Happy Thanksgiving, you all!

I know I know, I am quite late in the game.  I am supposed to write this post in a timely manner but my life recently has been out of ordinary because Fabrice has been traveling for almost the entire November!  I can enjoy being a single Mom for a short period of time, but for a whole month, well, that led to the following few incidents:

- Last Monday morning, I woke up at 7:30 am resulting in having Zhuzhu to miss her latest allowed drop off at 7:50 am.  We arrived at her school at 7:58 am and she had to enter from a side door.  Fortunately she was not alone and it was rainy...Sorry kiddo, it is the first time and hopefully the last time that you had to walk into the school through the door of shame.  

What, don't I know how to use an alarm clock?  Well, let me tell you, I am a dreamer and I love to dream in the mornings.  That morning I was listening to one of Fabrice's postdoctoral trainees to report her research progress in a lab meeting in my dream.  I remember being annoyed by some beeping sound while the meeting was going on and wished someone in the lab to turn that unattended timer off...it was actually my alarm went off in reality...

Oops!

- I also cheated by skipping regular breakfast at the table in order to get Zhuzhu to her school on time, at least 2 morning per week.  Shh, don't tell Fabrice that I fed the kids in the car since he is the one who cleans it!

- The house is a mess now.

Oh, alright, this post is not about my relying on Fabrice to live a life as a responsible parent.  It's about the T-day. 

Yes, I had learnt to appreciate this special day and in fact, our family has already spent our last 2 Thanksgiving dinner nights with the same close friends Mike/Vera and their close friends.  The 2012's T-dinner was even more specially personal to me because my parents were visiting.  After the dinner, my father could not stop talking about how much he appreciated the hospitality of our hosts.  He was trying to name each dish that he had as he had not had such typical/traditional American dinner before.  He was also offered a silver bracelet by one of the guests and surprisingly my father wore it all the way back to China - just so you know, this man had probably never worn any jewelry in his entire 82 years of life (well, at least I had never seen him wearing any in my entire life).  

It turns out that this year's T-holiday has made me in debt to our regular T-dinner hosts even more...

... right, we had planned to again join Mike/Vera and their close friends for another special T-dinner this year.  In my RSVP, I even emphasized the fact that we had to reject 4 other invitations to make it to their T-dinner indicating how much we appreciated the invitation and how much we were looking forward to another special evening.

However, just a day or 2 after I RSVPed, an email from SW airline lured me with a special offer to Denver, the ticket price was within our budget and I immediately booked 4 non-refundable tickets and then happily informed our hosts.  I did so NOT because I needed to change our RSVP from a Yes to a No, but because I thought that they might wish to jump into this opportunity as I did.

A bit of a background information here: we had been skiing together in the last 2 years and had been planning on having a ski trip together this winter too, except that we had failed to find reasonably priced tickets.

Well, guess what, things are not as easy as I thought. 

This year Chanukah/Hanukkah spans from Nov. 27 to Dec. 7, and our T-dinner hosts happen to be Jews who enjoy Jewish holidays.  That meant that their T-dinner guests included usual crowd and some unusual "out of town" Jewish friends.

That also meant that the T-dinner plan could not be easily changed.

After having found out this, I had tried to reschedule our ski trip but then was advised not to by our loving friends/T-dinner hosts.  They love me so much that they support, at least understood, my need of getting out of another 4 days of babysitting life.  Having been listening to Zhuzhu and Niuniu's complaints about how unfair it was that the Daddy got to travel everywhere in the world yet they had to stay home, I had been becoming more and more bothered by the fact that the T-holiday would need me to take care of them 5 whole days more straight while the Daddy is dealing with his jet lag from his international travel (Australia) and then catching up with his work!  

For the record, Fabrice was quite upset about my sudden change of plans.  He missed being home after a 12-days traveling in another continent; had to cancel several scheduled meetings including an important one with his biggest employer NIH; and of course, would have certainly not cancelled a T-dinner plan with our friends...However, I believed that he was mad at the fact that I had made a "mini family vacation plan" without his consent.

Sorry hubby, if you go out of town so often, I may run our lives like a true single Mom.

...  

Now, the end results? 

Fabrice has gotten his "home cooking" for not being "home" in the last 4 night straight - yes, I have cooked 4 dinners straight in our rental condo; he dealt with his jet lag effortlessly by flying on ski slopes; he also bonded with the kiddos by spending every single minute with them in beautiful Colorado Mountains; he even has not lifted a finger to decide which ski resort to take the kiddos - he followed my lead and we skied at the Breckenridge and Keystone, 2 days each resort.

Indeed, having a ski trip during T-holiday has been our tradition ever since Jay, one of my best friends, invited Fabrice and me to join him at Frisco years ago.  Following his lead, we have since invited many other groups of people, including friends and relatives, to Frisco to spend our T-holidays.  Together, we have had some special T-dinners at this small but friendly town.  I love Frisco and many other cities that welcome skiers during winter seasons.  T-holiday is particularly colorful as these cities put out the Christmas lights early enough for skiers like us who enjoy preseason skies - cheaper lift tickets with less people on the slopes.  I personally believe that a ski trip to CO mountains is the best way to spend T holiday for the ones who have not grown up with a holiday named Thanksgiving.  Therefore, I did go on the Facebook to thank Jay for taking us there years ago.  

On the other hand, I have lived the last week of my life in a terrible guilt.  The spirit of this T-day may have gotten into me after all.

Thank you to all of you for loving me as who I am and happy Thanksgiving to you all!!!   

Jimmy Kimmel - a name otherwise unknown to many Chinese

The last grant deadline delayed for more than a month, thus,  I was given a bit of time to think about something else other than writing my grant every minute of my day.  What I have done is so out of ordinary that I have to write it down here.  Before we go further, you first should take a look at the following clip:

Honestly, after watching it, I had felt almost nothing, not funny, not insulting, a bit of concerned, maybe, I was a bit sympathetic for the parents of the kid - imagined if that kid was my own, boy, I would have had hard time to get to my work place next morning.  As emails kept coming to my way asking me to sign a petition to boycott JK and I had to follow what has been happening.  Then I saw this clip:

That, my friend, ticked me off.  His arrogance and ignorance were unbearable.  I felt insulted and disappointed.  I used to like him a bit when I had time to sit in front of a TV years ago.  After watching this, all the worst experiences at which people have looked down on me in the last 21 years have appeared in my memory.  Then I volunteered my time, money and sleep to join the protest on 11.9.2013 (119 movement), which is an event organized by "the people" in the following cities. 

Here was the speech I prepared but only had time to deliver a summarized form in 2 minutes:
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I would like to express my motivation and purpose of coming out today to join this demonstration.

At first, I was kind of shocked by how desperate the ABC producers for Jimmy Kimmel’s show are. I thought it was obvious that they are seeking negative publicity to boost the declining viewers’ rating. I believed that I was an educated scholar and a mother of 2 young kids who has no time for such shows anyways. I would not give them the publicity for which they were looking. However, when I began to receive more and more emails from friends who are as educated as me, particularly many were American fellows, I began to understand this not just some kind of show to entertain viewers by singling out Chinese, they were clearly using “innocent” voices to promote ideas and values that they did not dare to speak by themselves. Because the show was pre-recorded hours prior to the air time, the ABC and JK show production team purposely chose the segment to show the viewers where they stand by commenting “killing everyone in China” as “an interesting idea”, by arrogantly asking “should we allow the Chinese to live”, by making more offensive remarks to accuse his viewers “have problems thus do not get the joke”.

I think the ABC network and JK production team should be boycotted for the following reasons:

Frist, JK commented the kid for his “killing everyone in China” as in interesting idea. Regardless which cultural background that we come from, this type of remarks is no joke to any of us. There is nothing funny and interesting about killing. As an experienced host, JK could have used his sense of humor to stop such horrifying statement, yet he chose to promote it. Now think for second here, do we really want to make our next generation killers? As a scholar and educator, I believe this is completely unacceptable and this alone, indicates that JK is unqualified for his job. His face should be banned from public media.

Second, after the fact, JK has never apologized. Personally, I am mortified by how uneducated he is, because he failed to understand “an apology” should include what he did wrong and why it was wrong and what he would do to avoid making the same mistake again in the future. There is nothing in his “apology” remotely covering above points.

Third, the ABC network authority has never apologized. In a letter that ABC management sent to the Chinese community, they stated, “We would never purposefully broadcast anything to upset the Chinese community, Asian community, anyone of Chinese descent or any community at large.” Again, this letter has not covered any points listed above. Again, it failed to admit what they did wrong, their responsibility and strategies to correct and avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. This raises the suspicion that the ABC network is using “naïve kids to spread thoughts that those adults dared not speak for themselves.” – a quote from Iminusc’s public protest letter.

Finally, I would like to end my speech with my personal view of this matter. I have come to the U.S. from China 21 years ago. Over the years, I, like many people who live in this country, have immensely enjoyed the multiculturalism and diversity. I am amazed and grateful everyday to the opportunities to learn from each and everyone of my daily encounters, particularly the ones with different cultural backgrounds from mine, about their cultures, values and tasty food. I have also chosen to immigrate to the U.S. after acquiring 2 advanced degrees so that I can contribute to this melting pot with the benefits that I have received. By marrying a French, I created our little world of diversity in our family and have created 2 little trilingual children.

Unfortunately, there are still small amount of people like JK, the production team of his show and the ABC network, who do not cherish the beautiful and colorful country by broadcasting a violence promoting show. What they did is disrespectful to the majority of the people in America, regardless the ethnic background, who have contributed to build this beautiful and attractive country. JK’s remarks in The Kid Table and the follow up “apology” shows were demeaning, ridiculous and offensive to the Chinese community and all JK TV show viewers. Therefore, he needs to be removed from the public eye.

Lastly, as an educator and a mother of 2 young children, I would strongly advocate education. The public media is one of the influential places that can assist us to achieve this goal. We simply need to have qualified and educated TV show hosts, producers and editors to focus on promoting responsibility, hard working, tolerance, and peace with the true American sense of humor.
_________________

After this, our local newspaper reported our demonstration and then few readers commented that we Chinese had no sense of humor. To which I responded:

"There is a huge difference between joking in private setting and public network.  Can you imagine to replace "Chinese" with "Jewish" "Blacks" "Whites" "Indians" "Japanese" or any other words in a broadcast show like this one? I don't even dislike JK shows, however, when he node his head searching for words to promote the funny part of the "killing everyone in China", he said, "That's an interesting idea". Following that, he even offended his own viewers by saying that they "have problems and could not get his obviously disagreeing with the kid". As a TV show host, his inability in handling unexpected answers with true sense of humor disqualifies himself from the profession. ABC's JK show production team had ample time to "save his grace" yet this segment was allowed to show. Now if you were the parents of the kid, would you really think it's funny to use violence to solve every problem?"

There you have it. I have done something else on the top of working hard to meet deadlines.