So I started a new blog to keep track of the random photos I take on my phone (and rarely used digital camera) sometimes. I used to just post the photos onto Facebook, but after a rather disappointing experience with the UI last time, I decided it'd be easier and maybe a little more personal to gradually post them in a blog-like format. I'll get to the pics from Europe and New York last year eventually!
http://r-swars.tumblr.com/
And that is all. (well, other than the ant invasion I discovered in my car today, but that's another story...) Good night!
Friday, August 22, 2014
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Expectations
So I started typing up a different unrelated post for a while that probably will never see the light of day, and in the process of writing it, I was reminded that I have issues with people's expectations. Or rather, how people expect you to conform to a certain stereotype in lifestyle or activity based on what they might know about you already, as if that's all there is to know about a person.
It was probably the worst in high school when teachers would actively group you as such. I was good at math and science so people started calling me "Dr. Suwarsa" then, even though I was already starting to develop the impression that the lifestyle of a doctor didn't interest me at all. In senior year while applying to colleges, I actually purposely delayed submitting an application to a post-baccalaureate program for medical school against my parents' wishes because I already knew that I probably didn't want to commit to it... and then took pre-med in college in order to appease them anyway. (partly because I still liked the courses... it would've been a different story if I hated O-chem.)
I feel like a lot of what I do subconsciously is trying to defy people's expectations of me. People are surprised to find out that I like to sing (for the record, the sight singing class at Berkeley was one of the best classes I ever took... up there with Race and American Film, Japanese, and Programming Languages + Compilers lol). Or that I'm into musicals and swing dancing and indie/alternative rock concerts and old films and random historical topics and books of any genre other than sappy romances and browsing book stores and historical sites and art museums for hours more than any sane person would be willing to stomach. (closing times are the bane of my existence. I never have enough time.) I guess it's because those don't necessarily fit with the stereotypical image of a software engineer or science/math buff, even though I know other people in my area who are also unique in that respect. (or maybe I'm just not technical minded enough now. meh.)
Granted, I've also gone too far in the past with emphasizing those other aspects and gotten on some people's nerves for it, trying to fit in somewhere and looking like a poser, essentially. I realize that people don't care about what you do as much as you think they ought to, and sometimes it's possible to come across as shallow and whatever negative connotations you associate with hipsters even when you're technically being true to your interests. Apparently I'm into hipster things without being into the culture itself... or whatever you might call it.
It's more that I don't like the fact that this is considered unusual. Why can't it be normal to have an interest in lots of randomly unrelated things? I wish there were more computer science oriented architects and mathematics loving English teachers and engineers knowledgeable in history, to not so subtly call out people I know- because you people are awesome. Life seems more boring when everyone just happens to fit in a distinct category without interacting with different people outside of themselves. It's why I never felt too comfortable about committing to special interest clubs, and maybe why most of my closest friends happen to be non-Christian even though I've been involved in multiple Christian communities in the past. (I don't mean that as a way of disparaging other people in the opposite situation, though - this is just more of my personal preference.)
People are not static individuals. They change over time, or at least are capable of it. Maybe not always that obviously or blatantly, but it does happen; even relationships will change. The person you would've expected to be there on your wedding day might not be there in the future, and other people who you thought you wouldn't see again suddenly come back into your life in a different form, unexpectedly. I find that I'm not usually surprised by drastic changes in people anymore- actually just the other day, I was told something along the lines of "bet you didn't expect her to swing that way," when in reality it didn't really surprise me much outside of me simply not hearing anything about this person till now. Honestly, sometimes I find the notion of making assumptions about other people in itself insulting.
It may sound a little stupid, but I still find myself mulling over comments that were said to me years ago.
"You haven't changed at all."
- said to me by someone whose personality had dramatically changed since I'd last seen him... a year earlier.
"I know everything there is to know about you."
- clarification of why this person decided to call me 'Nerdy.' Not that I would've minded if this hadn't been said.
"You're such a square."
- ...
Rather trite and likely have been heard by others as well, but the fact is that they still bother me now. Maybe I haven't taken into account that the people who said these likely wouldn't say them today, but this is more to say that the effect is still felt. I'm still trying to make up for hurts that started years ago.
Maybe the problem is that I've put too much stock into being identified by my own interests and activities. Because really, what defines a person? What makes them interesting?
To me, anyway, it's what they think.
[I'm also guilty of making assumptions about people and ignoring them when I deem their opinions uninteresting or not worth hearing about, forgetting that it's possible to have otherwise interesting and likable people hold unlikable thoughts. Or to even irrationally want to still like someone who's given me every reason not to.]
It was probably the worst in high school when teachers would actively group you as such. I was good at math and science so people started calling me "Dr. Suwarsa" then, even though I was already starting to develop the impression that the lifestyle of a doctor didn't interest me at all. In senior year while applying to colleges, I actually purposely delayed submitting an application to a post-baccalaureate program for medical school against my parents' wishes because I already knew that I probably didn't want to commit to it... and then took pre-med in college in order to appease them anyway. (partly because I still liked the courses... it would've been a different story if I hated O-chem.)
I feel like a lot of what I do subconsciously is trying to defy people's expectations of me. People are surprised to find out that I like to sing (for the record, the sight singing class at Berkeley was one of the best classes I ever took... up there with Race and American Film, Japanese, and Programming Languages + Compilers lol). Or that I'm into musicals and swing dancing and indie/alternative rock concerts and old films and random historical topics and books of any genre other than sappy romances and browsing book stores and historical sites and art museums for hours more than any sane person would be willing to stomach. (closing times are the bane of my existence. I never have enough time.) I guess it's because those don't necessarily fit with the stereotypical image of a software engineer or science/math buff, even though I know other people in my area who are also unique in that respect. (or maybe I'm just not technical minded enough now. meh.)
Granted, I've also gone too far in the past with emphasizing those other aspects and gotten on some people's nerves for it, trying to fit in somewhere and looking like a poser, essentially. I realize that people don't care about what you do as much as you think they ought to, and sometimes it's possible to come across as shallow and whatever negative connotations you associate with hipsters even when you're technically being true to your interests. Apparently I'm into hipster things without being into the culture itself... or whatever you might call it.
It's more that I don't like the fact that this is considered unusual. Why can't it be normal to have an interest in lots of randomly unrelated things? I wish there were more computer science oriented architects and mathematics loving English teachers and engineers knowledgeable in history, to not so subtly call out people I know- because you people are awesome. Life seems more boring when everyone just happens to fit in a distinct category without interacting with different people outside of themselves. It's why I never felt too comfortable about committing to special interest clubs, and maybe why most of my closest friends happen to be non-Christian even though I've been involved in multiple Christian communities in the past. (I don't mean that as a way of disparaging other people in the opposite situation, though - this is just more of my personal preference.)
People are not static individuals. They change over time, or at least are capable of it. Maybe not always that obviously or blatantly, but it does happen; even relationships will change. The person you would've expected to be there on your wedding day might not be there in the future, and other people who you thought you wouldn't see again suddenly come back into your life in a different form, unexpectedly. I find that I'm not usually surprised by drastic changes in people anymore- actually just the other day, I was told something along the lines of "bet you didn't expect her to swing that way," when in reality it didn't really surprise me much outside of me simply not hearing anything about this person till now. Honestly, sometimes I find the notion of making assumptions about other people in itself insulting.
It may sound a little stupid, but I still find myself mulling over comments that were said to me years ago.
"You haven't changed at all."
- said to me by someone whose personality had dramatically changed since I'd last seen him... a year earlier.
"I know everything there is to know about you."
- clarification of why this person decided to call me 'Nerdy.' Not that I would've minded if this hadn't been said.
"You're such a square."
- ...
Rather trite and likely have been heard by others as well, but the fact is that they still bother me now. Maybe I haven't taken into account that the people who said these likely wouldn't say them today, but this is more to say that the effect is still felt. I'm still trying to make up for hurts that started years ago.
Maybe the problem is that I've put too much stock into being identified by my own interests and activities. Because really, what defines a person? What makes them interesting?
To me, anyway, it's what they think.
[I'm also guilty of making assumptions about people and ignoring them when I deem their opinions uninteresting or not worth hearing about, forgetting that it's possible to have otherwise interesting and likable people hold unlikable thoughts. Or to even irrationally want to still like someone who's given me every reason not to.]
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Curses
Lately I've been having a random preoccupation with Middle East related topics. I never took a class that formally dealt with Middle East history post middle school (got AP Euro and AP US history instead), so reading about it now as an adult feels pretty eye opening in a way.
When I was on vacation and the cable news networks were all covering the the UN school shelter bombings in the Gaza conflict...
Me: I'd like to visit Israel at some point... when it's less chaotic over there.
P: It'll never be peaceful over there. Those people are cursed until the end of the world.
It was striking to me to hear this opinion spouted out, to go so far as to call a whole people cursed. Yes, it's a way of simplifying understanding the conflict there, and in this case I believe a view informed by an interpretation of that's region's history probably not uncommon in some Christian circles, something along the lines of either:
A. Jews being cursed for having a part in killing Jesus (and hence their lack of stability in their nationhood ever since).
B. Arabs being cursed to always be in conflict ever since Ishmael (as the story goes, ancestor of the Arab peoples) got displaced as an heir by Abraham in favor of Isaac (ancestor of the Jews). Also perhaps tied to why America, the "Christian" nation, always seems to favor Israel over everyone else in the Middle East.
C. Palestinians being cursed for allegedly being descendants or modern day equivalents of the Canaanites, who were themselves apparently cursed to be displaced from their own land by the Israelites ever since Noah cursed his grandson Canaan.
While there doesn't seem to be any real simple or easy solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict, which has lasted longer than our lifetime, calling the people involved cursed does more to make the situation worse:
- It's way of saying that there's no point in trying to fix anything, because this is just how things have always been and this is how things always will continue to be, because those people are just destined to fight till the end of time.
- It's using an interpretation of history, one that quite frankly likely isn't entirely accurate, to justify a terrible status quo- on the same level as 19th century Americans who used the Bible to justify the enslavement of African or black people for being descendants of Ham, which itself is a misunderstanding of the original story (it was Canaan who got cursed, not Ham) in the first place.
- And ultimately, it's robbing a people's right to self-determine their own future for the sake of fulfilling a story... which is how I feel about a lot of the narratives in Genesis (Noah's sons; Lot's daughters; Abraham's sons; Jacob's sons; it goes on and on).
Taking such a view also leads to turning a blind eye to actual historical and present-day injustices and ignores a reality that is much more complicated. The rise of Zionism, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and European geopolitics in the last century have had more of an impact on the present day situation in the Middle East than any curse so to speak listed above... and that's just part of the story. Let alone the human rights violations being committed on both sides by Hamas and Israel today.
Sure, it's easy to attribute everything that's happened to curses. Curses are satisfying to people because the stories behind them are easy to comprehend, and they're vague enough such that it doesn't matter how events play out so long as they end badly for whoever is related to the one cursed. And to be honest, I'll admit that they actually do have power- but not because they actually happened, considering that these stories are often collected centuries after the fact. It's because people believe in them and use them to justify past, present, and future actions that otherwise would be considered injustice today... and indoctrinating that kind of belief in a population is a terribly effective method of coercing them into accepting otherwise atrocious behavior- just look at ISIS/IS today.
It feels weird to formulate a whole thought process about an idea that feels so outdated and irrelevant to the present-day situation in the Middle East, but these beliefs exist, and it feels disturbing for me to see how it's influenced attitudes in people I know towards the news and current events in that region. It's something I've felt self-conscious of more often lately, having grown up in an environment where the only source of information about the Middle East that I was aware of essentially came from the Bible... which only provides one aspect of that region's story and in a context far removed from what's actually happening today.
(and for the record, this is why I would never put my kids through a private Christian school.)
When I was on vacation and the cable news networks were all covering the the UN school shelter bombings in the Gaza conflict...
Me: I'd like to visit Israel at some point... when it's less chaotic over there.
P: It'll never be peaceful over there. Those people are cursed until the end of the world.
It was striking to me to hear this opinion spouted out, to go so far as to call a whole people cursed. Yes, it's a way of simplifying understanding the conflict there, and in this case I believe a view informed by an interpretation of that's region's history probably not uncommon in some Christian circles, something along the lines of either:
A. Jews being cursed for having a part in killing Jesus (and hence their lack of stability in their nationhood ever since).
B. Arabs being cursed to always be in conflict ever since Ishmael (as the story goes, ancestor of the Arab peoples) got displaced as an heir by Abraham in favor of Isaac (ancestor of the Jews). Also perhaps tied to why America, the "Christian" nation, always seems to favor Israel over everyone else in the Middle East.
C. Palestinians being cursed for allegedly being descendants or modern day equivalents of the Canaanites, who were themselves apparently cursed to be displaced from their own land by the Israelites ever since Noah cursed his grandson Canaan.
While there doesn't seem to be any real simple or easy solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict, which has lasted longer than our lifetime, calling the people involved cursed does more to make the situation worse:
- It's way of saying that there's no point in trying to fix anything, because this is just how things have always been and this is how things always will continue to be, because those people are just destined to fight till the end of time.
- It's using an interpretation of history, one that quite frankly likely isn't entirely accurate, to justify a terrible status quo- on the same level as 19th century Americans who used the Bible to justify the enslavement of African or black people for being descendants of Ham, which itself is a misunderstanding of the original story (it was Canaan who got cursed, not Ham) in the first place.
- And ultimately, it's robbing a people's right to self-determine their own future for the sake of fulfilling a story... which is how I feel about a lot of the narratives in Genesis (Noah's sons; Lot's daughters; Abraham's sons; Jacob's sons; it goes on and on).
Taking such a view also leads to turning a blind eye to actual historical and present-day injustices and ignores a reality that is much more complicated. The rise of Zionism, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and European geopolitics in the last century have had more of an impact on the present day situation in the Middle East than any curse so to speak listed above... and that's just part of the story. Let alone the human rights violations being committed on both sides by Hamas and Israel today.
Sure, it's easy to attribute everything that's happened to curses. Curses are satisfying to people because the stories behind them are easy to comprehend, and they're vague enough such that it doesn't matter how events play out so long as they end badly for whoever is related to the one cursed. And to be honest, I'll admit that they actually do have power- but not because they actually happened, considering that these stories are often collected centuries after the fact. It's because people believe in them and use them to justify past, present, and future actions that otherwise would be considered injustice today... and indoctrinating that kind of belief in a population is a terribly effective method of coercing them into accepting otherwise atrocious behavior- just look at ISIS/IS today.
It feels weird to formulate a whole thought process about an idea that feels so outdated and irrelevant to the present-day situation in the Middle East, but these beliefs exist, and it feels disturbing for me to see how it's influenced attitudes in people I know towards the news and current events in that region. It's something I've felt self-conscious of more often lately, having grown up in an environment where the only source of information about the Middle East that I was aware of essentially came from the Bible... which only provides one aspect of that region's story and in a context far removed from what's actually happening today.
(and for the record, this is why I would never put my kids through a private Christian school.)
Friday, August 1, 2014
You can't please everyone.
I am generally a conflict aversive person, but conflict is difficult avoid when dealing with people with different value systems. In my case not at the same time, luckily, but it is a great deal frustrating to have some of your friends tell you one thing, and your parents another, and then both of them get mad at you for listening to the other at a given moment. Or as one person puts it, I don't have a "spine" and hence give in too easily to whoever I happen to be talking to first, and then the moment I get criticized I switch gears and the act of flip-flopping itself frustrates both parties.
I'll admit, I do tend to give in too easily - it's been in my nature growing up to listen to people, and generally I don't blatantly argue against them unless I have a solid reason not to. Unfortunately, I suck at coming up with these reasons on the spot (like said before, good lord if I ever get involved in a debate), and it usually takes some time after the fact for me to be able to articulate my point, by which point it's usually too late anyway. It's similar to why I always took forever on in-class essays.
Exhibit A:
One time I went to visit a friend's church, which happened to be Baptist (or at least had Baptist in its name), and upon finding out, the parents had choice words to say.
P: Don't go to a Baptist Church. Go to a Presbyterian or non-denominational; Baptist is bad.
Me: But it doesn't matter; they're all not really that different.
P: No, they ARE different. They're called Baptist for a reason; their beliefs are different. You should know what they believe.
Me: [silence because I have nothing to say]
As is usual with my parents when I argue with them, they technically make good points but those points happen to be off in the given context. If I had better split-second wits, I could have pointed out that:
- They don't actually know what the difference between a Presbyterian and a Baptist is themselves.
- The primary distinction of Baptists - that they practice adult baptism by immersion as opposed to infant baptism, the latter of which could be found in a Presbyterian church, for doctrinal reasons - is not something that they would have issue with. Well, maybe the underlying doctrinal reasons for this are what they're getting at, but these are the same reasons used by most of the non-denominational churches I've been to, including the one that they go to. Speaking of which...
- The non-denominational church they go to has more in common with a Baptist church than a Presbyterian church in America. (The head pastor at the time was from West Virginia, which happens to have a higher Baptist population so the influence is present.) If we went to an actual Presbyterian church, we'd be seeing more liturgical services - although the more modern versions of both probably wouldn't differ as much.
But I couldn't think of these at the spur of the moment so I just stopped talking. And of course several months later they had to ask me what Presbyterian meant. sigh.
Of course, this is an example where I actually could've argued back with points that might make sense to them. In other cases, the points that I would come up with don't mesh with their value system at all, so the arguments don't really go anywhere since there's no reasonable way of convincing them outright of blatantly defying what they say, which I don't particularly enjoy doing at all.
Exhibit B:
So I got a new car a few months ago (Honda Accord EXL v6), and while most people have been cool with it, I've gotten a few particularly different responses:
1. Friend A: THANK YOU!
(explanation: other person we both know purposefully bought a cheaper car, and Friend A doesn't understand why you wouldn't buy luxury car if you could afford it.)
2. Friend B: EXL? Seriously?
Me: Only one the v6 came in.
Friend B: Why the fuck do you need a v6? You granny driver. [this said while I'm driving.]
Of course, I feel less inclined to listen to someone while I'm being insulted, even if what they say has some truth behind it (granny: I don't generally exceed 80 on the freeway... partly because I don't trust my skills at faster speeds. Friend B can attest to this. But still, I didn't respond because I had no interest in starting an argument while driving.)
3. And of course the parents wanted me to not only buy a v6 (reasoning: for the hills in SF. though I imagine a v4 would handle it fine, but no, I can't argue with someone who cares about cars 100x more than I do), but with a nav, and I had to argue with them for a couple of phone calls that I didn't want to pay 2k for a product that I wouldn't use.
Mom: But I would use it!
Me: And I'm the one driving 99% of the time.
After finally winning on this point, I didn't feel like arguing any further past with them, nor did I care enough about the price difference between a v4 and v6. (And to be honest, I actually like my car.)
All three parties on this point come from completely different financial backgrounds, which is why their responses happen to be so different from each other, but the negative ones are really aggravating to deal with anyway.
For the record, Exhibit B is not something I want to talk about anymore, so pardon me if I brush it off in the future. I'm just sick and tired of being judged by people.
Anyway, back to sleep. (it's still 6 AM here - early wakers, no.)
I'll admit, I do tend to give in too easily - it's been in my nature growing up to listen to people, and generally I don't blatantly argue against them unless I have a solid reason not to. Unfortunately, I suck at coming up with these reasons on the spot (like said before, good lord if I ever get involved in a debate), and it usually takes some time after the fact for me to be able to articulate my point, by which point it's usually too late anyway. It's similar to why I always took forever on in-class essays.
Exhibit A:
One time I went to visit a friend's church, which happened to be Baptist (or at least had Baptist in its name), and upon finding out, the parents had choice words to say.
P: Don't go to a Baptist Church. Go to a Presbyterian or non-denominational; Baptist is bad.
Me: But it doesn't matter; they're all not really that different.
P: No, they ARE different. They're called Baptist for a reason; their beliefs are different. You should know what they believe.
Me: [silence because I have nothing to say]
As is usual with my parents when I argue with them, they technically make good points but those points happen to be off in the given context. If I had better split-second wits, I could have pointed out that:
- They don't actually know what the difference between a Presbyterian and a Baptist is themselves.
- The primary distinction of Baptists - that they practice adult baptism by immersion as opposed to infant baptism, the latter of which could be found in a Presbyterian church, for doctrinal reasons - is not something that they would have issue with. Well, maybe the underlying doctrinal reasons for this are what they're getting at, but these are the same reasons used by most of the non-denominational churches I've been to, including the one that they go to. Speaking of which...
- The non-denominational church they go to has more in common with a Baptist church than a Presbyterian church in America. (The head pastor at the time was from West Virginia, which happens to have a higher Baptist population so the influence is present.) If we went to an actual Presbyterian church, we'd be seeing more liturgical services - although the more modern versions of both probably wouldn't differ as much.
But I couldn't think of these at the spur of the moment so I just stopped talking. And of course several months later they had to ask me what Presbyterian meant. sigh.
Of course, this is an example where I actually could've argued back with points that might make sense to them. In other cases, the points that I would come up with don't mesh with their value system at all, so the arguments don't really go anywhere since there's no reasonable way of convincing them outright of blatantly defying what they say, which I don't particularly enjoy doing at all.
Exhibit B:
So I got a new car a few months ago (Honda Accord EXL v6), and while most people have been cool with it, I've gotten a few particularly different responses:
1. Friend A: THANK YOU!
(explanation: other person we both know purposefully bought a cheaper car, and Friend A doesn't understand why you wouldn't buy luxury car if you could afford it.)
2. Friend B: EXL? Seriously?
Me: Only one the v6 came in.
Friend B: Why the fuck do you need a v6? You granny driver. [this said while I'm driving.]
Of course, I feel less inclined to listen to someone while I'm being insulted, even if what they say has some truth behind it (granny: I don't generally exceed 80 on the freeway... partly because I don't trust my skills at faster speeds. Friend B can attest to this. But still, I didn't respond because I had no interest in starting an argument while driving.)
3. And of course the parents wanted me to not only buy a v6 (reasoning: for the hills in SF. though I imagine a v4 would handle it fine, but no, I can't argue with someone who cares about cars 100x more than I do), but with a nav, and I had to argue with them for a couple of phone calls that I didn't want to pay 2k for a product that I wouldn't use.
Mom: But I would use it!
Me: And I'm the one driving 99% of the time.
After finally winning on this point, I didn't feel like arguing any further past with them, nor did I care enough about the price difference between a v4 and v6. (And to be honest, I actually like my car.)
All three parties on this point come from completely different financial backgrounds, which is why their responses happen to be so different from each other, but the negative ones are really aggravating to deal with anyway.
For the record, Exhibit B is not something I want to talk about anymore, so pardon me if I brush it off in the future. I'm just sick and tired of being judged by people.
Anyway, back to sleep. (it's still 6 AM here - early wakers, no.)
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