Posted 5:54 PM by Anonymous

So today I was lucky enough to be able to go swimming without having my soap stolen. In case you're an avid reader of my personal blog, you may have been able to deduct that this has been a problem. I've only been at school for about four weeks, and I've already had two bottles of Dr. Bronner's stolen from my bag in the locker room while I was in the pool. Isn't that ridiculous? Anyways, I am heartened by today's experiences. Also today at the pool, the lifeguard told me that I swim like a Chinese person. Apparently she went to China for a swimming trip this summer and the swim coaches there tell people to swim like I do, kind of open-armed. Weird, huh?

So yesterday I went to see a debate on the war - whether it was morally justified - between a features editor at the Wall Street Journal, Max Boot, and Princeton professor and editor of The Nation, Richard Falk. It was an interesting debate and all, but the noteworthy event of the evening took place afterwards as my anti-war cohorts and I were passing out fliers and holding signs by the exit. I was asking my fellow pacifists how you pronounced this other girl's name - Thienny. I suspect that Thienny is Vietnamese, but I'm not sure, and anyways, I couldn't remember how to pronounce her name. Even if her name was Chinese, people have different preferences as to how they like Chinese words pronunced in English. Right? Anyways, I was asking around and this one girl responds, "Wait, shouldn't you know?"

I kind of stared at her for a minute to give her a chance to explain herself but she didn't, so I responded, "Why? Because I'm Asian?" And she says, "Yeah!" Then I had a short rant about how she's white, shouldn't she know how to speak German and Flemish and Russian?! She justified her response by explaining that in her school, "all the Asians were like that". Like what? They knew how to speak every other Asian language? I don't get it. Anyways, that's my small outrage of the week.