Soft Power For the (Still) Fairer Sex

"I felt more like an advice columnist than a secretary of state."

- Hilary Clinton, quoted from the NY Times.

It looks as though only the most beautiful Korean students were chosen to stand behind America's Secretary of State.  Note the double eyelids everywhere - 'eyelid surgery' is often a high school graduation gift from parents.

She reenergized many of The School's female student body with her visit to EWHA Woman's University during its orientation for new students (OT, as the students all it).

But what she said, or advised, exactly is not entirely clear.  Sure, her goal was to create future leaders in a social climate that still doesn't fully accept powerful women.  Yes, our school's CEO is a woman, but many female students openly dream of marriage or plastic surgery, not power.  As cute as it might seem at first, I suspect this is why a young Korean woman asked Mrs. Secretary of State how she met her husband.  Ambitious young thing, trying to peg a future president early on. (Here's a hint: go to a co-ed university.  As far as I know, that's where Bill and Hilary met).

My question is, however: in what language did Hilary give her speech?  Was it given only in English, to be understood only by the linguistically gifted or daughters of families rich enough to pay for years of extra English lessons?  Or did the organizers choose that cumbersome translation format, where everything is heard twice: once in English, then again in Korean, just like our staff parties? (Lucky for EWHA's students, the content would have been undoubtedly more stimulating than a staff meeting).

I tried to ask a few students what Mrs. Clinton had actually talked about.  You know, the question all students dread being asked by their teacher: "So, what was the main argument?" 

One lower-level student gave me a short answer with lots of enthusiasm, something predictable like, 'She talk about empower women and make me feel excited for university'.  An intermediate-level student gave me some vocabulary words in no particular order but using the stress and intonation that could have helped it pass for a full sentence: 'She said women empowerment important for ... uh, oppression ... uh, future empowerment women.'

The title of the speech was 'Women's Empowerment'.

But maybe I'm coming across a bit too harsh on these students.  I don't mind that they can't communicate the details of the speech to me or that their sentences sometimes just aren't.  I just hope the message wasn't totally lost on these women.  Some of them need all the non-surgeried, non-male-and-family-dependent inspiration they can get.

Airport Frenzies

If all our cards fall into place, we've got only a short while until we take off to Vietnam on March 1.  We finish February's work on Friday (Saturday, for Jon), have a day to get Keedo to the kennel and pack.  Oh, and I was invited to a wedding that day, about which I promise to post before we take off for a month, during which we will be incommunicado for the most part.

Now, we've been known to miss a flight before (San Francisco to Buffalo - would you blame us?).  But I highly doubt that we'll miss this one, or that, like this woman in the video below who narrowly missed her flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco, we'll put up nearly as much fuss. (Just click the play button in the middle of the video to watch it - sound is recommended, but keep the volume low to avoid popping your eardrums).

And yes, we've seen behaviour nearing this before ...

Firework-ing Shanghai

The more I keep up with the blogs of my friends, the more I realize that my posts have been ... well, sporadic.  But maybe, if your reading has been the same, then we're even?

Here's one of two videos taken by our friend Maria (I don't believe Patrick took these guys ... remember, this was taken a few hours after the poisoned dish.  That meal and its aftermath is now part of staff room parlance and non-joiners are equally well-versed in the weekend's misadventure).

I apologize for its ... sideways-ness.  Until Quicktime lets me upgrade to the Professional edition for free, there's not too much I can do about it.  I think that it gives the general feeling of new year's chaos on the ground, though.

Note the dangerous proximity the fireworks and apartment building - this was far from the exception that night.  In fact, I discovered when I was browsing nytimes.com today that one of Beijing's skyline features, a hotel that (luckily) has yet to open, was thoroughly burned by an errant 'work.  The fireworks that caused the blaze were part of an illegal show, the story says.

Judging by safety practices we witnessed, I don't think many of these 'shows' are concerned with legality until major damage like this has occurred.