In Case of Measles...

So for many of us living in the state of California, it's not any sort of news every time we hear the word measles. But think back over the past two decades. You probably haven't said the word measles in a long time, let alone think of measles or the possibility of catching it.

But something happened with those past twenty years. A British doctor by the name of Andrew Wakefield had released an article in a scholarly medical journal back in 1998 stating that vaccinations were harmful, contained toxins and caused autism or other types of mental illnesses. Suddenly, many people were up in arms, where once for nearly six to seven decades we had accepted getting a shot would keep us from getting sick would suddenly make us even worse.

Even though the medical community was in complete outrage over an article with zero substantial evidence and had even gone as far as to strip the doctor of his right to practice, the damage had been done. Millions of people around the world were suddenly convinced that what was going into be injected into their blood stream was the worst possible thing in the world.

There are anti-vaxxers (as they are called) who make these outlandish claims on the toxins contained in vaccinations and shots there were things like anti-freeze and mercury and so on. While mercury is an ingredient in many shots, what many of us in the laymen community don't understand is that we shouldn't latch onto singular words that we recognize. For instance, the mercury in shots. The general understanding of mercury is that it's highly toxic when handled and causes a severe form of toxic poisoning. What we don't understand is that it's a compound of mercury that isn't just quicksilver mercury that we know of but a complex molecule that helps preserve the inoculations and prevent them from going bad over time. Even then, the amount of this mercury compound is so minute that it wouldn't really have any effect on us in the long run.

Grasping at Straws

Understandably, the critics of vaccines have been on the defensive about their beliefs that their children shouldn't be full of toxins. These usually are the sort of liberal-ish people who feed their children fruits for snacks and provide meals made from organic, locally sourced produce and provide them natural oils.

In a New York Times article, one Californian woman named Crystal McDonald is extremely adamant against vaccinations that when her daughter was sent home from school for two weeks because she lacked the basic shorts to attend school she remained adamant and firm. Her daughter was concerned with missing two weeks of school and suggested just getting the shot and being done with it. Her mother refused stating "I'd rather you miss an entire semester than getting the shot."

It's this blatant adherence to these ridiculous claims that cause a greater number of problems for the entire community as a whole. The unfortunate part about this is that this problem is affecting the wealthy and usually well-educated people who attempt to live natural lives. Where eggs are straight from the henhouse and milk may be fresh and unpasteurized. This sort of living is incredibly risky due to the pathogens that may exist in unpasteurized foods and the people who are buying it up live in large quantities in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

While during my time in high school, shots were mandatory. There was no exception to the rule. The basis of our vaccinations function very much on the herd immunity to be effective. Now, in a recent article, I read that as many as ten percent of the children attending public schools in Alameda alone have not been vaccinated.

More recently, there had emerged a hero of the struggle for the anti-vax movement. A report from the CDC had stated that there was a 240% increased chance of an african-american boy to become autistic if given a particular vaccine. It was withdrawn from CDC releases due to a poor statistical data model as well as not having a large enough data pool to glean from. Even though the article had been pulled, the publishing journal issuing an apology, the "whistleblower report" from the CDC is still widely thumped.

Herding in Stragglers

It has been a constant uphill battle for doctors especially to try to convince people who had no faith in chemicals to put chemicals in their body. To prevent an outbreak as such, we are very reliant on what is known as herd immunity where if you have a large enough population vaccinated against an infectious disease then 90% of the people will most likely not be affected with only those who are not treated usually catching it and no one else being able to.

When this is not the case, say only 30% of people are vaccinated, then the disease is easily and very rapidly communicated from person to person. The more people around you who are sick suddenly makes the vaccine less effective. Since the vaccine is not a surefire way to protect yourself from getting sick (90% effective), there still is that ten percent of getting sick and that margin increases as the number of people around you who are sick suddenly display symptoms of measles.

Unfortunately for many of us, the way I've seen Americans function is usually a system of too little, too late. The outbreak scare suddenly has pitted vaccinated families against unvaccinated and because of that, there are a growing number of clinics that are refusing to admit children with full on symptoms. Parents are finding themselves having to update doctors via email or phone to consider what operations are to be taken to fix the situation. Again, too little too late. Measles, since the introduction of the vaccine in the late sixties have knocked infection rates down to almost total eradication in the United States.

When the Wakefield report came out in 1998, there was a noticeable increase in entirely preventable problems. I first remember reading an article on wikipedia about whooping cough nearly half a decade ago and from it, I distinctively remember reading that of all the first world countries, only Canada still had persistent problems from it. Now across the United States, there is an alarming increase in what had no longer been a problem at all.

Easily Preventable

It's scary for me to think that I live in a state with so many of these measles cases breaking out. Since January first of this year, there have been a reported 91 cases all within the month. In one month, there have been more cases than the entire previous year! The vaccine has been proven safe multiple times but for some reason, there are some people requiring that it be proven again. Many of the anti-vaxxers are clinging onto the hope that it will cause autism, which it very distinctively will not.

In the mid 1980s, Roald Dahl, the author of Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches and BFG wrote a letter to parents who had refused to vaccinate their children against measles. He drew upon the death of his first child in mid 1960s, his daughter Olivia who became faint, then unconscious then dead all within the span of twelve hours. It was impossible to cure at the time, the first effective commercially available vaccine not being available until the end of the sixties. He spoke of the mandatory vaccinations that used to exist in the US and how the disease had been virtually eliminated and that the side effects were nil. There was a million to one chance to develop serious issues related to the vaccine, but in protecting a child in the easiest possible way, the chance of death was greater by chocolate bar as Dahl put it.

Usually at eleven months, babies are given their first round of measles shots and this goes a long way to help a child's immune system. Untreated and if caught at an early age, it could cause a long string of problems or more serious and completely fatal, Encephalitis. Dahl's daughter Olivia had succumbed to it.

At what cost?

Where do we draw the line? Where do we begin to say, "You know? We could have easily prevented this."? It is my unfortunate guess that there may have to be several parents attending the funerals of their children before they realize that a poke in the arm could have prevented years of grief to come. I highly urge parents to vaccinate their children, for this is a case where you simply must put aside impractical beliefs and understand that by not saving one young life, they have compromised tens if not hundreds. No parent should ever have to hold their limp dead child and realize that they were at fault.

Island Home Companion: A History of Incompetence

But the history of islanders doing crazy things well pre-dates Ralph Mastick turning the entire northern half of the island into a miniature Venice. We have to go well before the days of the settlement of Alameda in 1854 when the Ohlone Indians utilized the entirety of Fernside Island for a multitude of purposes. It was sometime in the mid eighteenth century when the first Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived from the southern half of California and finally started to settle what is now called the Bay Area. They first had established a mission near San Jose, eventually one in San Francisco which we know was Mission Dolores and another in Sonoma somewhere, I can’t remember quite exactly where it was, but it’s of no concern to this part of Fernside history. What is generally forgotten in the early history of California is the story of Mission de la Fuertes. This was the planned fourth mission that was to be settled into what little bedrock made up Fernside. Alameda would have been a more ideal location since at least only half of it was made up of swamp (as opposed to eighty percent) but Father Jorge Ignacio Vicente Maria Luis de Santiago insisted on what he thought was going to be a firm footing for his mission on a patch of dry earth on Fernside.

Construction began according to the records held by Hank Leupp in the Fernside Island historical society, on March l6th, 1799. It apparently was slow going for them. The land (or back then whatever you could call land) was hardly arable and while fine in supporting the weight of Father Vicente, he had not experimented with having any livestock walk about to see if the terra firma was firm enough. But, he was a man on a mission to build a mission.

Well, the stone for the foundation had to come from somewhere, and much of that came Alameda. Within a week, Father Vicente with his assistants as well as the help of several dozen tribesmen had managed to lay out a very attractive footprint for their church. They had decided to celebrate on the Saturday before the Sabbath and there was much chanting, and moving about in circles. It seems that olden time celebrations usually involved moving about in circles of increasing diameter, but that’s how they chose to celebrate. That same evening, the tribesmen went back to their village and the Franciscans settled their evening in their makeshift camp.

Remember how it was mentioned a little earlier that the weight of a cow could barely be held up? Well, imagine a gigantic platform of various stones rotated about to provide the flattest surface to start the foundation. Now, the part of the stone that rotated into the earth usually is a wedge shape of sorts so overnight, when the Franciscans woke the next morning to say the morning hominy, they had what was more along the lines of sunken patio. But they persisted, being the missionaries that they were and that no act of god was going to keep them from getting the natives closer to god. Besides, barbecue hadn’t quite been invented yet in the recreational sense so there was no point in keeping a patio. So they filled it in with a crude adobe floor and started to build the walls up and pretty soon, they had a very nice half wall by early June.

Again, the venture would prove to be on shaky ground when the added weight of the walls caused the building to sag in various ways. It almost resembled an ancient rollercoaster manufactured entirely of Adobe. They kept going, levelling the walls each time but it really was not much use because the next morning, they’d find that they’d have to keep continually doing the same sort of compensating. The real problem occurred at windows. If they started the previous day with a nice square hole, the day of would be a rather handsome rhombus or in some cases, chevron shaped. Well, they kept on going. Finally, enough had sunk that they could finally put a roof on the mission. This they did rapidly to have the weight evenly distributed. Even a few brothers from Mission Dolores had come out to assist. By eventide, the roof was up and the younger friars were passing up tiles to cover up the roof with. It was finally a handsome place of prayer and service for the East Bay. Father Vicente sent out the order forms for statuary and as a congratulations, Fr. Angelo from the Santa Clara mission sent over a pair of gilt candle holders, Fr. Heitor from Dolores sent a beautiful red silk altar cover and Fr. Alberto from Sonoma provided four handmade pews from their personal workshops. Mission Fuertes was certainly well on its way to becoming a full time mission.

Tragedy struck (as it usually does in our case, otherwise it wouldn’t be humor) when the entire congregation had gone out to Mission Dolores to listen to a sermon there as well as an important message from the alcade who was beginning to grow concerned by the amount of lack improvement of roads in the area. When their boat nudged into the soft sand, the shirted Indians pulled the boat well into the shore before the Franciscans alighted. What they saw when they got back could have only been willed by a merciful god. The entire building had sunk again but this time, the rafter tails were resting on the ground. The building was gone in its entirety. The contents were still in the building albeit pressed up against the ceiling inside. How Father Vicente reacted could only really be described as melancholy mixed with a tinge of glee. Somehow, he found humor in the situation and reacted as any man should and went to the Father President of the missions, turned in is sashes and according to the last records anyone could find his name mentioned, he was listed as a vaquero for the Peralta land grant dying in 1828.

With the mission gone as well as a few of the cattle that somehow made their way into unfirm ground, the tribesmen left the ruins which eventually disappeared. The footprint of the mission props up Charlie Ancona’s Café, the Mission Statement. But it isn’t to say that work of the missionaries didn’t leave a lasting impression. Before the entire project could take seed, Fr. Angelo Carlos Rael de Balboa had managed to cover the entire island in almond tree seeds which he planted at six foot intervals. By the time Alameda became incorporated in 1854, Fernside had become somewhat stabilized with these ancient almonds making a neat grid that would later help make up the structure of our streets. So we still have god to thank for those in any case. Well, at least his shepherds.

-

The story of incompetence on a grand scale doesn’t just stop at Father Vicente’s abandoned dreams. It seems to shake its way into the core of all Fernsider’s ancestry. The first surveyor who came to the island shortly after the forming of the city of Alameda had good intentions of helping to lay out the first city streets. Bear in mind, the island is long and narrow, but somehow his cross street measurements came out wrong and instead of being a quarter of a mile wide, an error on his paper would say that Fernside was a mile and a half wide. Not even Alameda has a luxury like that! Thinking about all potential land sales he could make as he sat in the surveyor’s office in San Francisco, he put an advertisement in the San Francisco Call. It read something along the lines of:

For Sale!

Land Plots on Island off

ALAMEDA

Parcels begin at $4/quarter acre

Now, when land is abundant, it can come cheap. That surveyor literally oversold Fernside. When the first investors arrived on the island, each one clenching in one fist a piece of paper with the exact coordinates and sizes of their land and in the other fist, rods and chains. The surveyor’s assistant stood on the makeshift dock that was hastily put up to welcome the first ferry barge of investors. This young man whose name was Theobald Higgins merely stood there and before he could say “Welcome” he was knocked over by a wave of men, rods and chains. Theobald managed to stand up just barely after the last person cleared the ferry. At the end of the dock was a stone marker that had a surveyor’s way marker hammered into it and everyone stood squabbling around it.

Finally, a tall bearded man in a tall top hat which added far too much to his already enormous stature managed to control the crowd and organize them in a way to see who would own land within the length of the first chain, then they would break into groups in the different directions they would be going. Now, a little math. A mile is 5280 feet. A mile is made up of 80 chains of 66 feet each. An acre is equal to ten square chains or, a rectangle that is one chain in length by one furlong. Now, that would mean according to the surveyor’s excellent map, he could easily sell everything from the ferry dock 120 chains out. Now, remember his error? You sell for 120 chains when in reality you have 20 chains worth of land, something might have to give.

Well very quickly, people within those first 20 chains staked and marked their land from the ferry dock the people moving north and south were claiming their land as well. But there are those extra people which we might have to term an accounting error. One Frenchman by the name of Rampeau who had bought three acres at the supposed eastern end of the island very quickly found that he still had to continue measuring until he reached the sandy beach looking at the western shore of Alameda island. He somehow managed to hire a rowboat and he continued to measure chains out into the channel until he found his apparent allotment. In the middle of a tidal canal between Fernside and Alameda Islands. Now a few things go through a fellow’s mind when he makes the connection that he might have bought up a dud, he begins to seek vengeance. Especially during this early period in the State’s history where there were bloody conflicts over laundry.

When Rampeau reached the shore again, he was met with several other people who had all apparently bought land that was supposedly in the channel. They met and conversed for a bit. Had they bought land that was only visible at low tide? A Mr. Fennell had in his pocket a tide book and where they stood was low tide. They puzzled for a bit longer before realizing they might have been had. Rampeau cried out “Le bâtard!” meaning the bastard of course before he led the now angry and blood thirsty mob which was slowly growing. They were picking up people who had purchased full acres only to find that they had claim on a tenth of one where it abuts the shore. The lucky ones who managed to buy nearest the survey marker weren’t being satisfied either. The tall bearded had brought a soils engineer with him to see the viability of building a huge estate here to retire and that very little of it was usable. It got to the point eventually where everyone was marching to the ferry dock and the poor Higgins was mobbed. Every single investor was tearing at his clothing demanding the meaning of “this cruel, tasteless joke” as one called it. Higgins only having been hired the day before to help the surveyor take care of helping the new settlers suddenly had the new job of being led by the mob, back to the surveyor’s office and gaining an explanation.

The ferry ride back into San Francisco was an uncomfortable one for Theobald as every possible pair of hands clutched onto him to prevent him from escaping. When they landed, he was marched in vigilante style down Market Street. San Francisco, only being six years out of statehood still had a taste for vigilante justice. The moment a crowd forms, it kinda snowballs. It kept growing until it clogged up the entirety of Market Street before it reached the surveyor’s office at Stockton. For the surveyor, he was enjoying a nice bit of lunch, some cold pheasant (it was really just chicken according to the Chinese cook) and a small glass of Madera which he bought with a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Fernside Island. On the couch opposite him laid the most fantastic beauty you could imagine. Her name was Lilly Montrose, the surveyor’s mistress. She wore hints of clothing if you could even call it that, but the material was so see through, it was hard to discern whether or not she had a fine layer of body hair or that it was exotic French underwear. He was throwing hunks of chicken at her, deliberately missing and forcing her to squeam around so he could see more of her.

He threw a piece of breast at her when all at once, there came a resounding crash as a thousand pebbles peppered the front of the building. They broke through the window and the two of them ran for cover. From outside came an incoherent chant. Since only a small portion of the people in the mob below were the actual investors and the rest were part of the snowball, they couldn’t come up with a single coherent chant. Just a resounding noise that rattled the windows everywhere. When the hail of rocks stopped, he could hear a banging below. The surveyor pushed his head through the ruined window to see below that the mob had managed to upset several vendor carts and were now hammering on the front door of his office with a bench. Very quickly, the hail of rocks began again and he only managed to duck inside before the volley began. He quickly draped Lilly in a steamer rug and pushed her out of the window on the other side of the room onto the roof of Lehman’s Mercantile not far below. She managed to escape that day. The surveyor not so much. When the door burst open, they caught him trying to slip out the window to follow Lilly but they grabbed ahold of him and crowd surfed him down. Ruffians with no connection to the mob ran into the office grabbing anything that looked valuable. The chicken was gone in a flash.

Downstairs, the surveyor was tied to a rail and he and Theobald were marched down Stockton towards the Hall of Justice at Portsmouth square. While they were beside one another, they managed to exchange a few words. “What’s happened?” “I don’t know” and “What did we do?” were the only things they could hear each other say. Finally, the march led them to the front of the Hall of Justice where a line of Billy Clubbed policemen stood in a line in front of the entrance so as to not let the mob in. The rails were passed forward over the crowd with the bewildered surveyor and Theobald Higgins and very quickly untied and jostled into the front.

Their faces were bloodied, bleeding and puffy. Theobald sported a blackened eye and the red tell tale burn of someone gripping him by the throat. The surveyor had his lip split, hair askew and his shirt torn from him. He spat a little bit of blood onto the sidewalk and just as he had done that, the chief of police had materialized through the line of blue trench coats. His red bulbous nose sniffed at the air, catching the metallic smell of blood before looking at the two bedraggled men standing before him. He merely gestured at the line of policemen to take them into the prison and in a loud, clear voice he told everyone to disperse which they did.

Well eventually, the state had to send down an ombudsman to figure out all the details of what had happened and the surveyor (who had been found to not have a current license let alone a state license) lost his practice and it was reported he was between begging and laboring in the San Francisco sewers as a cleaner. Theobald was a little bit more fortunate. As he had nothing to do with the survey error, but since he technically did have surveyor’s license, the state hired him to do a proper measurement of the island and this time he made sure to do it right. As compensation, he was given one and a half acres at the southern end of Fernside Island where his ancestors are still today.

Not the Sweet Life: The Reality of Online Dating

In the San Francisco Bay Area, there seems to be something for everybody. Just as likely, there's someone for everybody as well it seems. But for me at least, that seems to be a lesser issue that stems from a far greater and graver issue it seems, especially these days.

When I first initially started dating, I was young, I was naive and I wore my heart on my sleeve like most people usually do whenever they meet someone they really like and like how most young romances end, I've had my heart broken several times and I've learned and always am constantly learning how to cope with it. Although the adventure ended there, it didn't mean that there wern't going to be any more adventures in the future.

Something odd happened along the way. I had done well on my own for four years or so until the day I got my second tattoo. I remember my friend Danielle sitting in the easy chair in my room telling me, "Hey, you should try okcupid. I know you've been kinda lonely lately and the last thing it sounds like you want to do is the bar scene." So I signed up, head in a mist thinking, that I'm going to have so many opportunities to meet people and so on. It wasn't like I was a stranger to online dating altogether. Actually, my first encounter with online dating was with a site that no longer exists. It was something odd like shop-a-guy or something like that. It allowed women to pick and choose which guys they thought were worth talking to and then allow them to talk to them. I met one girl, that was really it.

Ok...Cupid

At first, the opportunities were great. I met a fair amount of normal people. People who wouldn't seem like they'd cut you open and pickle you or something heinous of that matter. I had met three exes in that sort of golden era of online dating for me. Here, racial boundaries were broken and everything was go. What right did we, the users, have to be picky? Why else were we online in the first place then? So I went in tentatively. I personally had the understanding that this wouldn't be a long term thing, it was just "only a try" I told myself. Why the hell not? I mean, I deserve a chance to date as much as the next person.

I created a profile after a short internal debate with myself and uploaded some decent pictures. They wern't flattering, but they wern't hideous either. I answered a few questions, and after awhile, I fond myself two hundred questions deep.

The first ex, we dated for three months. It was okay at best. In the morning, we'd wake up together and she would have no eyebrows and that would freak me out for a second. She taught me the value having a place away from the parental units but I botched it up. When we broke up, we had a spat over wanting to go have food truck dinner in Richmond, a town noted for crime and I had my reasons not wanting to go there. Mostly because I valued living. She however grew up in the suburbs of Concord not quite grasping the concept of a drive by.

The next ex was from Norway, she lived in San Francisco (still does actually) and while I still recall the freezing cold nights trying to fall asleep in her tiny basement apartment below Mt. Davidson, something hadn't quite clicked. We still talk now and then, mostly not now, and maybe only just then. The third ex was the end of normalcy I think in the world of online dating. She was cute, worked a few jobs and we enjoyed each other. My living situation at my parent's place at the time made it far too difficult for her to cope with what was going on in her tumultuous life. So we broke up, I cried a bit and then I got back onto my horse. However that horse suddenly would have two heads or maybe was missing a leg for no reason.

I went back to OkCupid in March of 2012 and I don't think i've had to deactivate it since. Even it knows how long i've been around, even offering me a moderator position eventually. But everyone i've met, somehow, never moved beyond the first date, something seemed to give since then. One girl was merely in it for the food, another proceeded to stalk me for a few months before she got the message. There was a complete lack of organic growth from any of these interactions, for a lack of a better word, and because of that, when I met my friend Bella, it seemed to click a lot easier in person than on a computer screen. But Bella and I never dated, we had fun one or two times, but that was about it, when I knew it wouldn't go any further, it hurt a little. Whereas meeting a rando and realizing there's going to be nothing more than that, didn't feel a thing. Not that was for a complete lack of emotion, but the build up begins at the first date, it's too dependent on the first date.

In 2013, I moved back to Berkeley to finish up some classes, but I figured since my best success comes from living near campus as opposed to my parent's house, this would be a good opportunity to see what happens. Right out the door, I had caused a rift between myself and my roommate over a freshman girl. That since has been mended over. There was a sophomore girl I was really interested in, but she wasn't looking. She apparently had finished being in a relationship. So I got used, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

So after four months of trying to date on my own, I turned back to OkCupid, and the next thing I knew, I met up with someone at midnight and I thought it was going to be a walk and talk, she on the other hand apparently was drunk and just wanted to touch my penis in a jungle gym at the park. We persisted for I forget how long, until one day, in the middle of bed activities, she started to cry, put on her clothes and ran out the door. I asked her what was going on and she felt "she couldn't be with me because she started to have feelings for me." That's a big blow to the ego if there ever was one.

So it's been back to OkCupid again, except now, i'm not trying as hard. I didn't know if I wanted to give a shit about the quality of people I know I would meet, but I'll try.

The Game Changer

Lately, there seems to have been an obnoxious plethora of new apps for people to date, how to date and who to date. The big one lately has been tinder, but a splinter faction that emerged has been bumble, some I can't even remember the names of. Other apps like Lulu warned women about certain men, but didn't have a control against vandalism and the fact that as a potential date, a man could lose out on all future opportunities for a long while just because one date went bad or didn't click.

Many of us are expecting to find someone perfect and hopefully some of us will, but the unfortunate part is we're not wanting to put the work into it anymore. We're sort of expecting to find every single detail up on the wall on a dating site or Lulu and it will tell you, but how much can you trust this information that comes to you second hand? Personally, I have no idea what my Lulu says, but I've heard that a few others have and some of them had scathing reviews for no apparent reason. There lay the problem.

There is a moment of relief you feel when you purchase something on Amazon to read the reviews later and all of them are positive. You pat yourself on the back, say you made a good choice and then move on. I can't speak for women who rely on Lulu, but is that how it happens? I can get it to the extent where you could potentially be going out with a hoarder or a guy who always calls his mother before making a decision, but you've effectively knocked a key part out of the dating game which is to learn about one another and make the choice yourself.

I tried to escape the gravitational pull of OkCupid for awhile so I tried Tinder for a bit. For those of you who don't know, Tinder is an app that involves menial labor to make your choices in love. For those users who really couldn't care about making an informed decision about whether or not to swipe right (for a like) or left (for pass), a few ingenious people decided the best thing to do was to literally create an artificial finger that did nothing more than merely pressed a button over again, most likely on the like side.

While there is a certain lack of romance involved in this process, some people tell me it kinda worked for them. I have yet to see conclusive results. I had for awhile been talking to someone about fifteen miles from me, and on the day we were supposed to meet, she suddenly disappeared. Not a single trace. I tried calling but that didn't do anything. It was... odd to say in the least. I am talking to someone, but I have yet to see how this one current one pans out.

An Element of Race

I first encountered the article in 2012 saying how race has a major role in the responses that people give and send and up until that point, I had enjoyed relative success regardless of being an Asian male. I only had become more frustrated at online dating based on my race after the article itself and it suddenly put in my mind how much more complex I had to make things for myself.

According to the statistic, Asian men between the ages of 21 and 25 (which I belonged to at the time) were the lest likely to illicit any sort of response from women of any race. A statistic which for obvious reasons made me kinda sad. Well, when I say kinda, I mean more infuriated. Up until that point, I never bothered complaining about the amounts of white men with asian females I would see scattered here and there but when the gender roles were switched there was a larger, much more disparaging difference. In terms with people of my own race, I belong in a very, tiny minority. Asian guys who prefer white girls.

But here was an article saying "here's the hard facts, it's hard for you as is, and for you especially it's going to be harder." I couldn't remember a time when I ever dated an Asian person, it wasn't that I didn't have Asian friends, but it was the feeling of being jammed into a conformity of having to date a certain subtype of people and to understand that I need to fit the statistic. Rarely if ever will you find an absolutely accurate statistic but it's there for everyone to see. I wonder how exactly people of other races viewed the article.

Still, rather than being pushed aside, i'm still there. People tell you're a good person and you take that to heart. It's just more complicated in the realm of online dating when suddenly you have a set standard you have to conform to. Which as you may guess I rather not do.

Sitting Back, Putting My Feet Up

So while the pursuit of romance is not necessarily a priority, I've taken the road where I don't care what a statistic will tell me what will happen to me in my dating. I've got one working out potentially and whatever fate has in store for me, and take my hand as i'm dealt it.

Hello Love

It's been awhile, hello old friend.

I've neglected this blog for the past few years especially, and to be perfectly honest, I don't know the future of it to have any form of certainty. My thoughts are that within the next year, it might just stay up as a repository for all of these past entries and such. But beyond that, I don't think it'll get any further.

I can read through everything that i've written, but do I really want to be reminded of the past like that? to see these old entries, dragging what's left of themselves to my memory? I mean, I do enjoy reading a few and showing them off once in awhile, but I feel I need something new. Something that might rejuvinate this whole thing.

Perhaps, a makeover? Perhaps not.

I'll see.