Immigration in the World

Contrary to what most French people seem to think (that most of the immigrants in their country are from Africa), most of the immigrants are actually from other parts of Europe:

I guess it's only because skin color is more noticeable than linguistic differences that the mass public believes otherwise.

Today's Random Picture:
The breads of France: Mapping out the specialties of each region

Vancouver Winter Olmpics 2010

Lately I've been staying up until the wee hours of the morning to watch the Winter Olympics. Since the games this year are in Vancouver and since I'm in France this year, this means a 9-hour time difference so I've been awake until 6a.m. in the morning to watch some matches/performances. Last night, I watched the U.S. vs. Norway (Men) and U.S. vs. Finland (Women) hockey games and it really made me miss playing it... not to mention that 1 player on the men's Olympic team and 5 women from the women's Olympic team are UW-Madison alumni! WOO, Wisconsin represent! Snowboarding was fun to watch as well, but since I had a chance to board a couple weeks ago, I'm not as nostalgic for it. Ice hockey, on the other hand, I haven't played in over 5 years. Too bad the equipment is really expensive and I know of no intramural hockey teams in Strasbourg.

What I will comment on, actually, is figure skating. My mom is a huge fan of figure skating. As a child, I learned how to ice skate when I was 3 and my mom tried to direct me toward figure skating. The ultimate tomboy, even at this early age, preferring toy trains and Lego®s instead of stuffed animals and dolls, I took no interest on my own. Instead, I took up skateboarding a couple years later, to my mother's horror. She then made me quit and forced me into ballet classes, in hopes of them somehow inspiring me to combine ballet and ice skating to become an interest in figure skating. The only thing ballet inspired me to do was to start playing soccer, basketball, and track in order to compensate for the humiliating pink leotard I had to wear for ballet. Still, I woke up from my nap to watch the men's figure skating finals "with my mom" (I was on the phone with her while watching). It's a Winter Olympic tradition that we've developed over the years, almost as a way of compensating for the fact that the only sport I played on ice was ice hockey, I watch figure skating with my mom every 4 years.

I must say, what man decided that jumping up, doing some twirls in the air, then landing on one foot should become a sport? And what man would think that spinning around on ice in a graceful manner was remotely masculine? I'm an equalist in that I believe men and women are equal in every way, but that doesn't mean that I don't have certain standards for masculinity that men should have. For instance, I would never date a male figure skater. They're so thin, flexible... and, I have to say, I think they're all too feminine. Not surprisingly, some figure skaters are flamboyantly homosexual. I thought that the Russian skate, Evgeniy Plushenko, was gay with violinist Edvin Marton. Why? Well, Edvin Marton composes songs specially for Plushenko's skating programs and they're purportedly good friends. I just thought "friends" implied they were boyfriends, but I was wrong. Edvin Marton is dates a girl practically half his age and Plushenko got married (to a woman) last year. Still, when I see images like this:

You can't blame me for thinking he might, you know, "swing the other way" so to speak. I have nothing against gay figure skaters. I'd love to have a gay best friend and my favorite male skater, if I had to choose one, is Johnny Weir, who's pretty obviously gay:

I mean, what "straight" man would pose in high heels like this, right? While I was watching the competition with my mom on the other line, there was one skater from Japan, Nobunari ODA, who, according to the announcer, was a direct descendant of the Japanese daimyo ODA Nobunaga, who is often credited with being one of the major players in the unification of Japan. That made me think what would the famous Japanese warlord think of his descendant being a figure skater, pulling tricks like this:

Ok, ok, I'll stop now. I'm not hating on the male figure skaters, but you have to admit, it's not very masculine. Would YOU date a male figure skating knowing he probably eats less, is thinner, more graceful, and more flexible than you are? Just ask yourself that before hating me. I personally couldn't do it. On the ice, I'm more familiar with ramming other players into the side of the rink, fighting for a small puck, slapping that around on ice having it fly at 71+mph (113+km/h). Besides, I think I'd develop some sort of complex if I were to date a guy thinner than me, but maybe that's just me.

Today's Random Quiz:

You Are a Two Dollar Bill

You are a very quirky character. In fact, you're so weird that you've got some people doubting your authenticity. You may not have a lot of money, but you certainly make up for it with creativity and downright wackiness. You are very resourceful. You're the type of person who is able to barter their way up from a penny to a million dollars.   You don't need money as long as you've got your wits. For people like you, money is practically irrelevant.

What Dollar Bill Are You?

Unofficial American Embassy

What is the unofficial American embassy? What is the symbol of America that you have find in nearly every country in the world? Where would I go if I were stranded with no money and felt homesick? What place has a location on every habitable continent in all developed or developing countries? McDonald's. Not to eat there, of course, I stopped eating fast food years ago, but the comforting roof of the golden arches is like being back home in America, or at least, the closest thing you can get if you can't cook up your own comfort foods. I go there just for the WiFi sometimes, since there's a McDonald's just a 5-minute walk from my apartment here in Strasbourg. All McDonald's in France seem to offer free WiFi, which is nice.
I go because I can't study in my room and the library is sometimes too stiff. Cafés are nice, but I don't want to pay 3€ for a coffee and stay for a few hours and try to avoid the waitstaff's scrutinizing glares. McDonald's staff doesn't seem to care whether I buy something or not, so I usually go upstairs, find a quiet corner by the window, read, study, and whatnot when I feel I need to get away from my apartment or the library. And if I do have to buy something someday, a coffee would be just 1€, compared to the 3+€ coffees offered by other places.

French people do seem to eat there. The place gets rather crowded during lunch and dinner hours. It's especially busy on Sundays since most other stores close here in France while McDonald's, keeping up the American tradition, stays open 7 days a week, though here in Strasbourg, there are no 24-hour McDonald's. The latest one stays open until 11p.m., though.
Going off on a tangent, this map shows you basically where all the people live in the contiguous U.S. The more McDonald's there are, the brighter the concentration of lit areas, meaning there are more people there. The Western half of the Midwest and the Southwest are quite clearly sparsely populated, noting the lack of McDonald's =)

Today's Random Picture:
Apparently, McDonald's isn't doing so well in New Zealand and so, this is a promotional tray liner, with a fry shaped like the New Zealand archipelago.

Korea's Dark Half

Both the Bush administration and Obama administration seem to be overreacting and overestimating the technological capabilities of North Korea. The last time there was a "falling out" between North Korean and American powers, sometime in the '90s, it was clear that N. Korea was not really a "threat" since it's weapons juxtaposed to American weapons were like calculators trying to fight a nuclear bomb. Yet, people seem to be freaking out over North Korea being a "nuclear power".

Honestly, this isn't just to play devil's advocate (which I tend to do sometimes). I sincerely doubt that North Korea has any nuclear weapons. It's a country where people are starving to death and most of the country has no electricity or running water. Take a look at this map of North Korea and South Korea:
Personally, the idea of North Korea having nuclear weapons is kind of like Rwanda having nuclear weapons. Don't believe me? Check out this documentary:

XYZ Affair

I just spent the last half hour explaining the XYZ Affair to French high school students. This semester, I have stint at a local private high school or lycée, where I give lectures on a bi-weekly basis on the history and politics of the European Union. Somehow during today's lecture, as I was introducing the beginning of the EU, I went off a slight tangent and referenced the infamous "XYZ Affair", which, to my surprise, the students had no clue about. Ah, high school AP U.S. History class and AP tutoring helped me keep this Quasi-War with France fresh in my head.

Don't want to re-post a history lecture (it was a Quasi-War because while President Adams prepared for war with France, war was never actually declared, and this was due to the then-French Foreign Minister, Marquis de Talleyrand's, demands and demand for bribes from the U.S., as well as French seizure of American ships. It was called the XYZ Affair because Adams, not wanting to stoke the fire, replaced Talleyrand's intermediaries' real names with 'X', 'Y', and 'Z', when forwarding the negotiations documents, in a very short summary), but it makes me really wonder how different the education system is in France. The U.S. is "famous" for producing uneducated, culture-insensitive, overfed, and arrogant citizens, sending them abroad on resort vacations in their hotel bubbles, talking too loudly and dressing poorly. Yet, I really want to pause to wonder, is France, or any other country, really that much better?

Sure, I guess the average European dresses better than the average American. When I'm sitting in class with my sneakers, a hoodie, and jeans, my hair tied back into a ponytail, my nails cut short and unpolished, my French colleagues are sitting in class with their fashionable winter boots, a skirt or well-tailored pants, with smoky eye makeup, polished and filed nails, hair in moussed and hair-sprayed tresses and a nice, feminine shirt. Still, while that stereotype might be true to an extent (not all people dress to impress, but I guess most still dress nicer than I do when I'm in class at 8a.m.), it doesn't mean the French educational system as a whole produces smarter people.

The difference might arise in higher education. Up until high school, perhaps the French school system produces brighter students, I can't say for sure. I've tutored private-schooled American students and now I'm teaching at a French private school. From my experience, I must say I don't see a huge disparity in the quality of education. If anything, the private school students of New York receive more high quality education than the private school students of Strasbourg. That said, New York is the largest metropolis in America, so perhaps I'd be singing a different tune had I experienced private Parisian high schools.

Nonetheless, the French higher education is rather hierarchical. You have your basic government-funded public universities. Some are better than others (Sciences Po-Paris, Sorbonne Paris I, etc.) but all in all, the "Grandes écoles" of France are the cream of the crop. These private university-equivalents are much more expensive in terms of tuition and are much more selective. All the higher ranking French government officials are alumni to a Grande école, not a normal university. Perhaps that is why I find the quality of French graduate school at the university here in Strasbourg not up to par. In essence, I'm learning undergraduate-level material at a graduate level, which says something. Not to mention the poorer quality of lecturers and professors.

I suppose it's like going to a Tier 2 university in the U.S. While the best universities in the U.S. are extremely expensive private universities (Ivy League schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, etc.), there are still some public universities that are also in the Tier 1 category, and these public universities are also the most expensive of the public universities. Unfortunately, what it all seems to boil down to is money. You receive a better education overall if you spend more money. That's not to say that universities like Harvard, though ranked as one of the world's top universities, produces independent thinkers, which is a whole different story. It's a shame that it always has to be about money, since equal opportunity for quality education should exist. Of course, if you really wanted to receive Harvard-standard education for free, you could get it. All you have to do is read books, at least at the undergraduate level. I feel like you can learn everything (or nearly everything) you need to learn from books. It's just that though you read everything, you won't get a degree, and in today's society, a degree says more than private book learning.

This has to be one of contemporary society's flaws. Everything depends on monetary achievements, a degree from an expensive school leads you to a "brighter", better-paid future. It's a shame since I feel like we're losing independent thinkers. Even Harvard-educated students aren't necessarily independent, critical thinkers. Many just regurgitate what their professors tell them and repeat exactly what they read in their books instead of digesting what they hear and read and retorting to, challenging, and analyzing what was just fed to them. Perhaps the era of modernity has destroyed some fine arts of times past or perhaps I'm just not looking hard enough.



Today's Random Quiz:

Your Surfing Habits are 50% Male, 50% Female

There's no way we can tell whether you're a man or woman. Of all the internet users, you are the most broad based in your habits. You use the internet for research and your career. But you also use the internet to keep in close touch with your loved ones.

Do You Use the Internet Like a Man or a Woman?

Zest for Life

I've pulled through my homesick phase, my confused phase, my regret phase, and now, I'm recovering my usual zest for life. There have been a few changes in my life in the past couple of months. First of all, I'm not going to stay in France for the second year since my program is not teaching my anything new. Basically I sit in class thinking "Tell me something I don't know", since all my classes just teach me everything I've already learned, except in a different language. For a while, I felt like coming here was the biggest mistake I've made so far in my life, which was hard for me to admit. My love for a language injured my academic journey, setting me back a couple of years.

In my search for another program, I've discovered several programs that interest me in Finland, Turkey, Estonia, S. Africa, Norway, Slovenia, UK, and due to my mother's incessant insistence, the U.S. Due to language limitations, my only options now are S. Africa, the UK, or the U.S. and I've already completed my applications over the past week. I will have effectively lost 2 years of my life in terms of academic progress if I choose to go to S. Africa or the U.S., though the UK program rewards a MA after one year. Still, I try not to think of it as a year wasted and thus, two years of my life lost. Instead, I think of it as a life experience. Living abroad for a year, perfecting my favorite language and improving another (German) while meeting new people and experiencing new things... not so much a waste of time if you take things from that perspective.

There are still a lot of things I want to do in my life, but I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on myself in terms of "losing" a year in France. I'm still only 22 and the world is my oyster. Besides, there is so much to be thankful for in life. As my favorite childhood book's author Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote: "There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves -- so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful." With this, and many other mantras I like to surround myself with, I think I can continue living happily, with a smile on my face and laughter in my heart, living with my mistakes and happily gaining experience, no matter how big a mistake might be.

Today's Random Quiz:

Your Valentine's Day Personality is Cynical

You really, truly hate Valentine's Day. It's your least favorite day of the year. You think Valentine's Day fake, tacky, over the top, and meant to make single people feel bad. You realize that Valentine's Day is a holiday that only benefits companies... not couples. You know that real love is not about teddy bears and roses, and you feel like the holiday cheapens emotions.

What's Your Valentine's Day Personality?

Weather Anomalies

These past couple of weeks, my mom, siblings, and friends have been bombarded with anywhere from 30 to 50 inches (76.2 to 127 cm) of snow. The record-breaking snowfall in both the Midwest and Northeast/Mid-Atlantic outdid the blizzards of '96 (which also occurred in February), closing down universities (UW-Madison closed for the first time in 30 years) and stores all across the country. In Strasbourg, things have been relatively calm. No major snowstorms and the closest thing to snowfall we have are short-lived flurries and a dusting here and there that don't stay on the ground for more than a day.

That said, I think it's rather apparent the weather anomalies are due to global warming. While the name "global warming" sounds like everything would be warmer, the effects of global warming aren't just increases in overall temperature, but abnormal weather patterns (increasing frequency of tsunamis, hurricanes, other extreme weather conditions) as well as higher temperatures experienced in the summer, as noted upon by the Dutch. Temperature increases in the Netherlands has been rising at a faster rate than the world average, according to the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorlogisch Instituut (Royal Dutch Meteorology Institute). Weather in the Netherlands has increased to similar weather conditions in France a decade ago:
Maastricht = Poitiers
Vlissingen = Nantes
Utrecht = Lyon
Den Helder = Rennes
Groningen = Paris

I love extreme weather, but if it means unsustainable conditions due to global warming and the ultimate demise of humankind, I think I'll pass on the excitement of seeing a hurricane firsthand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

Today's Random Quiz:

Your Snow Test Says You're Independent

You feel like something good will happen to you eventually, but not soon. You don't really like to work, unless work feels like play. You only are successful when you are doing what you love. You are an independent, individualistic person. You thrive when you're doing your own thing. Your biggest worry in life is your family. You stay up at night thinking about them. When it comes time to relax, you always go the extra mile. You take relaxing as seriously as anything else in life.

The Snow Test