Biden just announced Harris as VP candidate.

My outlook for the future suddenly feel so bright. I even saw some serious work from one of the Democrats’ twitter account about getting Trump state—they are working!

But honestly, I had privately complained to friends that I don’t want to see an old white man elected president because he is most likely to beat Trump. Sleepy Joe scares me and it’s more than derisive nicknames from the Republicans. It would have seemed that America would rather have a mediocre white man but not one of the younger, stronger, minority candidate even has a chance. It would have seemed that we would choose a president for politics sake and not for merit and vision and leadership. I felt doomed. A victory would have been a loss.

But now that Harris is on the ticket, I feel a heavy weight lifted. I don’t have a rational thought about this—my rational thought is I’d preferred Yang or one of the black or latino man, or even sanders to really stir up changes. But I honestly feel happy that she’s on the ticket. That victorious loss just turned into a losses victory. And seriously, there are news paper suggesting Biden plans to die in office because he’s “choosing a VP who can step in any time.” This is so sad for so many reasons. But I’m feel the hope spring, and changes are already visible.

I fear that this race may be too racially charged. I don’t like the fact that I look at Joe Biden’s race when evaluating him for presidency. I don’t like the fact that the selection of Harris, an Asian-African-American, for VP brings a smile to my face. Race is way too much part of this decision. Politics is way too much part of this decision. I cannot even think about what’s good for myself, and much less for the country, because my mind is just so concerned with the color of the skin of the candidate.

Truth be told, this intense mental preoccupation with the singular concern of skin color (or minority status) is somewhat supernatural—it does not diminish naturally. It does not suffer from semantic satiation: where a word become blend when you repeat it 100 times and that repetition causes you to forget its meaning or pronunciation. This intense focus on race, it has endured for many years. Note that the election has brought it to the fore-mind, it is a sound that echoes without decay of amplitude between my ears.

One kind of wishes that there was more to it than that.

I signed up to the Democratic Party at Democrats.org. This is the official Democratic Party organization . It is Q3 of 2020 and the postmaster general, a donor to Trump, has just re-organized the USPS either in response to massive losses during coronavirus shutdowns or in preparation for the presidential vote-by-mail election coming up in a few months. One can’t imagine things becoming more partisan than this.

But staring at the multiple mails from democrats.org, I have a heavy heart. The DNC sends me 3-5 emails everyday. The subjects are either some one famous is asking you to donate (Biden, Obama, Albright, Warren, etc.) or that it was detected that Republican “outraised” the DNC. In both cases the first, second, third, and last paragraph asks for money donations.

I think, maybe I signed up for more than I bargained for. The political process I expected to experience includes things like discussing issues, or at least discussing the recovery from Trump presidency, how that will take place. For example, is Biden going to cancel everything Trump did by executive orders? Like what’s happening? Is the proposal to elect Democrats to every seat of government and undo all the laws that changes these years?

Some part of me feel that I don’t want to give money to the DNC. Their banal emails tells me exactly nothing to make me want to add another cent to this organization. When I did contribute to the Yang campaign, I felt there was a vision for change and progress. And I racked it up to inexperience the way Yang emailed twice a week saying “this is it, the last moment, if you don’t give money, I’m dead.” I thought that he did that in sincerity because he doesn’t know that the desperation does not garner more support. I thought maybe he doesn’t know how to influence people en masse because his professional experience had been in smaller enterprises of startups. I fought back vomit because I thought if we bear through it that there was a hope for more united and civilized and democratic future for America.

But now that I see that this kind of behavior is not just one faction, it is the whole rebellion organization, the whole resistance, the entire DNC are people like this. Even the experienced politicians believe that desperation win hearts, and hearts win money, and money wins the race.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been an outsider to Democrats until now. And maybe republicans talk to republicans like this too: “give money to me, that’s the only way I have to win.” It is horrifying to me to hear a leader say “the only way I can do my job is if you gave me money.” There is something wrong about this.

Why doesn’t the campaign show me the campaigning that took place? Maybe a massive zoom session, a rousing speech, something, anything. That shows me what the leader does with his hands and mouth. And brain. Something that shows me what he will do after being elected. Something that makes me want to give money other than restating “the only way to win a political campaign is money.” This Democrats believe is so sad! I mean even if that’s true, it’s not the sales pitch you want to make right? Don’t try to sell me a bed by saying “money is the only way you can get a good night sleep.” Tell me how soft it is and how firm it is and how it’ll even protect me from an earthquake when the house falls, tell me the big secret that the bed has unadvertised aroma that does the trick.

I don’t know… just anything that shows me these people care about doing what they are doing.

Like, we’d never survive an attack by an axis of evil with this kind of a party. (And I’m not saying there isn’t one right now, and I’m not comparing Trump or Xi to Hitler) but can you imagine Eisenhower or Churchill in their campaign speech saying: “give my campaign money or else Hitler will win!”

🤢😱

Watching this interesting show called Bulge Bracket on Amazon Prime. I have to admit, I know nothing about traditional fintech companies, so I cannot evaluate the realism of this show. As the self referential show asks, what is this Silicon Valley? The raunchy behavior is terrible terrible worst possible that you’d imagine maybe from the 1980’s? Or is this what 2020 looked like in Investment Banking?

The show is a little bit of an expectation jerker, season one ending with Bolo giving a reasonable pitch to his talented young female recruit to stay on board despite a finance-career making sexual proposition from potential client. This part sounds pretty real, well realistic for an Asian boss, solidly delivered: “I like how you work, I worked harder to get here, stay here and work harder for me and we’ll all be rich.”

But ultimately what really gets me is the HR scene. The HR executive immediately went on an offensive registering a complaint after the employee made legitimate complaints regarding behaviors of executives at the company and executives at other companies.

And I obviously do not speak from deep hatred of HR departments and some of their staff who choose to engage in this kind of activities for companies that I didn’t work for.

But when it does happen, it really hurts. If you think a female HR executive being marched around promoting company-wide support for female career development called BankHer would turn around and stonewall a newly hired female employee’s TWO sexual harassment complaints. Imagine how a lesser supported minority might feel when backstabbed like this at work.

But let me append that hate speech with a notice that I have friends who do HR, and they’re all wonderful people! Can’t find better specimen of human being than them. And seriously, there are those that have served me solidly and help to resolve conflicts and make the work place efficient and happy. Like these people are like instant friends. It’s their job to make help the teams work together and to bring to bear skill sets that vanilla management staff do not have. They don’t put a stupid black mark in your file so that they can have a reason to send you off. They don’t just register complaints so that they have work to show for. Like, sheesh, there are just such wonderful people out there when you think about what some other people do in their positions.

I wouldn’t expect the show to be renewed: 1.) too Asian, 2.) too real, 3.) that’s about it, like unless it descend into Silicone Valley territory, there isn’t that much more to what gets people out the door on Monday mornings.

And I should note the irony. The maker of the show apparently is an Asian living in California looking into the world of Finance through a spouse… I am an Asian watching their TV show. One does have to wonder if their perspective and my own may slant in the same way as our eyes do when observed by broader American audience. They feel so angry/nervous/strongly about it that they made a show on Amazon Prime. I feel so much anger/fear that I blog about it, but in reality, I don’t see anyone else making the same kind of big deal about it in these explicit ways. Or honestly, maybe I missed them because they usually portrait minority success and not so much failure. Maybe because the actress was Latino or black and I just didn’t feel it so vividly as I do watching Asians suffer. Maybe… idk, I really don’t see why non-Asians will be interested in this show—because maybe they have the same problem, the protagonist is not their in their race-social-economic stratus and they just don’t feel that strongly about it.

In my head, this is playing at FAMX.3

Recently, my children had a play date with her classmate from a private school in Palo Alto. We happen upon a day when the Oakland zoo was giving free admission. We could not even get close to the zoo even with our year-long membership already in hand. So we went for a hike at the bay shore of a nearby city instead.

After a short while, my 4-year-old was pushed off of a rapidly spinning merry go round by a fat Latino boy twice the size. He landed on all four. It wouldn’t have been so concerning if what happened before and after the fall did not happen. For twenty seconds before the fall, a giant man spun the merry go round rapidly so no kids could get on and off. During the 10 seconds prior, the fat boy used his butt to push my child off the merry go round. My child vigorously defended his position by holding on to the bars as if for dear life—crying. His hands and feet were the only parts of his body that are over the merry go round, “no! no! Stop!!” he screamed into the big fat boy’s back, but his other parts have been pushed beyond the play structure by then. He fell shortly after he lost his footing.

After the fall, I pick my child up to check for injuries. A older sister, or guardian, or mother of the child came to my back and says “it wasn’t his fault. I can apologize, I’m sorry your child fell, but it wasn’t my child’s fault!! I was watching the whole time and it was my child’s fault!!” I had to turn around to excuse myself from the rapid fire I-don’t-know-what-that-was so I could continue to check on my child and try to calm him from a crying fit. “I can apologize for what happened, but it wasn’t my child’s fault!” She insisted again to my back. Finally, I turned and said to her: “it’s okay, you don’t have to apologize, my fault for coming here where it is unsafe.” Walking out of the playground, I noticed that it was a Latino playground—most adults and kids are Latino. All things considered, I felt wise to have taken flight before more adults surrounded us. Admittedly, I was affected by a recent incident: while holding my child, I was attacked by old ladies in community public libraries across the bay. The old lady wished out loud that we, Chinese people, would leave. a few months ago I definitely fear for my children’s safety at that moment in that playground for many many many moments after.

I cannot fathom living in this city. The fact that it the kids had a little dustup is not of concern. (It looked horrifying, especially from my child’s perspective. But honestly, that’s life) The fact that a lot of Spanish is spoken here is not of concern. The fact that there are a lot of crimes in this city, as reported by online providers, is not the problem. The fact that the guardian acted that way so nervously made me just so anxious. Was I supposed to sue her? Why is she so defensive? Why did she apologize disclaiming remorse and wrongdoing? Is it a thing now that everyone knows Asians love to demand apology irrespective of giver’s true attitude and intentions? I do not want to call home a city in which I have to habitually engage in liability jousting on the children’s playground! I barely descended into this type of thing at work: obsessively making clandestine observations and recording them at work in preparation for formally charging or responding to charges of coworkers with impropriety: When I did, I did it well, why it had to be done—I kept log of everything significant that transpired, everything from massively complicated “concerning multi-organization technical issues with ‘controversial’ implications” to coworkers chitchatting about collecting human teeth as hobby. For those nightmarish months I documented the concerns I had with each issue and tried to document my own strenuous and timely efforts that in part absolve me of responsibility for things beyond my control. I was unhappy and extremely uncomfortable with that aspect of workplace culture. This city, has so far exhibited a culture that I cannot live with.

I hate to make stereotypical statements, but in present day Trumpverse, scribere cogitationes meas: don’t these people smoke weed, and wasn’t weed supposed to calm them down? Her reaction was so very prompt and rehearsed. Even this poor city along the bay seems to harbor highly litigious residents who are hyper-vigilant even on the children’s’ playground.

I do applaud myself, not for being a retard not removing my child from danger earlier, but for giving my child a chance to learn to defend himself early in life. It’s far to late for myself to gain the self-righteousness/respect, determination and physique to stand up to a playground bully and their guardians, but it is not too late for my children.

When I observe my own children playing with family of significantly better financial and social situation(than us) I observe similar things. My children become the more unruly party. Their actions leads to situations that even I feel are unsafe. They are often the aggressor in the taking of toys or play spot. I feel like apologizing for nasty situations. But their playmates parents are able to maintain a cool composure. They seem to be very assured that the situation we brought will pass and that their children will endure without physically or mental corruption. They do not run away from my family as I did from that playground and that city. Their children seem to be able to deal with friends who are recalcitrant and behave dangerously—and they play together peacefully without much apparent effort. “That’s alright.” is the perpetual response we came to rely on from these friends. It almost seems that they can sense my anxiety about the matter and are trying to comfort me!

Therefore, I shall conclude about the matter here with that reassuring expression of friendship and support:

That’s alright!

Apologies for any race, class or gender based bias in my expressions. If you perceive any such display in this blog, it is not my fault. Any mention of events of employment are not in anyway related to a real company that I worked for. I disclaim that I’m writing about things that actually happened. Person and events described herein do not correspond to real people or events that actually transpired.

There is a macrocosm to this encounter. California 2020 proposition 16 is a ballot measure to overturn ‘96 proposition 209 effectively removing laws forbidding race based discrimination by the State of California including higher education institutions. I think of my helpless child going to college and graduate school some day, or perhaps he wants to service the state from private sector, he might be butted off of the merry go round of an institution. He might have to holding on for dear life in tears but essentially very poorly positioned and equipped to play on a public structure. In my mind, the great state of California should be a civilized institution where, metaphorically speaking, bigger butts, chest, and other members should not determine inclusion and success—it is arbitrary and capricious to legalize race based discrimination. There just are wrong ways to do things and race based discrimination is simply wrong. And if lady Justice will be standing behind me yelling “He’s not doing anything wrong!” What will be my recourse then? What will be left of our pride in our most sacred believes about America and about California? What will be left of our livelihood? Maybe then, the popular adage will be right: “go back to where you came from!”