Category: Personal

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[women leaders]

Minister Kang Kyung-hwa (강경화 공사님) of the Republic of Korea has been appointed UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Minister Kang was serving here at the Mission when I started, back in 2004. She is an extraordinary woman: intelligent, articulate in both English and Korean, charismatic, passionate about her work. She has been especially focused on pushing through an international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the text of which was agreed this August after five years of negotiations. Ms. Kang’s particular emphasis was on the rights of women with disabilities, and she was able to get a paragraph on the subject included in the final text.

It is presumably in recognition of this work that Minister Kang was appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. As a pro-Korean feminist, I’m personally pleased to see a powerful Korean woman coming to international prominence. On a global scale, Korea does pretty well by its women — they’re educated, they have lots of professional opportunities, they vote — but for all that, there is still plenty of sexism and inequality. Minister Kang’s career is part of changing that.

I also find her inspiring as a model for Jenny, who is also attractive, intelligent, hardworking and capable. Last night Jenny caught sight of an old classmate, Caolionn O’Connell, in a Nova episode about E=mc2, and it got Jenny worrying about whether she’s made the right choices in life or tried hard enough.

I personally think Jenny’s doing just fine. She tends to have degree envy, but unlike science majors, humanities majors who go straight to grad school tend to waste their time there. If Jenny had gone straight into grad school, it would have been to study Provençal poets some more, and that would mean that she couldn’t go get her Ph.D. in something she’s passionate about — Central Asian religious development, say — after she’d built up some solid knowledge about the subject. So I don’t think it was a mistake for Jenny to strike out into the real world after college.

Jenny has never gone in a straight line, but that’s just part of who she is: someone with wide-ranging interests and diverse talents. Still, I can understand her worry. She’s building up a formidable set of skills in her current job — everything from management to programming — but what are they all for? Being good at getting things done is only meaningful if you have something meaningful to get done. And for all the value and importance of good corporate management, and of getting women into the higher echelons of the business world, I agree with Jenny that there has to be more to her life than helping insurance companies be slightly more efficient.

That’s why Minister Kang is an inspiring model. Jenny and I still want to join the Foreign Service in a few years, but even if we don’t, there are other ways for Jenny to follow her passions. New opportunities will arise, interesting doors will open, and Jenny will choose which ones to step through. When she does, she’ll have the necessary skills to be successful. Could Jenny one day be UN Deputy High Commissioner for Something Important? Absolutely. And even though she hasn’t gotten her Ph.D. yet, I think Jenny is doing all the right things to become someone like Minister Kang down the road.

Well, except for being Korean. There are some things even Jenny can’t do.

But fewer than you’d think.

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[ridin’ nerdy]


When I was maybe 10 or 11, there was this girl at summer camp named Leah Spieler. She had straight brown hair down to her shoulders that curled in at the bottom, feline eyes and pouting lips, and breasts — real, actual breasts — and so I was in love with her. We hadn’t actually talked or anything, but I was still hoping to ask her to the camp dance, so when another boy, taller and more popular than me, beat me to the punch, I was devastated. I spent the night of the dance hiding in my bunk, listening over and over on my Walkman to borrowed cassettes of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s first three albums.

I grew up — learning, among other things, that there is better breakup music in this world than “Slime Creatures from Outer Space” — but thankfully “Weird Al” never did. Today, from DKNY, the link for the video above arrived in my inbox, along with this note:

I’m sort of amazed that he’s managed to sustain a career for, jesus, 23 years now, not to mention that he actually manages to pretty capably flow (shit, better than Fiddy). Plus it references the Star Wars Holiday Special, which I appreciate…

Likewise. And in case you’re not familiar with the original song, it’s “Ridin'” by Chamillionaire, featuring the ever-incomprehensible Krayzie Bone, and you can see the video here.

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[korean names]

In response to a comment from DKNY, I thought I’d do a post on how Korean names work.

In Korea, almost everyone has a three-syllable name. The first syllable is the family or clan name — Kim, Lee, Park, etc. — and the following two syllables are the personal name. So, for example, Roh is the family name of the Korean president, and Moo-hyun is his personal name; with the foreign minister, the family name is Ban, the personal name Ki-moon. They should be addressed as Mr. Roh and Mr. Ban, never as Mr. Moo-hyun or Mr. Moon, although Koreans have a tendency to make this mistake in reverse with foreigners, which meant that I was “Mistah Joshi” throughout my time in Korea. In China and Japan as well, the family name comes first, followed by the personal name.

Interestingly, this pattern of largest-to-smallest is followed throughout the Korean language. Dates are stated year-month-day-hour-minute, locations are given with the largest area first — country-prefecture-city, for example.

Occasionally Korean personal names have one syllable rather than two. This was more common historically, but seems to be out of fashion these days. Nevertheless, the Korean Mission currently has two deputy permanent representatives, Joon Oh and Cho Hyun.

With me so far? Good, because now it gets confusing, in three ways.

Word order: Unlike Koreans, Americans and Europeans put their family names last. Many Koreans who live in the West or deal frequently with Westerners have adopted our pattern. Thus, if you meet a Korean-American born here, she’s probably going to introduce herself as Susan Kim, not as Kim Susan. This is straightforward when the person in question has a Western personal name, but when the whole name is still in Korean, it gets difficult. DKNY cited what is probably the most famous of such reversed names, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. His family name is Moon, and in Korean, using the official government translitaration system, his name is Mun Seon-myeong. Which leads us to our second area of confusion …

Spelling: The South Korean government has adopted an official transliteration system that nobody likes, which replaces an older transliteration system that was full of diacritics. Koreans who want Americans to pronounce their names right have thus gotten creative. For example, though the most common spelling of the Korean family name 박 is Park, the transliteration system would render it Bak, and in my two years at the Mission, I’ve also seen a Mr. Pak and a Mr. Bahk; these folks all had the same name in Korean. Probably the most famous crazily spelled Korean name is Syngman Rhee, the first president of the Republic of Korea, whose name in official transliteration would be Yi/Li/Lee Seung-man. Which leads us to our third area of confusion …

Sinicization: It is deeply upsetting to most people when I tell them that there are, in fact, no Koreans named Lee. The name that is rendered Lee in English is in fact simply I, though that pronunciation is usually rendered Yi. The mysterious L is there because that’s how the name — and its associated character — is pronounced in Chinese. This is also true of all Koreans named Lim, who are really named Im. Even weirder is that the Korean name Roh is pronounced Noh, so the current president of the Republic of Korea is, in the official transliteration system, No Mu-hyeon. (How Syngman Rhee came up with his spelling remains a mystery.)

Short note on stray E’s in the transliterations: eo is pronounced like aw in awesome, eu like u in put, ae like a in save.

So now you know why he’s Minister Ban, not Minister Ki-moon.

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[a groovy way to sleep]

Raga-Riff by The Punjabs [via Office Naps]

Thanks to Moistworks for alerting me, via soul sides, about an excellent music blog: Office Naps.

Devoted to obscure yet funky 45s, Office Naps offers some truly weird and fascinating music from deep in the archives of our collective musical memory. I particularly enjoyed the post about 1960s sitar grooves. For some reason it pleases me enormously that there was a group called The Punjabs back in the ’60s, even if it was just a name slapped onto a cut by L.A. studio musicians.

Nice. Very nice.

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[yes, minister]

The office is currently abuzz, with everyone racing around to prepare for the arrival this afternoon of His Excellency Mr. BAN Ki-moon, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea, as we refer to him around these parts (the caps are to prevent a recurrence of the unfortunate recent incident in which a Congolese representative referred to the Minister as “Mr. Moon”).

Minister Ban will be making his longest stay ever in New York, hanging around until the early morning of the 28th. During this extended visit, he will be speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, holding bilateral meetings with as many foreign ministers as he can manage, and otherwise meeting and greeting anyone and everyone who might have some influence over the selection of the next Secretary-General. This dense schedule will no doubt keep the Mission staff ferociously busy during the next week, leaving only us scribes to twiddle our thumbs until the Minister once again heads home.

As for Minister Ban’s bid to become the next Secretary-General, it’s looking good at the moment. In the latest straw poll of the Security Council, Ban came out with 14 “Encourage” votes and just one “Discourage,” putting him at the top of the list. The big question, of course, is whether that “Discourage” came from Japan, which has no veto power, or from either China or the United States, which as permanent members could quash his candidacy. There is always the possibility of a dark-horse candidate, but whatever happens, it looks like the Security Council will vote no later than October.

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[korean lyrics]

So there’s a rap song in Korean with a funny video. Dandy. But what the hell are they saying?

Until today, I figured the only way I would find out would be through another six years or so of diligent language study. But then I discovered Aheeyah, a database of Korean lyrics translated into English.

It doesn’t have everything — no Crying Nut, for example — but it’s a damn sight better than the nothing I had before.

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[fung wah funk]

Chinatown Bus by Project Jenny, Project Jan (EP) [via Gothamist]

China Girl (YouTube) by David Bowie (Let’s Dance)

Feng Shui by Gnarls Barkley (St. Elsewhere) [via undomondo]

Fung Wah, the original Chinatown bus company, may have had some trouble lately, but it’s still the cheapest way to move around the Northeast Corridor — with tolls and gas costing what they do, even driving your own car is more expensive if you’re going solo — and it still carries the frisson of the exotic and forbidden. Plus you don’t have to go to Port Authority, a horrible place that abuts another horrible place. Here’s hoping that the era of cheap travel is merely down but not out.

So, the music. Project Jenny, Project Jan is a Brooklyn duo that offers helpful advice for Fung Wah travelers. David Bowie is some kind of space freak who offers an unhelpful narrative about his little China Girl. And Gnarls Barkley is an enormously hyped duo in goofy costumes who offer what appears to be a paean to the principles of feng shui, the Chinese art of arranging space. (I’m guessing the Lo and the Mouse would not approve of the spacial relations pictured above.)

Bonus by Request: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley (St. Elsewhere) [via clever titles are so last summer]

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[primaries]

So the results are in, and beyond the obvious and expected wins by Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer, the biggest news is Andrew Cuomo’s surprisingly big win over Mark Green in the primary for state attorney general.

In our Congressional district primary in Brooklyn, which essentially decides who will hold the seat (a Republican win here is as likely as a Democratic sweep of all public offices in Provo, Utah), City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke narrowly won the field against three opponents. It was a contentious race because the 11th District was created as a result of the Voting Rights Act and has been held by African-Americans ever since, but one of the strongest candidates was second-place finisher David Yassky, a white city council member.

The seat came open this year because Representative Major Owens is retiring. He tried to give his son, Chris Owens, the keys to the fief, but Chris never had much to offer except his crown-prince status and a tendency toward vicious campaigning. State Senator Carl Andrews was the other candidate, but he was hurt by his ties to Clarence Norman, the former Democratic Leader in Brooklyn who was convicted last year on corruption charges.

I didn’t like any of the candidates, but I held my nose and voted for Yassky, who wants the Atlantic Yards project to be reduced in size (Clarke supports the project, the others are against), who has a relatively distinguished record on the city council, who didn’t take over his mother’s seat on said council (Clarke replaced her mom, Una Clarke), and who didn’t forget to graduate from Oberlin. Nevertheless, I think Clarke is a reasonable choice and will hopefully do a decent job in Washington.

In our local state senate primary, Ken Diamondstone’s expensive campaign failed to unseat Albany lifer Martin Connor.

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[if it’s in the dictionary, it must be real]

The good folks over at Merriam-Webter — you know, the people who decide what’s American English — have revealed some new words for 2006, among them polyamory, which they define as “the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.” Not a bad job for a first go at it, though I’m sure someone somewhere will be writing a furious post to a message board insisting polyamory is something else.

Other excellent new entries include drama queen, manga and ollie.