Joie's Space

Thursday, June 21, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

Shit Joie, WTF Have You Been?

Frankly I haven't been blogging because my life has been remarkably boring for someone who has moved halfway around the world. I've been shopping alot (which is uncharacteristic, kinda, but not really) and I haven't been cooking much (which again, is uncharacteristic, kind, but not really).

It's not like I'm going to blog here anymore frequently because even when I am hit with some blinding insight, I remember that there are a grand total of two people (with a few hit-and-run-not-quite-regulars) who read this blog. Not that you guys aren't a worthy audience, mind, more that posts that I envision take alot of effort and I find it hard to justify spending 4 hours doing research and tapping at my keyboard for two people.

So if my personal life gets anymore interesting, I'll post here, but don't hold your breath between updates or anything.

Meanwhile, I am blogging at ProcrastinatioNation and that's where all those "moments of insight" posts are going to be published. It's a joint blog that I have with Lisa and right now we're trying to build readership, so spread the word. We are fashioning the blog to be like a magazine that we would like to read. It will include posts about cooking, crafting, feminism and environmentalism. I will be blogging regularly there because I'm approaching it like a Real Job^TM.

See you there. Tell your friends. Follow us on Twitter. It's the right thing to do.

posted by Joie! at 12:33 a.m.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

Ginger, Lemon and Honey

GODDAMIT I'M SICK. And I know whose fault it is too. I mean, it's not really so bad to be sick, but it sucks when you have to take care of yourself, balance a rapidly increasing school load and worship a cat all at the same time.

Well, not so much the cat part. I really like cat. He's super awesome.

Some could argue that this forces me to slow down and take some time out for myself. Trust me buddy, I've been taking plenty of time for myself. Because I know that being good to yourself, relaxing and working out (can you believe it?) is essential to keeping healthy. I mean I couldn't quite tell if I was sick when I woke up this morning because the aches might've been attributable to yesterday's grueling pilates class.

But really, what can you do when your sick housemate refuses to stay out of the kitchen, and says "calm down, I'm not coughing" even though he blows his nose every ten minutes and doesn't wash his hands properly (warm-hot water with soap for 30 seconds) before putting dishes away? Or insists on hovering around people who are preparing food?

Kill him, that's what. Just wait till I'm better.

posted by Joie! at 6:57 p.m.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

Because I Had No Eggs to Smash Rocks With

So I was having this MSN conversation with a guy that I played Monopoly with online way back in 2001. We've kept in touch since. Today he was telling me that if I kept in touch with him, I would eventually believe in God. I was trying (nicely) to tell him that he was being condescending and that I have thought long and hard about religion and didn't need a blowhard assuming that I just hadn't found the right perspective yet. I wish I had the first part of this conversation but I had to restart my computer. Here is the rest of the conversation.

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jett says:
so then you agree there is no disprove of God

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
no prove either

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
*proof

jett says:
so then by what proof do you disbelieve in God?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
By the fact that I used to try and connect spiritually with as willing a spirit as I could muster

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and there was nothing

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
by the fact that there is so much intolerance in the bible that it cannot be proof of a loving god

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
by the fact that the church as an instiution which is supposed to be founded on Christian principles really only work on megalomaniacal ones

jett says:
if you read the new testament you would know why that is so

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
there is intolerance in the new testament as well

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
mysogyny at the very least

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
if there were a god, would he allow his avatars to be so corrupt?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
or are these not his true avatars?

jett says:
where did Jesus ever mistreat women? he saved one that you might know of

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
I mean seriously, it's been a while since he's last contacted us, don't you think?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
nothing necessarily in the gospels

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and mysogyny need not be direct abuse

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
I'm talking about the role assigned to women

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
to be subservient

jett says:
Jesus never ever put women as lesser than men

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
there are some prominent women in the gospels, maybe, but that's only four books of the NT

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
no, men are just supposed to head the households

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
no inequality there siree

jett says:
the four books that contain Jesus

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and so you believe in the gospels but not the other books?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
books that lay down lifestyle laws? like the epistles?

jett says:
you are following others not the Bible

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and if you only want to believe in the gospels, there's the conflicting tellings of Jesus' life story, there's also the fact that they were writting hundreds of years after he died

jett says:
never did God say men are any more important

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
why hasn't he come back since? he said he was coming back soon. You can't pull out the whole "yes but god's time is different, taking eternity into account blah blah blah, because you'd think an all knowing god would tailor his message for his audience

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and yeah, he did

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
he's posited them as spiritual heads

jett says:
feminists have clouded the truth that we need each other as much

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
don't even try and pull that bullshit out on me

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
feminists are trying to illuminate the truth that men and women need each other to be equal

jett says:
geez then you follow a women hate group that divides

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
the bible, which has no canonical gospels writtn by women

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
uhh, asking for equality is hate?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
asking for unity in persuing equality is divisive?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
how much drugs did you do in your youth?

jett says:
explain equality?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
the idea that gender does not impose restrictions on the worth of a person

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
neither does it have to define appropriate activities

jett says:
i know that outside of mathematical theory equality exists nowhere

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes, but systemic bias against a group of people based on the fact that they don't have cock and balls is a correctable inequality

jett says:
no two men are ever treated equally

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
I mean it's like saying "because there is no equality, I'm free to be a racist"

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes, but there are groups of men that systematically have an adavantage

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
not because of the individual that they are

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
but because of the group they incidentally belong to

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that is an insituitionalized bias that can and must be corrected

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
take for example the partial-birth abortion ban

jett says:
if so it is in the realm theand women in other cultures do the samey created

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that's a perfect example of inequality - the SCJ that announced the ruling invoked the idea of a woman who cannot be trusted to make up her own mind

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that last sentence made no sense

jett says:
text shut don

jett says:
down

jett says:
i'm saying women control a lot more in other cultures

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
what does that have to do with feminism?

jett says:
equality is what

jett says:
equality can never exist

jett says:
anywhere ever

jett says:
equality is a thought of the mind

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and therefore we should not strive to remove an institutional bias but should instead try to maintain it?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
by perpetuating cultural sanctions on those who deviate from set roels?

jett says:
the businesses you want to control did not grow on a tree men built them

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
because womem were excluded and are still in many ways barred from the public sphere. Besides, feminists do not want to control businesses

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
also it is moot who "built" them

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
the fact is as we stand now, women are disproportionally disadvantaged because of long standing biases

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
the removal of those biases would be good for society in general (as has been shown by SOL surveys - gender equality is strongly correlated with overall SOL in countries all over the world)

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
had gender equality always existed and women were granted the same access to education and resources, it might not be the case that "men built all the business"

jett says:
i disagree with your persective of change

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
you think we should preserve the power imbalance?

jett says:
you make it sound as though this power was grown like a leaf

jett says:
all of the power women want to contol was created by men

jett says:
contro;

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and here's where you are mistaken

jett says:
control

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
feminists want equality

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
we don't want control

jett says:
yes you do

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and because it was created by men

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
now you're telling me what I want?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that's presumptive

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and because it was created by men doesn't mean the system and its inequalities need be preserved

jett says:
i say create your own power and sail the earth conquer and invent as men have

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
within what structures?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
as it is women are being denied resources

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
you are asking women to remove themselves from the current system

jett says:
women flew areoplanes after countless men died perfecting it etc.

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
had women been given the opportunity to test and develop the technology as men had that might be a telling example,

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
but since they weren't, then no, that's irrelevant

jett says:
who gave men the opportutunity

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
religion

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
cultural norms that systematically devalued women

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that are reflected in many world religions

jett says:
are you saying religion sent atthiest men into the air

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes. of course. that's what I'm saying

jett says:
are you saying every invention was from a religisious man what about galeilio sp

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
oh c'mon - what I'm saying is that by that point the institutional biases toward educating men but not women

jett says:
capericus

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
so because more men were educated

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
more research was done by them

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
it's all about statistics

jett says:
many great inventors were killed b/c of religion

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
more engineers design car engines than dancers

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes, another good example of religious biases

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that are inherently harmful

jett says:
and proof os women prefer dancong to engine building

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
are you discounting societally constructed gender roles?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
more women are encouraged and allowed to be dancers than they are engineers

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
take for example the recent case of Kathy Sierra

jett says:
but men inventors were killed proving your regilion theoryincorrect

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
a prominent computer engineer who received death threats that no man would forced to cancel a speech in congerence

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
I'm saying religion is responsible for helping maintain institutional biases

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and that there is inherent mysogyny in many world religions

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
just because scientific change was also persecuted by religion doesn't mean that mysogyny was also not perpetuated by it

jett says:
you r changing in midstream

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
actually, no. you are

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
you asked who gave men the opportunity

jett says:
how am i

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and I'm saying systemic biases that have been made acceptable through religious doctrine

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
you're saying that's not the case, because scientists have been persecuted as well

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that's beside the point - because the point is through the opportunities granted to men and not women, more men were given the opportunities you illuminate

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
so of course men scientists would be affected by religious movements to shut them down, because there are more men scientists than women anyway

jett says:
if women r equal then y do they need to first be allowed by men

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
so you're saying that the current inequality exists because men are superior and that this is the natural order of things?

jett says:
i asked a question and want an answerr is all

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
because women are equal but because of historical forces they currently exist in a male-dominated society

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
a society whose assumptions need to change about genders

jett says:
what historical forces

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
jesus shane, have you read anything I've been typing?

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
historically men have been granted more opportunities

jett says:
y were men ever in control

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
that's culturally dependent

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
but also irrelevant to the fact that there stands a bias that we as a society are able to correct

jett says:
i said that earlier

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes, there are some societies in which the genders are more equal

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and we shouuld try to reach that goal

jett says:
but women hold over 50 percent

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
?

jett says:
there r more women than men on earth

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
yes and yet men still hold the power in many instituitions

jett says:
y

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
like I said, because of historical biases

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
recognizing the fact that before birth control women HAD to stay in the homes

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
only spinsters were able to enter the public sphere

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
and since marriage and family is such a strong must in many cultures, being a spinster was seen as undesirable

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
basically before reproductive control the only available option open to women was to keep house and family

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
now that that has changed and women can enter the public sphere, they should not have to face obstacles based on an irrelevant historical point.

-45 minutes pass-

jett says:
it is harmful to us to discuss this

Joie would drink Jim's Kool Aid says:
why would you think so?

jett says:
i'm not going to say

-------------------------------------------------------------

Honestly people, I can't make this shit up.

Labels: feminism, idiots

posted by Joie! at 12:00 a.m.

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Friday, April 13, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

Word.

Sorry for the lack of posting. I have been writing lately, but obviously not on here. I might copy one of the articles from the thing I'm working on, or I might not, or I might copy and article and pretend that it's really an original post. Whatever. It's my blog, it's all cool.

Meanwhile, since you're not getting anything to read from me - go over to Pandagon and read Chris Clarke's excellent post on How Not to Be an Asshole - A Guide for Men. It's eloquent and beautifully articulated. What is worth reading as much as the post itself though, are the comments.

Knock yourselves out guys.

posted by Joie! at 10:46 p.m.

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Saturday, March 31, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

Lunch-Mates

School has settled into a comfortable rhythm. People are starting to sit in their usual places. We know who to expect to be late, who would ask the question during lectures that's on everyone's mind, who to count on for a quick laugh, which lecturers drive which of us absolutely nuts, the usual details that are apparent in the mundane. With this ease, the class has also split into natural groups - people who lunch together, collect notes for each other, go for coffee on Fridays. Cliques have emerged (without all the attendant baggage usually carried by high-schoolers).

This wouldn't warrant any reporting, this is the natural way of things. In any gathering of people, there will be some your gravitate toward more than others. Over time, this results in the formation of stronger social bonds than with others. It's just that my little section of the class just realised that we're "The Asians^TM". More specifically, we're the Southeast Asians, but since there aren't any from the far east in class, Asians suffice. We're not all immigrants. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the only international student of the bunch. Ethnically though, we do identify as Southeast Asians. Not all of us have the language, but we all certainly have the food culture. Everytime we run out of things to talk about, we talk about food. In fact, our Friday night out was a ba kut teh night at my place with plans for a Hainanese chicken rice night, a sushi party and a pineapple tart party (those were just the suggestions put forth last night while we were waiting for the ba kut teh to cook).

But back to the fact that we're The Asians^TM. I mean, we've all been in situations where we look at the Asian clique, nattering on in their respective languages, not assimilating, keeping to themselves. There's something inherently obnoxious about Asians that stick together. I can't articulate it. But what do you know, here we are. It all started innocently enough. We used to go for lunch with everyone. More and more people started to bring their own lunches, we started to favour a certain cafe, while others preferred another. It was a very organic evolution that really grew out of lunchtime habits rather than actual social grouping.

Or is it?

How much influence did social preference play in lunch location choices? I'm sure many of us were indifferent about where we had lunch. We just went along with the flow. With that being said, how the hell did we turn out as The Asians^TM?

Best not to overthink this, I think, and just accept it for what it is. I mean, none of us sought each other out based on ethnicity. Not on a concious level, at least.

Labels: school

posted by Joie! at 2:02 a.m.

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Saturday, March 17, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

I Will Not Play Freecell Drunk

I will not play freecell drunk.
I will not play freecall drunk.
I will not bplay freecel drunk.
I will not play freecell drunk.
I will not play freecell druinkl.
I will not play reedcell drunk.
I will not play freecell rdinks.
I will not play freecell drunkm.
I will not play free celll frunlk.
I will not play dfeerlcell. droink.
I will ernot plau freecell drunkl.

Dude. Seriously. $2.50 bottles of wine. wicked sweet.

So I'm slightly inebriated. The above assigned lines were written honestly. The rule I applied to myself was "no backspace key". So while I noticed the mistakes, I thought I would leave them up there. The last 3 sentences took soooo long to type. Backspace is my friend.

Drunk blogging aside, this message is brought to you by Joie says DON'T DRIVE DRUNK. Because flarke man, if you manage to destroy your freecell stats through half a bottle of wine over one late afternoon, you are in no condition to pilot a vehicle. Not to mention, before this excercise in blogging under the influence, I really thought I was competent enough to ride down to little Vietnam for beef noodle soup. Honest!

ETA: ZE GERMANS ARE COMING! ZE GERMANS ARE COMING! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

posted by Joie! at 2:06 a.m.

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Thursday, March 15, 2007 ______________________________________________________________________________

And You Think it's Tough to Get People to Say "Johanna" Right

Let me preface this post by saying that I am a veritable fount of liberal, first world guilt. I'm always acutely aware of the fact that being a South East Asian female, I could easily be stuck in a brothel, a sweatshop, caring for my 19 other siblings and/or supporting said siblings through prostitution or work in a sweatshop. I could be denied education on the basis of the fact that I don't have a penis, married off to someone with a penis who thinks that the penis makes him the unquestionable boss of me, or I could've just bypassed the whole penis/no penis thing by being killed off as an infant for having a vagina. I could be living without access to clean drinking water, or to basic medicines and vaccines. The reason all this is relevant is because I was signed up by a door-to-door today to give monthly contributions to some kind of save the world fund. I think it's actually called "Save the Children", but it's really just using the "children" angle as a selling point because the work it does helps communities, not just the kids.

It isn't the monthly donation directly debited from my savings account that's the point of this post though (I mean, other existing, ongoing deductions from my bank account include a sponsored Indonesian girl and Greenpeace - I told you I was a fount of liberal, first-world guilt. I'm even going to sign up as a volunteer for my local whole foods, ethical consumer market.), it's the conversation I had with the girl who came by to talk to me about Save the Children.

When it came to writing my name down on the sign-up form, she asked what title I commonly used. I always use Ms. because I think there's something fundamentally wrong about the fact that it's common practice to indicate your marital status, as though it's an integral part of your public identity, where someone who has a penis doesn't need to do the same (the implication being that unless you already have a penis, you need to let the world know about how you're doing on your quest to acquire one - seriously, what is it with the emphasis on penises?!). She misheard me and wrote "Miss" instead, and I insisted that I be put down as Ms. This then initiated a conversation about whether I would take Jim's name (she also asked what the difference was between Ms. and Miss having previously thought that both prefixes were interchangable).

It wasn't a completely out of the blue, privacy invasion question. Up to this point we were sharing details of our respective lives (she's currently seeing an ex-Canadian pro hockey player *hawt!* who's living in Sydney) and so the question was reasonable. I just wanted to put that out there because she really was a very nice person and I don't want people to get the impression that she was anything other than friendly and completely within the bounds of polite company.

This just returns me to the "Johanna Hobbs" problem: chiefly, that it makes me sound like a 17th century British peasant. Don't get me wrong, I would love to take his name to acknowledge the fact that Jimmymabo is the one person who has made me comfortable with who I am and inspires me daily to pursue life for my own happiness and well-being. In other words, taking his name would recognize the significant contribution he has made to my identity and self. I should note at this point that I have never before been even remotely happy with the person that I am. On the other hand, taking his name would be buying into the patriarchal idea that as a woman, I am tied to the man who is responsible for me at the time (first my father, then my husband - see also the tradition of a father giving his daughter away during the wedding ceremony).

Simple solution? Hyphenate! It's not like it's a big deal, I already have one hyphen in my name (Si-en), another one's not going to make a huge difference. Uh. Dudes. Have you considered Tan-Hobbs?! For one thing, it reads like some Brit who has spent too much time out in the sun. Most people outside of Singapore already don't say "Tan" right. In fact, Jonathan (my brother) doesn't even say "Tan" right - and he is one (I encourage everyone of you out there to call his cell phone and leave a message on his voicemail urging him to pronounce his own damn name correctly. You can hear him say "Jonathan Tan" on the recorded greeting).

Johanna Tan-Hobbs. What a train wreck. Maybe I should just do without a last name altogether. I mean Cher's doing just fine isn't she?

Labels: Name

posted by Joie! at 5:20 a.m.

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