Made in Japan
What do you think of when you see the words, "Made in Japan"? Do you think that this product would be well-made, with few defects? Were you unhappy when you fould out that your Toyota, Nissan or Honda was no longer manufactured in Japan?
I remember when "Made in Japan" products were just one step above trash. I remember Japan-made toys frequently breaking. Once I had a toy sword - when it broke, I found that the handle of it was made from old beer cans! Even as recently when I was in high school (late 60s, early 70s) the Datsuns (what Nissans were called then) and Toyotas were the cheapest cars that you could buy. And never mind the cars from Honda - they were just a motorcycle company making tiny cars that resembled a large boot.
My only trip to Japan was in 1970, when my high school band (Iolani, not Punahou!) went to perform at the world's fair, Expo '70 in Osaka. At that time, one dollar gave you 360 yen. Which meant that the 100 yen coin (which was a little smaller than a US quarter) was worth a little less than twenty-five cents. Now the 100 yen is worth about eighty five cents, or 117 yen for a dollar. So the yen is worth about 3 times as much relative to the dollar in 35 years.
How did the Japanese improve so much after World War II? They brought in experts from the US to teach them, like
W. Edwards Deming - who helped them focus on quality. They were willing to do what a lot of US businesses were unwilling to do. Japanese businesses prospered.
Now there are many Japanese tourists who visit Hawaii for a cheap vacation. You see an abundance of signs in Japanese in the tourist areas (shopping centers, hotels and tourist attractions). Almost like all of the Spanish signage in New York. Anyway, all these tourists buy souvenirs made in China.
Back to the subject of "Made in Japan" - weren't all those recalled laptop batteries made for Dell and Apple from Sony in Japan? Considering how many batteries were manufactured, were there really all that many failures. The press is having a field day bad mouthing Japan since they don't have much chance otherwise. Would they have been able to manufacture these batteries elsewhere with the same performance and price?
Asian-American Detectives
Name an Asian-American detective besides Charlie Chan. Fu Manchu - no, he was a master criminal. I can only think of Chin Ho Kelly on the old Hawaii Five-O TV series. ("Kelly" ? For a Chinese guy?)
Although Charlie Chan was an extremely competent detective, why did they always have a Caucasian actor playing him? They had Asian-American actors playing his sons (the Number 2 son always seemed to get himself into trouble).
Anyway, I do like to read detective fiction and I find that I learn more about different locales from many of the different series. Charlie Chan is from the Honolulu Police Department, where there is a large Asian-American contingent. I've only read one Charlie Chan book by Earl Derr Biggers and hadn't been inspired to read anymore of the series.
Being at a loss for some Asian-American detectives, I did a Google search. I came up with a couple of series to check out. Rei Shimura, a Japanese-American English teacher in Japan is the main character is a series of books by Sujata Massey - the first book is
The Salaryman's Wife. Naomi Hirahara has a series of books featuring Mas Arai, a Japanese-American gardener in Pasedena - the first book in the series being
The Summer of the Big Bachi. (Note, the Bangkok series by John Burdett has a Thai detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, who is not an American.)
There is also another series about which I've heard good things in the mystery book discussion groups. These are the Lydia Chin - Bill Smith books (Lydia Chin is Chinese-American) in New York City's Chinatown. The first book of the series is
China Trade.I find it interesting that all of these Asian-American detectives (or amateur sleuths) are female. Is it that the Asian stereotype for the villian is too strong? Is it hard for an author to create a male Asian-American detective and not have immediate comparisons to Charlie Chan? Anyway, I look forward to checking these books out.
Eats Shoots and Leaves
You must have heard this joke: A panda sits in a cafe having his lunch. He eats a sandwich, fires a gun at another customer and walks towards the exit. When the waiter asks him in confusion what he’s doing, the panda throws him a badly punctuated book on wildlife. "Here, look me up in the book," the panda replies. In the book, it's written, “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
What brought this to mind was a recent best selling book by Lynne Truss called
Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The subject of the book is the decline of correct punctuation in written English. This joke illustrates the incorrect placement of a comma. Although the book was written in the UK and discusses English English, it is very pertinent in the US relating to a similar problem American English. The book is selling well in the US. I wonder how many people who buy the book actually read it. The title is catchy and may surprise someone who doesn't look further into the book to see what it's actually about.
I hadn't realized how bad the problem of incorrect punctuation. I personally am also a stickler for detail in writing and have been annoyed/amused by the abused sentences that I've seen. I've edited and written more than my share of newsletters for many organizations and I take pride in attempting to write things out correctly. I am appalled by a lot of the shorthand jargon and deliberate mispellings in email and chat messages - many people think they save time by writing this way (although I find it takes longer to read and figure out some of the messages). Other abusers write this way because they thing it "kewl" (i.e., "cool"). Email is international, so I suspect that there may be a similar degeneration going on in other languages. Incidently, I admire people who try to write in English, although it may not be their native language - they want to make it easier for the reader. In this case, I forgiving of any errors that they may have.
In Hawaii, in addition to common punctuational errors, there is a general problem with proper English. Instead of making the effort improve, the general population seems to embrace "pidgin" English as the local dialect and is "proud" of it. Publications deliberately emphasizing pidgin are rampant on the shelves of local bookstores. I was fortunate to have attended private school and learned proper English usage. For even conscientious students, verbal SAT scores for Hawaii residents are generally at least 100 points lower than they should be. Peer pressure is actually against anyone who might try to speak and write properly.
I might seem harsh in my criticism of English misuse in Hawaii - but that's how I remember it.
What is a kahuna?
According to
Wikipedia, the Kahuna was the Hawaiian title for a priest, expert, teacher, and/or adviser. If you do a Google search of "kahuna" the first result comes up about the movie
The Big Kahuna in the IMDB (Independent Movie DataBase). This annoys me - in my opinion the main prerequisite for the "rights" to use the title "kahuna" is that you must be from Hawaii. The second prerequisite is that it has to do with wisdom since the "kahuna" was the shaman in old Hawaii. This movie is about salesmen at a convention in Wichita, KS. Go figure...
The Wikipedia link above also describes how the term "The Big Kahuna" got incorporated into the surfing lingo - through another movie
Gidget where The Big Kahuna was the best surfer on the beach. Unfortunately, this abuse of the term has caught on - surfing is associated with Hawaii - although the
Gidget movies supposedly take place on Malibu beach in California. I will admit upfront that I've never seen any of the series of these movies - nor do I have an interest to ever see them.
The second result of the Google search is much more relevant. It leads to a site called
Kahuna Source and this does indeed cover the origins from Hawaii.
Some purists may consider my blog title
East Coast Kahuna to also be misuse of the term Kahuna. Well, I am from Hawaii - native-born (a
kama`aiana rather than a
malahini) - so that counts for most of it. I have a PhD - some folks may call that being wise. I do live in New York, although not really on the Atlantic Coast. But from the Hawaiian perspective, east coast is the northeast - probably covering New England and the Mid-Atlantic States (Washington DC and north). Virginia and below are the "South" and wouldn't really be called the East Coast. I have lived on the East Coast longer than in Hawaii now so I think the title justifiably applies to my viewpoint.
Ready, Fire, Aim
My initial hesitation to start posting to this blog was that I would not be able to keep up with writing at fairly regular intervals. I also was concerned that I would run out of things to write about. Finally, after seeing some blogs by other people that I know, I just went ahead and started.
I still remember something I read in a book by Tom Peters, although I can't pinpoint which one. This was the philosophy of "Ready, Fire, Aim!" - his point was that if you get too occupied with aiming (excessive planning, too much research, wanting to be more certain before launching), you might not end up firing at all. It's better to try something, then reevaluate and adjust, then fire again, for as many iterations that you need. I'm fairly sure that Tom Peters was the one that started using this expression, although I've heard others use it without attributing it to him.
I have been trained as a researcher (I do have an academic PhD in the sciences) so this philosophy is harder to accept. You usually want to do a few more tests or dig up more related research before committing yourself to presenting or publishing results. You base your conclusions on your experiments, hoping that you didn't overlook something in the design of the series of test.
Nike has the slogan, "Just do it!" This is not quite the same. It's more reckless. It doesn't take into account making adjustments and trying again with an better plan based on some experience. In a simple three word slogan, Tom Peters captured the essence of what it takes to innovate.
Bonsai and Orchids
In my previous post, I was quite critical about yard work. Although I don't enjoy it, I see it as a price to pay if you want to have your own house and property. Some people hire gardeners to do this work for them (heard the one about the wealthy Japanese-American who had a caucasian gardener?).
Plain yard work doesn't interest me. However, maybe because of my Japanese heritage, I do have an interest in learning bonsai. My interest goes way back, even before bonsai was made more popular by Pat Morita in
The Karate Kid. Growing up in Hawaii, many people had "Japanese gardens" - these usually were separate sections from the yard, often with a fish pond, pagoda-shaped yard ornaments and lots of gravel or small rocks making the surrounding trails. They sometimes would have bonsai in a separate building or display. When I started my first job out of college, my office mate, who was hapa-haole (his mother was a Japanese native and he had spent some time in Japan), also had a sizable collection of bonsai plants. He would often drive long distances to visit special nurseries to get more plants. There are bonsai clubs on the east coast - I actually took a Bonsai class (extended 1 day session) taught by an expert from Rochester. I came home with a plant which I made in class, plus some books and special tools which I had purchased, hoping to be able to continue. Eventually, the plant became infested with bugs and my wife and I could no longer care for it properly. I still have the interest to do bonsai again...someday.
When I was growing up in Hawaii, one of our neighbors were into orchids - they had a beautiful yard full of orchids. They always had an abundance and we could get flowers from them if we wanted to make some leis (we also had plumeria in our own yard). The real special leis, if needed for special visitiors or special events (e.g., graduations) were usually bought from florists or the lei stands near the airport. My uncle also kept a collection of orchid plants, many distinguished types. I hadn't thought about trying to grow orchids until recently. On a visit back to Hawaii, I went to a local orchid shop to buy a gift for my uncle. This shop now has an orchid of the month club, where you can have plants FedEx-ed to mainland destinations. I seriously considered signing up for this service. However, currently I would not have time to maintain them properly - perhaps after my kids are through with college and move away...
Hidden Costs of Home Ownership
When I was growing up in Hawaii, I remember my parents constantly tending the yard and plants outside the house. I thought that they did it because they liked doing it.
It was more that they were slaves to the burden of yard work. In Hawaii, conditions are always great for plants to grow. So they do. There are no seasons. The grass always grows and always needs to be mowed. The trees are always have leaves, which eventually will fall off and need to be raked up. If you have fruit trees, they will bear fruit - if you don't pick the fruit to eat or give away, they will fall on the ground and have to be cleaned up.
Now that I have my own house, I don't plant anything additional. We had tried gardening before, but living in the Northeast, too much maintenance is required. You have get your plants in at a certain time in the spring. You go through the winter and have to start afresh every year. You are always fighting off animals such as birds and deer who can get at your garden unless you protect it in a fortress of sort. I pretty much now just cut the grass, cut back on plant which endanger damaging the house or sidewalks, pull weeds when they are out of control. I don't even water the yard. It grows fine on its own. In the fall, all the leaves seem to fall at once (that's why the season is called "Fall" more often than "Autumn"). Although raking is a bigger task here in the Northeast, once it's done for the year, that's it. You don't need to mow anymore once you get to Fall - not until the other side of winter. Then the grass grows like gangbusters and you can see it grown back the day after you mow! As with the raking of leaves, mowing the lawn is much more intense, but you don't have to keep doing it all year.
I don't mind the trade-off. I much prefer having seasons. At least every year you get a sense of completion with the yardwork. In Hawaii, everything always grows. It's always hot and humid. You are a slave to your house and yard. There is no end...
Sabermetrics
I don't think the topic of sabermetrics has anything to do with living on the East Coast versus living in Hawaii. However, the topic is on my mind and I feel like writing about it. What is it? According to Wikipedia, Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially using baseball statistics.
I first got interested in softball statistics by helping out with my daughter's travel softball team. I am not athletic, so I really couldn't serve as a coach - but I'm good at cranking numbers. Since there was a need, I volunteered to be team statistician. While continuing to do the stats for the team, I wondered about the meaning of the numbers of what I was collecting and how to best interpret them.
The literature is full of stuff about baseball statistics. It goes way beyond batting average and strikeouts. This whole area of sabermetrics is like a contrarians view of baseball - lot of what has been uncovered is counterintuitive to many people already in the game (i.e., the major league teams, especially how the player scouts look at prospective players). My eyes were opened to this controversy by reading Michael Lewis'
Moneygame on the recommendation of one of the other parents on my daughter's team. Now I'm planning to dig deeper by reading some of Bill James' work - his name will come up right away when you just dig into the surface of sabermetrics.
Any significance to Asian-Americans? One of the key statistics is how often a batter gets on base, rather than his batting average and number of RBIs. A person who is bigger and stronger in physical build is not necessarily at a better advantage. I've noticed a larger proportion of Asian-Americans (and Asians) playing major league baseball, as opposed to football or basketball (Yao Ming is a major exception) for which size is a distinct advantage.
Driving to Camp
I spent most of today driving my daughter and a couple of her friends from Ithaca to a resident basketball camp in the Adirondacks, a little more than four-hours drive from here.
Growing up in Hawaii, if I went away to Boy Scout camp, it was about a 40 minute drive to a campsite on the other side of the island (Camp Pupukea). Later on, if we went on extended trips with the Iolani Concert Band, we would need to take the thirty minute drive to the airport. The unique location of Hawaii makes the driving minimal - if it's drivable, it's not going to take you very long to get there on Oahu. If you go any further you have to fly.
Now that I live on the mainland and I have to do much more driving to take care of family activities, I still think we missed out a lot growing up on Oahu. There are so many more places available to visit and explore here on the East Coast. You can even drive to Alaska if you had the time and inclination (I know people who have driven from Alaska to Ithaca).
Up through high school I never really found the subject of history very interesting - but now here on the mainland, where you can actually see the sites where a lot of the history took place, everything suddenly become interesting and relevant.
Given the choice, I'm glad I'm living where I am now.
Music lessons
Although I am a techie, music has been a big part of my life.
I was fortunate to be at an elementary school which was just starting band instrument instruction - this was back in 1965 when I was in 6th grade in Pearl City, Hawaii. There was a new program where a travelling music teacher came to the school twice per week - he carried a set of trumpets and clarinets for our use - we only had to purchase our mouthpieces. I wanted to play clarinet (maybe because my brother had been learning trumpet in Intermediate school) - but since I was wearing braces on my top teeth, the teacher recommended that I play trumpet.
One of my father's close friends owned a piano store (so of course we had a piano at home) - he had connections so that I was able to get my own trumpet. Because I had my own instrument, I was invited to join a larger group consisting mainly of students of the larger elementary school in town. So my journey in music began.
I played in Advanced Band as a 7th grader in Intermediate School. When I moved to Iolani for 8th grade, I could go directly in the Intermediate Band, then Concert Band as a 9th grader. Iolani had what I thought to be the best music program in the state (better than Punahou!) - it even had an orchestra, unusual for Hawaii, but since I was already in the band I did not take up a stringed instrument.
With the band, I went on my only trip to the island of Maui. I also had a chance at international travel - to Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, and in my senior year a trip to Fiji, Australia (Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne), and New Zealand (Christchurch, Wellington, Rotorua and Auckland). I was also playing with the stage band. At age 17 that definitely was the high point of my life. I did all of this travel even before getting to the mainland US.
I was at a peak in my playing ability - once I got to MIT I had the courage to audition for the 2nd MIT Jazz Band. Unfortunately, I was third for 2 openings. Both of the trumpet players who qualified ahead of me decided to join, so I was out. I think my life would have been quite a bit different with music playing a larger role, had I gotten into the jazz band.
I ended up joining the MIT Concert Band (anyone interested could join without audition), but they rehearsed one night a week and it was hard to get a lot of practice in with a busy schedule. Even though I stayed with the band for three years, my skills gradually declined. After a while I stopped playing entirely, but still kept my trumpet.
Move ahead about 10 years. I'm in working in Tarrytown, NY at the R&D center for General Food, a large food manufacturing company. One of the fat chemists is a saxaphone player and the manager for the Pleasantville Fire Department Band. They need musicians, so I dust off my trumpet and get back in shape. The quality of playing was highly variable, and I was good enough to play - although it took me a while to start getting my lip endurance back. In addition to the weekly rehearsals playing concert band music - we also marched at parades with the rest of the fire department and I was in the Dance band, a smaller ensemble that played for retirement homes (mainly big band and popular music). At this time a had a chance to purchase a good used trumpet, a Bach Stradavarius, when we were down in Princeton, NJ on a visit with my in-laws. I left the fire department band when we moved to Ithaca (I went back to school to work on a PhD), and again, my playing went on hiatus for a longer number of years.
Now in Ithaca, we are very fortunate to have quality music education in the public schools. In elementary schools, they can start playing string instruments in third grade. My son played cello briefly, but it never caught on with him. My daughter started playing violin and then later oboe in addition, being in both the band and orchestra groups (eventually she has to make a choice and is currently just playing oboe in the middle school band). But in the meantime I'm getting interested in playing again and looking for an opportunity to play.
I eventually found my way into the Ithaca Community Orchestra as of this winter, 2006. Although the repertoire is classical, it's still fun to play. And I've been inspired enough to try to keep practicing on a regular basis. It took a lot of work to get my lip back into shape (I still don't think it's as good as my peak at the end of high school). I also have picked up a clarinet to learn to play something different (I'm not a very good woodwind player!). I got some amazing deals on Ebay and pick up a decent flugelhorn and french horn (both used Yamaha instruments, but in good shape, quite sufficient for my playing). Flugelhorn is very close to the trumpet so it's easy to play. French horn is different - but I'm doing well, well enough to consider taking some formal lessons. Although I've been playing trumpet all these years, I always liked the French horn.
Learning Japanese
Looking back, I missed a big opportunity to learn to speak Japanese.
I am of the Sansei generation (3rd generation from immigration). My grandparents - the Issei - did not speak English. My parents - the Nisei - were bilingual, but not by choice. They often had to serve as the Japanese-English interpreters for their parents in Hawaii. At that time, there were many foreign nationals who came to Hawaii to work on the plantations - Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Filipino - along with the Japanese and Okinawans (Note that the Okinawans are distinguished from the Japanese). "Pidgin English" - the Hawaiian dialect of English - developed because of this melting pot of many nationalities. My grandparents may have picked up some English words here and there - but they didn't learn English enough to speak to their grandchildren (they had their children to interpret for them). My grandparents lived separately from us so I didn't pick up Japanese in this manner either. Before I was born, my family lived in a larger household which included my paternal grandmother. My older sister remembers being able to talk to Grandma a little in Japanese. But then my family moved out to be on our own a few years after I was born.
I had a close friend who was "hapa-haole" - or half-white in Hawaiian. His mother was of Japanese ancestry, his father of German ancestry. He used to attend "Japanese School" after school - this was extra Japanese language classes taught by the local Buddhist church (the Hongwanji). We used to tease him because it was like an extra chore for him to go - I considered myself lucky that I didn't go.
I've only recently reflected on why he studied Japanese and I didn't. My parents had to go through WWII - where not having the children learn Japanese was part of being loyal to the United States. It's unfortunate that the loyalty of Japanese-American citizens was put through so much scrutiny. Many of the Japanese language written materials were discarded or destroyed (didn't want them to be found if their houses were searched). My mother also considering herself Christian did not want the extra affiliation with the Buddhist temple. In this generation, the mother usually controlled raising the children while the father was out earning money for the family. So it was my mother's decision.
My friend's mother, was a librarian in the local schools and was very conscious of the educational value of having her son learn Japanese. Because she was married to a caucasian, my guess is that she did not feel that she had to prove loyalty to the United States (although hapa-haole families had other problems associated with them being of mixed-marriage).
I went to the best private school in Honolulu (Iolani, not Punahou!) and I ended up taking Russian as a foreign language - typical Asian-American ambition. I took up what was considered to be the hardest language (we had 7 to choose from in those days: Latin, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese). And because of the space race and my slant toward technology I chose between Russian and German (Japan was not yet considered a technological powerhouse). Also, I felt that I was already behind in Japanese because many of my classmates already had some early instruction in it - so it would have been harder for me to compete. With Russian, at least the whole class pretty much started from the very beginning.
While living on the East Coast, I've lost count of how many times I've been asked if I know Japanese, especially in the context of reading Japanese technical papers or patents. I can understand how someone who doesn't know English must feel, but only to a small scale.
Now I want to learn Japanese (and Okinawan) in order to go to back Japan (I was there for 2 weeks in 1970 with my high school band for Expo '70). I am hoping to be able to research my ancestors a little deeper and meet some relations. For somebody at my age it would be a big challenge.
Google AdSense
One feature of the Blogger host site is the easy addition of Google AdSense. If you look on the top of this page, there will be a display of links to related destinations, automatically generated by Google AdSense. These are determined, theoretically, by the content of the blog. Primarily out of curiousity, I added this feature.
In the last post, my criticism about the display of astrology in the blogger's profile brought up links to the zodiac and astrology. It didn't matter if my content was anti-astrology - the feature is automatic (i.e., stupid). Anyway - whatever links come up are not up to me.
However, this blog is about my viewpoint which developed from growing up in Hawaii, then leaving to go to school on the East Coast. Maybe if I put enough key words in this paragraph, Google AdSense will pick up on it: Asian-American, Japanese-American, Hawaii, Kahuna, Okinawan-American, Uchinanchu, Sansei, Iolani School, Honolulu, Ithaca, New York.
Let's see where AdSense takes us....
Astrological sign
Does anyone look at the Blogger's profile? Right on top, it listed that my astrological sign is Aquarius. Who cares? I looked for a control to turn it off. There isn't a control for it. The only way not to show the astrological sign is to delete my birthdate information. I kind of like my birthday - some important folks, like Thomas Edison, were born on the same day. But no way am a going to have Aquarius listed on the very top of my profile information! What fool designed that?
Also, why the bias - why assume that if somebody cared to list an astrological sign he would list this one? I was born in the Year of the Ram, from the "Chinese Zodiac."
Here's what Wikipedia says, "According to one legend, in the sixth century B.C. Buddha invited all the animals in creation to a race, only twelve showed up: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Cock, Dog, and Pig, and according to their places in the race, Buddha had given them each a number starting with the Rat who was the winner of the race."
(BTW, do you know that "wiki-wiki" is Hawaiian for quick?)
Some good background is on the website for the
Chinese Cultural Center. You can go there and look up your year. Here's what it says of the Year of the Ram:
1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003
People born in the Year of Ram are elegant and highly accomplished in the arts. They seem to be, at first glance, better off than those born in the zodiac's other years. But ram year people are often shy, pessimistic, and puzzled about life. They are usually deeply religious, yet timid by nature. Sometimes clumsy in speech, they are always passionate about what they do and what they believe in. Ram people never have to worry about having the best in life for their abilities make money for them, and they are able to enjoy the creature comforts that they like. Ram people are wise, gentle, and compassionate. They are compatible with Rabbits, Pigs, and Horses.
This doesn't sound too bad. I'll take it.
Personal computers
I attended a recent seminar about developing ideas - the step beyond the creative process. One of the questions the seminar leader asked to stimulate some discussion was to have each participant identify what his "favorite gadget" is and why.
Without hesitation, I thought about personal computers. I'm old enough to remember using a slide rule to do multiplication and division (then if you got good at it, you used your slide rule for your trig functions, instead of tables). And I remember having to solve equations with exponents in them (we really got good at taking logs and antilogs, and keeping track of decimal places). There were no slide rule calculators. I eventually bought one of the first slide rule calculators, the HP-35, back in 1973 for $300. Even then the idea of having a computer at home was mind-boggling.
The computer was left to mainframes - we had to use keypunches to punch cards which were fed in a large stack to the computer. It was a breakthrough several years later to be able to have a departmental minicomputer which could be accessed with a terminal. You could even call into it over the telephone - there were these printing terminals which had acoustic couplers. At 300 baud you could watch the printing terminal connect and print out line after line (in two directions!).
I got my first job out of college in 1976. I started in a manufacturing plant (all the controllers were analog at that time) - but found that I liked R&D better so I moved on to another company. I still remember my section manager liked to hire Asian-Americans because he had a perception that they were better with computers (and I think they were).
Actually at that time I was not one of the heavy computer users. I did buy one of the early home computers, an Ohio Scientific Challenger. It was programmed in basic - you stored programs on audio tape and had to play the tape to feed it in (or you typed in the program by hand). I used a portable black & white TV as the monitor. There wasn't a printer, so I had to copy down the results onto a pad of paper. I usually used it to play simple games, but I did use it sometimes when I had to do simple linear regressions and statistics.
The breakthrough was when the Macintosh came out. I was about to buy a more substantial home computer and I really didn't want to buy an IBM-PC. We considered the DEC Rainbow and even the Apple II. I am grateful that the salesman at the local computer store who sold Apples suggested that I wait a little bit. Sure enough, several weeks later the first Macintosh was there and I saw one of the first ones demonstrated. In those days the operating system and two applications MacWrite and MacPaint (the basis for GUI word processors and graphic programs) fit on one 400K Sony type floppy disk. I ended up getting a 128K Mac in 1984, the first year it was out. Little did I realize that one of my Iolani classmates, Guy Kawasaki, was evangelizing many third parties to develop software for the Mac.
Anyway to summarize - personal computers were a breakthrough product and the Macintosh was a breakthrough product for personal computers. Even Microsoft eventually copied the Macintosh and went from DOS to Windows. I'm just at the right age to have seen how revolutionary this development was. My kids always had computers around as they were growing up - they really have no concept of life without a computer, or without videos, or without cable TV...
Baseball
I recently attended a New York Mets game with a group of folks from the office. We took a chartered bus from Ithaca to and from Shea Stadium. It took pretty much all day - leaving early in the morning, seeing the game, then coming back home after 9 in the evening.
Baseball was popular for boys in the father's generation. It was also a popular sport when the Japanese-Americans were put into concentration camps (called "relocation" camps) during WWII. There's actually an incident where baseball may have saved my father's life. He was awaken early on Sunday morning December 7, 1941 by his baseball coach to play - that got him out of bed before the Japanese attach on Pearl Harbor. Later on, a bullet was found in his mattress from the attack (Ewa, where my Dad's family lived, was not far from Pearl Harbor - my dad described being able to see the pilots in the Japanese Zeros during the attack).
Nobody in my generation (my brother, sister or myself) is athletic. Maybe my Dad's athletic abilities skipped a generation and went to my daughter who is into softball (she plays for a 14 year and under travel softball team - and has gotten quite good at third base). I hadn't had a chance to really watch baseball or softball closely until my daughter started playing a lot. I have developed more of an appreciation for the game and a better idea of how to watch the game. I now also do the statistics for my daughter's team.
The Mets won, by the way, by 1 point - the hero for the team was their 3rd baseman who had three key plays which limited Philadelphia's scoring - the last one ended the game with a runner on third base. I had done a lot of watching of third base with my daughter's play, and knew that the Mets' third baseman, David Wright, was an exceptional player.
For a better world - outlaw telemarketing
This note may seem off-topic, but I'm irked enough to write this now.
Last night (of course, at dinnertime) I received a telemarketing call "on behalf" of Amnesty International. They managed to get past my son (my kids usually can screen out telemarketers). They don't have to tell you they are telemarketers unless you ask. They also need to confirm that they are talking to you (since you have to a "relationship" with them to get past the "Do Not Call Registry" rules). So when she asked if I was a certain person, I didn't say yes - I asked who was calling. Then they did this "on behalf of..." thing - that's one giveaway that it's a telemarketer and not a volunteer for the organization. Another giveaway is that they mispronounce your name (here's an advantage for being Asian-American, your friends know how to pronounce your name correctly). I gave a contribution to Amnesty International last year so I had a "relationship" with them. I quickly mentioned I do not give contributions over the phone and hung up. There was no reason to try to get their company name and report a violation - they were allowed to bother me as they did.
You have to go back to the source. This year, instead of a contribution, Amnesty International will get a note. They wasted their money on professional telemarketers so no contribution from me this year. Recommend that they get rid of telemarketers entirely. I highly doubt that they are doing this work pro-bono. I would not be surprised if they get 50% (maybe even more) of the pledged money. Try asking the telemarketer to send the info in the mail - they will not be willing to do this, since they won't get their cut. I will do the same thing for any of the charities who go the telemarketing route.
I see absolutely no consumer value to telemarketing. Name one. It has caused more people to get answering machines because they don't want their dinners interrupted. The Do Not Call Registry was created - but I think is not strict enough. Telemarketing has stimulated the technology of Caller ID, probably more so than obscene phone calls (and it gives the telcoms a reason to charge you if you want the service).
I hate to say this, but I much prefer to get junk mail and spam than a telemarketing phone call. At least you can throw them away easily and you don't have to interrupt your dinner.
15 years
It's August 2006 and it's been 15 years since I officially finished my PhD in 1991. I only recently realized that it was also 15 years after I received my bachelor's degrees in 1976 (yes, a double major--typical Asian-Americn overachiver...but that will be another topic for discussion). I didn't do it on a straight path. I went to industry right out of undergraduate study, then did a part-time master's degree while working (finishing in 1983), finally going back to school full-time in 1986. I did this in sync with my wife (an undergrad classmate) who finished her doctorate, also not on a straight path, and started a faculty position.
It felt like a long time, getting through high school, finally leaving Hawaii to go to school on the East Coast. I was 21 when I finished my bachelors, but 36 when I finished the PhD (didn't quite do it before turning 30, another overachiver goal). My undergraduate class has already had it's 30th reunion this year.
What's the significance of all this? The second 15 years flew by so quickly compared to the first. Will the next 15 years seem even shorter? I'm now 51, the reverse numbers of 15. Maybe it just means I'm in true middle age now. Wouldn't mind setting a goal of at least one-hundred and 15 years.
(Note: For completeness--my bachelor's degrees were in Chemical Engineering and Biology from MIT in Cambridge, MA. I went to Columbia University in New York City for a MS in Chemical Engineering. My PhD was from Cornell in Food Science & Technology, concentrating in Food Engineering. Not too atypical for an Iolani alumnus.)
Hot Weather
We've been having near record high temperatures this week - although the temperature is in the 90s, the humidity makes the heat index well above 100. It's times like this I don't regret leaving Hawaii. There, the heat is always present - no relief at summer's end, because there aren't really seasons there. Now that I live on the east coast, I look forward to the fall - the nicest time of the year for me. Temperatures are cool and the bugs are dying, leaves are changing colors. I still get excited when the first snows come - a result of not having any winters when I was growing up.
In the hot weather, I think about my issei grandparents - how they emigrated from Hiroshima and Okinawa, looking for a better life. Having to work in the heat on the sugar and pineapple plantations - working in the fields with no way out. Two books come to mind which I've read long ago...
Kodomo no tame ni - For the sake of the children: The Japanese-American Experience in Hawaii by Dennis Ogawa and
Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii by Ronald Takaki. Since they didn't have a good life for themselves, everything was channeled into providing a better future for the children. This frame of mind carried over to the next generation, that of my parents, the nisei. Education became a very high priority and was seen as a way out of the situation.
It's probably a good time for me to reread these books. I remember how they helped me create an image what my issei grandparents and my nisei parents had to go through in the times before World War II. And then things would get worse before they got better.
I was fortunate to meet Prof. Ronald Takaki who also wrote
Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. He came up to Cornell University back in the late 80's to present some guest lectures for the Asian-American studies program (I was a grad student in a different field of study). It turns out that he was also an alumnus of my high school, Iolani in Honolulu, HI - another topic to be discussed later (not to be confused with Punahou School).
