Photos courtesy of Jessica Su ’13
Gallery 2: CASA Turnover Banquet 2010
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Monthly Archives: January 2010
Gallery: CASA Turnover Banquet 2010
Click on photos for larger size.
All photos by Will Zhao ’13
Welcome to the APA Blog!
Welcome to the newly formed Asian Pacific American blog! This blog was specifically created to provide a venue for Asian-Americans at Yale to connect online. We want to open up the opportunity for everyone at Yale to share their ideas in a low-key, casual atmosphere. We also strive to inform readers of ongoing political issues, updates on campus events, general advice, and any other topic that would be interesting to the Asian-American community at Yale. In the future, we hope this blog will eventually allow us to reach out to other Ivy League schools and other Asian-American communities as well.
We especially want you to be a part of the blog. Feel free to comment on our blog entries and submit your own entries. We are open to any medium (artwork, video, links, etc.) and any topic that you would like to share with our readers. Submitting to the blog is probably one of the best ways to reach out to the entire Yale community, and we encourage you to post your own content. Email your submissions to apablog10@gmail.com to see your stuff posted on the web!
So now we’d like to meet our staff!
Hey, everyone! My name’s Miriam Cho, and I’m a freshman in JE. I have no idea what I’m majoring in, but it’ll probably be in the Humanities, seeing as I’ve vowed never to take a math course at Yale. I’ve lived in Kentucky for most of my life, where I went to a high school between a cemetery and a cow pasture and enjoyed drives through winding country roads. My hobbies include running, eating, and sleeping – if only life could be that simple 
. I’m part of the APA Blog this year because I think it’s a great way for Asian-Americans at Yale to connect online and express whatever’s on their mind, both on serious issues and random topics of interest. I hope you enjoy browsing around our site and I encourage you to submit your own cool stuff!
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Will Zhang
Associate Editor
Hey guys! I’m William Zhang, a freshman in Ezra Stiles. (Whoooo Stiles!) I like food, writing (sometimes), photography, graphic design, turtles, swimming, sleeping, food, and just having a good time. I hope this blog is a forum of thoughts that keeps it real, and that you guys really take advantage of it (in a nice way of course.)
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Catherine Dinh
Events Reporter
My name is Catherine Dinh. I’m a freshman in Pierson. I’m from Fremont, which is in the Bay Area, California. I am considering majoring in English or Psychology. I enjoy reading, writing, watching movies with friends, shopping, graphic design, taking walks, eating, imagining, and learning new things. I’m a member of ViSA and TAS, but I joined the APA blog because I wanted to reach out to more of the Asian American community here at Yale. In short, I hope this blog will be a huge success and am looking forward to seeing it grow.
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Will Zhao
Public Relations Specialist
Hey everyone, my name is William Zhao. I’m a freshman in Pierson College and I’m from New York City. I’m currently planning to major in Classics. I’m a big fan of food, and I can often be found watching the food network for hours on end. I really enjoy fencing, reading, drawing, and I live for awkward moments. I’ve also been working to promote Asian American awareness at my high school for the last four years, and I’d like to stay involved in the Asian American community here at Yale.
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Kathy Zhong
Graphics Editor
Hi, my name is Kathy (JE ’13!), and my life philosophy can be summarized by the following quote from Neil Patrick Harris: “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.” Unfortunately, I now spend most of my time being confused in orgo, working in lab, and trying not to freeze my Californian butt in the temperamental New England weather. I enjoy lots of things, but to be relevant, I love Asian culture, whether it be the food, music, food, dramas, or food — and I plan to pimp it out to the best of my ability with this blog. (would you like to be awesome too? join us!)
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Thanks for reading this, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Blast from the Past: Rubik’s Cube Master, Anthony Hsu
This video was previously posted on the AASA site, but we’re posting it again for those who haven’t seen it. Watch sophomore Anthony Hsu solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than 20 seconds!
Restaurant Hopping: York Street Noodle House
For someone who’s lived in China and Singapore* for the first decade of my life, and in California’s Bay Area for the last five years, my taste for “authentic” Asian food is actually quite terrible, or better put, simply nonexistent. Case in point: my favorite dish at many Chinese restaurants is sweet and sour chicken, I think the sushi at Durfee’s is just fine, and I’m still a little freaked out by how much my relatives seem to enjoy pig’s blood and chicken feet. With that in mind, I’m probably either the best or worst person to York Street Noodle, your run-of-the-mill noodle house that apparently encompasses Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese “cuisine,” and a staple for poor Yale students and New Havenites.
Corporate Groups in Politics
This past week’s special senatorial election in Massachusetts has received a lot of national attention. Conservatives have heralded Scott Brown’s win as clear signs of the nation’s discontent with President Obama while liberals worry about what the repercussions will be not only for health care reform but also for climate change and the rest of their agenda. The added drama that the Kennedy seat was won by a Republican just 14 months after Obama carried the state by 26 points has helped this incident overshadow the far more important political news of the week. In a 5- 4 decision on Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court overturned over a century’s worth of precedent in allowing corporations and unions to spend from their own treasuries on political campaigns.
The reactions to this ruling have varied from cries of treason to the celebration of “a great day for the First Amendment.” This broad range of responses comes as no surprise given the long history of government restrictions on corporate participation in campaigns starting with the Tillman Act of 1907 and as recently as McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. The rulings will allow special interest groups to use their deep pockets to run ads for or against candidates who support their agendas. Proponents of the first amendment rights of institutions see it as a big victory and have dressed it up as a great win for Americans. At the same time, the dissenting opinion of the court warned that the decision “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.” Complicating the matter even more is the group of supporters who argue that the ruling is both good and bad for our democracy because the potential for corruption is greater but it decreases the power of big media corporations, which were exclusively allowed to participate in campaigns.
Living Between Two Cultures
Sometimes I feel like an illegitimate child of the world. Neither truly born of Korean culture or American ideals. My Korean speaking skills are pretty shabby, I prefer Big Macs over kimchi and rice, and I’m totally incompetent in the latest K-Pop hits. Yet I do complain when people don’t take their shoes off in my house, and I let my parents eat first before I touch my food. And as I look in the mirror each morning, I always see the flat nose and nonexistent eyelids that will always mark me as another ethnicity. Even if people claim America is a melting pot, I’m still the radish that doesn’t seem to quite dissolve in the soup.
It seems like Eastern society constantly pushes Asian-Americans to retain their culture. “Never forget your heritage!” Asian parents insist as they send their children to language schools and celebrate Asian holidays. Yet on the other side of the spectrum, Western society makes fun of FOBs and draws stereotypes from those who just seem “too Asian”. Expectations of Asian-Americans are pretty unrealistic – accomplish both complete assimilation and cultural preservation? It’s more likely that one will lean more toward one end of the spectrum or the other.
Colbert Report on Obama’s first year
Great piece from the Colbert Report about the criticism of President Obama’s first year:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Two-Faced | ||||
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You Are More Than What You Eat
Most of us have access to a buffet three times a day and an endless source of free/cheap food from various late-night gatherings, not to mention the stash of junk food we have accumulated in our rooms and the twenty four-hour eateries in New Haven.
It’s no wonder that college students are notorious for unhealthy eating habits. (Freshman Fifteen, anyone?). We take this lightly, but deep down, we all know that the daily food choices we make will affect not only our lives now but our futures as well – the ones we obviously care about or we wouldn’t be at Yale.
This article is not another dieting guide or a useless “do, don’t” lecture. Rather, it is meant to help you take the step between reading advice and following through with it and to open discussion on ways to successfully reform eating habits. I am in no way a nutrition expert, but I have done research on how to have a healthier lifestyle and have personal experience with failing and succeeding with following through with such changes. Yale Dining has compiled a very helpful list of ways to eat healthier at Yale entitled “Have a Healthy New Year!” that should be available in all dining halls. Essentially what I’ll do is give tips on how to follow Yale Dining’s fairly comprehensive tips, some of which I’ve paraphrased and condensed.
From Your 2010 AASA Co-Mods
Dear Yale Community,
It has been our pleasure serving on AASA’s 2009 board. Our two co-moderators last year, Peter Lu (BK ’11) and Vi Nguyen (DC ’11), took the organization to new heights and set a high standard for AASA in this coming year. AASA 2009 accomplished new events— 40th anniversary banquet, the first ever AASA cultural show, Harvard-Yale Elixir dance, just to name a few, and improved past events – Prelude and Fall Fusion were markedly better than previous years. Certainly, AASA 2009 has left us with big shoes to fill, but AASA 2010 plans on not only filling those shoes, but also outgrowing them.
For this year, our vision is to build upon the successful events of the past while introducing new events to further fulfill AASA’s role in the political and historical arena.
2010 is an important year for AASA. It marks not only the beginning of a new decade, but also AASA’s 5th decade of existence. As Rocky Chin, one of the founders of AASA, mentioned at last year’s 40th anniversary master’s tea, Asian Americans have had a rich history at Yale and we, as a community, need to start embracing and documenting our past. An effort has been started to archive Asian American historical documents in Sterling Memorial Library and AASA has partnered with the AACC to spearhead this project.
In addition, 2010 is a census year and one of AASA’s political priorities is to ensure that the Asian American population is not underrepresented. Here on campus, AASA’s political focus will be to collaborate with other groups, both within and outside of the Asian American community. We plan on holding monthly discussion panels and master’s teas, which should increase the quality of AASA’s political activities on par with that of our social and cultural events.
Our social and cultural events will have the aim of bringing the Asian American and Yale community closer together. One event with the potential to achieve this goal is a campus-wide world record attempt. Of course, we plan on keeping and improving upon our social and cultural events in the past—look for a second, even better cultural show this year.
We have an energetic and motivated board behind, and we look forward to a great year.
In service,
Christine Chen (PC ’12)
David Zhang (ES ’12)
2010 AASA Co-Moderators