Made in Japan, Outsourced Globally

Thanksgiving, minus the turkey, plus sushi, multiplied by 4 family members = the perfect holiday for me.

If I remember correctly, this is the first time in 3 years that I spent Thanksgiving together with all members of my nuclear family. And that's what Thanksgiving is about (well, that and continuously shoveling food down your esophagus beyond normal human digestive capacity).

Despite our best efforts to have a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal in Cape Cod, we still ended up having a sushi feast on Thanksgiving evening. Ah... you can take the Takasu's out of Japan, but you can't take Japan out of the Takasus.

After all these years, mom & dad are back in the East Coast again. Rin is finishing up his final year at Cal and searching for jobs. My whereabouts is highly unpredictable and changes every 6 months. Who knows, maybe none of us will ever settle down in a final location. The most important thing though, is that home is where the people you love are.

I love the phrase "Okaeri" and "Tadaima" in Japanese. "Okaeri" is something along the lines of "Welcome back. Good to have you have you home." And "Tadaima" is the response which means "I'm back now." I can't wait till I get to say those words again.

Scene: Bella - a hot & posh bar in downtown Chicago
What: the bar's 2nd anniversary party
What really?: free drinks until 10pm = chaos

Push, shove, push. People behave with utmost aggression when they wrastle for free drinks and appetizers. It's ugly fun to see the middle-class urbanites greedily elbow their way to the bar. Pathetic, really.

A short, Latina (even shorter than me) came out on top in the competition and finally got us some drinks. She was super friendly - mostly because she was drunk. She kept on telling my colleague and me that it was heresy to drink rum and diet coke. In the process, she gave a guy a nice little coke & rum shower. Oops. Other than her persistent principal on mixed drinks, she revealed that she was a Mexican Jew, and that she was looking forward to watching the Borat movie. Big up, yo', she says. As she continues with her life story, I wonder what she would call her self. A Jexican? A Mew?

Tired of standing around, we finally convince the hostess that we deserve a table. And we get a super duper friendly gay waiter (think: David Spade except 1000 x's cuter - okay, that's no longer David Spade). I love it when waiters don't take grief from rude customers. A.J. just flicked his hip and said, "Uf! I thought she was going to kill me with her eyes when I bumped into her!" He was adorable.

Nothing else stood out, except for the guy doing a fist-pump and (attempting) the electric booty. It was probably all the more amusing, because he reminded me of the nerdy guy from sixteen candles, the breakfast club, or any other cheesy 80's teen movie (such as pretty in pink).

People watching is certainly amusing.

When I first started narrowing down my studies in undergrad, I chose a topic that was burning a hole in global trade since the late 70's: the emergence of China. It was too big for me to chew, but I was excited - because here was a developing region (post-Communist) that was actually making significant progress, and perhaps could be a model for other developing regions.

Recently, I read an article on Guanxi Newsletter that made me reflect on my perception of Chinese manufacturing. When I was a student, I often pondered what it was really like. Most people assume that Chinese manufactured products are good for mass and cheap items. That may have been true in the 90's, but today, the items that come from China are more complex, and more importantly, can be sold as high-value goods. This all leads to better profit margins for buyers in the developed regions of the world.

Albeit brief and rare, I got to see some of the manufacturing reality while I was working in China. And today, I am working at a multinational company that closely weighs the options between US domestic and overseas manufacturing on a daily basis. I thought it might be time that I put some of my thoughts together.

What are the Benefits of Chinese Manufacturing?
In China, most of the manufacturing is done manually, and the factories operate 24/7. (It depends on the industry, but the American counterpart factory only operated 5 days a week).

One of the interesting conversations I overheard was that the Chinese aluminum die casting company could not meet the daily quota in comparison to the American factory, which had more efficient machines. However, with 30 days per month, they could meet the monthly production quota AND be 30% cheaper. Therein lies the strength of Chinese manufacturing: the ability to match current international manufacturing capabilities with signficant cost savings.


Workers file away to chip off excess aluminum. The minute you walk inside, you feel your lungs fill up with the metallic dust.

On the corporate entity side of things, the Chinese government has bent over backwards ten-fold for MNCs - and it has been working well. Tax-exemptions, free trade zones, and the anticipation of a huge consumer economy attract MNCs to China. It just goes to show that the government understands the future benefit of attracting these MNCs (and frankly, it's beating the regional competition by brandishing its low labor costs).

Export incentives for Chinese companies, such as the VAT Rebate program, also help boost the Chinese companies' willingness to expand business globally. (VAT, or Value Added Tax, is like a sales tax on every sold good. Chinese companies will get a rebate for this tax when they export goods - although, in my experience, I know that VAT rebates are often late (even a year late), so you don't really see the returns for a long time).

Well, all these benefits are built on the foundation of low cost labor. I'll try to organize my thoughts more on labor, especially regarding the issue of increasing wages and migration.

Community service was on my mind for a while - I just didn't act on it until fairly recently.

Conversation at McDonald's with M after a Saturday morning reading exercise:
Volunteers (V): So, M, what do you like to do at the home? *(the kids live in a community home)
M: I don't know. I just got out of the hospital. I'm new here.
V: Oh... so, what do you like to do?
M: I like taking things apart (grins).
V: Like what?
M: Dunno. TV's. Computers. My Dad's real good. He's a motor engineer.
V: Very cool. Is that what you want to do when you grow up?
M: Yeah. I'm going to have my Dad teach me, as soon as I can get out of here.

The kids at the home live separately from their parents for one reason or another. Perhaps their family couldn't support them. Perhaps they have special mental or physical conditions. Perhaps they were abused. The kid I was paired up with, T, a small, wiry, and witty boy. We finished up the work and he started reading Lemonny Snicket out loud (to me, maybe?). He was absorbed in reading more than socializing.

On the other spectrum, there is a tutoring program at a college-prepatory elementary school in Lawndale. I was tutoring an energetic 5th grader with ADD and a despondent 6th grade girl. These kids are quite the charmers but they probably have no clue why they need to study. They need to complete all of their homework (or else it's detention at lunch or after school) - but there's no reward for getting right answers. The girl just zoomed through her math homework - not really understanding why her fraction answers had ginormous denominators. Their motivation was to not get a detention the next day.

It may take a while to find a group I'm comfortable with (and I have to leave in a couple months), but I'm enjoying interacting with the community again.

I stole this from Farid:

WOMEN'S ENGLISH:
1. Yes = No
2. No = Yes
3. Maybe = No
4. We need = I want
5. I am sorry = You'll be sorry
6. We need to talk = you're in trouble
7. Sure, go ahead = you better not
8. Do what you want = you will pay for this later
9. I am not upset = Of course, I am upset, you moron!
10. You're certainly attentive tonight = is sex all you ever think about?
*Guilty as charged. Every woman reading this is nodding right now.

MEN'S ENGLISH:
1. I am hungry = I am hungry
2. I am sleepy = I am sleepy
3. I am tired = I am tired
4. Nice dress = Nice cleavage!
5. I love you = Let's have sex now
6. I am bored = Do you want to have sex?
7. May I have this dance? = I'd like to have sex with you.
8. Can I call you sometime? = I'd like to have sex with you.
9. Do you want to go to a movie? = I'd like to have sex with you.
10. Can I take you out to dinner? = I'd like to have sex with you.
11. I don't think those shoes go with that outfit = I'm gay

After chatting with Drake and KK, respectively, I was totally floored at why we do this to ourselves. Humans, I mean. You Tarzan. Me Jane. Can't we just be straightforward and get along???

I am trying to learn Cantonese and French right now. Apparently, trying to learn both at a half-ass rate does not promote progress. I have a strange tendency to mix up Mandarin and Spanish, so this may be a doomed attempt as well. Palez-vous guangdonghua?

I just saw a unique combination on CNN - Anderson Cooper and SesameStreet. It was a snippet of Anderson Cooper interviewing 'Dan Rather-not' and 'Walter Crank-ite' out of Oscar's trashcan - sweet.

I guess I get slightly tickled when I hear about Anderson Cooper, who was once in our junior high classrooms for Channel One. His bio is actually quite amazing, considering that a young Yale graduate started by being rejected for an entry job at ABC, worked for a youth school news program, quit his job, smuggled himself into Burma (with a fake ID), and then made his big break. He definitely had the cahunas, and his thoughts about wanting to be in a place with tension and conflict is understandable.

Sesame Street is great. When we first moved to the US, my brother, mother, and I all learned how to speak English (and to count in Spanish) by watching the show every day.

I can't wait till the Anderson trashcan interview episode actually comes out on TV.