Given that Keith Ng is on my fantasy-holiday while I am stuck here, and that one Chinese Public Address anarchist tearing through the streets of Hong Kong during the WTO is both Yellow and Perilous enough for everybody, I've put myself on forced vacation - from being Asian.
What might this consist of? The following examples seem to mostly consist of failing to be Asian enough:
- Not managing to wax lyrical about how the Australian race-riots might swing the Chinese International Student market back in our favour (what's scarier, mob rule or Winston Peters? Um...) because really it just freaks the bejeesus out of me and I'd rather ignore it all and treat myself to the haiku to Lindsay Lohan on gofugyourself instead, or maybe check out what's hot with the hobos on overheardinnewyork.
- Letting the ultimate set of critical eviscerations of Memoirs of a Geisha pile up in a corner of the internet. Village Voice. Poplicks. This picture via angryasianman: 
- Not getting to 277 K Road before the Marvel Anthology Amazing Fantasy #15 featuring the Greg Pak mini-feature Mastermind Excello (teenage Korean-American Genius on the run from a nefarious government agency) totally sold out. And failing to write a post about it in relation to this Herald story about small cute Chinese chess geniuses written by a small cute Chinese journalist, and squeezing in some comment on how Jubilee from the X-Men never counted as an Asian superhero because her powers were so lame and had nothing to do with precocious intellect, work-ethic, or even martial arts.
- Brushing up on my string theory. But not by reading. By watching television on the internet, aimed at 10-year olds.
- Belatedly drawing people's attention to this campaign to demonstrate that Asians aren't any worse drivers than anyone else, and also pointing out that the Herald could have mentioned in its statistics that while Asians are 6.6% of the population, that they are also 10% of the population under 25 - therefore, given that people under 25 dominate car accidents, Asians are probably even more under-represented in car accidents than it appears.
- Not even having anything to say about this repellent incident, even though Raybon Kan is from Masterton and there could have been something potentially amusing about that.
- Watching a strengthening flow of submissions to a literary journal I have to edit next year pile up in a corner of my lounge, while sitting in the sweltering heat in a sarong, drinking pottle after pottle of Yakult until I have a Yakult-pottle-pyramid. You may consider this to be Asian behaviour, because of the sarong and the Yakult-drinking. But no, it's non-Asian, because of the display of poor work ethic.
- Getting reminded by Gordon Campbell to buy my Sleater-Kinney ticket, while in turn, abjectly failing to help him find a Chinese astrologist.
- Finding out that political pundits are less accurate in predicting actual outcomes than "dart-throwing monkeys", thereby losing my burning faith in the grand intellectual reputation of the blogosphere.
- Encouraging hip muso bloggers to take a holiday from hip muso blogging by sending them this tip-sheet on how to make a hip end of year top-ten albums list.
- Being sent at least two awesome non-Asian related links from two awesome non-Asian people to spend lots of non-Asian time at. Here is one of the greatest post-facto justifications you will ever find for having majored in English Lit: Holy Tango of Literature, a satirical collection of poetry and play-excerpts by famous writers, had they used anagrams of their names as subject matter for their writing. And here is something else that must be seen rather than explained.
- Reading Arts & Letters Daily for fun and relaxation. Because that's what I do.
- Getting sent another racist email and not even caring. Gmail Menu - More actions - Apply label: 'nazis' - Archive. *Yawn!*
This is great. I hope Keith stays in Hong Kong and becomes a democracy-activist boy-genius Chinese superhero and blogs for months while on the run from the nefarious government agencies - his mother has already sewn him a riot-ready journalist utility-belt/pouch/bag ensemble. Because I've got to get a whole lot of other stuff done this summer. Yep, 'bloggage will be light' as everyone is saying right now, but at least there's a bunch of links for you here, to ward off the Singapore of the mind that may drift in with the Singaporean climate in the new tradition of our globally warmed Auckland summer. Happy Holidays. Oh, am I allowed to say that?