Achoo!

Before the long Chinese New Year weekend, I asked a coworker if he was going somewhere. He said he had plans to visit Japan. He just hoped that he won’t be encountering too many Chinese tourists because of the coronavirus which is all over the news at the moment. I shrug and nod at the thought.

After living in Korea for so many years, I could differentiate Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese by the way they look, dress, and behave, especially as tourists. Listening to that comment, it’s a bit odd to hear such casual xenophobia from coworkers, when from a western point of view, he might as well be Chinese himself. Right now, I’m seeing Chinese Canadians are reporting being stigmatized due to fear of being infected by the virus. The same goes in other parts of the world. News about French newspapers being particularly insensitive towards their Chinese populace has been going viral, no pun intended. Asians aren’t usually very loud when they suffer racism. In fact, many racist Asian tropes have been so normalized due to people suffering in silence that it takes a fair amount of time to convince them that such tropes are racist.

In any case, I think situations like these are just catalysts for internal racist attitudes to be openly vented. I was inclined to believe that racism against Chinese people overseas due to the virus was just media hype, but then again, I’ve seen people in Korea actually fearing the Chinese. Chinese students and instructors who visited China during the break are asked not to attend school for at least two weeks. Places where Chinese tourists usually crowd in the city look quite empty. I haven’t really seen this strong a reaction in people and in the media since the avian flu hit the country, not with SARS or MERS. And even with the avian flu, the only time it affected me was not being able to visit the aviary in the zoo.

Anyway, I’m not really too concerned about it at the moment. I still believe that the rate of infection and casualty is still pretty low compared to other diseases that were previously hyped up. Though the youngest casualty is 36 years young, the majority of the casualties are over 60 years old. Videos of tents and Chinese medical professionals yelling instructions in Chinese might sound scary, but I don’t think it’s too much to get into a panic over. Tents with sick people, hazmat suits, loud foreign language… these are all intimidating at a very basic level. Then you add in some communism and a distrust of the Chinese government and you have a potent mixture of irrational fear that allows you to be dumb, or at its worst, be unkind to your neighbors.

Gotta keep calm.

Just stay healthy, eat right, wash your damned hands, and be nice to Asians.

Impeachments and Shamelessness

This is the second impeachment of a US president I’ve seen in my lifetime. Looking back, this is the fourth impeachment of a president I’ve witnessed or closely followed. It is interesting to see how these things result into precedents and social attitudes that will be felt for many years to come.

At the risk of aging myself, I remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It was an embarrassing exercise which started as a fishing expedition and concluded with hypocrites impeaching a man for essentially protecting his marriage by lying. Commentators at the time would have people believe that the Clinton saga opened a Pandora’s box in society. It brought sex… oral sex, out in the open… right into public discourse. It was blamed for young people being more promiscuous and being more open-minded regarding sexual activities outside of coitus. And of course, conservatives successfully impeaching the president and surviving their rank hypocrisy, it made hypocrisy their brand. It’s amazing that Newt Gingrich, the man who led the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for having an affair, was also having an affair at the time, and the woman he is having an affair with is currently the US ambassador to the Vatican… the fucking Vatican. No one bats an eye. Of course Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite… he’s a conservative politician. Now ask him questions on CNN.

A couple of years ago, they impeached and removed from office the President Park Gun Hye of South Korea. I was there for a couple of the protests. I remember being amazed at how fast the whole process was, from outrage to removal of the president. It taught Koreans that when a move becomes popular and people, especially young people get outraged enough, they could shift politics. This power of youthful outrage is similar to the umbrella movement which happened a few years earlier. Unfortunately, the conservatives in Korea are trying to copy this movement and are now regularly attracting older Koreans to come gather in the public squares formerly occupied by the protesters who ousted the former president. They have seen how outrage and continued public protests could change the country. However, what they are getting mostly senior citizens riled about are mostly empty rhetoric and fake news. The weekly weekend gatherings are now turning more and more into just weekend strolls for angry old people to aimlessly listen to slogans.

Back in 1986, there was the People Power Revolution in EDSA. The people of the Philippines were protesting the violent regime of President Marcos and electoral fraud. I remember there was martial law in the Philippines and during the protests there were talks of violence in the street or people being detained by the police for no reason. I also remember my father being pro Marcos at the time. After the ousting of Marcos, the Filipinos seemed to see EDSA, or large public protests, as an exercise or even a ceremony of public grievance after a period of putting up with traditional political corruption. I say that because after EDSA, corruption still continued in the country, a second “revolution” happened entitled “EDSA 2” which overthrew President Joseph Estrada, but again, the country still continued to have its usual problems. It’s almost like nothing was fixed. The status quo remains and only the players have changed. Look at what they have now, Duterte, a populist who encourages violence on the streets. The country is getting better economically for rich investors (especially foreign investors), but not so much for the people who elected the president, the downtrodden masses who fell in love with his macho crime-fighting lies.

Now in 2020 in the US, we’re seeing the trial of Donald Trump after his impeachment. It would seem that the only lesson we’re learning is that there is no bottom that conservatives would sink to in order to maintain their power. I’m afraid the precedent we seem to be taking away from this is that with shamelessness and a bold disregard to the truth, one could weather any evidence of wrongdoing. Believe in your “truth” and yell it out until people give up and say yes, you’re right. It’s the lessson learned from The Secret. It’s the Kim Kardashian guide to being a celebrity. It’s the Real Housewives of Atlanta. It’s disgusting. It truly is disgusting what is happening right now. I really hope I’m wrong, but by looking at what happened during the first day of the impeachment trial, even with Lev Parnas speaking out and new documents being released by Mick Mulvaney, I think the winners have already been decided.

And yes, I know, I know, the Republican majority senate would not vote to convict and therefore remove Donald Trump. The only thing the Democrats could do is force the Republicans to be more brazen in their defense of criminality that it hurts them in their local elections. That, and by embracing Trump and the ridiculous arguments of the White House lawyers, it makes Trump’s eventual acquittal by the Senate a sham and invalid in the eyes of the public.

But that right there is the rub. The people in power, they don’t really care much about how they look in the eyes of the public. They don’t seem t o care how history would judge them. Let me enjoy my wealth and my power now. Forget history and my legacy. I will be long dead and gone by then.

The Cheating is Now a Feature

It’s strange but this is the second week in a row that I’m writing about sports. Even weirder is that I’m writing about a sport I’m not particularly fond of.

My wife has been following the Dodgers for years now, ever since Ryu Hyu-jin started pitching for them and Korean networks started playing MLB, particularly Dodgers games on a regular basis. These days, as long as there is a Korean player in the team, you’re sure to find their games in Korea. Anyway, due to my wife’s fandom, I’ve watched and casually observed the Dodgers play, to which I have absorbed quite a bit of baseball knowledge by osmosis.

In 2017, the Dodgers were set to win the World Series. After missing the chance to finally win a ring for several years, I thought I was time for Kershaw to get one. I remember them looking to be the favorite to win despite the odd move of suddenly bringing outfielder Curtis Granderson and pitcher Yu Darvish into the roster.

Unfortunately, the Dodgers didn’t win that year. Houston Astros beat them and won the World Series. There was a bit of drama during the game as well. Yuli Guriel was seen making a racist gesture in reference to Yu Darvish. He was penalized with a five-game suspension for 2018, but that racist gesture and the rather light punishment is still fresh in the memory of most Korean baseball fans. I remember feeling quite upset at Yuli Guriel. It didn’t help that he had that cocky Michael Madsen look and he peddled a BS excuse that he used to play in Japan, giving him the racist immunity idol. I felt bad for Yu Darvish, but I can’t help but blame him for the Dodgers losing the World Series that year. He seemed to be giving away the easiest throws. And despite him not delivering for the team, head coach Dave Roberts kept him on.

For over a year, I thought it was stupid to have brought Yu Darvish on. They could’ve let anyone pitch in his place and the Dodgers would’ve won the World Series.

Fast forward to 2019 and we learn that the Houston Astros were in fact cheating. They had cameras set to catch the signals of the other team. Then they would warn the batter if a fastball was coming by banging on trash cans. It was a set-up that they had in Minute Maid Park. Yu Darvish pitched for the Dodgers in 2017 in Minute Maid Park. They knew what Darvish was going to throw. The Astros were cheating. And in the process of cheating, Yuli Guriel had the grace to be racist as well.

So what happened next? After months of deliberation, the Astros’s manager and general manager were suspended for a year. The club was fined $5 million and will be deprived of their first and second round draft picks for two years. The Astros later announced that they fired their manager and general manager. No players were punished. They get to keep their championship.

This is shit.

MLB’s reason for not taking away their title was that sign stealing or predicting the pitcher’s throw was always a part of the game. The Astros used technology to give them an edge during the game but the tradition was the same. If the league was to take away their title, then it would start a cascade to other past scandals. Remember the 90s when players started to look like wrestlers and were batting home runs regularly? Also, there have been many instances of alleged sign stealing, but not as systematic as the one employed by the Astros.

This reason is also shit.

While it’s justice to fire the manager and general manager for orchestrating the cheating system, the players themselves carried out the sign stealing system. Whatever happened to sportsmanship? The players knew that they were playing with an unfair advantage. Winning and losing in baseball has consequences. It affects a player’s stats and their standings. For over a year, Yu Darvish had to suffer the blame of losing the championship for the Dodgers. He even had to change the way he pitched. Players were traded due to their performance and their bottom lines were probably affected due to losing to the Astros. The Dodgers might not even have the same line up now if they won that year. That was probably Kershaw’s closest opportunity to win that gold ring. He got robbed. People got robbed. The manager and general manager weren’t the only culprit. The whole team participated in the robbery.

That is not to say that the Astros are bad athletes. They’re world class athletes. But the fact that they needed to cheat in order to win the championship casts a dark shadow on their talent and their achievements. If I were an Astros fan, I’d probably feel pretty bad at this moment. It’s like being a Milli Vanilli fan. Yeah, maybe those guys can actually sing their songs, but it’s too late. They were caught using voice doubles. But unlike MLB, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences actually took away Milli Vanilli’s Grammy.

This sours the whole sport for me. Unfortunately, MLB is hoping that by force of habit, people will still continue to watch baseball and that this scandal will soon be forgotten. But for me, it shows an organization that is willing to allow athletes to cheat in order to become stars, and once they become stars, they can no longer be taken down. I can’t help but think of the phrases, “too big to fail” and “we don’t look backwards, we look forward.” I’m trying to think of any other sport outside of WWE that allows the game to continue despite cheating, that allows cheaters to keep their medals. But unlike WWE, MLB will still pretend to be a “real” sport and not sports entertainment. It’s disappointing. And for what? Because it’s too much of an inconvenience to look back? Too many injustices have to be corrected? If this is “America’s favorite pastime,” then it sends an awful message about what America is and its tolerance for unfair advantages.

The Hockey Transporter

I haven’t been following the World Juniors much due to its awkward time in relation to Seoul, but I’ve been able to catch bits of it, especially key moments like when the Canadians first lost to the Russians with an embarrassing 6:0 right before the New Year. It was much to my sleepy delight two days ago at around 5:00 am in Seoul when the Canadians faced off against the Russians for the gold and managed to beat even after an early lead. The manner at which the Russians were beaten at the end was something else as well. At the very last minutes of the third period, the Russians were desperate to catch up to Canada that they were making crucial errors, leading to them being two men down at the end. It was our 18^th gold at the World Juniors and the fifth time we bested Russia at the finals.

Overseas, when I see the Canadian hockey team beating the Russians or the Americans, it always brings me home. It’s like a magical moment that transports me back to some unknown time and place in Canada, because God knows I didn’t watch hockey with my family. The sport was just something I absorbed via osmosis and I was made aware of just like other Canadiana like ice skating, the Guess Who, and ketchup chips. They were all there. I didn’t sought them out, but living in Canada, I just happen to absorb them. Of course I watched important games back then, but I don’t particularly have any memories of family with it… just hazy memories of old furniture, cold outdoors, and Canada.

Seeing Canadian hockey is like a rush of nostalgia and patriotism all at once. There is a Canadian love affair with the sport. So much so that the Tragically Hip, one of the most important unknown Canadian musicians of all time, had two popular songs about it. And speaking of music, watching it is much like listening to a familiar tune. It’s like listening to Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ or ‘OK Computer’ and being immediately transported back to younger days along with the old angst and insecurities I used to feel.

There is glee at the prospect of victory while watching the players battle it out on the ice. It’s like being in an unfamiliar airport outside of the United States and feeling a rush of possibilities. “This could be good. This could be good.” The air smells and feels a little bit different. Things (ALL THINGS) could be better if I, or in this case, the players, play their cards right.

And sometimes the emotions turn to misplaced emotions, hate against the other team, great disappointment against the goalie who keeps letting the other team score. “C’mon! We must win, dammit!” And I get caught up in all of it. But for what? To brag against who? To win against who? No one in particular. I’m not here and I’m not now. I’m somewhere in an odd undefined Canadian space along with most people in a country I happen to not be in at the moment.

After all of that. After all of the players got their medals and skated around the ice with the tiny silver cup hoisted above their heads. After all of the commentators finish their final analyses and my online stream is cut off, it takes a few minutes to get over the rush of victory and get ready for work. Congratulations, boys!

2019 Just Died

New Year morning, we were watching ‘New Year’s Rockin Eve’ over breakfast in Seoul and it dawned on me how truly mediocre popular music is. Well, maybe that’s a tad bit unfair. After all, ‘mediocre’ is kinda expected when ‘New Year’s Rockin Eve’ is preceded by “Ryan Seacrest.” Seriously, Post Malone? Ugh… It was so unbearable that I had to distract myself doing chores afterwards while my wife waited for BTS.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Let’s make more art in 2020. Be less depressed. Learn more. Work more. Draw more.