helping small business.

But mine is not an unquestioning, wholesale love.  Growing up all over, I considered myself a citizen of the world.  Because I moved around so much & because my mother's Indonesian, it felt weird to align myself so completely to one country.  Of course, it didn't help that I was never really interested in sport.  It is easier to critique something from the outside, and patriotism seemed to me to be rife with faulty thinking and dangerous antagonism.  (After all, wars have been fought over nothing less / more.)  What I do think is important is a sense of community, of valuing each other.  Appreciating what we've got.  And preserving it for future generations.

There seems to be a fair amount of capitalising on national pride and nostalgia at the moment in NZ.  Sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that I am just being manipulated.  Like "Kiwiana" is being used like some kind of artificial flavouring in ads to sell us to us; or in movies and TV shows to tug on our heartstrings & as some kind of substitute for actual substance.

There are numerous T-shirts and hoodies with strong patriotic messages, cashing in on warm fuzzies, that are in fact made by "our friends" in China.  (Most of the NZ Music Month gear is not NZ-made; though to be fair, they are trying to do more than sell clothing.)  Like the truly obnoxious T-shirt emblazoned with the image of NZ & the words BORN HERE, that was of course not made here.

I wasn't born or made here.  But I live here.  And I love here.  I know how special it is.  And I don't need the message constantly fed to me.  Especially by those happy to sell NZ out.

On Our Own.

It used to be that we were told what to think and how to behave by religion, the class system and social etiquette, but these are all struggling to stay relevant and respected.  We can pick and choose traditions now and create our own.  There is a much greater sense of individual freedom, as illusory as it may be.  The majority still rules but what it agrees on, or decrees, is in constant flux and can be more easily ignored or circumvented.  We often don't even know our neighbours.  And can pick and choose our own social networks.  We still have the law to guide us (which is slower to change & the enforcement of which tends to uphold the prevailing socioeconomic hierarchy) but the emphasis has maybe moved, from what we should and shouldn't do, to what we can get away with.

So are we thinking for ourselves now?  About what we want our lives to mean?  About the world we live in?  How we are all connected?  Or have we just stopped thinking about anything but ourselves?  Religion cannot be replaced by science for a number of reasons.  For one, the message needs to be repetitive and completely self-assured.  Science needs to always be happy to be proven wrong & to let new light shine on old subject matter.  Also, by its very nature, it is not as accessible to the masses as religion.  Its focus and scope is often too small or too infinitely large to give us any answers we require in our daily life.  And it tells us time and time again how inconsequential we are.

Might we turn instead then to the arts to fill the void?  (The very thing our education system tends to place very little value on.)  The arts tell us that what our hearts and minds contemplate does matter.  That, whether or not it continues to exist after our bodies expire, in this life, our soul does exist.  Our expressions of love, anger, sorrow, humour and fear live on after us in these mediums.  Which is why it is so important to tell your truth & not temper it in the name of commercial viability.  Art and entertainment have always had a tenuous relationship; and while it may not be possible to accurately gauge whether the balance has shifted, it is always safe to say that we could certainly do with less processed junk food.  The arts remind us, rather importantly, there is no one reality; that viewpoints are just that; and of our interconnectedness and the commonalities of the human experience.

I have read countless online remarks about how undeserving an artist (whether it be an actor or a couture designer) is of reverence or appreciation, even when they have just recently died, because they did not discover a cure for cancer, etc.  How infinitely more noble it is to be a scientist.  Despite the fact that many scientists are merely whores of capitalism, pushing the frontiers of production and exploitation, rather than healing the world's woes.  Much of what ails us has been caused by us.  And the cruelest blows can be those inflicted by the loss of love, of kindness, of hope.  Anyone who seeks to restore these and celebrate beauty and joy is worthy of our esteem.  Anyone who strives to remind us to take our blinkers off, and to think of others, is deserving of our respect.

I believe there is no big plan, no invisible puppeteer.  Bad things happen to good people & good to bad.  Everything can be taken away from you in an instant.  There is no inherent justice in the world, except that which we actively uphold.  It is now that matters.  How you represent yourself.  What you do more than what you say.  What you bring to the equation.  And what you learn from others.  We are heaven and hell on earth.  And there is no-one else to blame.

Resolved.

To...

Stop saying "awesome" until 2012.  I don't say it more than most but struggle to come up with alternatives.  Which is ridiculous in the Age Of The Superlative.

Blog more often.  Sometimes I feel like I am out of opinions but it's more the case that I haven't really been engaging my brain lately.  I need to read more and socialise more.  I will still refuse to stress myself out about this blog.  It will still be something I do only when I am inspired.

Write a web series.  And maybe short stories.  I have problems with story lining.  And getting started.  But not with coming up with a hundred reasons why something won't work or why it'll be crap.  Have to stop fantasising about getting on a writing team for a TV series (and learning on the job) because I'm pretty sure you have to have written something other than a blog to get hooked up with that kind of sweet deal.

Fix my lower back pain with yoga and professional massages.

Halve my debt.  No concrete ideas on how I am going to do this just yet but will work harder on not having gaps in between employment, bringing lunch from home, supermarket shopping more, stuff like that.

Fight for a better world.  A more conscious, meaningful and understanding one.  Not let the bastards get me down.  Fuck the naysayers!  Stand up for the underdogs.  To still be me, just a better version of me.  To make sure that I am spreading love more than anger.  To suffer fools (marginally) more.

That's me for 2010.  Off to Ocean Beach tomorrow where there is no internet or cellphone coverage.  Thank you to those who actually read my blog.  To those who bother to comment, subscribe or are visibly following - it means more to me than I can say.

But enough about me...

When I was a kid, my mum was always harping on at me to at least be honest with myself.  It was a pretty see-through attempt to get me to tell her the truth when she thought I was trying one on, but nevertheless it really stuck with me.  I don't have to always like myself but I do make a constant effort to know myself.

"Do unto others..." is another edict that I lived by that made me feel that I was still Christian in nature, if no longer in beliefs.  I have since had to revise that commandment as I came to realise that people have different comfort zones and sensitivities & that it was important to respect that. When I was younger, I assumed that if I would be comfortable with something then other people would be too.  And that it wasn't my problem if people were more uptight than I was.  I was generous by nature so share and share alike, right?  Which is bullshit.  Not least because I never seemed to have much to share, at least in the material sense.

Over the years I learned not to be offended when someone seemed a lot more stingy than I or less accessible.  I used to hate the saying, "Variety is the spice of life" because people would invariably incant it when I was bitching about what a dick someone was.  But I learned to try to respect everyone's individuality, if increasingly from a distance.

The truth is that as I have gotten older, I have well and truly gotten grumpier, despite all my (minimal) attempts to exercise tolerance. (Though I did get a tattoo of the Japanese/Chinese symbol of love to remind me not to be such a bitch; and to remind myself that since I believed that the average person is an idiot, if people were getting on my nerves more than usual then the issue lay with me.)  In theory, I honestly believe to each their own; in reality, I am more than happy to live and let live, as long as I don't have to suffer their company.

I am a snob.  Well, that's not all I am but, thanks to my mum, I believe you should call yourself on your own bullshit.  While I'm at it, I'm also a bitch, lazy, shallow, thoughtless, insensitive, unsociable, obnoxious, critical, angry and self-centered.  I am also the exact opposite of all those things.  I can be very dual in nature.  Something I attribute in part to my dual ethnicity and the two worlds I have occupied.  That and I'm a bit mental.  While I can sometimes come off as reluctant to mingle and socialise, it is in part a consequence of my need to have true and honest communication and debate.  I guess, deep and meaningfuls but not always.  (Trust me.)  I find it hard to build up to it.  I find it hard to put in the apparently requisite hours of small talk.  It is of little consequence to me how long we have known each other.

So to some degree, I am a snob because I can be a little too intense for people to handle & they withdraw or react badly.  But I am also a snob because I find a lot of people unimaginative, unintelligent, unconscious and uninspired a lot of the time.  Sometimes all at once.  I have tried to accommodate my own issues by avoiding people and situations that annoy me.  Suffice it to say, my world has gotten a lot smaller.  It may have also been my mum who told me that only boring people get bored, which was something that I dismissed as pat and untrue.  But it might actually be the case that my aversion to boring people has made me bored and my life boring.

More questions than answers.

There have been an abundance of tragic stories in the news recently, bringing home what can go horribly wrong in an instant.  In a moment of neglect, recklessness or irresponsibility.  Lives lost and lives destroyed.  My heart has ached both for the families of the deceased and for the defendant in some of these cases.  It's hard for me to imagine which would be worse - the idea of losing a loved one in such a way or the idea of causing someone's death through circumstances under my control.  I hope to never experience the latter and to never experience the former ever again.

When it is obvious that the guilty are truly remorseful and devastated, it can be hard to see the point of sending them to jail when it seems clear that this will never happen again & that they will be forever punished and haunted by their actions.  I have never studied law and so am not remotely knowledgeable about the definition(s?) of manslaughter, what sentences are usually imposed, and how much remorse is taken into consideration by the judge.  (Please feel free to enlighten me, and of course to express your opinion even if you didn't go to law school.)  If someone pleads guilty & expresses remorse, should it even be up to the family to decide whether the defendant goes to jail?  How close would the family members have to be to be allowed to make that kind of decision? Would they have to prove that or indeed if they are emotionally or psychologically stable enough to make that kind of judgement?  What if the deceased had no family?  What if they were pregnant?  This is all highly emotional and variable & it seems to me that the law must be logical and apply the facts of the matter to each case?

Is jail even the right place for these people?  I am not arguing that their lives should be allowed to resume as normal & as soon as possible.  A life was lost.  And some wounds will never heal.  But what is the logic in sending them to be confined with people who meant to commit their crimes & who are not sorry?  Would home detention and/or community service not be more beneficial?

Actually, what is the point of jail in general?  Punishment?  Rehabilitation?  Constraint?  Deterrence?  Vengeance?  Criminal instruction?  Because by and large, unless the last two are the correct answers, it seems that jails do not work.  Not to mention that we just can't build them fast enough.  Jail certainly punishes but often dehumanises in a way that certainly seems counterproductive if parole is likely to be granted.  Jail can't promise to make anyone sorry - except maybe that they were caught.  It seems to be incredibly hard to ever become an upstanding and productive citizen upon release.  And perhaps in cases that are successful, it is despite the prison system and despite the society the reformed is released into?

Size Matters.

In primary school, a teacher once called my mother to school & after a few warm-up questions, asked if she was feeding me properly.  I still marvel at her audacity/courage/cluelessness/ignorance.  Luckily for her, Mum chose to laugh it off.

I grew up skinny and with having it commented on for about the first 30 years of my life.  Most people refrain on commenting on how overweight someone is to their face but for some reason the gloves come off for the underweight.  Of course, these comments would often try to disguise themselves as concern that I might suffer from some kind of eating disorder but without ever really managing to pull it off.  I would reply that I am half-Asian and might sometimes casually but spitefully add that we can't all be built like farm girls.  This all made me extremely self-conscious and insecure about my body.  In a particularly ironic twist, considering the damage she is said to have inflicted on the body image of so many young women at the time, things changed in a dramatic way for me when I turned a magazine page & feasted my eyes on a Calvin Klein ad featuring a young naked Kate Moss.  I was transfixed.  Not just at that face, but at every part of her.  I sat there, comparing, feeling relief and delight wash over me.  Her breasts were smaller than mine!  Yet she was undoubtedly a vision.  And that's when I realised there was nothing wrong with me.  That I was healthy and proportional.  That I didn't have to measure up to some agreed upon ideal of being blond, white with big tits.  That there are many different kinds of beauty and none so powerful as the beauty in deciding not to hate the vessel that carries your big beautiful brain around.  

Skinny models have been a big bone of contention in the media in the last few years.  And I have to say that I frequently gasp in shock, not pleasure, at the state of some of these young women.  I feel like I would know, better than most, the difference between someone who couldn't put weight on if they tried and someone who is starving themselves.  But the issue is two-fold:  the systemic abuse of these coat-hangers and the effect of this persistent message on "real" women and particularly impressionable young girls.  Fashion is an industry that has the tendency to focus these models solely on their external appearance, often making them feel like they have nothing else to offer.  And then endlessly criticising the 'one' thing they have going for them, so much so that apparently most models are unhappy with their appearance but certainly not because they feel they look like they could use a sandwich.  And while I think that whatever standard of beauty is in vogue will inevitably alienate some, we have definitely gone too far;  as is evidenced by how dumpy the sight of a beautiful woman, who has not been almost photoshopped out of existence, looks to us now in a magazine.  And the fact that despite the three waves of feminism, women hate ourselves more than ever & many of our young ones are starving, slowly killing, themselves.

Actually the issue of skinny models is three-fold.  No-one protests against the protests more than designers.  (Though not all feel that way.)  Protesting that these girls are naturally skinny & avoiding the question of why they are deeming it necessary to use younger and younger girls (some of whom haven't even finished growing yet) to sell clothing to adult women.  Protesting that their clothes won't look good walking down the runway on anything other than the abnormally skinny.  Which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the skills of the designers themselves.  Essentially they are saying that if you have an inch of fat, their clothes will show up your every flaw.  Which, for the most part, can't really be true.  And no-one's really suggesting that the current crop of models all be replaced by the plus-size variety.  (Though some in the pro-emaciated camp seem to have a somewhat skewed view of what plus-size means exactly.)  So the answer to me is for us to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the fashion world to embrace variety being the spice of life and to show us that they can design clothes that we want to wear because they make us look and feel good.