“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

 

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

oh heeeell no.

i don’t own a smartphone; i’m not planning to anytime soon. peter already makes a good point, that we consumers need to consider the human footprint our demand creates.

but lemme just say that this apple customer does care about working conditions. and that i can wait a little while for any company to think through all that stuff before marketing your product.

and finally, apple, you need to slow your roll, son; i’m all for innovation but at your rate, by the time i can actually afford to buy your product and maintain it, whatever i’m wanting to get is about as obsolete as mini-disc players.

sincerely, the girl who misses flip phones, because they don’t butt-dial.

Reblogged from Gloriously Alive:

(A huge note of thanks to everyone who made a plug for my blog this week – it nearly doubled my hits: 20 people!!  Just kidding, it was a lot more than that, and I’m hugely thankful.  So…thanks.  A passage of Scripture has been rattling around in my head for the past couple of days, the one about the bleeding woman that I talked about a few days ago in this post, based on Luke 8.  So I wanted to share some of my reflections on the story for the next few posts.) I am a huge Seinfeld fan.  I can quote …

“…a trick to being able to tell the difference between being singled out and being treated individually, and that is it all hinges on your perception of God…”

That’s good stuff.

Reblogged from Consulting Nations:

We love the idea of freefall.  Especially as Christians (let go and let God), but the idea is found in the world as well.  Falling in love.  Falling out of it.  As if the progress in our lives can be determined by the moment we choose to step over the ledge; and all it takes is an act of courage, or of foolishness, for life to really begin. Months ago I sat in a room with a struggling friend and listened as she was told the same words.  She just needed to let go.  Fall.  Live by faith and God would …

she’s so sage. my former world race teammate and sweet friend carly’s thoughts on faith, time and our dreams.

you’re welcome.

this girl

(i.e., me).

• going on vacation from missions work… to go on missions.
• so i’m going to india, no big deal.

help me.
please.

dhanyavaad.

“Does he fly?” 
“No, he goes on the clouds…he’s a person, like us… when he comes to get us, he’ll give us new bodies.”

Now, I’m not sure if Jenny was the one who said the bit about new bodies. But I’m kicking myself for not recording the actual conversation.

even though i ain’t married, the things i come across lately, make me throw my hands up, wanting the Lord to just whisk me away to where we don’t have to put up with this bullshitnonsense.

(“filter-free” disclaimer in title? check)

last night, i went to busboys and poets to catch up with two awesome friends and to hear lisa williams of living water for girls share her and others’ stories of courage and survival of forced prostitution and child sexual exploitation.

ugggggghhhhh. ruined.

i want to do justice to her, the girls and their work with a better, more thoughtful post.

then in the past couple days, i came across this article, disturbing details emerge of asian-american soldier’s final hours, on the bookface. my reaction to this got too long to share with the link.

so later this month, human trafficking awareness month, i’ll respond to what lisa shared. but for now:

< rant >

what struck me in this article that soooo angers me:

“The top two leaders of the platoon knew about this… but chose not to report it”

and

“They did it because they knew that there was an environment that they would get away with it”.

Maybe because he grew up in NYC, he wasn’t exposed to or used to the fact that the rest of the country is not predominantly Asian like his neighborhood so that’s “culture” shock?

As I was preparing to graduate high school, I knew that the rest of the country isn’t like Stuy (well over 50% of student population was Asian when I was there). And I was headed to the capital of the U.S. for college; sure, it’s not the same as New York, but it’s a city nonetheless. People get nicer as you go further south, right?

Even before school started, going to the reception for incoming freshmen from the metro NY area was a taste of culture shock. I stepped into the room with high-school classmates — one Chinese-American and one Jewish — and saw a sea of preppy and white.

“Oh shit,” I thought. “What the hell am I getting into?”

For a split-second, I second-guessed my choice, feeling like I failed to think this through.

Over a decade later, after reading this needlessly tragic story, being asked “How do you feel about going to school in the south?” when it came to choosing Georgetown for school doesn’t sound as ridiculous as it did anymore. To be fair, my classmate who posed the question was himself headed to Baltimore, which, while technically north of the Mason-Dixon line, was only 30-45 minutes away from DC.

I’m not excusing some of the Asian bubble tendencies of my cohorts, by any means. The church community I belong to began as a predominantly Korean church and is slowly but surely growing through the tension of living up to its name, “Open Door…”

But this incident — and the Papa John’s incident (which happened in NY) and the Chick-fil-A incident (which happened in CA, and hurts right here [pointing to heart] because I think CFA’s a great company) — makes me want to rail against those who would accuse Asian-Americans of being exclusive and only associating among themselves outside of work. I want to point to these moments and ask,

“Can you really blame us?”

At this point, may I remind/inform those reading this that

• I’m currently the only “person of color” in my household* (everyone else is Southern and Anglo-Saxon-ish-American);
• (sort of related) the song that refers to the children of the world as “red and yellow, black and white” at best, makes me wince and at worst, pisses me off; the songwriter meant well, i’m sure, but still rather insensitive.
  

  i am a person, not a color.

  geez.

• for 11+ months, i was one of two full Asian-North Americans; there were daysmonths my grace-tank was sucked bone-dry.
• ethnic/racial diversity is not a forte of my employer (bless their heart), to put it delicately. 

So, I get it. I’m not a naive New Yorker that thinks the rest of the world is like New York. I’ve been to a chunk of the world, I know first hand that it’s not.

“They ask if I’m from China a few times a day… They also call out my name Chen in a goat-like voice sometimes for no reason… People crack jokes about Chinese people all the time. I’m running out of jokes to come back at them.”
– Danny Chen, February 2011, in a letter to his family

But Danny’s story is set in the U.S. military, a body of people who are supposed to defend the ideals and freedom of this nation. The alleged perpetrators were fellow soldiers, men (based on the list of those arrested) supposed to be of character, expected to conduct themselves with honor.

I’m going to assume the best here; Danny wanted to serve his country and chose the military as the way to do so. I can empathize albeit incompletely the confusion. I imagine he thought,

“We’re playing for the same team. Why are you doing this to me?”

Ultimately, their behavior was completely unacceptable regardless of Danny’s ethnicity.

Maybe those of you who are military, especially of you’re Asian-American, can bring another, hopefully a fuller, perspective but this incident has left me a rather bitter taste of the Army, already my least favorite branch of the armed services.

Where was rest of the platoon? What did they see or know if anything? If any of them objected, why didn’t anyone f’ing speak up?

I’m trying not to stereotype the military as racist, especially for the sake of my military friends, but in this moment right now, it’s very difficult. I’m not sure how I can put a positive on all this.

A reality check, perhaps. If I was ever in danger of being overly-optimistic about America’s greatness as a nation, this surely has curbed that. If I ever was in danger of forgetting the that the world is a broken, fallen place, and people the same — duly noted.  

I won’t be jumping back on the “total depravity of man” bandwagon anytime soon but today, I indeed received the memo that it’s quite close. Left to our own devices, the depths of the evil we’re capable of seems endless. Only with God (thanks be to him!) can the good we were designed with and designed for amount to anything more than “filthy rags“.

< / rant >

oh Jesus.
please, fix us.

P.S. for the record, i love love love the people i live with. with them, i get to see how the gospel transcends race/culture. and at the least, they redeem my perception of the American South.

thank you, Jesus
i love the snowwww

it’s snowing. at first it was a light flurry but the snowflakes are bigger.

excited, ekl puts on boots and her jacket, steps onto the deck and makes snow angels.

then she runs the length of the deck and breaks out into the above song.

i sang “bad romance” during our new year’s eve karaoke session; today, nine days later, ekl sings:

woah oh oh oh oh oh oh Je-e-e-sus

that’s right. she’s turned gaga into a song about Jesus. well, just the chorus of the song. still brilliant.

melanie over at onlyabreath.com made this! so cool.

• clear is not the same as “clean”; especially with regard to love. i recognize that love gets messy; i mean clear in the sense that my love is obvious.
• i wrote, “Lord, i want to spend my time clearly”, which i have interpreted as little to no multitasking. crap, i might as well say i’m going to drop 2 dress sizes.
• clear as in transparent and direct. consider this is my advance apology for being blunt.
• in my understanding of clear, i don’t expect complete comprehension of a situation or knowing exactly what’s ahead. rather, i seek to perceive what’s right before me, as it is, as God shows it to me. no more presumptions of where i stand with certain people, of the meaning behind vague sets of circumstances.

no more nuance, i’m over overanalysis, and i’m dieting from “what if”s this year, Jesus. i know you’re mysterious and stuff but whenever possible, please be captain obvious.

God, i need lots of grace as i keep my life clutter-free; cutting down and cleaning up have not been my forte.

and just ’cause i like this movie very much:

are we clear?

crystal.

tuesday night. i add another word to the list:

abide.

i sense that for all my life, i’ll rest in and wrestle with what it means to do that: abide.

next, i think about the word

set;

the way a gem is to a ring or a pendant.

the past two years have been full of transition; i’ve been as nomadic as one be — housing, employment, community — for not having traveled beyond the east coast of the u.s. all of 2011. perhaps this is the year things will settle down; this is the year i will further set myself inside God’s heart and among his people.

or not quite yet.

then i thought about

simplify.

but that, too, felt like a lifelong everest for me to climb.

as i prayed and prayed, my mind got muddled so i jotted down the thoughts that cluttered.

• how i’ve been spending money.
• the work routine i’m still refining (like, how much time to i spend on various types of tasks?).
• thoughts to expound upon on this blog.
• the things i plan to finish this year.
• what happens after this job (how long will i be working “here”)?
• menfolk.
• odpc’s upcoming spring evangelism conference and outreach.
• my role in the missions committee.
• belonging / in whom to invest more time?

then like sunrise, my supplications spilled from my pen and my one word for 2012 emerged:

ta da!

’twas the frontrunner early on but God made it more apparent as i was praying and journaling:

Lord, i want to see (you more) clearly

Lord, i want to act clearly

Lord, i want to communicate clearly

clarify who isn’t “him”

clarify my desires

clear off debt

clear away envy

clear away fear

clear away lies

clear space & time for what truly matters

clearer outpouring of Holy Spirit — into me, through me

a clear path

a clear call

live clearly

love clearly

hear more clearly…

to borrow the six definitive words of my brother’s favorite tv show:

clear eyes. full hearts. can’t lose.

now it’s your turn; what’s your one word for the remaning 360 days of 2012?

chalk it up to being enfp — easily inspired, inept at execution (not that i offer that as an excuse or cop-out). i typically resolve things like:

• lose weight
• read through the bible (i got as far as joshua).
• debt-free/significant debt-reduction (well, car got paid off last year, a huge win!)

i liked these sets of resolutions re: dating. i’m in that age cohort (read: my peers are married, getting married, making babies, raising said babies) and i work from home, so i have to be much more deliberate about meeting (new) men, at least being more open to it. anyways…

then there’s the desire for increased intimacy with God and growth in my understanding of him, in ministry, in my gifts, et al. but those are default resolutions for like, everyday, so designating them as new year’s resolutions is redundant. let’s just establish those as life resolutions.

thanks to my boss and this writer (just noticed both their names begin with a. why did i feel the need to note that? and why against my better judgment am i leaving that thought here instead of deleting it? that’s what happens when i try to multi-task), i was made more aware of one word 365, pioneered by this fellow native new yorker.

each of the aforementioned folks (and others, like him, him, & her) are declaring some money words that i feel could apply to my yearlife. i made the silly-in-hindsight assumption that repeats aren’t allowed; that is, my one word can’t be the same as someone else’s.

see? ridiculous.

so i manage to mangle this rather straightforward, simple (which isn’t synonymous with easy, of course) concept into this mental mess:

pressure to be utterly novel & unique

+ future-orientation

+ aversion to making mistakes

+ indecision

+ clumsiness with details/follow-thru

+ chronic logorrhea

= overwhelmed by prospect of selecting just one word of all the words of the english language to shape the next 365 (this is four days overdue) 360 (2012 = leap year!) 361 days.

after days or a week+, the breakthrough came as i asked God, ever faithful, at prayer meeting this week (during which the list actually grew, hah)! but since this post is already quite long, i’ll share it tomorrow…

can you guess which of these made the final cut?