Culture

ON MY MIND | Cultural Appropriation, Giraffes and You

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You already know what this is about. And I get it, Halloween’s over – cultural appropriation isn’t a hot topic anymore. The people have moved on. Wait until next year. Wait for the hashtags to pop up again, wait for the flame wars and public smear campaigns, wait for the liberal think-pieces, wait for the conservative backlash, wait for those little voices of incredulity and derision – the voices of “reason” – to percolate up through your subconscious.

Life

WHITE KNUCKLES | Bucket Lists and the Ancient World

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We all have the painful awareness that, during our lifetime, we will not have time to read every book worth reading, to visit every place that fascinates us, to learn what we’ve always dreamed of doing, to play musical instruments and knit scarves. In response to this anxiety, we make lists; bucket lists. Things to do, things you must see, 100 movies to watch at least once. They help us keep track of the meaningful time, of the time that does not dissolve between library hours and scheduled meetings and meals and sleep, the time that crystallizes in scrapbooks and gleaming pictures, in timeless anecdotes and stories repeated over and over. Cornell has its own bucket list, 161 things to do.

Entertainment

KYLIE’S ROOM | Story Time – This American Life

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“Tell me a story,” is a phrase that seems to come out of my mouth, or be sent via text message quite often. Sometimes, I am just looking for something to pass the time, idle gossip about people I don’t know and will never meet. But, other times I am looking for a story with purpose, to learn something new. People consider stories relics from childhood. They remember their parents reading to them in bed with a big story book about a mythical land, a prince, a princess, a villain, a moral to the story, and a happy ending.

Life

IT’S ONLY LOGICAL | Hooking Up

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“We’re more alike than I thought.”

Probably not, but I was too drunk to worry about the validity of the statement and too fixated on the idea of mitigating the inevitable wave of despair that I associate with falling back into sobriety. We lay there for a little while longer and chatted about pretty much everything , except for what was on our minds. Kant said that it was wrong to use someone as a means to an end, but I don’t really enjoy sex that much so I wasn’t too worried. James 1:15 briefly popped into my mind, but I’ve done worse so again I wasn’t too worried. I woke up early the next morning; we exchanged a hopeless ‘later’ and I began my long walk back to Cascadilla.

Life

BETWEEN BARS | Learning Chinese

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This week at Auburn I taught Chinese. It came as a surprise, really: when we checked our belongings in at the front desk I noticed a fellow tutor holding what looked like worksheets that were written in Chinese. She explained to me that she taught a small Chinese class and invited me to join her in administering a quiz for her class. It turns out the entire Chinese class that night consisted of three people. The five of us sat around a single table in a classroom filled with other students who were there for study hall.

Entertainment

SUNSPOTS | Halloween Edition: What is the scariest thing at Cornell?

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See what several of our writers have to say about some of the scariest things they’ve experienced during their years at Cornell. THE WALK TO MY HOUSE

Charlie Liao

As a non-guaranteed transfer, I had no clue that Cornell housing is basically over before Thanksgiving. So, I’m living conveniently closer to Ithaca College than I am Cornell. What does this mean? Well, it means walking through a living representation of the “Upside Down” from the Netflix hit, Stranger Things.

Culture

POLITICS & STUFF | American Dream

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I am the child of immigrants. I am the child of two people who moved to another country with not a penny to their names and worked themselves to the bone for twenty years to finally earn a small house with a yellow lawn and white picket fence. My parents worked hard and endured continuous years of hardship because they were promised a light at the end of the tunnel. My family is The American Dream personified. And just as my parents’ lives were strung along by a longheld promise, my life has been shaped by that same promise.

Life

TRAVELIN’ WITH JACQUELINE | Insectapalooza & Nabokov’s Butterflies

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As I mentioned in my last blog post, I attended Insectapalooza this past Saturday at Comstock Hall, where I witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly. However, before I delve into my experience, I’ll get the formal stuff out of the way: admission was $3 per person and free for kids aged three and younger. I’ve also attached photos of two sides of a handout from Insectapalooza to show everything the event offered:

 

I’ll start off with the bad and the ugly, which is the first event I visited—Bug Innards. This exhibit featured a cockroach that had been cut open and spread out for a few hours but was still alive due to a constant dripping supply of water mixed with what I think was sugar. Grody!

Culture

COMMON SENSE | Thank you Donald.

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There’s a chill in the air, pitch-black darkness as I lug my suitcase down the steps. The rolling of the suitcase wheels on the uneven concrete reverberates through the air when at this time of night silence dominates. At 4 a.m., it’s easy to imagine a whole world only inhabited by me with little sign of life and not a soul in sight. It takes approximately 7 minutes to walk from my apartment to the baker flagpole bus stop. At 4 a.m. those seven minutes feel harrowingly long.

Culture

ON MY MIND | Loving Asian Parents

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Put a group of second-generation Asian Americans together in one room. Get them to open up about their childhoods, to describe what it was like growing up in their household, what their parents were like. I guarantee with 95% certainty that, at some point in the conversation, someone will probably say something along the lines of:

“You know, it was always, ‘Keep your head down,’ or, ‘Don’t rock the boat.’ You know, stuff like that.”

And in case you were wondering, here are some typical refrains from my childhood, too:

“I don’t care if all your friends are going. You have 사모님 on Friday. You know that.” [사모님: Korean title for a married woman – a.k.a. my piano teacher]

“야.