Author: Frank

I first learned about the Holocaust in school.  The Japanese invasion of China more deeply impacted my parents, and they held a deep animosity towards Japan; they never mentioned the Holocaust though I’m sure that they were aware of it.  Hearing the details with both scale and severity of the Holocaust remains something that I can scarcely wrap my head around.  However, the callous treatment of the victims amplified the sheer scale of the devastation.  You see pictures of bones piled up to the ceiling of those rooms.  I heard stories of soldiers pulling gold fillings off the skulls in order to pocket a little money.  Similarly, they ransacked the luggage of the dead for any valuables.  The heartless way by which they treated human life, without any iota of dignity, was horrifying.

Of course, these horrific crimes weren’t limited to the Jews in Germany.  They included many other groups that did not align with the Nazi Germany ideology.  Soldiers used badges like pink triangles to distinguish between groups.  Every single detail sends me into despair.  Including the fact that they conducted science experiments on these people.  I have a friend whose mother survived the Holocaust; the idea that either he or his family may simply not exist because they’re part of the wrong group is one that I can’t comprehend.

Continue reading “The genocide movement in the United States” →

I attended a Catholic school in sunny Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.  It sat a block from my house which was also my dad’s restaurant.  We all wore uniforms which were consistent within each gender.  I believe that there was a store from which we could buy those uniforms, but my mom, having been a seamstress, simply made our uniforms.  Our school had an attached church on one end, whenever asked which church we attended we simply responded with the church for our school.  We didn’t though, my family ran a business and don’t remember attending church regularly.  Honestly, I think we attended this school because we wanted a good education, the faith element wasn’t really a factor.

Precisely one homeroom teacher taught each grade, and the class numbered around thirty of us.  Our homeroom teacher taught most classes, but we had an occasional guest teacher for different subjects.  Some of these teachers were nuns, which wouldn’t be a surprise being a Catholic school.  Our English teacher was a nun, and I failed that class.  Speaking Chinese at home, I struggled to learn both Spanish and English in the few years that I attended that school before we moved to Florida.

Continue reading “Xenophobia and gay educators” →

On a typical weekend evening, we jut out to one of our favorite Italian restaurants.  It’s a contemporary Italian restaurant, so it doesn’t necessarily have classics like you might expect, such as lasagna.  However, they have exceptional cocktails and reimagined dishes in wonderful ways.  Oh, and the staff is great, we know many of them by name.

As we walk through the door, the young hostess greets us.  She asks us the typical questions (Reservations?  How many?) and proceeds to walk us to our table, carrying a couple of menus.  We settle on our seats.  Finally, as the hostess walks away, I note to myself that she wears a sternum nose piercing and wondered if that was appropriate for the hostess.

Continue reading “Our biases on the standards of beauty” →

As a boy in Florida, I spent many afternoons watching cartoons.  The Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna are inextricably part of that childhood. Intermingled with episodes of Super Friends, the networks bombarded us with public service announcements.  One cartoon character that resembled a meatball with legs asserted that, “You have to eat some kind of breakfast every day.”

Another such commercial instructed children on how to cross the street, “Look left, then right…  then left again.”  I remember the video as the camera took the point of view of the pedestrian.  It scanned left, right and left again to demonstrate the point.  I imagine that the producer of that video would be proud that it has committed to my memory.

Continue reading “Our children can survive learning history” →

On a weekend evening, we indulge on a dinner out at one of our favorite local restaurants.  This particular weekend is Father’s Day.  Having lost my father at nine, it’s always bittersweet.  Naturally, I miss him, but it’s been literally decades.  Seeing as though we both spoke three languages, I’m not entire sure in which language we would communicate.  As I chat with our friend at the bar, I ask him casually, “Are you a father?”  With a small grin, he responds with, “…not that I’m aware of.”  I chuckle; she glares at us both.

Continue reading “Curb demand for abortion? Talk to the men.” →

Many years ago, I discovered Sophie B. Hawkins; it was during the release of the Whaler album.  I was fascinated by her music, it showed both femininity and assertiveness.  She was on tour and came to the Seattle area.  I know that I wanted to see her in concert to I cast a wide net and sent mail to many friends; I got one taker.  The show was phenomenal, and she did not disappoint.  However, this is not a post about music.

Hawkins is unconventional, though I didn’t know it at the time.  She once came up in conversation with my cousin, who described her as a self-confessed ‘omnisexual’, which I eventually looked up.  Years later, I remember reading and article where she was expecting a child, at the age of 50.  That piqued my interest.  When she was 31, she had the forethought to freeze fifteen of her embryos; she decided to thaw one and have a child.  You can say what you will about her, but this woman is both unconventional and fascinating.

My fascination didn’t end there, I filed away the concept of freezing embryos, since I had not heard of any other instances.

Continue reading “It is civic duty to save a life” →

Before the pandemic, I met with different friends for coffee regularly.  Since these are mostly former colleagues, we often reminisce on shared memories.  Sometimes our conversations drift to other friends and how they’re doing.  We occasionally talk about our current positions.  Sometimes those conversations are celebrations; occasionally they are rants.  That said, their different takes on the same events persistently surprise me.  Everyone has different perspective and life experiences.

One such friend has an identical twin, though I’ve never seen them both together, save for the occasional picture.  I found this fascinating.  For instance, I listened intently of stories where they played on the same basketball team and was very amused by imagining how the opposing players would react to seeing the ‘same’ person twice on the court.  Similarly, I wondered how well face detection technology worked between identical twins.  There are many questions that a geek like me would ask about being an identical twin, mostly debates about ‘nature vs. nurture’.

Continue reading “A fraction of a person” →

A television commercial aired when I was young.  It portrayed who I remember to be Dick van Dyke but may be wrong about that.  First, he instructed everyone on the appropriate use of a Q-tip cotton swab.  Next, he wielded one to clean is ear lobes and very explicitly instructed, “Only on the outside.”  I laughed at the ad and thought it was absurd.  Were they simply guarding against potential litigation about the misuse of cotton swabs?  For all I know, it may have been part of a settlement from an incident.

Since that ad, like many adults, I have had my share of ear infections.  I’ve had instances where my doctor has flushed ear wax from my canals with hydrogen peroxide; the motion sickness nearly made me hurl.  Any legitimate medical professional will tell you, do not put a cotton swab in your ear.  First, there are safer and more effective ways to remove ear wax.  Second, there are many potential complications to putting a swab in your ear canal.

Continue reading “Fatal uses of cotton swabs, cars, and guns” →

Years ago, I watched the news as they mentioned a restaurant that did not have required prices.  I don’t remember if they had suggestions or minimums, but I believe that you could literally pay nothing.  The concept is called Pay-What-You-Want and it’s not limited to restaurants.  My family owned two restaurants, and I worked on many more before I graduated college.  There are real costs to running a restaurant of which most patrons are not aware.  The notion that our livelihood relied on a stranger’s good will would be unsettling.  Still, today the notion of running your business in a PWYW model is still your choice to make.

Continue reading “Deconstructing colorblindness” →

There’s this thing that we programmers do called code reviews.  This means that someone else needs to review your work before it goes ‘live’.  As experienced as we may be, engineers are humans and thus fallible.  Over the years, I’ve used many different tools to conduct these code reviews and many different teams do it to different levels of scrutiny.  Sadly, sometimes that scrutiny is none.  For at least a decade, I’ve advocated that we need to conduct code reviews for all changes.

The downside is that everyone gets busy; there have been times when I’ve been waiting for someone to sign off on my changes for over a week.  This caused me to eventually walk into a teammate’s office and insisted she pull up the code review on her screen (and refused to leave until she did).  She didn’t necessarily need to do it that moment, but when she returned from lunch, it’d be there waiting for her.

Continue reading “My pronouns are he and him” →