Category: manners

PTO project live and I’m angry

asian, depression, family, manners, PTO Project, publishing

My latest project is the Pessimist to Semi-Optimist (PTO) Project which battles depression by addressing one negative thought a week throughout 2017 with thinking exercises. While launching this I was working with the editor of Ricepaper magazine to publish an article of lessons learned from deaths in my family entitled Save a Life, Stop Being Asian.

I’ve received lots of positive feedback from friends and family, which is great, but then the trolls among my friends and family came to visit. The internet is the wild west and comments from strangers don’t hurt as much as people whom you interact with daily or have known for many years.

So far I’ve been accused of:

  1. Hating the Asian culture – not true. I am merely pointing out that strengths in our culture become weaknesses during a healthcare crisis. For example, being stoic and protecting face (reputation) at all costs when help is needed. I can not tell you how much energy was wasted fighting face instead of getting medical help.
  2. Victim blaming – not true. When people are really sick sometimes they don’t recognize that they need help (due to mental illness) or refuse (being stubborn), which makes it really hard to help someone when you know the consequences.
  3. Pretending to be a medical professional – not true. I work in the healthcare sector, but I am not a doctor and I don’t claim to be one. The PTO project is my journey on depression which I’m sharing in hopes of helping other people struggling through the same thing. When you are down and flat on your back, believe me, any little thing that can prop you up helps.

Other than anger, I feel deep disappointment. The same people criticizing me now and telling me to stop writing are the same people who were not there when crap went down. They are such busy people, they didn’t even attend the funerals as well. They also grill me about religious values, tolerance and acceptance of others – yet they are not being empathetic or helpful at all. Feeling stupid for believing that people should practice what they preach. Good grief, how can I not be a pessimist!

I know everyone is struggling with something, but please don’t beat other people up when they are already down to make yourself feel better. Really read or listen to what I’m saying before you go bat-shit on me.

Apologies for my rant. Will forgive everyone tomorrow, will be angry today only because I know I have to let go of anger or else it will destroy me. I’m trying to harness this energy for good by writing and will chose which friends and family to allow into my life from now on. A grief counselor told me quite frankly that “with friends and family like these, you don’t need enemies!”

If you are going through something similar in your life, know you can only control yourself and your reactions. If avoiding someone isn’t possible, you will have to make the best of it by changing your own behavior and choosing to share only selective things from your life with them. Running away does help, but only works for a little while because the main problem still remains.

Thank you for reading, have a good day and let’s all try to be slightly positive among the rubbles of life!

 

I am a "generic Asian"

art, asian, culture, identity, manners, women

Happy New Year!

Throughout December 2013 I had been travelling throughout Tokyo, Japan and Seoul, S. Korea since there was a major family wedding in Korea.

To my surprise, people thought that I was whatever they were and would speak to me at length before realizing I didn’t understand. Then I would get the “this girl is a deaf mute” look. This has happened before in China (I speak Cantonese, not Mandarin), but I didn’t expect people to think that I was Japanese or Korean.

A computer in 2009 simulated average faces for Asians, can you tell which faces are Chinese, Korean and Japanese? (click for answer as well as South Asian faces)

My Viking husband labelled me the “generic Asian” as he was quite amused by all this. With his red hair and beard, people didn’t even try to speak to him. I learned how to say “I don’t understand/don’t know” in Mandarin, Japanese and Korean. However, people sometimes interpreted this as I didn’t know the answer to a question. My brother in law suggested that I learn how to say “I have a mental disability” which may work better.

I was so amused by my new nickname that I decided to rename my blog to “Musings of a Generic Asian” from “Musings of JF Garrard”.

Unfortunately, there was some negative stuff as well which was obvious from angry speech and body language – that I am a terrible Asian as I am hanging out with non-Asian people. Usually it would be an older Asian man that would come up to me directly and say a long speech with nasty glares.

I was being made to feel ashamed that I was a bad Japanese/Korean when I was Chinese. I’ve never traveled to China with my husband, so I’m not sure if we would experience the same thing there. Generally, I think this happened so often because the older generation wants to enforce their rules on the younger generation.

Regardless, it was a wonderful trip and I have been inspired to create art again after a visit to the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and National Musuem of Modern and Contemporary Art in Deoksugung. It was amazing to see the fusion of Eastern and Western art techniques and the powerful messages behind each piece.

I don’t think I’ll see my husband much this year as I want to finish up a few books, travel to a few conventions, start a podcast and create some cultural identity art!

Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll put together my pics and comments, so stay tuned!

Everything I've done Wrong This Past Weekend

branding, conventions, Geek stuff, manners, Uncategorized

I’m proud of my friend Chris, as he has proven to be superb deliverer of guest services. We met again this past weekend at Fan Expo as it turned out we were both doing liaison guest work. He put me to shame as after a long conversation with him last night I realized all the things I had been doing wrong all weekend.

In general, I have a lot to learn from Chris in regards to how to service delivery while having fun at the same time!  So in summary, I’d like to hypothesize what he would do in the same situations I encountered or “What Would Chris Do?”

1) Slow down…Relax…Keep Things Simple

My guest Shawn is an adult, but I felt like I had to be very attentive and almost maternal as once he turns “on” for the fans, I have to be “on” too; in order to make sure he meets his schedule, eats, go to the bathroom, sign all the autographs people line up for, take all the pictures people line up for, etc. My maternal instinct was on overdrive and I was like a rabid chipmunk mother. So I felt really stressed all the time as I was worried about meeting timing of events and keeping things moving along. I would over think how to efficiently do things by running multiple scenarios through my head, then things would change and I would freak out underneath (although I can’t show my stress on my face to my guest).

What Would Chris Do (WWCD) – Although he was doing transportation of all the guests, he kept a calm head and just did things without overcthinking. In the past at Anime North we would bump heads as I would worry about how inefficient he was being but in the end, the result is the same. So just think about the route from A to B and then just dive into it. Often, reality does not reflect the scenarios you think about as there are too many changing factors, such as people blocking the path or an elevator not working etc…Keeping calm at all times instead of freaking out is the best as you don’t waste energy on unnecessary emotional turmoil! Chris took the time to have fun under stressful situations and even calmed down other people!

2) Talk to Strangers and Smile!

This is a hard one for me to do, as I have been raised all my life as a female to not talk to strangers or smile as you worry you are inviting a disaster of some sort. There were many awkward situations of me standing there with strangers as Shawn would run off to talk to one guest and their assistants would be there, often unsmiling. There was one man who kept looking at me and I was worried he wanted something I couldn’t give. It turns out he was an agent and could have been scoping me out. Argh! Missed my chance for stardom!! In general there was lots of odd silences which could have been avoided if I reached out, but was worried about reactions of people and if they had the time to even talk back since everyone is on a busy schedule. Also, I don’t speak very loudly so sometimes when I tried, people didn’t hear me.

WWCD – Chris is a very cheerful guy and when you first meet him, he loudly says hi, then shakes your hand. He is very genuine and sincere with people.  He didn’t worry about potential walls of unsmiling people or what people might be doing next. This is a hard thing for me to do as a germaphobe since I worry about hand germs a lot. Sigh. But I know I have to learn to speak loudly and shake hands as it is a “North American/European” gesture of friendliness. I found myself bowing a lot all weekend perhaps due to my Asian background. So I think I have to do both, bow to the fans when they meet my guest as a hospitality gesture and shake hands more with strangers. It’s so hard to break out of your shell when most of your spare time is spent hiding and typing…

3) Don’t Over Focus on Your Guest

This is an anti-Japanese/American idea, as the usual ideal for customer service is to only focus on the guest. There were a few times where I could get pictures with other guests, so I would leave Shawn on his own and run over for a snapshot. Thinking back, I don’t remember if I thanked them for taking the time to do that with me as I was so worried about getting back to Shawn. It was like he was my baby and I couldn’t just leave him on the street on his own. But he is an adult and he will survive a few more minutes without me as I take the time to talk to other guests properly. He complained that I would leave him for “other men” but he was laughing, so I knew that I didn’t offend him.

WWCD – Chris handled multiple guests, but he told me stories about taking the time to drink with one, then have a cigarette with another. He had a great time and divided his attention equally. I know I was assigned to only one guest, but when I meet the others, I need to learn to focus my attention on them right away, even if it’s for a few minutes. Again, I have a hard time talking to strangers and my default position is one of shyness/introvert. But Chris had such a great time and got to know all of them, so I think he did a much better job than me at creating an impression. Memory wise, the guests would remember a cool guy they hung out with and then there was that crazy Asian girl that ran around like crazy, not thanking or talking to people properly.

Really messed up with Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy, Star Trek) on this one as I didn’t get a chance to read his bio, so I asked if he was British which made me seem silly as he is from New Zealand.  Need to read more bios next time!

4) Have fun!

As you can imagine from the scenarios above, I was not exactly a great person to hang out with as I was like a mother worried about her child most of the time. My guest had a great time, Chris had a great time and I think I could have had a better time if I learn how to do things more like him.

It was a privilege to have done some guest work at this convention and hopefully next year I’ll have more fun if I get to work with Chris!

“Do your time, to pay the price
For every thing you’ve done wrong, baby
In your life, you get so high
There’s nowhere left to go but down
Don’t believe that no one cares
‘Cause we’re here waiting for you, baby
Do your time
and then come home for good”
-Sloan, Everything You’ve Done Wrong – an awesome song, popped into my head when I was thinking about writing all this!