I have since started on a new novel, so I may have passed that unusual phase. But really, I have all the intention to get to them in near future. My libraries don’t stock any of this books, which is one requirement I imposed on myself for book buying. The books above:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Eva’s Assembling My Atheneum series on Oliver Sacks intrigued me enough to convince me to get a copy. It’s a collection of essays about fascinating neurological case studies, which I promise would seem a lot more interesting if you can see the table of content.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
First heard of Bonk from Jackie, but later on read more about Mary Roach and her other books from other bloggers. Funny non-fiction? I’m on it! I got it second in good condition from Better World Books.

Little Princes by Conor Grennan
Subtitled One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, I was offered this book by Harper Collins (US) and could not resist. Nepal is a country and culture I’d love to know more about and a couple of reviews confirmed that I’m in for a good read ahead. Also, what an stunning cover, don’t you think? It’s in hardcover too! (see below)

Starting Point 1979-1996 by Hayao Miyazaki
Another hardcover but I have no one to blame for this one. Starting Point came to my notice when I read Sydney Japanese Foundation new catalogue. It is a collection of essays, interviews, memoirs that go back to Miyazaki’s childhood roots, animation theories, and the founding of Studio Ghibli, covering the first half of Miyazaki’s legendary career. Squee! It seems to be the quintessential book for Ghibli and animated film fans. I cannot wait to dig into this. Currently waiting for a good time in which I can dedicate my whole self to the book. There said to be the sequel Turning Point 1997-2008 yet to be translated to English and I’m already looking forward to that.

This last book is not on my physical pile as it just came to my attention last week, thanks to my good friend (who happened to fly to Tokyo for holiday only hours after the tsunami happened. What a bad timing to visit Japan. It’s very sad to see the massive disaster that happened. Hope things will get better and they will be able to rebuild soon.)

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is written by the first gaijin to work for a Japanese newspaper as Japanese crime reporter. He spent 12 years covering vice and organized crimes. Tokyo Vice is about his years in Japan and Japan underworld. Sounds fantastic!

Have you read any of these books? Read any great non-fiction lately?

An enormous share of the country’s wealth was squandered on the military. North Korea’s defense budget eats up 25 percent of its gross national product–as opposed to an average of less than 5 percent for industrialized countries. Although there had been no fighting in Korea since 1953, the country kept one million men under arms, giving this tiny country, no bigger than Pennsylvania, the fourth-largest military in the world. ~ p65

Much wisdom in the saying “One death is a tragedy; a thousand is a statistic.” and Demick understood this. She followed the life of six defectors and took the human angles of the catastrophe that is North Korea. It must be the weirder place on the planet at the moment, like a place you would read in dystopian fictions. It is ruled by an absolute dictator who brainwashes everybody in the country to think that their leader is God–not just a respected country leader, but God–the true and only path to salvation, the provider of everything that you need in your life.

Most people, like me, are probably curious of why the citizens do not make a move, when it is obvious their leaders the Kims are losing control of situation, when people are starving everywhere, dropping like flies. You would understand when you read the book. The government controls so much of every aspect of its citizens’ life that it is impossible to stray off path. First, with absolute communism system, nobody practically gets salary. They get a tiny amount, like a few dollars a month, that they could use for extra things like hair cut or make up. But the food is provided by the government based on coupon system, which people get when they do work. Everybody is assigned workplace and house. There are “community polices” everywhere in the neighbourhood to ensure everyone is behaving. A tiniest scruple or disagreement expressed about their leader would get people in trouble. Radio and TV are restricted to only North Korean channels, all carefully constructed to let the citizens know that North Korea is the place to be. South Korea, China, Japan are poor and horrible (hence the title of the book, which is taken from a popular national chant). US is their ultimate enemy. Don’t even mention Internet. North Korea is the only country in the world not connected to the Internet by choice. And I’m just barely scratching the surface here.

North Korea was (and remains as of this writing in 2009) the last place on earth where virtually all staples are grown on collective farms. The state confiscates the entire harvest and then gives a portion back to the farmer. ~ p67

The peak of North Korean starvation happened in 1998, when millions were dying while the rest did unthinkable things to survive. The coupon system came to a halt, nobody got food or salary. People ate bark trees, grass, rotten fruits, you name it. I found out that in famine the females have more chance to survive than the males, even though the males are usually given priority for food in the family. Death also gets to the young and the old first. Mrs. Song, one of the defector featured in the book, lost her aged mother-in-law, her husband and soon her son. People don’t necessarily starve to death. Often some other ailments get them first. Chronic malnutrition impairs the body’s ability to battle infection and the hungry become susceptible to all kinds of illnesses.

This is a very emotional book for me for many reasons as I kept seeing parallels with my own life. Coincidentally 1998 was also the darkest time for Chinese-ethnic citizens in Indonesia. In May 1998 there was mass anti-Chinese attacks that crippled the whole nation for 10 days and chased away many out of the country. People were killed, home and business were burned down, and there were mass gang-rapes of women including children, too horrible to even mention. It was a massive turning point for all Chinese-ethnic Indonesians. People’s lives were changed forever. Even now 13 years later it is still talked about among us, the wounds are raw and effects are always carried. My life too was changed forever. I fled the country a few months later, did not finish high school, and was told by my dad to never come back, leaving everything behind: home, family, friends, school, and the only place I ever knew. I guess I too am a defector. I fled and renounce my birth citizenship. For many people this is a rather foreign concept. Your home, your citizenship, is the place where you were born and grew up in and nothing can change that. Sometimes people ask me whether it was a hard thing to do, to “give up” my citizenship. As if it is something worth holding on to. It’s hard to explain. How do you explain the dark side of your country that made you leave and never look back? I wonder if someday I could possibly visit my hometown without any trace of bitterness. I’m lucky to personally survive pretty much unscathed, thought it’s not the case for thousands of people.

Among the 6 defectors that are the focus in the book, I connected most with Mi-ran and Jun-sang and their little teenage romance, since again I saw some parallels with my own life. I too had a little something with a boy from high school at a tumultuous time and place, unfortunately, and got separated to live in different countries. Mi-ran and Jun-sang had to go to great lengths to reach each other, spending most of their later years staying at different cities and communicating with slow unreliable postal system. My boyfriend and I used to send one letter every week and number them, so we knew if any got lost. Sometimes the letters wouldn’t come for a month and a few came together at once. And I just broke down when before running away from her village Mi-ran had to burnt all the letters and left everything Jun-sang gave her. She could not even tell him the plan. It was too dangerous to trust anybody. I too had the collection of letters and little presents in a box from the boy I loved, which I held on to even after years of separation, because there was a little hope that one day something might change. Burning them means no turning back. It’s devastating. What happened to Mi-ran and Jun-sang after that? You have to read to find out for yourself. As for me, I married my high school sweetie 10 years after I ran away from Indonesia and left him. So very lucky to have a happy ending.

Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For my love I’ll sacrifice
My life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice
My love.
~ 19th-century Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi, p279

Answer to why Mi-ran left Jun-sang.
Also answer to why I would never go back to that hell hole of a country even if my love was there. He had to get out and come with me.

How do people go from absolute trust and loyalty to defection? When North Koreans defect, there is no way to go back. The regime takes extraordinary measures to keep its population locked up. When North Koreans left the country on official business, they had to leave behind spouses and children who were effectively held hostage to assure their return. Defectors had to be able to live with the knowledge that their freedom came at the expense of loved ones who would likely spend the rest of their lives in a labor camp. As South Korea stands as the true Korea, any North Koreans that cross over to their side are accepted as citizens. But these people have to go find their own way to the South. Crossing the North and South Korean border is impossible because that’s where the strongest defense is. So people cross over to China. But if China finds out they’d send them back to North Korea and the consequences are fatal. The ones with money and connections could forge a fake passport to fly to South Korea. The ones without have to find their way to Mongolia up North, which accept North Korean defectors and send them to South Korea.

Only a small fraction of the 100,000 or more North Koreans in China are able to make it to South Korea. In 1998, there were just 71 North Koreans who requested South Korean citizenship; in 1999 the number rose to 148; in 2000, there were 312 defectors; and in 2001, there were 583. In 2002, 1,139 North Koreans were admitted. Since then, anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 have been arriving steadily each year. ~ p246

Feel like I need to apologize for interspersing my own personal stories in a book review but I guess it just goes to show that you can only read a book in the way you know how. It struck the chord in me in so many ways. I had memories floating around and emotions running wild. Even my post seems scattered and all over the place, but I just had to let it out otherwise this would’ve stayed in draft forever. Really I’d like to reiterate how informative Nothing to Envy is, so eye-opening, so personal, so heartbreaking. It’s a story of human survival and unbelievable will to live. Inspirational at so many levels. Read it.

2010, 314pp

ps: I don’t usually pay much attention to the edition of the books I have or read, because most of them are imported. Where and when they’re printed or published or first published seem inconsequential. But this one caught my interest. I borrowed my edition from a local library and it was actually published by Harper Collins Australia in 2010. The subtitle says Love, Life and Death in North Korea as opposed to Ordivary Lives in North Korea or Real Lives in North Korea for the US/UK publications, which I thought was a great choice, and a better one. There’s also Korean characters on the cover (as you can see above) which adds a nice touch. Cheers for the Australian publisher!

Award
2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
Finalist of 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Also reviewed by
Bibliojunkie | Reading Matters | A Striped Armchair | Sophisticated Dorkiness

Having lived in Indonesia and Malaysia for more than 18 years, Islamic rules and society are not new to me. However, there are always questions in my mind about how things came to be this way and that, about why Islam is often identified with oppression of women, about all the violence done in the name of Islam, about polygamy, and so on and so forth. Nine Parts of Desire did not answer all of them, but it definitely satisfied some and sparked things I would never have thought before. What I loved is that it specifically talks about women issues and Brooks has done her research first hand extensively, spending a decade talking and befriending many Muslim women in Middle East countries, poor and rich, ex-foreigners, converts, royal family. I applaud her for being so brave. Being a woman and a Jew at that really put her at disadvantaged position in that area. In many ways she’s everything I hope I could be.

There are 12 chapters in total, each discussing a different issue: veil, marriage, polygamy, jihad, about women in education, politics, army, business, art or entertainment. It covers many countries in Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and more. One of my favorites is the chapter on women soldiers in UAE, the obstacles they need to break to become fully trained and qualified soldiers, fighting along with the men, even supervising them. In any country, women soldiers seem to be rare breeds, but this is even done in extreme Muslim country, who is used to having women at home and in complete obedience. The idea is so out of the way it seems absurd! Cool is the word to describe them!

In Indonesia polygamy is something that is quite real. Men from range of classes are known to take more than one wife, beknownst to one’s wife or otherwise. Influential clerics do the same, using Islam as reasoning base, and caused an uproar. Polygamy seems to be against the society’s conscience in this age, but for some people there’s always Islamic rules to fall back to. Here’s what the book says:

“In the Koran, polygamy is presented as an option for men, not as a requirement. In seventh-century Arabian society, there had been no restriction on how many wives a man could take. The Koran, in stipulating four as a maximum, was setting limits, not giving license. A close reading of the text suggest that monogamy is preferred.

The issue of polygamy is analogous to that of slavery, which was gradually banned in Islamic countries. As with polygamy, the wording of the Koran permits, but discourages, slavery. Muhammad’s sunnah included the freeing of many of his war-captive slaves. Because freeing slaves is extolled as the act of a good Muslim, most Muslims now accept that conditions have changed enough since the seventh century to allow them to legislate against a practice that the prophet probably would have chosen to ban outright, if his own times had allowed, Polygamy is already on the decline throughout the Islamic world, and many Muslim scholars see no religious obstacle to a legal ban on the practice.” ~ p186

On the issue of inheritance, the Koran states that daughter should receive only half of the son’s inheritance. Interesting point is that the Koran was actually advanced in its time when it was first out.

“The Koran sets out the formula for inheritance as an instruction which all believers must follow. In seventh-century Arabia the Koran’s formula was a giant leap forward for women, who up until then had usually been considered as chattels to be inherited, rather than as heirs and property owners in the own right. Most European women had to wait another twelve centuries to catch up to the rights the Koran granted Muslim women. In England it wasn’t until 1870 that the Married Women’s Property Acts finally abolished the rule that put all a woman’s wealth under her husband’s control on marriage.” ~ p186

It reminded me of the time last year when I read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. For the life of me I couldn’t make sense of why the Bennett sisters and their mother get nothing if their father dies–the estate would instead go to a distant male cousin. Now that seems backwards in comparison with the Koran, doesn’t it?

In the face of politic, in 1994 women led three Muslim countries: Tansu Ciller for Turkey, Bagum Khaleda Zia for Bangladesh, and Benazir Bhutto for Pakistan. If you think about it, USA has never had a female president. Australia just appointed a female Prime Minister last year (2010). Why is that? It’s a wonder that I have no answer to. These Muslim women get death threats (and Bhutto was assassinated in 2007) for being female in authority position. You’d wonder how they got to the top in the first place.

There are a lot more aspects discussed in the book. Though at times Brooks cried disagreement, her objectivity is more prevalent throughout the book. What I concluded at the end was that Islam seems to be religion of contradictions and therefore it’s quite easy for some groups of people to twist the text to their own interpretation. Added to the mix is the conservative Arab culture where Islam is easily absorbed and takes root.

Nine Parts of Desire was published in 1994, so some things have obviously changed since then (just knew that Queen Noor of Jordan has become a widow in 1999). But to my understanding the progression of Muslim women’s lives and roles goes at snail’s pace, so I believe the book is still as relevant today. Check out the afterword written post 9/11 at Geraldine Brooks’ website. Love the last paragraph. Brooks writes so beautifully that I’m sure I’m going to check her other books including the fictions.

It could be very depressing to read about the unfairness and the inequality towards female gender in that part of the world, but above all Brooks looked into the women who succeed in their own small or big ways, who prevail against all odds. In many ways, it’s celebration of the strength of women, of the choices they make in their lives, whether we agree to or not.

“I have my own young sons now, and it is unlikely that I will go adventuring again into lives so far removed from my own.  Somehow, moving house between London and Sydney, Virginia and Massachusetts, I lost the chador in which so many of my memories were wrapped.  Yet they are with me, always; memories of women who trusted me across the chasm of faith and culture. When I think of them, I think of laughter and kindness, warmth and hospitality.  I think of the things that united us rather than those things on which we disagreed.  They wanted to live, to see their children live.  That, at least, we had in common.  That, at least, is a place to start.” ~ Nine Parts of Desire, New Afterword

1994, 255 pp

Nine Parts of Desire at Geraldine Brooks website

More Memorable Quotes

“Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.” ~ Ali ibn Abu Taleb, husband of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima and founder of the Shiite sect of Islam

“”Rose,” I said, incredulous, “are you telling me you’ve ruled him out because he had dirty fingernails? For goodness’ sake! You can always clean his fingernails.” She raised her head and gazed at me sadly with her huge dark eyes. “Geraldine, you don’t understand. You married for love. What’s a dirty fingernail on someone you love? But if you are going to marry somebody you don’t love, everything, everything, has to be perfect.”" ~ p65

“Few women’s colleges have their own libraries, and libraries shared with men’s schools are either entirely off limits to women or open to them only one day per week. Most of the time women can’t browse for books but have to specify the titles they want and have them brought out to them.

But women and men sit the same degree examinations. Professors quietly acknowledge that women’s scores routinely outstrip the men’s. “It’s no surprise,” said one woman professor. “look at their lives. The boys have their cars, they can spend the evenings cruising the streets with their friends, sitting in cafes, buying black-market alcohol and drinking all night. What do the girls have? Four walls and their books. For them, education is everything.”” ~ p150

Challenges/Projects
Middle East Challenge, Aussie Author Challenge, Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Books in the City | Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? | Muse Book Reviews

Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (the micro-finance bank he built) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and since then he came to my attention over and over again, though only until a few weeks ago I managed to set a time to read his autobiography, in which he tells you everything about micro-lending and the battle against world poverty.

Poverty is a subject that is close to me, having been born and lived most of my life in third world country, where poverty is not a problem in the other part of the world, but very real, very close, that I saw every single day. But as life would have it, I’m not someone who works in vital sectors, like doctors, economists, lawyers, teachers, or politicians. I work in entertainment industry. So I guess learning about problems of the world and contributing a small portion of my earning would be as far as I can go. Anyway, that’s food for thought for another day.

Muhammad Yunus though, was exactly in the perfect position to make a difference. He’s a Bangladeshi from a well-off family, had a chance to study in US, and became a professor of a respectable University in Bangladesh. He’s highly intelligent, has very strong concern for humanity, and is well connected because of his position and upbringing. And boy did he make a difference.

The idea was born one day in 1976 when he loaned $27 from his own pocket to 42 people living in a tiny village. By lending the small amount of money, they were able to buy raw materials for their trades. What he found later on was that the poor only needs to be given a chance to lift themselves out of the death circle of poverty. By lending a small amount of money and encouraging them to be micro-entrepreneurs, they are able to help themselves. These people have managed to live with such minimum resources. Imagine what they can do given even the smallest window of opportunity. The possibility is limitless.

When you hear a success story of somebody, you often forget that there’s an enormous amount of time and energy to get them to where they are. When I heard Muhammad Yunus winning the Nobel Prize, I imagined a smart professor solving world problems with his almighty brains. But I did not imagine the little things he had to go through physically: going to house after house in a small village, day after day trying to gain the villagers’ trust, to convince them to borrow money and give it a go, rain or shine, literally. There was an occasion when it was downpour raining and he had to wait outside because it was against the custom for a non-relative male to be in the house without the men of the family. So the women lent him an umbrella while he was sitting at the gate of the house, while one of his female students played messenger, going back and forth between the house and the gate. His first “office” did not even have a lavatory since he started with very little money in a tiny village. When nature called he had to go to his neighbour. These are just ones of many little things that brought tears to my eyes. There is someone in this world, willing to go through so much, so his fellow human beings could have better lives. Not just by making up high theories in the comfort of his room, but by diving head first into the center of the problem, to the lowest of the lowest of society. It restores your faith in humanity. It makes you believe the power of one person to change the world. It makes you believe in all sorts of things.

“How did we define “poverty-free”? After interviewing many borrowers about what a poverty-free life meant to them, we developed a set of ten indicators that our staff and outside evaluators could use to measure whether a family in rural Bangladesh lived a poverty-free life. These indicators are:
1) having a house with tin roof
2) having beds or cots for all members of the family
3) having access to safe drinking water
4) having access to a sanitary latrine
5) having all school-age children attending school
6) having sufficient warm clothing for the winter
7) having mosquito nets
8) having a home vegetable garden
9) having no food shortages, even during the most difficult time of a very difficult year
10) having sufficient income-earning opportunities for all adult members of the family”

How down to earth is he? The goals they set are clear and very realistic. The poverty rate has fallen from 74 percent in mid 1970s to 40 percent in 2005. A ridiculously high achievement for a nation that is often struck by natural disasters and has no great natural resources apart from the hard work of its people.

Professor Yunus is truly one in a million. What a better place he has made the world. My admiration for him has no bound.

2003, 277 pp

Kiva – loan as small as $25!
Grameen Bank
Yunus Centre

The Book Nest (review)
Dawn @ she is too fond of books talking about Kiva

Before Megumi I never knew about the existence of “Documentary Manga” so I took the book out of the Japanese Foundation Library shelf with high curiosity. As what the title says, the manga is a true account of the abductions of Japanese people by the North Korea.

Revolves around Megumi Yokota (横田めぐみ) who is one of at least thirteen Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the story is told from Megumi’s parents perspectives: Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, who supervised the creation of the book (illustrated by Soichi Moto).

It is a very heartfelt manga as you learn about the poor fate of Megumi. One day happy with her family of parents and two younger brothers, and the next abducted to a foreign country, never to be heard again until twenty years later, during which Megumi’s family thought she could be dead. Until one day a North Korean agent spoke up about the whereabouts of Megumi.

What came after was horrible mind games done by the North Koreans. One day they would say Megumi was alive and the next send human bones claimed to be Megumi’s (a DNA test that followed proved that they weren’t). They said Megumi got married and had a daughter. While the daughter was allowed to send letters to the Yokotas, they do not allow any contact with Megumi. There are a lot of other little things that make me wonder what their real intentions are to play with people’s life and feelings. Megumi and the Yokotas were just ordinary people who were at the wrong time and the wrong place, sucked into psychological political war between the South and the North Korea (apparently the North Koreans abducted some Japanese to learn to disguise themselves as Japanese with the purpose to penetrate the South).

A lot of the scenes really got to me. I couldn’t help imagining if I were the 13 year old girl abducted and my parents lost me one day, not knowing whether I were alive or dead. For if there’s even a glimpse of hope that I’m still alive, I know my parents would go as far as Sakie and Shigeru Yokota do. Their perseverance and faith is so commendable, and truly touching.

I went to South Korea in 2008. Even to these days there’s huge tension between the two countries. There is a part in the book where Megumi’s parents went to visit the South and North Korean border, a place that I have visited as well. So I recognized many of the places and the experiences: the dynamites and electrified border along the highway, the armies, the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone): 4 km wide buffer zone between the South and the North–the most heavily militerized border in the world, the North Korean’s tallest flagpole (160m) with its biggest flag (270kg) in the world (which you can only see from afar with a binocular, on the South Korean side). It was such an eerie experience, to say the least.

Megumi is published with the aim to enhance the understanding of the international community concerning the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea. It is distributed through Japanese diplomatic offices, including embassies and consulates. But it is not available for purchase, which explains why I had never seen the book anywhere. It doesn’t even have a record on popular book website like goodreads.

Megumi is a very informative manga (as documentary should), packed with emotions as it is told from the parents of the abductee. I love how the Japanese use medium such as manga to convey an important message. It’s a bit of a weird read, since there’s no proper solution to the “story”. Even though I knew the real-life Megumi is still held by the North Korean and there’s no way the book ended up happily, there was a part of me that was still hoping for it. Alas, it’s real life and the struggle continues.

2005

You can read the excerpt of the manga here. Apart from the manga, there’s anime made available for download (25 minutes full version), and also 85-minute documentary film titled Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story that has won many awards, produced by Jane Campion. Both of which I look forward to watching sometime.

More info about Abductions of Japanese Citizens by North Korea.

We know from the second page that Pedro was going to die. The book is a tribute to him and what a special tribute it is. Judd Winick is a fine cartoonist and storyteller. His illustrations are full of emotions and the story is told in a very gentle heartfelt way. You can really feel that their friendship was genuine and they made an impact on each other’s life. One of the most interesting things about the book is that we are told about the life of a gay guy from a straight guy point of view, not just any straight guy, but his roommate and best mate. What a unique perspective.

Pedro died in 1994 at the age of 22. The book was published in 2000 after 2.5 years in the making by Winick. I read it in 2010 and it made an impact on me. It’s amazing how Pedro’s legacy lives on even after he is long gone. I believe it’s an important book, the book to read for anyone wants to know more about gay people and people who lived with AIDS. Thanks to Pedro, he put a human face to those with the disease. Pedro and Me is about intimate life journey of a brave man and the wonderful friendship he had with another man who is just as great. It’s about fighting for life, about living, surviving, loss, friendship, and love.

“I think the experience of watching two people fall in love is like seeing a snowfall. It’s slow. It’s lush. And when everything is covered, it all looks perfect. It was magical. I’m biased. But you would’ve been, too.” ~ Judd Winick, on seeing Pedro fell in love

A lovely book that will stay with me for a long time..

2000, 187 pp

Judd Winick and Pedro Zamora

Judd Winick site

Challenges
Graphic Novels 2010 (book #7)

Also reviewed by
su[shu] | The Zen Leaf

Clueless in Tokyo: An Explorer’s Sketchbook of Weird and Wonderful Things in Japan is the second book in the series that I read after Squeamish about Sushi by the same author.

Once again, the illustration was always a joy to look at and the little things were fascinating to learn.

For example, the instruction on how to drink Japanese tea:

1. admire bowl
2. turn bowl clockwise 180 degree so the sacred spot faces away from you
3. slurp your tea to show appreciation
4. clean the rim with a cloth
5. turn bowl back counterclockwise 180 deg
6. admire bowl again

A few random facts that I took note of:

• Sumo grand champion’s ceremonial rope weighs 15 kilos
• You can rent a protest truck, get  behind a microphone and blast your views around Tokyo
• Taxi’s doors open and close automatically
• Whole squads of gas station attendants hoot and hollar to welcome you like in restaurants
• When you order food for delivery, you leave the dirty dishes out of your front door after eating. It will be picked up by the restaurant in the morning.

And a few items of interest (or shock!) in Japan:

• Batteries vending machine
• Porn vending machine that’s hidden behind metallic curtain at daytime and exposed at night
• Condom vending machine that categorizes the condoms by blood type
• Schoolgirls’ used panties vending machine (eewww.. WHERE did they get those?!)

When I reviewed Squeamish About Sushi I didn’t get a chance to take pictures (or was just assuming that I could steal some pictures from the net, but apparently I couldn’t find any), but this time I did! So here I present you a few pages from the book: (taken in a train on the way to work with my iPhone, so pardon me for somewhat mediocre quality photos..)

The famous complicated Japanese toilet buttons

Japanese chick attire

Japanese masks

Are pictures really worth a thousand words?

1997, 48 pp

Each item is named by its Japanese name in romanji (alphabet) and hiragana/katakana, which is great whether you’ve learned Japanese characters or not. So it acts like a visual dictionary, if you will. Most items are food, including various types of sushi, bento (rice box), yakitori (grilled food on a stick), shabu-shabu (cook your own soup), and more. I literally drooled inside my mouth when looking at the illustrations. I love Japanese food!

More interesting bits include guide to going to toilet in restaurant (change your restaurant slipper–which is given when you enter the restaurant– to toilet slipper before going into the bathroom), guide to using the complex buttons on the toilet bowl (recommended not to use if you’re not sure how), and guide to taking a bath at ofuro (the public bath).

I am quite familiar with Japanese food and culture, so most of the things weren’t really new to me, but I still learned a few things here and there (perhaps about 30% was new to me). I have also just visited South Korea in October last year, and found that it has many similarities with Japan. One in particular is the onsen which is very similar with the one in Japan. I absolutely loved it! Okay so some people found it uncomfortable to walk around in the locker room naked and to take shower/bath in communal place, but I somehow liked that they’re totally comfortable with it. After about 15 minutes it kinda felt natural to me too. The experience was one of the most memorable of any of my foreign trips. I even went to the onsen twice when I was there, because once was just not enough! (I plan to write about the whole onsen experience, but I’ll keep it for later so I don’t sidetrack too much.)

Too bad I’ve already returned the book to the library, so I can’t show you more pictures (couldn’t find more on the internet). But I’ve borrowed another book by Betty Reynolds titled Clueless in Tokyo, which has the same format. So I hope to show you more from that book soon.


2000, 72 pp

This is the first book by Malcolm Gladwell that I read. I have Tipping Point and Blink on my shelf, but I got attracted by Outliers that I reserved it from the library and had to wait for a few months (I was 4th on the queue) to get my hands on it. To tell you the truth, the catch line that seized me was how the Asians are better at Math. Really, I wanted to know, if it can be explained. Also, being born in a society where IQ and accomplishments highly matter (aren’t we all?), this book is bloody important. Yes, I want to know The Secret of Success!

Just a note before you read on, I’m probably going to discuss in details many aspects of the book and I’m not sure if you can call them spoilers. After all it’s not fiction and there isn’t exact storyline (though sometimes the way it is written makes it feel like you’re reading fiction). But if you worry about knowing too much before reading the book then you probably want to skip the rest. I’m writing this as personal notes too, so I’ll go over points that I managed to extract from the book.

The book started with a bang, telling you things that you probably don’t notice, like how important it is for Hockey players (and probably other elite sports too) to be born on the right month, simply because of the selection cut-off date. Then it goes to 10,000 hour rule, where we trace back the history of a few highly successful people, like Bill Gates and the Beatles. 10,000 hour rule is saying that you generally need this golden number hours of training to be really good. Nobody gets to be great in what they’re doing overnight. No exception. But of course, you also need an incredible amount of luck and talent to support your training to be a world expert. This fact gives me some kind of hope. Nobody is born genius, you need to work hard on your talent to make things happen. The best people spend the most time on crafting their skills, which happens over long period of time (10,000 hour is roughly equivalent to 10 years).

Then we move to the man with the highest IQ in America (or at least the one known), Chris Langan. He’s not overly successful. You’d think that a person with the highest IQ would do wonders in this world, but no. Gladwell analyzed why. He compared him with Oppenheimer, the Father of the Atomic Bomb. They weren’t raised in the same way. Oppenheimer came from a wealthier family (like Bill Gates), Langan came from a poor broken home. How you are raised matter (obviously). Kids from middle class family and above are generally more successful. This is not only because of all the privileges that they receive, but also the mentality of the parents who pass down to you the ability to assert and the sense of entitlement.

At this point I talked to my dad about what I had read. We agreed that they’re not exactly new discoveries. My dad always said that there’s this old Chinese concept that says there are three things that make a person’s success. The heaven, the ground, and the people. Means it’s very important when you are born, where you live, and who you meet in your life. I think that’s pretty accurate, and this goes in synch with Outliers, mostly on the when and where you are born for the first part of the book: Opportunity. At the later chapters, Gladwell gives more examples on the perfect years for certain profession to be born in, like perfect years for software developers are 1954-1955, business entrepeneurs 1830s, and New York lawyers 1930s.

Part Two is Legacy, which I think has a lot of to do with the third of the Chinese concept: people you meet. But Gladwell points more toward the culture you are from. In other words, your family, your roots (while the Chinese concept says more about your mentors, bosses, or partners that support you in pursuing your goals). He goes to the South Americans that tend to be more violent, because if you trace their family tree, it goes all the way to herdsmen, the people who need that “culture of honor” to survive. Then there is Korea, who used to have a very bad reputation for having high number of plane crashes. Apparently countries with high PDI (Power Distance Index) tend to have bad pilots because it’s just too hard for them to communicate. Koreans have six levels of politeness in their language, and that doesn’t help. The more hierarchical the society is the more ambiguous their choice of words is. In case of flying a plane, this can cause fatal mistakes that lead to many deaths.

Then finally we get to the part that explains why Asians are good at Math. To summarize, it’s because they work harder. Why? Because they come from society who farm rice paddies, and rice is one of the hardest thing to take care of. You basically need to work around the clock all year round to get maximum result. This makes the other clan who hunt and gather like couch potatoes. According to the research, the Asians tend to be more persistent. So for example, given difficult Math problems, they take more time to try before giving up, in comparison to their Western counterparts. That makes them better at Math.

Am I happy with the explanation? I’m not sure. Sure, hardworking is one trait of Asians, but it’s too broad of generalization. How about the South East Asians? The research was done on descendants from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China, which happens to countries that are more “successful” than the rest of Asian countries. How about Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and so on? They work on rice fields too. We know that they’re considered as the third world countries which don’t do as good. And in terms of being hardworking, there is just no way that they’re as hardworking as, say, the Japanese. (Again, this is broad generalization, but surely true.)

How far would you believe that the culture you are from affects you that much, even after many generations? My grandfather from Dad’s side came from South China (which according to Gladwell is generally better at Math than North China, because they work more on rice paddies) and my dad happens to be someone who never loses the Chinese heritage that he takes pride in. So even though he was born and grew up in Indonesia, he can talk Chinese and reads lots of Chinese books. He is where I know anything about China and Chinese people from. From mom’s side, I’m probably the 4th or 5th generation of Chinese immigrant in Indonesia. I’m pretty far down the line. Even my grandparents couldn’t speak Chinese. My grandma spoke Dutch and English apart from Indonesian, because she grew up close to the Dutch colony in Indonesia. I myself left Indonesia, the country I was born in, at the age of 17 and have never gone back since. What that makes me? I’m a child of a migrant who’s a child of a migrant. I’m not sure if ethnicity and culture of origin affect me much (I’m not even sure where I’m originated from). But then again, Obama has very complex family background (as a child he stayed in my birth city Jakarta :). So that’s probably what you need, combination of cultures and heritages and take the best of many worlds.

To go back to the topic of the book, Outliers was an entertaining reading, if not anything. I know a lot of people probably think that it’s neither original nor informative, but myself personally wouldn’t read psychology or sociology books with dense information in it unless required by class. So this is good, because the book summarizes facts and findings, and it is written in a fun and enjoyable way. I like how Gladwell uses one person’s point of view for each topic and builds from there. It makes the stories personal and interesting. The last thing you want is to be given a bunch of cold blooded statistics with heartless analysis (because that would be, um, boring).

I thought some chapters were a bit too long-winded, like the parts with the Jewish lawyers and Korean pilots. It’s like, okay, I got it already, can we move on? But all in all he doesn’t go too crazy about things. You can see where he’s coming from and a lot of his points make sense to an extent, which I think is good enough. I just wished that somebody like him could make analysis on other countries. His is heavily based on America and Canada. I would definitely get to his other books soon or later. And oh I just knew that Gladwell is part Jamaican. Just look at his hair!

Below is a great interview with him on CNN, and check out Outliers Q&A on his website.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pages: 299
Publication year: 2008

First line
Roseto Valfortore lies one hundred miles southeast of Rome in the Apennine foothills of the Italian province of Foggia.

Last line
These were history’s gifts to my family – and if the resources of the grocer, the fruits of those ruots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill?

Quotes

“People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage… It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forbears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.” ~ p17-19

“Success is the result of what sociologists like to call ‘accumulative advantage’.” ~ p30

“Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.” ~ p38

“I owe thanks most of all, though, to my parents, Graham and Joyce. This is a book about the meaning of work, and I learned that work can be meaningful from my father. Everything he does – from his most complex academic mathematics to digging in the garden – he tackles with joy and resolve and enthusiasm. My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell on Acknowledgments, p298

Also reviewed by

Rhapsodyinbooks’s Weblog | S. Krishna’s Books | Gimme More Books! | The Book Lady’s Blog | Book Addiction | She Is Too Fond of Books | Redlady’s Reading Room | Islandhopper Lives It Up | Books for Breakfast

Ethel & Ernest is a true story of Briggs’ parents, from their first encounter to their deaths. It’s a story of two ordinary people, who experience the changing of the world around them: Second World War, the arrival of television, people landing on the moon, as they brought up their only son. It’s really nice for a change to read a book about ordinary lives. No abuse, violence, extreme poverty, and all the things that make the world dark and gloomy. This time, it’s intimate insight into life of a simple working class couple, who have simple wants and dreams, who are happy and sad for things that are important to them (not necessary to the world of course).

The main storyline is okay, but I found some scenes to be very choppy. Sometimes there’s no transition to one scene to another, and scene can change in one page from one to another abruptly. So that makes it a bit hard to understand. Furthermore, the setting is in Britain, and there are some references that I couldn’t really get or relate on. But that’s probably just me.

At some points of the book, I felt kinda annoyed with them. Interestingly though, it’s probably what I feel with my parents. I feel annoyed with my parents sometimes (okay, often!), but I cannot not love them. Their complaints to some aspects of life and to their son sound familiar. It probably just hits close to home. So at the end of the book, it’s really painful to see them dying. I mean, everybody has to die and you know from the beginning that the book tells the story of Ethel and Ernest until their deaths, but it’s still hard to swallow. I remembered my parents.

The art! How pretty! The art was exactly the thing that pulled me. I think it’s combination of crayon, color pencils, and marker. They somehow just make into something really beautiful. Love it! Look at the cover art below. The whole book looks pretty much like that.

It’s really hard to rate a graphic novel without considering the art. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

Rating: 4/5 (3.5 for the storyline, 4.5 for the art)
Pages: 104
Publication year: 1999

Award
1999 The Illustrated Book of the Year from Galaxy British Book Awards

Also reviewed by

Things Mean A Lot (whose review just appeared on the same day before mine. We probably read it at the same time by coincidence :)