Author: Frank

Many advise against buying the first house you look at; we did.  Our friend alerted us to new construction in a great location.  I entered the address into the GPS (yes, it was that long ago) and off we went, except it didn’t take us to the place in question.  This neighborhood was so new that the years-old GPS had no record of its existence.  As the crafty engineer, I pulled over and reasoned through where this location should be and, after a few minutes, found the address.  We toured the model; it’d end up being our new home.

However, we didn’t know it at the time.  We liked the location, but the builder priced it out of our comfortable price range.  Initially, we found Linda, a real estate agent with whom we had great rapport.  She ended up driving us into neighborhoods, showing us many homes.  That first neighborhood had only built homes for about half the lots so far, so we even toyed with the idea of building our new home. 

Continue reading “Our neighborhood as a microcosm” →

I confess that I have a guilty pleasure.  It’s a television show named House, MD, or House for short.  The show centers around an exceptional diagnostician in New Jersey who suffered a traumatic leg condition.  The show cycles between the extent of what he’d do to manage his addiction to pain medication, his relationships with his peers, and fascinating medical cases.

I started watching the series early; she started watching a couple of years later, after watching a few episodes with me.  Naturally, the characters fascinated us.  The fact that Jennifer Morrison (Cameron) and Jesse Spencer (Chase) became engaged while they dated in the show tickled us.  Listening to Hugh Laurie talk natively genuinely shocked us; we found him incomprehensible.

Continue reading “Accepting the miracle of medicine” →

We live in a great, diverse country where we may each have opinions.  The First Amendment guarantees the right to practice different religions and express our opinions.  We don’t have to agree, but we do have to coexist.  Our founding fathers understood that we built our country from many distinct parts.  The very name “United States” implies a collection of many.  The similar Latin phrase ‘E Pluribus Unum’, placed on all our currency, means ‘From many, one’.

For our citizens to all collectively believe the same things is profoundly dangerous.  Homogeneity is our enemy; diversity is our friend.  Our founding fathers listed the freedoms to practice our faiths and express our different opinions as the First Amendment.  This is the very definition of diversity.  You’re entitled to your faith and expressions, as long as they do not impinge upon others’ rights.

Continue reading “Who are the actual groomers?” →

I’ll write a Star Wars-themed post after observing May 4th (affectionately recognized as Star Wars Day).  In 1977, as a 9-year-old boy, I watched Star Wars at the movie theater in Puerto Rico with Spanish subtitles, even though I barely knew how to speak English.  The movie stunned and even fascinated me; even back then, I knew it would make a lasting impression.  However, I did not anticipate Star Wars becoming a franchise and, dare I say, a pantheon.  Though strangely, this is precisely what I needed.

As a child, I would’ve described Star Wars as science fiction.  As I grew older, I realized it was closer to fantasy.  It had its type of swords and sorcery with light sabers and the Force.  The classic conflict of good versus evil anchors the story, and it starts with the onset of the first scene of the first film, Star Wars (A New Hope).  Darth Vader boards the smaller captured vessel and immediately dominates the scene.  His imposing stature in all black symbolically earmarks him as the villain.

Continue reading “The tragic story of Anakin Skywalker” →

Strangely, I don’t remember much from my high school prom.  I went stag when most of my class had dates, and honestly, the entire social expectations dance wasn’t my thing.  However, after years of bullying and ridicule, I had clawed my way back into relevance.  I attended to demonstrate that they would not browbeat me into ‘outsider’ submission, much like my private version of Pretty In Pink.  At least that’s the story I tell myself in my head today.  Truthfully, I did not have this level of self-awareness when I graduated; it gradually developed over the years.

One conversation I remember from that night came from my friend’s date, a college student.  He lamented that although he had turned 19 years old, he was disallowed from drinking alcohol.  Specifically, the legal drinking age in the US wasn’t always 21; for many years, and in many states, it was 18.  To retain its federal funding, Florida also made this transition to 21.

Continue reading “Breach of contract” →

As spring starts and flowers bloom, I settle into an annual tradition.  Baseball season starts in spring.  Those who know me know that I’ve cheered for the Atlanta Braves from the start.  People often follow that discovery with a question (or confusion, if you know my geographical history).  No, I never lived in Atlanta, though I have visited a handful of times.  For the record, I do not follow the American predisposition to cheer for a professional team based on geography.  If anything, it irritates me that others assume that I would follow suit.

In 1982, the Atlanta Braves rocketed from next-to-last in the preceding year into first place through a 13-0 start.  They kept that first-place position in the National League West on the last game of the season versus the Padres by the skin of their teeth.  The start of the baseball season is magical.  The 1982 Braves weaved that magic.  They were the embodiment of the little engine that could.  Geography does not undo that kind of loyalty.

Continue reading “42” →

Early at the University of Miami, friends and I discussed what kinds of things we would do for money.  Naturally, the discussion iterated on both sides of this.  On one side, we discussed the nature of what we’d need to do; on the other, we contemplated the amount of money we’d receive.  At the time, I asserted that no amount of money would lead me to compromise on certain principles.  One friend responded, “Of course, there’s a dollar figure.  A buck’s a buck.”

Naturally, movies like Indecent Proposal lead us to contemplate these very limits of what we’d do and for how much.  However, money by itself is simply an arrangement of digits in an account.  It simply enables us to get a class of products (fancy car) or services (tropical vacation) we may get.  Alternatively, it’s a means to dissipate certain worries (broken car or leaky roof).  Having more money generally means more access, fewer worries, and a better life.

Continue reading “Would you compromise your principles for $19 million?” →

Years ago, we discussed tech at work; if memory serves, it occurred during lunch.  I mentioned I would pick one particular device because it had a “larger screen”.  One friend interrupted me midsentence and corrected me, “It doesn’t have a larger screen, it has higher resolution.”  He was right, of course, that is precisely what I meant; I wanted the extra pixels for more digital elbow room.  I didn’t post an objection, though, at the time, it seemed a bit pedantic.

He later mentioned that misrepresenting facts felt like fingernails on a chalkboard; he felt compelled to correct it.  It felt surreal, like a “sorry, but I’m not sorry” type of apology.  I filed it away as “that’s the way he is” and moved on.  Anyone with a diverse enough group of friends understands that they all have their idiosyncrasies and buttons to push; we learn to navigate them.

Continue reading “The hypocrisy of the word ‘groomer’” →

For those who have read my posts consistently, you’ll know that I was bullied through school.  It started at Parkway Middle School in Fort Lauderdale.  It mostly occurred the moment I got off the bus, where I lacked the safety of adult supervision.  The bullies mostly pushed me and knocked me to the ground while I walked home, sobbing from the humiliation, eventually stopping when their walk home took them down a different path.  Once, I endured their spitting gum in my hair as they targeted the “Chinaman”.

Upon arriving at South Plantation High School, the bullying didn’t necessarily stop, but it morphed.  While I no longer feared for my physical safety, psychological bullying took its place.  Classmates uttered cruel and demeaning comments, loudly enough for many to hear, but softly enough to avoid detection by an adult.  Still, in a handful of instances, even when our teacher heard such words (like “whale” or “sumo wrestler”), they reasoned that it didn’t rise to the level of disciplinary action.

Continue reading “The silence of our friends” →

Many years ago, a friend suggested that I move to his company. He maintained that I qualified for several software engineering positions, and he would get a referral bonus. He even marveled that it’d be a larger sum since I, an Asian male, qualified as a diverse candidate. I never took him up on that offer, but he joked later that he looked up the details and for software engineering at his company, Asian men were not considered diverse candidates.  Statistically, Asian men are not a minority in this particular population.

As far as minorities go, Asian men are among the most favorable.  Other minorities suffer from different stereotypes involving laziness, illegal activity, or lack of intelligence.  If anything Asian people generally benefit from the stereotype of intelligence.  People may also believe that we’re disproportionately soft-spoken, but that’s not a trait that typically threatens them.  Naturally, kids in school still bullied me for being different, but I navigated adulthood fairly smoothly.

Continue reading “Why you need to care about politics” →