Testosterone

Grace was talking about an article in the New York Times for Father's day. The gist was that the more you take care of the kids, the more your testosterone levels drop. 

"So what's your point?" I asked. 

"So people were saying, 'Does that mean the more you take care of the kids then you become Caitlin Jenner?'"

"So what's your point?" I asked again although I may have used a few expletives. 

I have noticed that since my kids have gotten older, and I noticed my bad posture and started reviving my old Kung Fu practice that I have become sort of more manly. In other words, I am taking care of the kids more like a Sifu now and less like a father. After all, this is the age that I am already familiar with. My older students that are now teenagers started at 4 and Jonah is 4. 

So planning for the summer of Kung Fu is kind of like growing balls again in a way. I can feel it. 

But with that, I seemed to have lost patience for other things. 

So what I want to know is, do I want to have low or high testosterone levels. 

Countless commercials and advertisements will tell me that testosterone is what keeps your muscles big and dense and wards off diabetes and other health problems that kill you. But they are trying to sell me Testosterone supplements. 

I heard this thing on NPR about records of Korean Eunuchs, and how all of them lived over 80 years, and this was back in the day when I don't know what the life expectancy was, but it was probably like 30 or 40 or something like that. Now living in the palace probably helped, but I think even palace life expectancy was low. And in that program they talked about high testosterone contributing to heart attacks etc etc. 

So let's go into the world of fiction for a moment because the scince depends on whose selling what. 

Did you ever read/watch Proud Smiling Wanderer? You know, Siu Ngo Gong Hu. The protagonist is Ling Hu Ching and he masters duk gu gau geem, a sowrd technique of now technique. 

This is the most powerful sword in the book other than, pik che geem faht, from a book called Kwai fa bo deen, a type of sword technique developed by Eunuchs. The only problem is, to practice it, you will have internal injuries once you get to the high level... until certain charcaters like Lam Ping Ji and Dong Fong but Bai realized the meaning of the secret phrase, "In order to practice the Enuch Gung you have to loook like a Gung (eunuch) i.e. you have to cut your balls off. 

I would like to thrown in at this point that don't dogs that are gelded live longer? And also don't horses with one ball have stronger staying power because they don't waste energy or something? In the Town the bulbous nosed villain who also played Hakeswill in Sharpe's Eagle mentioned something about gelding a horse or a man in a "chemical" way as opposed to  just cutting them out, But I digress.

So Pik Che Geem faht was the secret of Lam Ping Ji's family, but none of them could ever get any good until Lam Ping Ji went all in and cut his own balls off. But the founder of the family was a monk right? And he adopted a baby instead of getting married and was world renowned for his powerful sword. So did he cut HIS balls off? Or maybe his understanding was different since he was a Buddhist monk. Of course for some reason the women charcaters do not practice this books Kung Fu which I feel is sort of a plot error right? 

But here's the thing, (of course Jin Yong wrote this book in the 70's but let's pretend the novel is just actually real.)

Maybe the founder of the Lam family didn't have to cut his balls because by raising an adopted child from a baby as a single parent father his testosterone levels dropped and he was therefore able to practice PIk Che geem faht, appearing to be a eunuch without actually cutting. 

So does this mean I can now practice Pik Che geem faht?

The Fledgling

After dropping Noah off at school I saw a baby bird on our brick path. I put away Shao's bike and then looked at the bird again. It was a sparrow. It didn't look too good. I had seen it before in the bushes with the mother nearby. My first instinct is to leave nature alone. It will run it's course. But as I went inside I thought, "Maybe this means something that this bird cam across my path and maybe I was meant to do something. After all, it was pretty defenseless like that on the ground. If I put it in makeshift nest and put in on our porch, then it's mother could find him and it would be safe from cats, or from me accidentally stepping on it or something.
I cut up a box that had some packing material that looked just like a next would.
I shoveled the bird in with cardboard not touching it because I had heard that if you touch it the mother will reject it. Then I made a little house for it on the porch. I checked on him every once in a while and he looked like he was happy to be out of the rain and had stopped shivering as much. He tucked his little head into his breast and went to sleep.

I then looked at a bunch of stuff on the internet and found out that this sparrow was not a baby but a fledgling and that it had been doing what it should have done hopping along the ground. But it had been shivering. I decided I should move it from the porch to a bush nearby because the mother might not be able to find it.

My neighbor saw my makeshift nest in the bush and called the Audubon society, which said she should do nothing and we talked and I left the bird  there to sleep. The more I read the more I realized that perhaps I was hindering the development of this bird by "rescuing" it. I decided I might want to put it back where I found it. There were sparrows flying around which I thought might be the mother.

I moved the box to the ground under the bush. I decided I would keep watching for the mother, and that if tonight, it was still there in the box, I would move it up to the porch away from cats and dogs.

I saw a couple sparrows who looked like they were looking for it, and again I thought, "maybe this fledgling needs to develop it's legs instead of being so lazy in the little box I made it. So I dumped it out of the box gently. It looked at me with eyes that looked like Dai Dai's when he is being tipped off balance by surprise.

Everytime I checked on it Dai Dai would ask where I had gone and I tried to explain. Idecided I had to watch after my own little fledgling. So I watched the bird from the house.

I noticed all sorts of birds passing and flying around. Our neighbor has a great vegetable garden and  I think this had incerased the number of birds that hang out on my porch and in the bushes. There were colorful red ones that looked like robins. There were orange breasted ones that looked like Orioles, and then two jet black ones that looked sleek with yellow thin beaks flew by too.

"Look at how beautiful all these birds are." I thought.

The two jet black birds and an orange breasted one suddenly seemed to take interest in the fledgling as I watched from a window three stories up. And then, the jet black one made a clear decision after watching for some time. It leaped forward and stabbed the fledgling several times before the orange breasted bird attacked in and chased them both off.

I ran downstairs to find the fledgling heavy with dying, it's life seeping out of it's defenseless undeveloped body. I tried to see if I could scoop it up with cardboard again and it made some last motions of flapping.

"Fuck!" I yelled looking around at the birds coming and going with a new perspective. I felt like I had witnessed a street fight. A murder. Indeed it was strange that the orange breasted bird did seem to try and step in on behalf of the sparrow fledgling despite it not being of the same species.

The murderer bird... I suppose that was about competition of some sort. It certainly wasn't about food.

A neighbor's friend came by and tried to sell me his services for gardening and house painting and I chatted in a friendly way suitable for society while the fledgling slowly died.

I checked after the man left and it was now heavy with death. Lifeless. I went back inside and Dai Dai asked where I had gone. I tried to explain. I got out three sticks of incense and found the lighter. Obviously this would do nothing. But I did it anyway.

I lit the incense and watched it burn. The ground was wet but I wanted to make sure there was no chance of a fire, and standing there made it feel like a service.

I rang the bell to tell my neighbor, the woman, because I wanted to talk about it. But she wasn't home.

I stood and watch and smelled the incense burn with Dai Dai who didn't much care about the dead bird, but was fascinated by the living ones.

My neighbor, her husband came home and I explained what I had saw. We chatted over the birds dead body and talked of wild and nature and various experiences he had had in Namibia, and about cats.

My neighbor, the woman, came back home and I explained and she almost cried. Now it really did feel like a funeral. I suppose it was. But I didn't bury the bird because I didn't know how dead it was. I suppose I will bury him later.

So much for that.

I followed all the rules I saw online.

Fuck the rules. If I had kept that bird on the porch it would have lived an extra day or so, at least another hour. In another week it would know how to fly. Maybe I should have just raised it despite it's being illegal. Then if it died, well at least I would have somehow gotten something out of it in some sort of science experiment sort of way. At least it would have died quietly on the porch instead of being murdered in the bush. Who was that bird? Was it someone trying to contact me from the realm beyond? Why was it in my path? Coincidence?

Well, it's dead now.

Drinking Tea

I have been working on my new book, "Kung Fu and Cooking" and I was writing about tea drinking. I suddenly realized how much I missed the tea drinking culture that we had at Moh Goon. Enough of this in the microwave tea bag in a mug shit. This summer I am going to put loose tea in a pot and pour it into a cup. We'll just do the Chrysanthemum tea so the kids can drink it too, and maybe I'll make a small tea pot of some strong Taiwanese tea. And the water will be boiled, not this electric singing water boiler crap either. After all, I can really only drink tea on the early morning anyway. So I'll have it for breakfast after our Tai Chi Inner peace, mein lay jum session. And I'll get little tea cups. Heck we'll have a Chinese Tea party every morning while we eat. I may have to go buy some supplies from Chinatown tomorrow.

Maybe Grace wants to make fun of me and say that it's just like my "Chinese Utopian village."
But heck that's what I'm going to create. I'm not the first one to say they were going to create some sort of City Upon a Hill in America. So I'm going to do it this summer. My kids and I will live a scheduled version of my dream. Kung Fu, Tea,  Dulcimer, Chess, art, learning the Wong Fei Hung song, Math and Science, and some other activities at the library But drinking tea will be a part of it.
Even if I'm the only one drinking it.

Black Chic watching

I went to a library event tonight called "Black Chic Watching." Basically it is about how black women are portrayed in the media and how that is different from how Latina or White women are portrayed. The presenter, Amber Knight, started with a picture of Mammy tying up Scarllett O'Hara's dress (corsette?)
And then went through a bunch of stereotypes and problems with how black women are portrayed and how white women are portrayed. All this was done in an entertaining and funny way too. So actually it was like a fun night out away from the kids. Plus I got to see how someone else presented at the library.
Then she showed some examples of shows that broke that mold. Like Merlin, which has a black Guinevere. And Scandal. She mentioned how some people have an issue with  this character but that she likes her, and since the audience at Library events tends to be small, there was more back and forth in the presentation than there usually would be.

At the end she did a section called Blank-blank watching. Where you can  say things you notice in the media. At first, I thought I didn;t have much to say because I was not as upset as everyone else about the Emma Stone Aloha thing. But then I noticed that I do kind of watch for half Asians, but a lot of the women just pass sort of, and Brandon Lee, and Russell Wong, were portrayed pretty well and since there isn't a lot of portrayal in Hollywood, I would just watcha ton of TVB and Hong Kong movies.

But I did realize that I do this thing. I watch for Chinese portrayal in Hollywood films, and white guys speaking Chinese or mixed guys in Hong Kong films. There is the guy that played Dai Fei (he's half white but doesn't even know his white father, that kind of deal.) Then there is Michael Wong (I think that he is actually Russell Wong'r brother.)

But the Chinese and Chinatown, and Chinese culture in general in Hollywood opened up a can of worms for me. And then I started thinking about Charlie Chan and all the stuff I read about that. Now don't gt me wrong. I didn't have that much trouble with the fact that technically Charlie Chan was played by a White guy and there is a lot of racist stuff going on there. But when you look at the history of Asian American men, that in the Silent film era there was this Japanese American star that white women were losing their minds over, and how that had to be stopped. And then later we have Bruce Lee, and then Brandon Lee. And then Jason Scott Lee in the movie about Bruce Lee by Linda Lee, and how I remembered how that love seen made some of my teachers really uncomfortable, that got me thinking.

And actually when you juxtapose all that with Cameron Crowe's portrayal of the Asian male in 16 candles. Now that is a WTF moment. So nah I don't have a problem with Emma Stone being cast as a Half Asian in Cameron Crowe's Aloha. But I'm sure there are other issues with the movie. And yet, it was almost as eye opening for me to watch 16 candles in the 2000's for the first time as it would be to watch a foreign film.

All in all a fun night out and I think it would have been cool to have seen such an event at my high school when I went there. It would have sparked some interesting conversation.

Chess Playing

Noah has played a couple other people in Chess. He is much more behaved when he plays people that aren't me.
"I just don't like to play you!" he yelled.
But this summer I plan for him to play the game everyday. Part of it is to learn that you can lose and not get all crazy. Also it is a good activity to develop the mind and just pass the time. It will be part of our Summer program.
The first game was with someone staying with us and his approach was pretty hardcore.
"Ah ah. You can't take any moves back. You make your decisions and you live with them. If you are in a bad situation you have to learn ti improvise." That game actually never ended. A picture of the board was taken at the game will resume in a couple of months.
I liked this approach. But it is hard to do this with me. Noah will yell and scream. But with a stranger he won't do this.

Our neighbor played a teaching game. Showing "if you do this then I can do this, and this is a good move but that is not."
Actually, even this way Noah will get mad at me too because he doesn't want me to tell him what to do.

"Do you want me to watch or not to watch?" I asked him before the game started.

"Not watch." Noah said. So I sort of hid from afar and listened in. This was not so much to see how he would do on the board, but how he would react emotionally.

He did very well.

Aloha

I'm not from Hawaii. But I am half Asian. Really.
I just wanted to my take on the whole Emma Stone, Aloha, movie in Hawaii thing.
When I saw the commercials I thought, "that's cool."
When I saw the billboard I thought, "I bet if I was a local from Hawaii I would be upset about a movie called Aloha, about Hawaii witha an all white cast. I would be like, that's our word and our state, get the hell out."

But when I found out that Emma Stone is Allison Ng and that she is representing someone half Asian
I really....actually don't care as much as other people seem to. Sure there are some other Half Asian models who I've recently seen crossed over to Hollywood from Hong Kong cinema who could probably use the work. So I guess if I was one of those actresses I would be like, "Damn it that should have been my multi-million dollar part." or since the movie flopped, "Damn, glad I didn't get that role."

But people keep talking about her appearance, appearance, appearance, and start saying stuff like "she is white as it gets because she is Swedish, Irish and German" etc etc.

I happen to be Irish and German... and Chinese.

I just want to say that the classic "yellow face" actor Warren Oland, who played Charlie Chan (inspired by Apana Chang who had a personality more like and Asian Indiana Jones) was Swedish. And he also looked more Asian than I do because.... he was. Wait how is that so was his mother or father.. no.
Remember Genghis and Kubla Khan? Yeah they were all up in Europe. So a lot of Europeans have Asian ancestry.

Maybe they should have got someone that looked more Asian and that had a big name... like Jennifer Lopez. Would people get mad about that? Because I think if Jay Lo spit in a cup on that Henry Louis Gates show, I think that the percentages of Asian blood would come up pretty highh, even though those "Asian" genes are really American Indian, and they have been in this hemisphere since before the ice age or even before, back when monstrous looking creatures roamed the earth.

I'm just saying are there issues with the movie? I'm sure there are, even if Lucy Liu got the part there would probably be issues with the movie. Will I watch it? When it comes out for free on Amazon because of the low rating, yeah I'll probably watch it.

Revenge of the Green Dragons had a practically all Asian cast an the directors were the guys from young And Dangerous, but guess what? I was extremely insulted by most of the movie and it sucked and I waited the whole movie for the protagonist (who looks like my best friend) to pop the bad guy from Glee, but noooooo. He gets popped. Oh I spoiled it? No I saved you from watching the whole thing.
But I did like that all those Asian actors got work. I mean good for them. But the movie was still racist and disrespectful to Gwan Gung and the Buddha head with green eyes in the back ground for noe apparent reason. Probably just a references to Big Trouble in little China or something. Another racist movie where a lot of Asians got acting work.

Is Aloha a bad movie? I don't know.

Here are some good ones.

Better Luck Tomorrow. (dark and disturbing though.)

Ping Pong Playa (awesome.)

Let's not sound so whiny. Let's just hold up the movies that are good and make more of those. Oh yeah.

Finishing the Game (have to watch that one. That had a pretty white guy playing a half Asian too. Pretty Funny)

And finally, the Young and Dangerous movies were really good. Maybe they could remake those, but set them in New York. That would be cool. I mean why be so graphic? And why not have that priest and have the whole Christian Allegory and show some respect for Gwan Gung instead of keeping him in a dark room. Turn on the lights man!

Okay. Okay. Just focus on making good Asian American movies. Then these little slights by Hollywood will simply be laughable.