tri-city

Where we live now, since we moved down here to our new home some 7 months ago, is a peculiar spot at the deep southern end of south Orange County. As we motor down from our hill side home and get on the I-5 freeway, going north by two exits, we reach downtown San Juan Capistrano; going south by one exit, we enter the city of San Clemente; and if instead of ramping onto the freeway, we zip through the freeway underpass, we are right at the heart of the beach and harbor district of the city of Dana Point. 

What's the big deal, you may say. Here in Orange County, or in the Greater Los Angeles area in general, we all drive past 10 cities a day on our way to work, shop, or just running some errands. True, and the very same thing I've been doing for over 25 years while living in another south Orange County city myself. But maybe moving did wake up the old sniff dog nature in me, or it's just my curious mind always wanting to know, I started exploring and registering what I saw in these new environs I am in, and found things interesting.

Starting with the official new hometown of mine, the city of San Juan Capistrano, a somewhat wordy name that came from an even wordier one, "Mission San Juan Capistrano," the settlement set up by the Spanish priests back in 1776, the same year the United States declared its independence on the east coast. The name literally means "Saint John of Capistrano," in honor of a "warrior saint" born in a little central Italian town called Capestrano (which is now a sister city of San Juan Capistrano) who led Christian soldiers to fight off Muslim Turks in medieval Europe. 

San Juan Capistrano is on record the oldest community of Orange County, and true to that title it has quite a few historic landmarks in town, such as the vintage railway station that Amtrak and Metrolink still make daily stops at, some over 200-year-old adobe houses that are the oldest continuously living residences in the state of California, and of course that world famous tourist attracting old Mission compound (which, unsurprisingly, contains a chapel that is the oldest continuous functioning of its kind in California), as well as a neat and robust old town district where you can stroll antique and artifact shops and enjoy great Italian, Mexican, or American food in one of a dozen cozy restaurants, cafes, or tea houses along the unpretentious city blocks and well-preserved old-time neighborhood alleys, all within minutes' reach. 

If you are like me, you probably heard of the city of San Clemente long before you even set foot on the United States. It is the city where former President Richard Nixon kept an ocean side mansion that was nicknamed "Western White House" where he took break from Washington and entertained international dignitaries and heads of states such as Soviet Premier Brezhnev during the Cold War era. Indeed San Clemente is yet another "ancient" city of Orange County that holds the title of the first planned community in the state of California, way earlier than Irvine, Mission Viejo or the like. It was all based on the vision of one man, Ole Hanson, who was a retired mayor of Seattle who drove by the sea side of present day San Clemente in the 1920's and decided to create a "Spanish village by the sea". All street names are in Spanish, and all houses must have red tile roof and white exterior walls, according the original city ordinance. 

I used to drive past the city on the freeway and see it as just that last city of Orange County before I hit the San Onofre nuclear power plant and the San Diego County line. But once I took time to ride its local streets, visit its downtown, and even go to its little Episcopal church for weekly meditations, I begin to sense its small town charm and why people here want to keep things the way it is (no toll road extension wanted here). 

Stop by their downtown one late Sunday morning, park your car, browse through some shops or farmer's market stands or art festival booths that they occasionally host, then walk a few blocks down the beach to have a sea side brunch, (or turn the other side to tour the old mansion of Ole Hanson's and learn some city history), watch people surf and angle fish at the pier, then if you feel like it, walk down a beach-side trail a couple miles all the way to the San Onofre State park... You get a pretty good picture of what the city is all about. 

Dana Point is yet another quiet little town along the Pacific coast, where local ranchers used to trade cow hides for merchandise brought in from the east coast by the sail ships, one of them carrying a young Harvard law student named Richard Henry Dana—from whom the city got its namesake, who wrote in his journal that the ocean bay he saw here was "the only romantic spot" along the whole North American west coast he had traveled through during the 1830's. 

I've been to Dana Point harbor a few times before I moved down here, going deep sea fishing or roaming along its marina, like many people do. But since we moved down here, I found out it actually has a couple of nice trails along its headlands, as well as a few nice little parks with great scenic views that the occasional visitors won't know about. As a result, my very indoorsy, city-girl wife are now happily joining me for walks along these beautiful routes once every other weekend, sacrificing and separating herself from her beloved soap operas on TV and Internet. That's a miracle!

On that I end my tale of three cities.

same kind of different as me

Denver Moore was an African American born in rural Louisiana. Uneducated and growing up with an aunt and an uncle, he started working for white cotton farm owners since a kid, a dead-end job where the white farm owners lent and manipulated the living necessities and crop profits so the "sharecroppers" never got their fair share but trapped ever deeper in debt with their landlords year after year. 

In 1960, at the age of 23, he hopped on a freight train to Fort Worth and began his life as a homeless drifter, hovering between Fort Worth and Los Angeles. Once while away from town after a skirmish with some local gangsters, he attempted a failed robbery on a bus and was arrested and sent back to Louisiana to serve a 20-year prison term. He was released in 1976 and returned to Fort Worth, where he lived on streets around a church mission center that cared for the homeless.

Ron Hall was a white boy born and grew up in a lower-middle-class town of Fort Worth, went to college, met his sweet heart future wife Debbie there, got into sales and investment banking jobs in his early career, before finding his knack of spotting and selling fine arts and became a successful international arts dealer, with a gallery set up in an upscale Fort Worth district just some freeway interchange and a tunnel away from the said church mission center.

In their early 50's, Ron and Debbie started volunteering at the mission center after Debbie had an epiphany of seeing "a poor man who was wise, and by his wisdom he saved the city" (Ecclesiastes 9:15) in her dream. Just a couple weeks after they started their volunteering work there serving food for the homeless, a melee broke out with a huge, angry black man hurling chair across the dining hall floor and shouting and threatening to "kill whoever steal my shoes." As Ron scanned the room for mission personnel to mollify the situation, Debbie leaned in and whispered to him, "that's him... the person in my dream," and urged Ron to befriend him.

Thus began a courtship then an endearing and enduring friendship between Ron and Denver, riding through and after Debbie's struggle and final succumbence to liver cancer at age 55 in 2000.

That's the true story told by the best-seller book "Same Kind of Different as Me," co-authored by Denver Moore and Ron Hall. (http://www.samekindofdifferentasme.com/default.aspx)

You will probably be touched by a few things it describes coming from the sad plights of the homeless people. For example, right after they started serving there, Ron and Debbie noticed people always jockeyed for position near the head of their designated section of the serving line, for fear that the good stuff--meat, for example--might be ladled out already if they were too far behind in the line, and be left with soup or the stale 7-Eleven sandwiches. "When that happened, the looks on their faces told a sad story: As society's throwaways, they just accepted the fact that they survived on leftovers and discards."

One truth confessed by Ron himself was he was not a happy jolly donor of charity work by his own volition initially, but mainly doing it out of love and dedication to his dear wife Debbie. But it didn't take long for Ron to start getting a sense of fulfillment from his work of service. For example, after asking the chef to prepare a little more food so that the street people at the end of line could eat as well as those who slept at the mission, "it thrilled us to serve the street people the good stuff, like fried chicken, roast beef, and spaghetti and meatball... That was the first time I tried to do something to improve the lives of the people Debbie had dragged me along to serve. I hadn't yet touched any of them, but already they were touching me."

Another truth that can be gleaned from the book is the "haves" don't necessarily possess things better than the "have-nots." As a street person, Denver lived in a world with its own code of conduct and spirit of camaraderie (he took it upon himself for years to protect and take care of an old white homeless cripple who lived in his own filth and kept cursing and calling him "nigger") that he felt fairly comfortable with, as well as his simple faith in God, more so than Ron's occasional discontent or grumble with Him (for taking away his beloved wife Debbie, for example) showed.

The biggest truth revealed, however, was by the woman who brought these two diametrically different men together. More than being just another "holiday charity giver," Debbie was a genuinely loving and courageous woman who wanted to know and truly serve these "God's people" on consistent and permanent basis, believing each has gifts--like love, faith, and wisdom--that lay hidden like pearls waiting only to be discovered, polished, and set. As Denver explained how his heart changed from "don't-mess-with-me" to accepting and building true relationships with Ron and Debbie: "Faith-based organizations, government programs, and well-meaning individuals fed me and kept me alive for all those years on the streets, but it was the love of Miss Debbie that caused me to want to make a change in my life."

A good book worth reading.

"I used to spend a lot of time worrying that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we weren't ever going to have no kind of future. But I found out everybody's different--the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walking down the road God done set in front of us... The truth about it is, whether we are rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain't no final resting place. So in a way, we are all homeless--just working our way toward home."   -- Denver Moore

memorables

There are some dates that are memorable to each person. Top on the list, for example, most likely, is your birthday. Then the date you get married (which becomes an Anniversary date with a big A that your wife will not forget even if you did); the dates your kids are born, maybe; the date you win $100 million lottery, for sure; etc.

My personal memorable dates, as far as I can recall, include the date I reported to the boot camp that started my mandatory military service in Taiwan (July 12, 1980), the date I finished it (May 26, 1982, exactly 1 year and 10 months and 2 weeks later); the date I had a horrific car accident on the California freeway and walked away unharmed (January 4, 1983); and the date I came to America, August 16,1982.

That date is memorable because it marks the first time ever I went abroad, leaving a place I was born and raised and lived continuously in for almost 25 years, for a far and foreign land that I had only heard about and saw on TV. Going to the USA for study, that's about the only way many a young man and woman of my generation did to break away from the old and familiar to the new and fancy in a land that waves a promising hand to the world.

Everything was new and titillatingly fun to a young mind then. It's as if just yesterday I was sitting in that tiny Japan Airlines seat, eating tiny Japanese cold noodle, looking out the window, seeing the bright blue skies and white shiny clouds, and the beautiful landscape down below, excitement more than overcoming the bitsy unease for the unknown to come...

And whiff, just by one turn, that yesterday was 30 years ago already, and that barely 25 year-young lad had just turned double-five this past month. 

Remember that "Never trust anyone over 30" proclamation by the baby-boomers when they were at their prime early 20's, that shows how incomprehensible big chronological numbers seem to young people. I remember when I was at grade school age and one day I read on a youth magazine projections of many soon-to-be-accomplished human achievements for the next 30 years to come, and I told my father, finger pointing at one of those projections on page: "there, I can well live to see this thing happen--humans landing on Mars," I said triumphantly, as if that would be my own accomplishment too.

Well, that forecast date had long passed and gone, and no human feet have ever set on Mars yet, and I doubt it will any time soon. Nor are there any automated walkways that transport pedestrians around city blocks day and night, or people living happily in beautiful, sophisticated undersea cities all over the world, for that matter. Straight line projections based on science and technologies alone always neglect to take into account other factors that make people do what they do in the first place.

But many things amazing that I did see happen in the past 30 years: Neil Armstrong's foot-step on the moon, Berlin walls got torn down overnight, Apple beats Microsoft, Korean soap operas trump Japanese ones.

And Y2K crisis was just a hoax of millennium magnitude, AIDS and SARS did not decimate human population, oil and gas did not run dry, the ozone layer did not keep on thinning, as many predicted they would.

We defused the nuclear hot war between two super powers but were then shocked by the havoc natural hazards such as tropical storms and tsunamis could wreak over the world, one of them led directly to a nuclear calamity in Japan. The evil Soviet Empire is no more but no one foresaw a few extreme men could bring down two monumental buildings of New York City in broad daylight on one sunny September morning. Japan's economy did not take over US during the 1980's, but China's may in the 2020's. 

So I just turned 55 mid last month. What significance does that carry? If our dear old sage Confucius is right (which he always is), turning 50 means "I know what on earth am I here for (五十而知天命)," and turning 60 means "wife's nagging is music to my ears (六十耳順)," then turning 55 means I am halfway to realizing that my purpose in life is to hear my wife's nagging as music to my ears soon.

Actually the even more blissful thing for turning 55...are you ready...is you start getting "senior discount" at some shops. I found that out about a couple weeks ago when I called into a local golf club to check out their green fees, and the clerk explained: "If you buy this gift card, you'll get $5 off our senior rate," upon which I interrupted: "I am only 55, so I don't think I qualify as senior..." "Oh no, here in our club 55 is considered senior..." OMG, moment of enlightenment, for the first time in my life--it dawned on me--that I am considered a senior citizen already!! 

I recovered from the shock and sadness fairly quickly, and about one week later, when I was sitting at a Denny's Restaurant for lunch with a friend, I flipped the menu around and saw the "Senior Menu--for 55 and over" on the back. How interesting, as my friend laughingly explained to me, when his wife was pregnant, she seemed to see lots of pregnant people around her all the time. Same logic applies, when you become senior, you start seeing things senior more and more. I turned around and look, and lo and behold, I saw so many senior people sitting around me that I didn't pay attention to just moments ago!

Then the waitress came, and joyfully I told her: "This is your lucky day, your restaurant has the privilege of serving the first ever senior discount meal for me," and went on to order one good country fried steak that was about two dollars cheaper than it normally would be charged. The waitress just smiled and took the order, without ever asking for my ID... Even though I looked too young to be over 55, she decided to give me a pass for the good spirit I showed her, I reasoned.

To close, I'd like to make a projection, especially for those superstitious minded friends of mine: When I turned 30 in 1987, the Wall Street had a "Black Monday" crash in October; when I turned 40 in 1997, we had the Asian Financial Crisis; and when I turned 50 in 2007, of course that's when the current Great Recession started in December that year. So naturally, my friends, I project when I turned 60 in 2017, there is bound to be a world class financial crisis of some sort happening again. Where there are crises, there are opportunities. Take this lead from me, and no need to thank me when you make it, because I will be busy hearing music to my ears all day long by then.

your kindness

The other day me and a friend of mine ordered a couple of soft drinks at a McDonald's drive-thru, and when we pulled up to the window to pick up our drinks and prepare to pay, the girl there just smiled and said "Yours has been paid for by the person two cars ahead." We were totally surprised, and both looked out to the car two ahead of us: It was an ordinary, black little car, a Prius, I think. This is a town in San Bernardino County, more than 100 miles away from where we live, and my friend tried to see if the driver inside may be one of the business acquaintances he knew around here, but to no avail... We scratched our heads and for the life of ours couldn't figure out who and why would someone we don't know do something like this to us. 

In the end we just had to conclude it must be someone who is in the habit of doing something like this for the happy effect it can create to the recipients, and today is just our turn to be at the receiving end of this random act of kindness, so to speak. 

Just like the story we sometimes read on newspapers that some not-necessarily-very-rich people would give out hundred-dollar bills at random to street people during Christmas time as that pleases them.

I recall that boy scout motto "Do one good deed a day" (日行一善) we were taught when growing up. Now that makes a lot of sense: Imagine if we all do one good deed a day, then almost each of us is bound to be at the receiving end of an act of kindness a day. I also recall a recent TV commercial where a Good Samaritan act as simple as yielding a seat to a stranger on the bus leads to yet another good deed, and then another, until it circles back to the original do-gooder to complete this cycle of good Karma (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frpp6DjCaJU). Random kindness can be very contagious and its own reward, indeed.

But "one good deed a day" seems a bit uptight. It's "rationed" kindness (why not do 2, or 3 good deeds a day then, that will presumably make the world even better for everyone), not the rapturous, spur-of-the-moment, "poetic" type we like to romance. Come to think of it, the Christmas dollar-bills giver and the McDonald's drinks payer, are they really perpetrators of random kindness, or they know beforehand their benevolent acts would bring joy to people (and themselves), therefore set out to do them at certain locations at certain times? These acts are not that random, but rather "premeditated," then.

To expand on that thinking, almost all kindness done in massive scale today--orphanage houses, rehab centers, Salvation Army... all charity organizations, for-profit or not, secular or religious--can fall into this premeditated, or "institutionalized" kindness category. The reason can be very simple: Though we may all want to do good for goodness' sake, we get tired of doing it after a while. Once the "charity fatigue" sets in, we say "not today," and defer it to the "professionals"--we'll just send in the checks then. 

That's why people like Dr. Schweitzer (Mr. Africa) and Mother Teresa (of Calcutta) amaze us: They are practically one-man/one-woman institutions that keep on giving, their great hearts even more than their great works, without ever fading out. Where and how did they get such endless supply of good will and energy? Not from this world, I don't think. 

Here's another true story of kindness I heard from a guy who told us after hearing our McDonald's-wonder story:

He was at a supermarket checkout stand, the woman before him was finishing up her items, when at the end the total came out to be $50 something. But the woman told the cashier that she had only $40 to spend around for the whole grocery, so they started removing items from the stand to cut the bill down to $40... Seeing and hearing all this, the man interjected and told the cashier that he'll pay whatever amount over the $40 for the woman so she can have all the items with her still... Upon hearing this, the woman broke down and cried and thanked him profusely...

My heart shivered while hearing this, and then I knew very sure I would do the same thing the man did if I were in that situation.

And I am glad I feel it this way, being assured that this cynical "getting-older" man still has some strong good heart beating in him. 

transition

How did one leave a place he's been living for over 25 years and move on to the next?

Just drove off for a weekend house hunting, turned a corner, and bumped into a dream house he and his wife couldn't resist.

That's basically what happened last November when we made a purchase of a brand new home in San Juan Capistrano, located on a hill top between San Clemente and Dana Point, two beautiful coastal cities in the very south of south Orange County.

Then what should we do with the home sweet home of ours of more than 25 years? To sell or not to sell, that was the question. The economically correct answer should the the latter: rent it out and ride out the worst housing slump in years while collecting rental money that should be more than adequate to make payments for a new mortgage whose interest rate is at historical low. 

But call us debt-abhorrent or loath-to-be-landlord chickens, in the end we decided we'd rather be mortgage free and nobody's landlord, and sold the house outright, to a beautiful family who really loved our old house and made a moderately-above-market offer for it.

Backtracking a little, it's not that easy to let go of a place you've been living for over 25 years, emotionally. It's our first home we owned, after our first jobs, our marriage, in this country. I started my own business in it--at one time I had my business card with the fictitious business name "Wong Laboratories" taped on the door of my study room, and 24 digital phone lines installed in my garage. Friends and families had visited and gathered in and around the house through the years. Both my parents and my wife's parents had visited here ("It's so darn quiet," my father said to me after we toured the neighborhood together for the first time), and now all of them except my mother-in-law have passed away. More recently, my men's group had been meeting in the backyard most other weekends and had annual omelette cookouts on the barbeque island for 4 consecutive years, practically since we redid our living room and side yard some 5 years ago. And heck, even the bathtub of our master bedroom has some special meaning to it--we got baptized in it some 20 years or so ago.

And there were the neighbors: Scott and his wife and 2 kids who just moved in a couple years ago, replacing the suddenly disappearing Clampitt family whose house (now Scott's) got foreclosed upon, that we seemed to be getting to know each other better and better every time we chatted on the curbway; Kathy and her family across street who are like us the very original owners of their house for 25+ years, and the quiet but gentle school principal couple to the other side of the house, Mr. and Mrs. Joel and Paula Rawlings. Both families we had just invited for a get-to-know-you-better party a little more than a couple years ago after the shock of the disappearing Clampitts.

So we decided, to close our lives here with a sound note--to bid farewell to our dear old neighbors and to welcome the lovely new family to the neighborhood--that we hold a backyard barbecue party for the last time for everybody.

All except Paula--who got down with a cold--appeared, including Kathy's 2 grown boys and one precocious girl who did not show up last time we invited them. Henrik Eriksen and his family were the new people here, and this was my first face to face encounter with him at length since our real estate transaction began. He is a taut, healthy looking man who's turning 50 this year, and an immigrant--from Denmark--to this country too, while his wife Patti a native San Diegan whom he met and married here, with two teen age boys (one had just gone to college) and one girl. 

Henrik came here in his early 20's after serving the military in his native country, just like myself. "Why did you decide to come to America, Denmark being such a well-known affluent, welfare society?" I asked him, with curiosity. "Well, somebody has to pay for it," he smiled and said, meaning he's the kind who prefers to make things happen and take care of them himself. He's been in business of his own for years, and was one of the first to take on the e-commerce trend and started an online furniture store back in 1996 that's so successful some people offered millions to buy it, until a few years ago when this great recession hit and his aggressiveness got the better of him and he had to close shop and started working for a major international Danish furniture company as consulting executive traveling between here and New York. 1996 was the year I came up with my first online business VoIP project too, I told him. "We must be long lost brothers, one from the West, the other from the East," he joked.   

It must be a rarity, but both escrows--one for the sale of our old home, and the other for the purchase of the new--closed on the exact dates we set months ago, with a 10 day gap between them that we purposely planned, so we had exactly one workweek for our flooring contractor to get in after we got keys to the new house to install the hardwood on the first floor and upgraded carpeting on the second. Magically, these jobs got done on time as well, right one day before our scheduled move-in to the new house.

Came the moving day, a crew of 4 and a truck 28 feet long arrived on time in the morning and got right down to it: hauling the bulky tables, sofa, chairs and cabinets, and miscellaneous boxes of things we had pre-packed ourselves the previous week, with swift deft hands. So did Kathy and her husband and kids, who came to disassemble and move the office furniture I gave away to them, piece by piece, into their home across the street. In less than two hours, our little big house was reduced to an empty hull like no one had ever lived there before. The truck then reappeared at our new home's front curb shortly after lunch. The downloading was even faster than the uploading, with me and my wife busy directing what items go where. By mid afternoon, the operation was complete and the crew gone, leaving a slew of furniture and boxes scattering around in yet another hulky big little house in a brand new community. 

It's been almost a month since then, and we are yet to figure out all the light switches in the house--which one is for the hallway, or the stairways; which one is for the dimmer, or the straight on/off; my supposed new home office is still standing empty with boxes strewn around; the same is true for the dining nook by the kitchen, since we had given away our dining table set to Kathy as well. The garage door still opens and closes with grinding noise that the builder had promised to fix, as well as little touch up for the walls and doors, here and there. 

But overall we are happy with the grand and spacious rooms of the new house and the quality material they use to build them, the wonderful mountain and ocean views we can see right from our master bedroom and balcony on the second floor, the easy access to the freeway, the fiber-to-the-curb high-speed network that equips each room with an Ethernet plug-in, and the natural, open beauty of the blue Pacific that we can enjoy every time we drive up and down the hill in and out of the community. All the sentiments of leaving the old home are gone, at least for now, replaced by the excitement and many things to do for the new home.

Who knows, next time I check, maybe we'll be living here for another 25 years already.

* For those interested, here's a stream of pictures I collected that shows "how a house was born," and our transition from the old home to the new:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106815509376349700576/Transition?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNuvjdqtsOHA2QE&feat=directlink

who do you think you are

Did you watch that PBS show "Finding Your Roots" last Sunday, where they traced the family origins of 3 religious leaders of the day: Pastor Rick Warren, a Korean-Jewish female rabbi, and a Muslim imam? 

It turns out Pastor Rick's Protestant lineage goes all the way back to his 9th great grand father who landed on the New World in 1630, and was a co-founder of the first church in a New England town (but has nothing to do with a May Flower Compact signer who also named Richard Warren). The Korean-Jewish rabbi is the daughter of an American Jewish man and a Korean Buddhist mother, and the Muslim imam is the the son of Pakistani parents whose genetic graph shows certain Jewish markers. And, interesting enough, through their separate Jewish lineage, both the Korean rabbi and the Pakistani imam come to be relatives of Barbara Walters, the famed blonde TV news anchor woman whose ancestors were East European Jews ("Waremwasser") who emigrated to England (and became "Warmwater"), and then to America (hence "Walters").

It shouldn't be too surprising, though. With today's advanced genetic technology and well documented genealogy records, almost everyone can be proven to be related to everyone else, one way or the other. Case in point:  President Obama and President Bush are shown to be long lost cousins who share the same great-great....-great-grand father back in colonial New England by way of Obama's white mother from Kansas.

As a matter of fact, through extensive research and genetic samples collected over the past 20+ years, scientists have demonstrated that all modern people today came from one same origin. Briefly, the human genes mutate at a predicable rate that in time created distinctly looking subgroups called races. By comparing the genetic "markers" of different racial groups today, scientist can determine how close or far apart they are related to each other and when did the diversions occur. It is concluded, then, all humans today--black, brown, red, white, whatever--are descendants of one same woman (mitochondrial Eve) around 140,000 yeas ago, and one same man (Y-chromosome Adam) around 60,000 years ago, both from Africa.

Probably due to climate change (the desertification of Sahara), our African ancestors had tried venturing out of Africa a couple of times starting about 100,000 years ago. The last breakout happened around 70,000 years ago, when a group of probably no more than a few hundred men and women went across the Red Sea. In the subsequent tens of thousands of years, some descendants of theirs went northeast to Asia, where a subgroup of them went further to the Americas through the Bering land bridges during the ice age when the sea level was low; some went northwest to Europe via Central Asia, and eventually took over the continent from another earlier Homo Sapiens species called Neanderthals; some went along the Arabian peninsula and Indian subcontinental coasts, all the way to Australia through the southeast Asian straits again during the time when the sea level was much lower than today. 

There are books and documentaries explaining how scientists research and collect and put pieces together to come up with such human migration story. For example, the PBS documentary "Journey of Man" details how geneticists collect blood samples of people of a remote village in India and discover them to be the relatives of Australian aborigines and remnants of ancient people who traveled along the Indian subcontinental coast to reach Australia some 50,000 years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0QDrODnN6g); another episode shows how they locate one Central Asian man who is the direct descendant of a man 40,000 years ago who is also the ancestor of all men in Europe and Asia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV3Ws7pyJUI&feature=relmfu).

And if you are like me, or most Chinese of my generation, growing up learning from school textbook that we Chinese are a unique ethnicity that came from a unique Homo Erectus origin (the "Peking man"), you may be amused watching this BBC documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZF0JBb6Clo&feature=relmfu) where such old-school myth (and one may say somewhat racially/culturally Chauvinistic idea) was conceded to be false by a young Chinese scientist after seeing the genetic evidence that shows the Chinese are descendants of same African origin just like the rest of the world.

Besides genetics and archaeological finds, another way of tracking human expansion and migration trails is through linguistic study. Take, for example, the group of people scattered around South East Asian islands (the Philippines, Indonesia), Polynesian Islands (Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand), and the Madagascar Island off southeastern coast of Africa. They all speak one subgroup of Austronesian languages, while the aborigines of Taiwan--the tiny northern-most tip of this Austronesian sphere of habitats--alone speak 9 subgroups of the Austronesian languages. Which means Taiwan is very likely the place where the Austronesian people stay the longest, therefore developing most diverse ways of speaking the Austronesian language. Or, in other words, Taiwan is the most likely place where all the Austronesian people came from.

   

Take for another example: where did the Indo-Europeans--the so called white people--come from? One way to find this out is through the study of the oldest Indo-European language (called Proto-Indo-European). What Proto-Indo-European scholars find in their study, among other things, are words related to agricultural affairs--such as plant names or tilling tools--do not exist in the language, while a wealth of vocabulary related to wheels, horses, chariots, etc., and the root word for "snow," do. Combining this with other linguistic analyses and archaeological and anthropological finds, it is concluded that the original Indo-Europeans were a group of nomad people living on the southern prairie (of cold weather) of Russia who knew how to maneuver wheeled vehicles and horses and used them to conquer other ancient peoples and forced their language upon them, whose descendants in turn spread the language (or rather, subgroups of the language) along with their colonial expansion during the Great Discovery Age throughout the world, to make it the most dominant language family of the world today.

Conclusions: It is no longer doubt that all humans today come from the same origin, we are all brothers and sisters, literally and biologically. What distinguishes me as an individual, however, has to do with where I was born, the environment I grew up with, the language I use, the culture I immerse in, how I behave, and what I believe, much more than how many different genetic markers I have in the endless DNA strands in billions of cells of my body.

May our species be fruitful and multiply for eons to come.

kids' treats

I received a "soliciting" email from a friendly source asking me to be a volunteer judge for a local youth debate contest. This was a first for me and sounded interesting enough, so I signed up for a couple of time slots that fit my schedule after visiting the website.

Each time slot (contest), according to the schedule, lasts an hour and a half, but a note there suggests the judge be there 45 minutes ahead for the orientation. So I rode my horse there right on time, at the campus of a Christian college in Irvine. Parking was easy, and they even sent out shuttle cart transporting you to the building where the judge orientation took place so you wouldn't get lost. It was a classroomful of about 40 or so volunteers like myself–actually I didn't know how many of them were first-timers like me, and how many were veteran judges, or alum debaters who came back to become judges, or friends or parents of the debaters, etc. The orientation instructor wasted no time explaining the program, the guidelines, the rules and tips on how to be a judge, etc. in a short 45-minute span. It's quite a bundle for a debate novice like me. But I did catch a couple of essentials out of it: Don't let your personal opinion on a subject influence your judging decision, and try to write constructive comments on your ballot so the debaters know what to improve on the next time.

Then off I went to the debate I was assigned to. It was in a library conference room. The debaters, 4 of them, all teen age girls, and one timer, a young boy probably some kid brother of some debater's, were all sitting there waiting for me. The girls smiled at me after I sat down and asked if I wanted to conduct it in any special manner or just let them make things easy for me (??). I smiled back and told them this was my first-time being a debate judge so letting things go easy for me would be just fine. They smiled back again and then the debate began.

The 4 girls were actually separated into two two-member teams. The subject of the debate was "Should the US Government Reform Its Revenue Generation Model", with Team Affirmative arguing for it, and Team Negative against it. Each team member started with a 8 or 10 minute speech that stated her core arguments, followed by a 3-minute questioning and answering session with the opposing team, then another 8 or 10 minutes of rebuttal by an opposing team member, and so on. 

As the debate went, one thing that surprised me or I didn't expect was they all brought their pre-written scripts to the stand and practically read from it, interspersed with their charming stares and smiles at me. I soon realized they probably had to do it this way because the majority of their arguments consisted of statistics and quotations from various sources they collected, and I assumed the debate rules do allow them to bring scripts and read from them. I was impressed, though, by the effort they apparently had spent digging up those info, as well as the logic and arguments they made out of them.

What surprised me even more, and I think demonstrated the merit and purpose of such form of debate, was how intensely and keenly they listened to (and made notes of) their opponent's arguments, collected their thoughts, then quickly came up with defenses or counter attacks to their opponent's questions or arguments.

As instructed, I refrained from making any comments during the debate, except giving them encouraging smiles and an all-inclusive "bravo" congratulation at the end of the debate, then hurried back to the judges' corner to finish up the grading and ranking, then turned in the ballot to the judging committee and left.  

The next judging session came a couple days later. It was a totally different format this time. Instead of debating each other, each participant picked and prepared their own subject of interest to present and speak about by themselves. (It reminded me of the "show-and-tell" session an English instructor from Canada had us do in her class during my college days in Taiwan). There were total of 8 contestants and 3 judges (including myself), along with one timer (again a kid brother of sort from some contestant), and a few audiences in the room. It was a captivating, totally entertaining 90 minutes through and through: From the girl that dramatized and explained the fear of public speaking she had overcome, to a tall handsome boy making cool and fun analyses of all stories in the world, to a short little boy dressed in 3-piece suit demonstrating how a little bugle can play more than 20 different tunes with just 3 notes that dictate the US army's on and off battle ground activities...

Each subject was well picked, well prepared, and well presented, to a fault. Nobody brought or read from notes any more, only their articulate speech, smooth transitions, calm and confident demeanor, rich and interesting content, accompanied by creative artwork and props they made themselves, and in some cases the actual object of the subject matter itself. The audiences--judges included--could not help but erupt into emphatic applause at the end of each presentation. These were not your ordinary 12-to-18-year-olds any more: With skills like these, they could go out and compete with any professional speaker or lecturer head to head. I really had a hard time not giving "Excellent" rating on each category on each contestant's score sheet. 

I didn't sign up for the final rounds or the awarding ceremony so I don't know who the ultimate prize winners were, but my hat goes off to all these young men and women who show passion and efforts in trying to excel on things they love to do, and men and women who organize and keep such debate and speech league going on year after year in communities all over the country! 

happy valentine's

I am probably one of the last hold-outs who don't believe there are that many born differences between men and women that people like to make fun about, given we all hail from the same human stock and share the same fundamental working of body and soul, men or women. Now that I am in my early 50's, however, I am admitting that men and women do behave differently in many ways, manifested and perhaps reinforced by the many different roles we play in years. I'll leave it to my dear wife to tell what roles she perceives me playing, but here are those she impresses on me from day to day:

A Rule Setter 

There might be plenty of good food in the refrigerator, but if you think they are for pleasurable random consumption, you are wrong. "The bbq meat is for dinner, the cake is for breakfast..." Snatch the wrong thing, and you hear that rule repeated over and over again.

A Mother

Remember President George Bush Sr. once said he never likes broccoli and would not have eaten it if his mother did not force him to? One day after I raised my occasional complaint about some vegetables I don't really like to eat and she gave me the usual "eat you should because they are good for you" lecture, I suddenly realized I was in poorer plight than old George, because he finally can eat whatever he likes without his mother's presence, but I still can't.

A Vigilante Environmentalist

"You forget to turn the light switch off again..." even though I only do it once in a hundred times.

  

A Health Alarmist 

One latest piece of health science finding (or hearsay), or a spike in her blood pressure will trigger a new round of health panic and (verbal) commitment to healthful habits again. 

An Absolute Conformist

"Nobody has done it this way before," she'll always object whenever I suggest some innovative way of doing things. If we have children, none of them will grow up to be another Thomas Edison, I don't think.

A Good Citizen 

"Don't drive too fast," she'll say,

with Pragmatic Reasoning

"lest you get caught by the police (and pay a hefty fine)."

Joking aside (one thing I am not sure of is if she's a humorist or not. I'll be in big trouble if she's not), I personally think the following lyrics from the song "She's Always a Woman to Me" by Billy Joel makes the most apt description of what a woman is: (to hear the song, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNZeGnV43ys&feature=related )

She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes.
And she can ruin your faith with her casual lies.
And she only reveals what she wants you to see.
She hides like a child, but she's always a woman to me.
She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you.
She can ask for the truth but she'll never believe.
And she'll take what you'll give her as long as it's free.
Yeah, she steals like a thief, but she's always a woman to me.

Oooh, she takes care of herself.
She can wait if she wants, she's ahead of her time.
Oooooh, and she never gives out, and she never gives in,
She just changes her mind.
And she'll promise you more than the Garden of Eden.
And she'll carelesly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding.
But she'll bring out the best and the worst you can be.
Blame it all on yourself, 'cause she's always a woman to me.

Oooh, she takes care of herself.
She can wait if she wants, she's ahead of her time.
Oooooh, and she never gives out, and she never gives in,
She just changes her mind.
She is frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel.
But she can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool.
And she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree.
And the most she will do is throw shadows at you,
But she's always a woman to me.

Yes my wife is always the ultimate woman to me!!

Happy Valentine's!