Author: Frank

Many years ago, I worked into the evening at Microsoft.  As I waited for a task to finish on my computer, I thumbed through a magazine.  It was an issue of A. Magazine, an Asian American-focused magazine.  A friend comes by my office to ask a question.  After a few minutes, he looks at the magazine cover quizzically, and I respond with, “It’s an Asian American magazine.”

His response shocked me, “You’re the least Asian person I know.”  For context, this is a friend who met me shortly after I arrived in Washington years before.  He had never heard me speak in any language other than English.  I arrived here for my first professional job, and all my friends were people I met at work.  Therefore, only two observations indicated that I was of Chinese heritage:  my surname and, to a lesser degree, my facial features.

Continue reading “Reflecting on my heritage on this month” →

When I turned 16, my friends were preoccupied with getting their driver’s licenses.  In fact, many spent hours on their actual birthday at the Department of Licensing, officially getting their first licenses.  They saw it as a rite of passage.  While I did get my driver’s license at 16, I did not spend my actual birthday doing so.

Honestly, every family I knew owned cars, so it only made sense that everyone I knew would eventually get a driver’s license.  However, students in my high school generally lived pretty comfortably.  First, sadly, many people cannot afford to get cars.  Second, if you’re a poor family, your insurance rates increase when young drivers live in your household; it doesn’t matter if they choose not to drive.  Suffice it to say, there are many reasons why people may not have a driver’s license.

Continue reading “Distributing new voter identification” →

I have two sisters.  My younger sister was born in Puerto Rico; as such, she was a US citizen from birth.  I’ll occasionally tell her that she must run to be the president of the United States, since she is the only one among us who is qualified to run.  In response, she glares at me.  The very notion that the US population elects a Chinese woman born in Puerto Rico as president is logistically absurd.  While she certainly meets the legal requirement, there’s still implicit racial and gender bias that US citizens exhibit.

I became naturalized when my mom was naturalized, since I had yet to turn 18.  Ironically, I helped her study for that test by memorizing the questions and answers; I would’ve easily passed the test had I taken it.  I remember taking the oath as a teenager.  My older sister had already turned 18, so she took the naturalization exam and passed it years later.

Continue reading “A new form of identification” →

I grew up hearing that cringeworthy expression, “All Asian people look alike.”  I heard it occasionally from my friends.  I honestly thought that they made it up or were at least joking with me.  I mean, I could easily see the difference between two particular Asian people.  It astonished me to learn that they couldn’t.  Still, it sounded to me like a racist stereotype, like expecting me to be able to talk to our Japanese and Korean friends.

Years later, I was reading the book Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do.  Right from chapter one, Seeing Each Other, they confirmed this.  Studies corroborate this phenomenon, and as it happens, it’s a function of both nature and nurture.  People can see subtle differences among familiar faces, and the numbers suggest that it’s easier for Asian people to distinguish among Asian people (even when they’re strangers), etc.

Continue reading “Now you see me, Voting Rights Edition” →

In 2020, I started a new job.  This occurred right in the middle of the pandemic when everything was still shut down.  As such, the onboarding process was strictly remote, and we did this over webcams.  The standard forms clearly outlined the documents: one document from List A or two documents (one from List B and one from List C).  My US passport qualified for List A, but it expired (legally just a piece of paper).  I had to go with the second option.  My driver’s license qualifies for List B; a Social Security card qualifies for List C.  I memorized my number years ago, but I didn’t have a physical card.

My new employer gave me a 3-week window to get a replacement card.  I started the process with Social Security, which was also under lockdown.  It would require meeting with them on webcam; that wait may take as long as three hours.  This wasn’t that bad.  I worked while I waited for the Social Security administrator.  They eventually come in, ask me a few questions, and ask me to hold up my driver’s license to the camera.  Approved.  I got my new card well within my deadline.

Continue reading “The Hippocratic Oath, Voting Rights Edition” →

On a typical weekday afternoon, my friends and I break for lunch.  Many of us do not bring our lunch; we normally walk to an adjoining building that hosts a cafeteria.  After buying lunch, we walk back to our building to the familiar kitchen table where we sit together.  This process only takes a few minutes, and we’ll eventually end up on the same table chatting during lunch.  One friend consistently brings her lunch, and when appropriate, brings sharp utensils.  This amuses me.

During one such lunch, a topic of conversation came up.  I honestly can’t remember what we discussed.  However, I do remember that this conversation, or specifically a friend’s response, distressed me.  I reacted as you might expect:  I became agitated.  I raised my voice.  I minimized her position.  It was ugly.

Continue reading “The source of my bias” →

In the mid 1980s, I navigated my life by autopilot.  I bided my time through the labyrinth we called high school.  Socially, I excelled only in awkwardness.  Academically, I excelled at every subject I studied.  How did I pick my eventual field of study?  Computer programming came easily; I could learn in minutes what took others hours to understand.  Other subjects might’ve come easily, but not that easily.  I spent a couple of summers in engineering programs before graduating.

After high school, I attended the University of Miami to pursue a degree in engineering.  I only have two criticisms about my time at “The U”.  First, as a private school, it had considerably higher tuition than state schools.  Second, which is really a side effect of the first, I consistently took 16-17 credits per semester to maximize my tuition money.  That course load, along with needing a part-time job waiting on tables to pay my expenses, made for an exhausting grind.

Continue reading “A new hope” →

I spend many evenings tinkering on my computer.  My activities may range from composing blog posts (like this one) to 3D print projects, among others.  As I continue to pound away at the keys on my computer, I turn on the television for background noise.  I could easily turn on music or a YouTube channel.  Reflecting on it, I turned to television, at least partially, to account for the elapsed time.  The start and end of shows will mark the incremental hour or half-hour chunks.

I turned to Investigation Discovery, a channel that specializes in true crime stories.  The names of hosts like Tamron Hall, Joe Kenda, Paula Zahn, and Candice DeLong become familiar, and so do their styles.  Having studied both engineering and psychology, I am fascinated by both the how and why people commit crimes.  My wife often refers to it as ‘The Evil People Channel’.

Continue reading “To truly understand that they matter” →

I moved from Florida to Washington state in 1991, and now I live in the Seattle area.  Seattle is substantially different from Miami.  For instance, Washington legalized recreational marijuana in 2012.  Recreational marijuana is still illegal in Florida and federally.  Naturally, values and opinions vary around the consumption of marijuana; some opinions will be driven by whether its consumption is allowed by the law.

Interestingly enough, that’s not the only metric that drives opinions.  Washington legalized recreational marijuana in 2012; some stigma around it remains.  We should treat pot the same way that we treat alcohol, because they’re legally equivalent.  How many work-sponsored events have you attended with an open bar?  How many work-sponsored events have you attended with THC products?  Will you comfortably mention at work that you had a glass of wine after work?  How about a pot brownie?

Continue reading “How laws can change” →

Initially, I only saw vague references on Facebook on January 7th.  The phrase read, “This was not self-defense. This was murder.”  At the time, I had little time before I needed to leave, and I’ll hear the details later.  In that moment, I didn’t anticipate that this incident would balloon to what it became.  I left for the day and generally do not browse Facebook at work.  I did not receive the details on this discussion until the evening, and then it blew up.

Of course, the references were to the shooting death of Renee Good by an ICE agent.  Both the news and Facebook blew up with news and opinions about the incident.  I watched in quiet horror as video feeds from other people and different angles trickled in.  In a quiet instant, I think to myself, how much horror do we need to endure before we all become desensitized to it?

Continue reading “The memory of Renee Good” →