Where am I from today? Walk down around Jester Hall on any given day, and you'll see groups of different organizations, a lot of them ethnicity oriented, advertising different events they have planned by handing out fliers to people who seem to hail from the same ethnic group. Asians advertise to mostly asians, desis to desis, crackwhores to crackwhores, etc. So every time I walk through, I like to think of it as a test to see if people can figure out where I'm from. I know its weird, but for my whole life, for some reason people can never seem to be sure of what background I've decended from, and I find it amusing that some people seem to think that i'm some hybrid combination of either mexican, white, or asian. Heck, i've even got Indian a few times..... (to be clear, i'm Asian/Filipino by ethnicity) Anyways, I find it both a little funny and sad that I've never been apporached by ANY of the asian organizations, while every time I walk in there, I'm mobbed by hispanic fraternities and service organizations. So I find myself an outcast, rejected by the group that I call my own :'( ...Nah, just kidding. It's not that big of a deal. And it really shouldn't be anyways.


P.S. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!

New Orleans, birthplace of Jazz, home of the Hornets, and land of Mardi Gras. With estimates upwards of 10000 people dead or missing, this is the worst natural disaster I can remember in my entire lifetime. This IS, our tsunami. I noticed something on the news the other day, which I thought rediculous. Some news network (I don't want to point fingers, so we'll just call it FOX NEWS for now) showed a slide of what it described as one of the many incidents of looting which have been reported across the city. The picture was of a black African American man, obviously left with nothing, walking out of a broken-into convenience store, with food and toiletries. Directly after, the network showed a slide of a white man in a similair situation, with one tiny difference. Instead of describing the scene as "looting", the caption under the picture read "left with nothing, man survives on abandoned goods."

Come on people! It's not "looting" or "borrowing" or even "stealing". It's survival. I bet that NOBODY, black, white, whatever, could tell me that if they had own their shit washed away in a hurricaine, they wouldn't be doing the exact same thing. Why everyone is so concerned about crap that, even if it WAS untouced, would probably never be seen again anyways, escapes me. Especially if some of this "crap" could be used to save lives. The government response was slow, and it was obvious aid wasn't on the way, so these people face a choice. Lay down and die, or bust into an already busted store, and have a glimmer of hope for survival. Hmmmmmm, now there's a friggin hard choice, and unless hurricane-ravaged house and/or drowned housepet is on your list of favorite things to eat, I'm pretty sure you'd break into the store too.

So how 'bout everybody take a chill pill, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture here. New Orleans is a mess. And a lot of the stuff not destroyed by the hurricane will probably end up being collateral damage by those not fortunate enough to have gotten out of the city in time. As unfortunate as it is, saving lives is just more important right now.