Musings of a Generic Asian

Who's Going to Toot Your Horn? No One Except Yourself!

On Fridays, I usually receive a weekly newsletter on “leadership” and personal improvement. There was a link to an article about having a strong and focused vision with the example of Amazon for their Kindle.

“To make available in less than 60 seconds every book, ever written, in any language, in print or out of print; and bring the same ease-of-use, deep integration and superior selection of content to movies, TV shows, music, magazines, apps, games, and more.”

This got me to start thinking about a personal branding stuff story told by one of my profs in my MBA classes which went something like this: “I was accused of being an arrogant bragger by one of my co-workers who said that I tooted my horn too much. Well, if you don’t toot your own horn, who’s going to toot it for you?”

Toot-Your-Own-Horn

So basically if you don’t tell people about who you are and what you can do, how will people be able to see you from among the crowd? Looking at Amazon’s example, it tells the world exactly what the Kindle is capable of, suggests that it is compatible with many countries and can play a wide range of media. It is a very diverse tool which can be used for many entertainment products.

This personal branding stuff and tooting the horn is something that I struggle with. Sometimes I think it’s due to my upbringing in an Asian family in which you are taught to stay humble and out of the spotlight while working hard/doing your best. Other times I think it’s because I’m female and don’t want to be seen as an aggressive bitch. I also wonder if I’m driving myself crazy for no reason by never settling and aiming too high.

Regardless, fears and excuses need to be put aside, because if there is something you want, you have to get it yourself. So how does one actually do this personal branding stuff?

In a Forbes Personal Branding 101 article, a few practical steps are given on how to think through the process before making an action plan:

Step 1: Define your overall aspirations

– Be specific and choose a goal.

For example, at the moment I want to become a published author.

Step 2: Conduct research

– How did successful people reach their goal? What are competitors like?

I’ve been looking into how the publishing industry works and looking up potential agent contacts online. I’ve seen published author query letters, so I will be crafting my own in a similar style. Competitors – well, there are many and I’m not sure what I can do except make sure I have an idea that’s unique and can sell. Also make sure I finish the novel before attempting to sell.

Step 3: Determine your brand attributes

-What do you want your brand to convey? How do you want people to see you?

I’m a bit of a mixed bag at the moment, as I have both fiction and non-fiction items on my author page. Usually authors are known for one or the other, so there is a bit of a brand mismatch. In general, I want people to see me as a credible author who writes fantasy/horror, but also a “real” person who is struggling with this parasite/munchkin business.

Step 4: Assess your current state

-How do people perceive you and what is the gap?

People who know me are surprised at my interest in writing as it is a creative endeavor which has nothing to do with my day job. So until I get something published, this whole author business doesn’t seem real at the moment.

Step 5: Create your game plan

-This is creating a “brand” not only through social media, but also attire, hair, makeup, behavior, verbal and non-verbal communication.

Part of my game plan was to launch this website to communicate and let people know of my writing goals, so one thing is done. The whole attire thing is a bit difficult as I have visited other vampire author websites and they are very “goth”. I am a bit of a closet goth, but can’t a happy looking person write horror stories? Isn’t that more scary?

Step 6: Manage your brand

-Continue to reinforce things and proactively make sure things are in sync.

To me, this means continuously writing random but entertaining rants on this blog, inviting more friends to spread the word and stalking agents until I find someone who can help me sell my books. Also, just keep writing and developing this craft.

So I have to keep tooting my horn and hope for the best! It’ll be a long time before I give up my day job, but one can dream?! The world is a stage and we all need to act out our lives!

On a side note, my husband is still playing his Dwarf Fortress game. He was upset when a siege of trolls and goblins attacked his dwarfs. Most of them dropped their tools to run away to safety, but one dwarf decided he couldn’t leave without a large rock. As a result, he was hunted down and killed. My husband said that he didn’t care about the rock and would rather have seen the dwarf live, however, each dwarf has their own personality which can not be controlled. I told him that it sounded quite realistic, as people are irrational people anyway. I mean, if there was a fire, would we not want to run in and save objects which we are attached to?

He asked me what major project he should do next as the trolls had destroyed his dams. I told him to build a shrine dedicated to his wife. He told me to be more specific. I told him, maybe a “J” surrounded by a waterfall. Hm..it is possible, he said, stroking his red beard. But what if the trolls come back? Right, I nodded, as I thought about what 14 years with one person does to romance…then my practical side comes out as I think about how lucky I am that he is my best friend and that we still enjoy each other’s company all of these years. He does say that every day that I torture him with my strange theoretical questions (If carnivorous aliens landed on earth, would you let them eat you first to save me?), but I think he’s accepted that this is part of my personality flaw. I think.

Life is depressing…and my husband doesn't have enough dwarfs!

films, Geek stuff, Uncategorized

After work today, I went to see a film with the TIFF goddess (she is a major Toronto International Film Festival sponsor/hobby film historian). Entering the TIFF theatre, I was impressed that there were six people in the room. For some reason, I tend to frequent really odd films which usually have few people in the audience. Anyhow, just before the movie started, someone walked in and announced that “Lore” (a film about children of Nazi soldiers who have to travel across the country with a Jewish companion) was showing in another theatre. So 2 people walk out. Great! We have a total of four people in the room with me and TIFF goddess making up half of the audience.

The movie we watched was Pietà, a Korean film which made its world premiere in the competition line-up of the 69th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. It also won at three major international film festivals — Venice, Cannes and Berlin. I had read reviews in the newspaper where snobby critics said that “The Master” should have won instead of this film in Venice, which made me wonder as I really didn’t like The Master that much. I am happy to report that this movie was much better that The Master and was very moving, although there was a lot of violence and torture.

Its title refers to the Italian Pietà (piety/pity), referring to depictions of the Virgin Mary cradling the corpse of Jesus. The main character Kang-do, is a thug who cripples people to collect insurance money in lieu of the payments they owe his loan shark boss. One night, after a day of crippling people, a strange woman shows up at his doorstep and claims to be the mother who abandoned him 30 years ago. To test if this is true, he tortures her in various ways and eventually believes that she is his mother. He becomes attached to her and of course, at this point, you figure that she probably is back for revenge after she says:

“Money is the beginning and end of all things. Love, honour, violence, fury… hatred, jealousy… revenge… death…”

Without giving too much away, at the end of this movie, everyone suffers or dies. The film was quite touching though as it depicted how much a mother is willing to go through for her children, whether it be physical torture or self-sacrifice. Korean movies always have the most beautiful crying scenes, everyone looks so pretty! It was sad as well to see all the unfortunate lives who thought that borrowing from a loan shark would give them the ability to make a better life, but in the end there were dire consequences. The main character is a cold, uncaring person who does a good job at inflicting pain due to his abandonment – however, after developing strong feelings for the new manipulative mother in his life, he does change. So there was a message of hope for a few seconds. Alas, did I mention this is a depressing movie? It is also a moral tale to not borrow from strange loan sharks who charge 10x the loan after a month or to care too much about money as it leads to bad things.

After seeing this, I came home slightly sad over this film and wanted my husband to give me some hugs. After a few minutes, he started to complain that he had to pay attention to his dwarfs, as he had accidentally drowned one in a well and the other dwarfs were drinking water from it. Also, the dead dwarf had returned as a ghost to haunt the others. He is one of many addicted to a game called “Dwarf Fortress“, in which the point is to keep the dwarfs in the game happy with beer (they don’t drink water) while building mines and expanding their territory. They also like cats and if their cats are killed by various enemies (dragons, goblins, etc), the dwarfs will become depressed, commit suicide or go on murderous insane rampages. I was feeling grumpy, so I threatened to erase his game. He gave me the puppy dog look along with, “there are dwarf children, elderly dwarfs and baby dwarfs…” He then excitedly showed me the new “Dwarf Therapist” program which lists all the dwarfs and the skills they can be assigned as it is difficult to manage his current 91 – which is a small number, as he started to complain that he was being limited by manpower in whatever he was trying to build next. I told him I was excited for his new therapist program and was now I was going to write about it. He called me a meanie and that was that! Great conversations we have in this household!

It's the end of human society – women breadwinners!

family, Money, Uncategorized, women

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of articles which talk about the positive and negative rise of women in the workforce. A recent Economist article, “The Natural Order”, mentioned that census bureau data in the US showed that four in ten American children live in household in which their mother is the primary breadwinner. In typical American fashion, this sparked outrage from everyone’s favorite channel, Fox News and a panel of four distraught men went on about the impact on the poor children and how this is tearing marriages apart. One of the guests, RedState editor Erick Erickson, stated that this trend is defying biology:

“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.”

Fox News blogger Suzanne Venker writes on a similar note to her fellow colleagues in her post, the “War on Men” – that men don’t want to get married because “women are not women” anymore. They are angry, bitter creatures who won’t let men take care of them. The solution of course is: “Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”

So basically women should let men dominate them in work/life or the end of human society is in sight!

Another perspective is shown in the Globe and Mail’s article “Female breadwinners: Good income, bad outcome?” which talks about men’s problems with females earning more. Basically as women become more educated and earn more, if they are married to men who are less educated and earn less, the marriage tends to end in divorce due to the frail man-ego. As well, the Economist did an article in 2011, The flight from marriage, which had some interesting statistics on women in Asia marrying later and the percentage of them not marrying increasing over the years. The reasoning behind this shift in Asian society is due to women becoming more educated, wanting a man with higher education than themselves and having a job increases a woman’s autonomy. She has more options which include not having a husband as she can support herself.

The guru that I often listen to is my 98 year old grandmother. While growing up, she was not allowed to have an education and was put into an arranged marriage at the old maid age of 18. Throughout my life she often told me that the only way for me to be happy in the future was to obtain a good education and job, so that I can support myself and not depend on men. Being trapped in a bad marriage is worse off than not being married. She was way smarter than my grandfather I think, so she was not that happy. I wonder what choices she would have made if she had options. Maybe I wouldn’t exist…alas…

These debates will continue until women and men are considered “equal” by general society – but then again, this may never happen due to gender differences. Often, I have been jealous that my husband has never had monthly menstrual pains or have to imagine the horrors of child birth. Complaining about this in business class made me seem like a dominant man-woman as my male classmates nodded nervously in agreement.

Another issue in these debates is that there is never a thought to consequences. So if a women has children and is dependent on her husband, what happens if he dies/divorces her/leaves, etc? This is a similar issue with pro-life arguments – people want all children to live, but no one wants to take care of them. Do people practice what they preach? Usually no!

My alternative solution to all this is to have all future generation of children created in artificial cabbage patch wombs, have robots do housework and parents put on the same schedule for “balance” family time at the end of the day. Then one day, all the future children go berserk due to some DNA split gone wrong, blow up the planet Earth and the debate ends…hm…we can make a movie from this!

My Father's Nightmare…Is What I Am Now!

family, theatre, Uncategorized

There is an excellent play at Soulpepper Theatre (in Toronto’s Distillery District) on at the moment called Kim’s Convenience, which is about a Korean family and their first generation Westernized children. Basically, the father has high hopes for his children and he also wants one of the kids to continue running the family business, a convenience store. This is my second time watching and the acting was just as wonderful as the first time. I don’t want to give away the plot, but it there are a few twists and hilarious lines (“Only skinny Asian is the gay. That’s rule.” “Fat guy is black, brown shoes, that’s no steal. That’s cancel out combo!”) To my surprise, before walking out of the venue, staff were selling books of script. I bought a copy to read as some of the dialogue was in Korean and while it was easy to imagine what the characters were saying, it is great to finally solve the mystery of what was actually being said.

Kim's Convenience Cast Picture — Paul Sun-Hyung Lee & Grace Lynn Kung. Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

Anyhow, the play got me thinking about my own father and how disappointed he has been in me. His dream was that I would be a professional of some sort, such as a doctor, lawyer or accountant and I am none of those things. I think I have a fairly good job, but it is difficult for me to explain what I do as I don’t fit into any standard job definition of what he understands. Wanting to write or paint or do anything creative is viewed as a luxury. This is not surprising, as he spends a lot of time working and any arts stuff is frivolous as free time should be spent fixing the house, babysitting the grandchildren, driving relatives to multiple grocery stores, etc. I’m also sure that immigrating to any country is difficult, as well as raising a generation of kids who are growing up in an environment the parents didn’t grow up in. On a recent multi-family road trip with some teenagers and their parents, I remember the teenagers complaining that their parents didn’t understand them. I told them that quite frankly, their parents will probably never understand them as we all grew up in different countries and are exposed to so many different things culturally. Maybe I sounded like an old person, but I told them that they should think from their parent’s point of view sometimes as things are difficult for them as well and to respect the elders regardless. My advice was ignored as they started to yell rudely at their mother to pack all the luggage and to remember the cell phone power cords.

My father once said to me that I should specialize in something and do one thing very well in my career…or else I would know a bit of everything and not be good in anything! Over time, the latter has happened as I haven’t been focused on just doing one thing. I think I have attention deficit disorder (ADD) or some sort of impatient person syndrome as I get bored with things over time easily and I like having the adrenaline rush of trying or doing new things. However, I have been fortunate to also not be afraid to jump at opportunities when I see them, so I have worked on some incredible projects. I’m sure he is thinking about job stability, etc, but I think in my generation, one doesn’t really have job stability anymore. As I keep looking ahead all the time for new/exciting prospects, having a bit of ADD is perhaps an advantage as you can gain skills in lots of stuff and apply them to roles not necessarily in your field. Here’s hoping that some of the selling skills I have learned in side marketing jobs will help me with this book stuff!

Where are the headless people?

Geek stuff, Supernatural, Uncategorized

Today I spent some time at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and was forced to climb up long flights of stairs by my husband to the contemporary exhibit (yes, I am a lazy person). Anyhow, it was worth the effort, as there was a strange new media exhibit called Lost in the Memory Palace: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, on the top floor in which I discovered some interesting things. There were several rooms in which visitors can enter and experience something visually or acoustically. One room felt like you were in someone’s apartment in the middle of a storm in which lots of water poured down from the windows and there was thunder/rain noises.

Another featured a killing machine with robots drilling/interacting with an empty chair with leather straps (you pretend someone is in it I suppose), spooky violin music and a disco ball which create lights all over the room. The lights looked like a nuclear medicine scan of the heart and the music at that point was a heart beating, then stopping (with lights going out = person is dead I presume). Not sure if the artist knew that; if they did, I would be super impressed.

There was one room which looked like some strange genius occupied it, as there were stacks of books, cups with fake bugs in it, plates of fake food, plastic heads and odd machinery parts. If you sat between two large gramophone tubes, voices start asking who you are and there is a pre-recorded dialogue with conversation between two strangers. It appears the random music and voices start talking once you approach a particular area, leading me to believe there are some motion detectors in the room. Out of all the items in the room, there was one book with maps which caught my eye featuring maps by Italian sailor and cartographer named Andrea Bianco of the 15th century. It was fascinating as the map featured Russia, England, Jerusalem, etc and had locations of the “Garden of Eden” along with the “Headless People.” Doing searches on google, I can not locate this map. However, I learned at the time that many biblical places were put onto maps as it seemed like a popular thing to do back them. Will have to go back to the gallery before August 18 and see what the title of the book is. I want to find out more about the headless people and their mythology if any!

For those interested in world maps throughout the centuries, here is a great site with scans of maps from different periods – ancient (6200 BC to 600 AD), early medieval (600AD-1300), late medieval (1300-1500) and renaissance 1492-1800.

Steampunk

Geek stuff, Uncategorized

At Anime North I had participated in an auction and bought two pieces of jewelry that were “steampunk” in style (bracelet & locket). There were also metal goggles, scarves and pocket watches on sale, but I refrained myself. All the pieces were just so beautiful and…shiny which is a weakness of mine as I do like things that reflect light.

Steampunk is is based on Victorian-era clothing style, but incorporates industrial elements such as brass gears, fittings, watch parts, leather and rivets. Many costumes for women include corsets, puffy skirts, high neck blouses and masculine style jackets. As I had a conversation with a friend today about how obsess I have been lately about buying a corset to make a costume for the next Anime North, she pointed out how ironic this was since I was still on a journey on trying to get pregnant. Well, whether the baby/parasite (that’s what we called them in embryology class) thing happens or not, I do hope I will keep enough shape to fit into the corset in the future.

The whole concept of steampunk fascinates me as it is so creative and cool! As I age, it seems less likely I can dress up like a gothic Lolita without looking like an old woman-child but steampunk seems more doable and ageless.

steampunk jewelry

steampunk-corset-240x300

Anime North 2013

Geek stuff, Uncategorized

Yesterday I did some volunteer work for Anime North 2013. It’s been a while as I had stopped helping the con out due to work and education pursuits which took up a lot of time. There were lots of nerdy merchandise to buy in the dealers room, lots of wonderful amateur artwork to peruse and the high point was two live moving Daleks who went around shouting “exterminate…exterminate!” There were some aerial silk acrobat performers and wrestlers throwing each other to the ground…making one feel very lazy as I certainly had none of those amazing capabilities. There were also lots of amazing costumes, although it seemed like people were dressed up 50:50 (normal clothing: costume). Lots of Links from Legend of Zelda (in the dealers room I saw a Zelda metal shield, was so tempted to buy, but held back), bought some steam punk genre jewelry so perhaps on my next visit to the con I’ll wear a Victorian steam punk dress. Spoke at length with some professional artists and writers, which made me realize I better kick myself and start moving on this publishing goal. Last year at Anime North 2012 I spoke about writing, so someone had asked me if I wanted a table for my wares. Alas, it was embarrassing to admit I had nothing to sell this year, so here’s hoping that next year I’ll have something ready!!