hunger for public space

In my non-scientific observation, I get the sense that there is a strong desire for public spaces that goes unfulfilled, at least around here in Washington. The majority of the space around here is either commercial and/or restricted in access. All this has become evident as I have been trying to organize events for my photography meetup.

Consider our monthly meeting space, the local coffee shop. The coffee shop is a great place to meet up because it's not too quiet (like a library) and not too loud (like a bar) so people can have conversations at reasonable volumes. However, most coffee shops are small and cannot easily sustain a group of more than six to eight people without the group starting to dominate the venue in terms of space and noise volume. Plus, I get the feeling that most coffee shop proprietors prefer that people just get their coffee and go just so they can make way for other customers to come through. I don't get this feeling everywhere, but it seems to be rare when any shopkeeper welcomes people lingering for a meeting.

We've entertained an idea of having a projector-based slideshow presentation of photos at some meeting in the future, but I doubt there's any chance any coffee shop is going to let us set up a screen. So I went out in search for some additional venues. The Apple Store used to have a section of chairs in front of a large projection screen where the staff would give demos and tutorials. We thought of asking them if we could come use their setup for one evening a month. Well, when I showed up to ask them, they dismantled the seating section and screen to make way for more retail shelving. Understandable. The local public library meeting room is the next place I went to check out. Depending on the library, I could reserve anything from a room with a conference table to an auditorium. Both would definitely work for what we wanted to do. However, the rules and regulations involved really put a damper on things: the library closes relatively early in the evening (9:00 pm at latest), no collection of money of any sort is to take place (we collect $1 event fees to help offset our operational cost), and no food and drink is allowed. From there, I started investigating some local art galleries to see if they would be willing to host a meeting in their space. Some seemed ok with the idea, although some wanted to charge, and other places didn't look like it could sustain an audience (no chairs or tables).

The search is still on for a Metro-accessible meeting place where we have a little more room to gather, share, and present on a weeknight evening, although I'm sort of running out of ideas.

In addition, I'm on a search for a place that would be willing to host an photography show of our members' work. I need to find a venue that would be (1) open to us holding a show event (opening night) there, (2) willing to keep our framed photos on display for a month and possibly helping to sell the photos (they would receive a commission in that case), (3) preferably have patrons who would appreciate photography, and (4) be accessible by Metro. Anyone have any ideas?

Beyond my particular problems finding public space, I was thinking of this issue in a broader sense. Is there any place other than a coffee shop or a bar where people can meet and be social with a purpose? If not, how can this problem be resolved? Is this where members of the community and/or the local government that represents them need to get involved? Can and should commercial space be balanced between retail and public use? I wonder what the architecture and urban planning gurus have to say about this.

I know I am not the only one searching for spaces and answers.

april photography events

The following is an announcement of the April 2007 events for Washington Photography Meetup, the local meetup that I co-organize. Click on the links for detailed event information and to RSVP.

Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin
Saturday 7 April 2007, 7:30 am
Tidal Basin Paddle Boat Dock
15th St. and Maine Ave., SW

Washington Photography April Monthly Meetup
Wednesday 11 April 2007, 7:30 pm
Foster Brothers Coffee, Cleveland Park
Connecticut Ave. and Porter St., NW

Covered Bridges and Historic Frederick, Maryland
Saturday 14 April 2007, 8:00 am
Shady Grove Metro Station

The monthly photography assignments will return soon, as soon as I come up with a few interesting topics :) In the meantime, stay on the lookout for a Monuments at Night shoot, an Eastern Market shoot, and if I can pull it off, a Washington Photography Meetup Photo Show, and possibly a DC Photo Scavenger Hunt.


Ken with Camera, Tidal Basin, March 2006

Photo courtesy of Jessica Hang. Taken on a Canon EOS Elan IIe film camera with a 50mm f/1.8 "nifty fifty" lens.

resolved, on a mission

I believe that I should commit myself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of circumnavigating the Earth and returning safely to Washington. No single travel adventure will be more exciting, or more impressive, or more important, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish...

Ok, so I borrowed the words of President Kennedy, but is there any other way to phrase a grand goal? Inspired by the round-the-world travel year of others and friends who are currently making their way around the world, I decided that I want to be able to experience it myself. There's really no better time for me to travel. I'm old enough to appreciate the finer things the world and its people have to offer but still young enough to do most anything I want to. According to this map, I still have a lot of the world to see. China (PRC) is marked as visited, but I've only been to the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, not the mainland yet, so it looks a tad deceiving when shaded. Same goes for Canada—I still have quite a bit to see there.



Heck, I still have a lot of the American heartland to see too.



One year, on travel, around the world. Let the savings begin.

I'll close this post with the words of the late Peter Jennings that sums up how I feel. I'm fascinated by everything. There's just too much going on in too many places that I just daren't miss.

foggy sunday morning

Involuntarily waking up early on weekends can sometimes be a good thing. When I am awake at 5:30 am on a Sunday morning, I usually turn on the radio and fall back asleep when the public affairs programming, which radio stations have to put on by law, comes on. But when the news announcer reported a heavy fog advisory until 9:00 am, I decided to slide (not hop) out of bed. With twilight around 6:45 and sunrise around 7:00 am, I had just enough time to clean up, grab my camera, and get going. I figured the thickest fog would be at the river.


GW Parkway, from the Key Bridge


Roosevelt Island, from the Key Bridge


Whitehurst Freeway, from the Key Bridge

As soon as the sun came up, the fog started burning away really fast, although the fog somehow made the sun look gigantic.


C&O Canal in Fog


M Street

By 8:00 am, the fog was more or less gone.


C&O Canal Terminus

At this point, the sun started to get high enough and strong enough to wash out colors, so taking pictures of the sort that I like became difficult, but it wasn't any reason for me not to enjoy the fantastic weather. I started walking with my camera in Rosslyn, across the Key Bridge and through Georgetown as seen in the above photos, then continued through the West End on Virginia Ave., down 23rd St., NW, to the Lincoln Memorial. From there I didn't feel like heading back so I kept walking toward the Washington Monument, across the length of the National Mall to Capitol Hill, then followed East Capitol St. to 7th St, SE at Eastern Market. No farmers market down there on Sundays, but there is a cool flea market where I got to check out some photographs by local artists. If I were to write a Lonely Planet book for DC, I'd map this out as a walking tour for a foggy Sunday morning.

congee: my folk healing comfort food

One of the things I rediscovered while I was on travel in Asia was a good bowl of rice congee (粥, zuk1 in Cantonese). Sometimes it's called rice porridge or rice gruel here in the states, but porridge or gruel makes it sounds like I'm eating something out of a nursery rhyme or a Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist in particular comes to mind. Ok, so by definition, it probably is a porridge or gruel, but I think it tastes good.

Congee is a traditional breakfast food in many parts of Asia (East, Southeast, and South), sort of like how oatmeal, cream of wheat, and grits (another favorite of mine) are breakfast items here in the West. In Hong Kong, congee is a favorite local snack food served at eateries at all hours of the day. While I was walking around in Kowloon (九龍, gau2 lung4 in Cantonese), I found places with hundreds of varieties of congee on their menu. Some places had specialized congee stoves which were heating about 50 little french onion soup bowls of congee at a time, made to order. Congee as it sounds, is pretty plain, just rice and a base liquid, usually some soup stock and water, but it is quite versatile as one can add most anything to it to make it to their own taste. One Cantonese favorite is to top it with a preserved egg. Not quite my preference, but I can understand why -- it gives a really intense taste in contrast to the mild taste of the congee. I grew up with a much simpler version—congee topped with pulled chicken breast.

Every time I was sick as a kid, my parents would make pulled chicken congee as my comfort food and folk healing remedy. It was my family's version of chicken noodle soup. So this week I've been struggling with some crazy stomach virus that is going around and what am I craving? Congee, of course. Below is my very unrefined recipe that I used to satisfy my fix this week.

Basic Rice Congee
(makes 4-6 servings)

4 cups of chicken stock
4 cups of water
1 cup of uncooked white rice
1 cup of cooked, pulled chicken breast (optional)

1. Combine chicken stock, water, and rice in a 4 quart pot. Without covering, bring the pot to a boil, stirring occaisionally.

2. Reduce heat to medium low, cover with the lid cracked, continue cooking at a low boil for one hour. Consistency will eventually appear like thick oatmeal.

3. Spoon into bowls and top with several pieces of pulled chicken breast and a few grinds of white (or black) pepper and any other seasonings of choice (a dash of soy sauce or a drop of chili vinegar, for example).

The key to my recipe is simplicity and working with what is in the kitchen cabinet. When I'm sick, I don't want to be at the grocery store searching for ingredients. All I need for this recipe is a one-quart box of chicken stock (low sodium and/or organic), a cup of rice, some water, and I'm ready to go. There are much more refined recipes out there, calling for a mix of different types of rice (short grain, glutinous, etc...) and for other ingredents for flavoring. My philosophy is to start with the basic congee and then use that as a base to add other flavorings later, if desired.

robert reich's new vblog

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich writes in his blog that I read through my new handy feed reader. I guess I'm a little late on catching onto the feed reader trend, but I can subscribe to a whole bunch of feeds (professional and personal blogs, news feeds from my favorite sources, even my friends' photo sites). When I log into my feed reader, it shows me everything that's new from all of the sites. Pretty cool.

Anyway, Robert Reich just started video blogging in addition to writing in a blog. I found his first video blogs (vblogs?) pretty entertaining so I'm reposting his first three video blogs here to share. I know I'll have to come up with some more original content of my own soon, but in the meantime, enjoy Secretary Reich's.

spring 2007 dc film season

The thaw is almost here in DC and the tourist season is just around the corner. I've been poring through event calendars to find out all the things I want to check out this spring season. This post is going to focus on just films alone. First, the upcoming film festivals:

DC Independent Film Festival
1-11 March 2007
University of the District of Columbia (UDC), Van Ness
4200 Connecticut Ave., NW (Windom Pl. is the cross street)
So many films in the listing.

Celebrating Kerala Cinema
2-18 March 1007
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
12th St. and Independence Ave., SW
A series of six films from Kerala, India, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a state.

Francophonie Film Festival DC 2007
6, 13, 20, 27 March 2007
Freer Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum
Four films in French with English subtitles, celebrating the culture and diversity of the French-speaking world.

15th Annual Environmental Film Festival
15-25 March 2007
Various locations around DC
115 films from 27 countries, premieres and screenings at 46 different venues around town. Nearly 100 filmmakers and special guests, including genome pioneer Dr. Craig Venter, photographer Sally Mann and animator Bill Plympton will discuss their work. This film festival is huge and there appears to be so many good films to choose from.

Filmfest DC
DC International Film Festival
19-29 April 2007
Various locations around DC
Details yet to come.

Korean Film Festival DC 2007
May 2007
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
More details yet to come, but the films are listed in the link.

Silverdocs
AFI / Discovery Channel Documentary Festival
12-17 June 2007
Details yet to come.

And now for two special film events, independent from the above festivals, I found in my browsing:

Hotel Rwanda, film and book signing
Friday 16 March 2007, 6:45 pm
National Museum of African Art / S. Dillon Ripley Center, Lecture Hall
From the Smithsonian Institution's website:
(2004, 121 min., rated PG-13) This film is based on the true story about Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a four-star hotel who saved 1,268 refugees from the ethnic violence in Rwanda in 2004. Paul Rusesabagina discusses his book An Ordinary Man.

Journey from the Fall
Saturday 31 March 2007, 6:30 pm
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
From the Smithsonian Institution's website:
(2006, 135 min., USA/Thailand, directed by Ham Tran, in Vietnamese/English with English subtitles) This film follows one family's struggle for freedom after the end of the Vietnam war in 1975. Long Nguyen decides to stay in Vietnam despite his allegiance to the toppled South Vietnamese government; however, he is imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp and urges his family to embark on the arduous ocean voyage to the U.S. and freedom. After they left, Long suffers years of solitary confinement and hard labor, and despairs that his family has perished. Upon learning of their successful resettlement in America, he makes one last desperate attempt to join them. Presented in association with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program. Related Exhibition: Exit Saigon, Enter Little Saigon (in the Ripley Center)

So much going on—and this is just in terms of film! I haven't even started posting details about festivals and events...

if i owned a coffee shop

I spent some time in a local coffee shop this past weekend doing what I do there: catching up on emails, organizing photos, and writing in this blog on my laptop, while enjoying my weekend treat: cafe americano. While I was there, I noticed the owner of the coffee shop stopping in.

The line for ordering coffee was about 10 people deep and the line of people waiting for coffee was about 10 people wide. The cashier announced to both the long line and the wide line that espresso drinks were going to take 15 minutes after the order was placed. What does the owner do? Cut behind the counter and starts making some espresso. Not for the customers who have already paid or who are still waiting to order and pay. No, he was making free espresso drinks for two of his friends that he just came in with, and interrupting the workflow of the two baristas who were actually working on serving the paying customers.

Maybe my vision of customer service is a little different. If I owned the coffee shop and I came in with two friends, it would go something like this. "Wow, this line is pretty long, do you gals mind grabbing a seat while I help clear this line? When I'm done I'll be back with coffees for you both." Then I would proceed to (1) do what I could to speed up the workflow already in progress (like help grind beans while the baristas continue to operate the brewing machine) and (2) talk to the customers in line and say, "Hi, sorry about the long wait today—it's pretty busy in here. Do you usually have to wait this long when you come in for our coffee? Would you like to have a cookie while you are waiting?" Yes, there really was a box of cookies sitting on the counter.

Rolling up your sleeves shows your employees that everyone, no matter what their role is, is willing to do what it takes to deliver quality service to the customer. Talking to the customers shows that you care about them and you take pride in the place that you operate and the product that you sell. Asking them questions is a means of gathering information to see if problems are systemic and is a starting place to make improvements to make the customer experience even better. Finally, offering the customer a little token of appreciation to make up for a service that could be improved is not a means of buying them out, but rather a means of opening a dialogue that will hopefully extend far into the future when they return to the store and they see you there again. You'd be surprised how well customers remember the freebies they get, no matter how small, and how many people they tell about it.

I still haven't stopped telling people how the staff at Stormy Weather Pub in Kaohsiung, Taiwan arranged to have a cake for me on my birthday, without any prompting whatsoever. Or how the clerk at the 7-Eleven gave me a free pack of instant noodles later that same night when he found out it was my birthday. Small tokens, but they leave a very good impression.


My cake from Stormy Weather Pub

There isn't a single management book or quality improvement book in the bookstore that would lead the owner of the coffee shop to see my point of view on what I would do. It's almost too common sensical to write about, yet good customer service is strangely elusive in a marketplace that is constantly seeking to build loyal customer bases. It's especially odd when customer service in the current day has come to mean the desk people go to or the hotline people call to complain about things and get their money back. In other words, customer service tends to be reactive instead of proactive—wait until complaints come in until making improvements to the customer experience instead of making the experience good to begin with.

It really comes down to paying attention to the details and caring about your work. I don't interact face-to-face with my customer on a daily basis, but when they are in the office or when I am at their office, I pay attention to how they use our software. I look closely at when they start pounding the mouse on their desk, I walk over to ask them if they need anything when they start punching the keys on the keyboard really hard. Again, I show my customer that I am there when they have a problem (even when I don't have an immediate solution) and ask them questions about the frustration. After everyone goes home, I'm there fixing the issue, making a sensical modification that will alleive the frustration. Keep in mind, the problem is not a software bug, it's typically a usabililty issue—making something easier or faster to do. By the time the next morning comes around, I tell my customer, "I noticed you were having problems with X yesterday, I think I have something that might make things a little better." This isn't part of any ISO 9001 quality document, it isn't part of the CMMI process model. If anything, those "quality" processes just hinder my effort in getting a change into the software to make the customer happy. This is the difference between my version of software engineering and the versions being pushed by process gurus. Making quality products isn't about following steps, it's about paying attention and applying some knowledge and common sense to the solution.

On the other hand, it was the coffee shop owner and not me who was featured in a Washington Post article last year for "his conviction that how you treat people— employees, customers, suppliers, competitors and the farmers who grow coffee beans—'really, really matters.'" So it looks like the only way for me to gain some credibility in my written argument is to put some action behind my words and go prove it to the local general public :)

a fading culture

Growing up as an American-born Chinese, one of the staples of Chinese family travel involved checking out Chinatowns in major cities, learning how to speak Cantonese, going out to eat dim sum every once in a while, and practicing some of the traditional customs of Southern China during the Chinese New Year. On my most recent trip to Asia though, I realized that the culture of the 19th century Chinese diaspora and their descendants is fading.

In the 1800s, famine and a labor surplus in Guangdong (Canton), China precipitated mass immigration of Cantonese people to Southeast Asia, Australasia, Central America, and North America. Here in the United States, Chinese immigration is usually discussed in the context of the railroad and gold mining era in California toward the latter half of the 19th century. (Remember the Chinese Exclusion Acts?) Up until recently, when one referred to Chinese-American culture in the US, one was really referring to Cantonese culture in the US—descendants of the laborers.

Although my family did not come to the states in the California Gold Rush era, we were part of the Chinese diaspora who left in the mid 19th century for Southeast Asia instead of North America. My family along with a other Chinese settled in Vietnam, where they established communities that celebrated traditional Cantonese culture while doing business and raising their families. It was the Vietnam War that eventually led my family to the US as part of the wave of Vietnamese refugees immigrating from Vietnam in the 1970s.

Chinese communities form as people seek places to relate with people who share their experiences and culture. Traveling to Chinatowns across the country was sort of a staple for many Chinese families in the states. You could go to a city, check out what it had to offer, but also find a Chinatown where one could find familiar faces and a common tongue for language and food. However, as shared experiences tend to diverge, so do the communities. Within the past 10 to 20 years, most of the Chinatowns across the U.S. are fading to oblivion as the Chinese in America have found their way and they've grown out of immigrant culture. As immigrants find success, they move outward into the suburbs to find their own version of the American dream.

This phenomena couldn't be clearer than here in Washington, DC. As a kid visiting my grandparents in the area, we would always head downtown to Chinatown to enjoy some dim sum with the family, or grab a quick bite in a noodle house, or do some shopping for traditional Chinese items at some of the shops. All those places are long gone today. The traditional arch marks Chinatown's location in DC, but the shops and restaurants are CVS, Starbucks, Benetton, Ruby Tuesday, Fuddruckers, all signed in English with Chinese characters. The Chinese arch really no longer is the anchor, but rather the Verizon Center down the block. I head to Chinatown to see events at the Verizon Center but it's rare if my family even wanders down there anymore.


The New Chinatown, by magandafille

The story is the same throughout America though. I hear of the same thing happening in all of the Chinatowns, even the larger ones in San Francisco and New York City. I totally understand why it is happening though. A few of the reasons I find my personal culture changing include: (1) the suburbanization I mentioned above, (2) new generation Chinese assimilating into American culture, and (3) Chinese immigrating to America from areas other than Canton. None of these are complaints—they are in fact the reality.

Taking just language as an example, Cantonese was the lingua franca of the Chinese diaspora for generations. However, China has been standardizing to Mandarin and Simplified script since the 1950s revolution. Nowadays if Cantonese-speaking people want to do business with other Chinese, particularly those from Beijing and all of mainland China, one has to learn to speak Mandarin (Putonghua) and how to read and write Simplified script (versus Traditional script) to conduct not only business transactions, but the most basic of conversations. (They speak Mandarin in Taiwan, but still use Traditional script.) Where Cantonese was almost universally spoken in American Chinatowns up until the 1970s-1980s, it's now becoming increasingly rare. David Pierson of the Los Angeles Times covers the phenomena in his article, Cantonese is Losing Its Voice (reprint at The ChinesePod Blog).

Up until now, I've been writing about the Chinese diaspora community in the Americas. When I traveled to Hong Kong (the NYC of Cantonese culture) on my most recent trip, I started to notice that the roots of the diaspora culture that I grew up in are starting to fade as well. Cantonese language and Traditional script in Hong Kong is still dominant, but it's clear that the shift to Putonghua and Simplified script is beginning as Hong Kong is starting to make closer economic ties to Beijing and the mainland. It's not even the language alone, but the food too. Dim sum and the dai pai deng (small snack eateries) in Hong Kong are closing by the hundreds (the local press there reported over 400 dim sum houses closed in the past year) and are making way for larger chain restaurants and eateries.

Again, I understand where the Hong Kong residents are coming from. Sometimes one gets old of the same old same old and it's exciting to have new restaurants that have classy decor inside, younger clientele, and serve ethnic food from places other than home. Even here in DC, I like the fact that I can eat a different ethnic cuisine every night of the week. Unfortunately for me, one of the varieties of cuisine does not include traditional Cantonese food. There really isn't a good dai pai deng or a dim sum house here in town. And what I find sort of disappointing as well is that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a good one in San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hong Kong, the heart of it all. Yeah, sure there are the big corporate restaurants, but I find that it's really hard to beat the quality of the mom-and-pop ten-table restaurant. One can't beat the expertise of mom or pop who has been making some specialty dish by hand for 30+ years and knows the flavors inside and out. I know full well this sort of business is not sustainable in this day and age—it's inefficient and can't possibly scale to cater to demand.

I'm happy to embrace the Chinese-American culture of the here and now as it is a new culture, one that reflects the existing community and who we are. Change is exciting and the culture of today is interesting—I like learning about and being part of the change. My disappointment lies in the fact that my own personal cultural history will fade so far that it will be lost forever. There are elements of Cantonese culture that is like no other in the world and I want to be able to share it with people and enthusiastically explain why it is so cool. It will be sad when I will not be able to do that anymore—and I'm afraid that time will be very soon.

the scourge of fast food overseas

I know globalization is not westernization, but one can't deny that there is a direct correlation between them. While I was on travel in Asia, I found more fast food joints than I cared to admit. I didn't eat in a single one of them, but they had plenty of business without me. While I was looking inside and shaking my head, the places were packed full of customers morning, noon, and night.


Kaohsiung, Taiwan


Kaohsiung, Taiwan


Central District, Hong Kong


Central District, Hong Kong


Kowloon District, Hong Kong


Largo do Senado (Senate Square), Macau


Largo do Senado (Senate Square), Macau

I'm not upset at the fact that these places exist overseas -- I'm all for everyone being able to have variety. I'm just a little disappointed that they are displacing the local culture that I traveled to go see (and eat at). More to come about this topic...