My Blog

I can still remember my History teacher in high school telling our class how the US has become the melting pot of different cultures. Nothing could have illustrated his point better than my experience the other day in my English 100 class at Skyline College.  It took me a while to observe that the person on my right was an African-American guy, on my left was a Latino, and sandwiched between them is my glorious brown self.  It tickled me to think that the three of us made a good model for our discussion that day as we were talking about the other in class. Nothing spelled minority better than our presence in the classroom.

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I finished my first essay for my class here last Tuesday, and I had it "workshopped" with my classmate and my teacher.  Its title is, Every Sway of His Hip, A Bruise to an Image, and it is about how Filipino gay movies have promoted gay stereotypes.  My peer editor and my teacher said they liked how I made my essay, and nothing could have made me happier that day.  Others asked to read my paper and they too agreed that it was well-written.  Naturally, I’m flattered, but something’s nagging me.  When some of them realized that I have just been here in the US for a month, they seemed to be surprised that I could write that well.  Hmmm…what’s up with that?  Or am I just being overly sensitive?

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I am about to finish watching a Korean drama entitled, Coffee Prince.  Its premise is quite interesting and might raise some gender related issues. Anyway, it is about a girl who pretends to be a boy to keep her job at a coffee shop.  She falls in love with the owner of the shop who is as straight as an arrow.  As both of them spend more time together, the coffee shop owner finds himself drawn to the girl who pretends to be a boy.  Problem: The coffee shop owner finds it uncomfortable falling in love with a boy who really is a girl, and so he suffers a lot deciding whether or not to follow his heart.  Unsuccessful at stifling his feelings for the girl pretending to be a boy, he gives in to his emotions and goes into a relationship with a person whom he thinks is a boy.  Hmmmm…There are so many questions I want to ask Freud about this.

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