OPINION
April 6, 2015
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
Heals wound,
and time heals
hen we were squirrelly anak-
anak — about our grand-
children’s age — our elders
made a lot of us understanding and
managing time. Not time, mind you, as in
time management. Not as in, how we
weekly lectured our teenagers on allotting
this many hours for studying and for
exercising, and that many hours for
playing and sleeping. Not like that. Not at
all.
Back home, we were schooled on Time
with a cap T, as in a proper noun. Time as
an active actor, central to every setting.
Time, as if a character in a book or in a
movie.
Time, our elder Auntie Kris told us, can
move you to the next minute or to our next
tomorrow; Time can take me back to last
week or last year or the decade before that.
At this very moment, Time can be elastic,
or be stubborn — as when someone sets
down a time certain, as in “you have an
appointment with Dr. Chen at 2:20.
Sharp.”
In the west, it’s primarily this latter
sense of time we have to work with. As in:
Be there on time. Or else. Luckily, both my
iPhone’s calendar and my office MS
Outlook stick to these time demands too.
A short while ago, to get to the intent of
this column, a woman important to city
governance took me aside. I cannot say
exactly what hour or even what day this
happened. To tell you the truth, I can’t
recall whether we talked a week or two
weeks ago. But, to be sure, the time of our
talk had a world of meaning. In that Old
World elder auntie way.
By Old World, I mean those peoples
rooted to their rich soil, loved by their
W
ancestors, and bonded by our common
Creator. By old school elder, I’m referring
to our Manado folk, those pribumi
populating that crooked little finger of
Sulawesi island. We have hooked four
millennia of commerce in peoples and
products from Ma Hind and from Mother
China, from ummah Islamia and from the
Christian west.
For our folk, the metaphysics of Time are
as true as calendar time and clock time. We
wear those big chunky Lucien Piccard,
Seiko, and Tag Heuer as much for fashion
statements as for their chronological
utility.
Time to tell truth
But let me return to my story — what
this Portland elder told me, blended into
when she told it, resulted in turning our
little moment into a world of meaning.
Terima kasih, Ibu — and I offer my love, in
thanks for it. She handily worked time,
same as our traditional aunties do. Four
stars, they’d flash her if score cards were
issued.
Time was central to the meaning of her
message.
During a break from our business, she
said something like “I know this guy. He’s
mispronounced my name for about eight
years now.”
I said “Oh.”
“He’s been a newspaper columnist for a
long time. In fact,” she said, “he’s always
been the reason I pick up that Asian paper.
To read his column” — or something to
that effect.
I said “Oh.”
Oh (by the way) is an Asian spacer. Oh is
intended to let enough time, and all those
uncertainties that arrive in time, to show
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
themselves. Oh allows highly adaptive
ethnocultural types to know how to
effectively work with what’s coming, as
our shared universe of causality unrolls.
As mentioned earlier, our islanders are
used to Yemini and Chinese merchants
unpacking their wonders; we know all
about Imperial European and Japanese
navies arriving under angry steam.
Oh actually slows Time’s flow. Oh lets
me sense then sort my way through what
to do next. Sinbad the Sailor offering
Mokka coffee and Prophet Mohammed’s
Teachings (peace be upon him) is a very
different proposition from, say, the
Chrysanthemum Emperor off-loading his
ferocious soldierboys.
It eventually occurred to me that my
kind colleague, this veteran Portland civic
activist, was talking about me. So, I said
“Oh.”
Taking time to tell it
When finally we settled into a common
groove, she asked about a sudden unkind
turn I took in an essay about — as she put
it “letting people call themselves what they
want to call themselves, instead of what
we call them.” Por examplo: Somali
instead Somalian, or Lao instead of
Laotian, or Shi’a instead of Shi-ite. She
was happy going along with this reasoning
when, without warning, I went off the rails
and got into denigrating women with
crude references to “metermaids” and the
like.
“Oh,” I said.
Sensing my disorientation — were this a
world welterweight championship match,
she would’ve clocked me, KO’d me, right
then and there — pero instead, she said in
substance, “Well, it was probably 10 or
more years ago.” A generous gesture.
Again, well-timed.
“Oh,” I said, because honestly, I cannot
recall what I said last night or last week.
“Umm, was it after 9/11?” I stalled,
meaning after America aligned much more
with our shared world of hurt. A date after
which many writers giving voice to
communities and countries often reeling
from American carelessness, all backed off
a bit. Eased up, just like my kind colleague
was doing with me.
I said, “I’m sure you’re right, saudara
saya.” My sister. “Truly, I cannot
remember.” You know, we’ve recently
What this Portland
elder told me, blended
into when she told it,
resulted in turning our
little moment into a
world of meaning.
completed 1,000 Asian Reporter columns.
But what matters most, is how you read
what’s written. I am responsible for
outcomes bad and good, for caring for all
our families.
“I am often taught,” I went on to say,
“how to be better, by my wife, by our
daughter. And now, you’re teaching
me.”
“Well, you know” — she said in
substance, because really, dear readers, I
cannot recall, not word for word, what she
said, or what my beautiful wife or our
bright daughter said one week, two
months, or 20 years ago — “You know, I
kind of knew that’s how you’d respond,”
she said. “And I knew that’s what would
make this conversation possible.”
And there you have it.
Time to make right
And therein, we have all of it.
Everything our ancestors and elders tried
and tried to tell us when we were
squirrelly anak-anak. Time is a major
actor on our shared stage, an active agent
in this grand production in which our
pretty little planet is only one of a
million-million spinning players. And at
center stage, here’s a community activist
deftly handling Time as a proper noun.
She could’ve scored, like The Champ
Mohammed Ali would’ve, like Brazil’s
Black Pearl Pelé surely would’ve, while
their opponents were mesmerized by their
mastery of time and space. Baam. Match
over.
Instead, she slowed time, letting our
achy earth take 20 or so turns around
our generous suriya sun, allowing me to
grow into a person who might properly
hear the pain of her disappointment,
enough time to allow her anger to take a
role secondary to her turning into a
teacher.
Big in Asia, Line app hopes cute factor will win worldwide
Continued from page 2
“People express their emotion with the characters so the
depth of the interaction is different,” Yoon said.
Stickers also made Line the rare mobile messenger that
rakes in cash, first by selling stickers for $2 a pack to
mobile phone users and later by adding new businesses
such as games and a taxi hailing service. Users can now
sell stickers they make themselves to other Line users.
There are more than 200,000 people around the world who
do that.
Line Corp.’s net profit jumped 50 percent in 2014 to 126
billion won ($112 million) on revenue of 670 billion won
($594 million), according to its parent, South Korea’s
Naver Corp. The app was launched in June 2011.
Line also cashed in on the rock star popularity of its
animal characters through mobile games and an
animated TV show in Japan.
In China, the company hopes the stores and other
ventures will put it in a strong starting position in case
authorities ever relent on their blocking of the app.
The first Line Friends store in China will open in
Shanghai’s Xintiandi shopping district in May, selling
Brown dolls, Cony pens, Sally mugs, and other goods such
as kitchen utensils, stationary, jewelry, and toys.
“We hope to resume the Line app service someday” in
China, Yoon said. “If the Line app is resumed at a time
when our characters are well known, it would be a
powerful launch. We hope that in the countries where the
Line app is not used actively, Line characters would
promote the app.”
Apart from stores, Line is in talks to open a virtual
reality amusement park in China. The first such park,
where visitors can explore a virtual space with Line
characters, will open in Bangkok this summer.
Line is also negotiating with Hollywood producers to
turn its cute characters into an animated film for theaters
or series for television.
Line spun off Line Friends last month to operate the
character-related business independently from the
company’s app business.
Though analysts are skeptical about the app’s future in
China where Tencent’s WeChat is dominant, they say the
merchandizing business could be effective in the U.S. and
Latin America.
q
My Turn: The Dumpling Complex
Continued from page 6
thing.
In the past, before
discovering the dumpling
shop, we would usually
have a bag of factory-
processed dumplings in the
freezer, so we’d heat them
up and bring them to
“Yappy Hour.” With the
store-bought dumplings in
hand, we would attend the
party and let everyone try
them. Our neighbors, as
dear as they are, know
nothing about Chinese
food. They may say they do,
but they don’t.
How do I know this? One
by one, they would pick up
the dumplings and dip
them
into
…
sweet-and-sour sauce. Or
ketchup.
Or
in
one
instance, heaven forbid —
a packet of spicy mustard
sauce.
So naturally, seeing
Maya cook up a pan of my
beloved dumplings for
“Yappy Hour” was just too
much to bear.
After blurting out the
whole
“dumpling-
worthiness” thing, I think I
followed with this: “If you
think I’m going to let them
dip
my
beautiful
dumplings in a bowl of
Tzatziki sauce, you’re out
of your mind!”
In
the
end,
the
dumplings were a big hit —
inappropriate
dipping
sauces notwithstanding.
But I tell you this: You can
bet I’ll always keep a small
supply of frozen eggrolls in
our freezer.
You can never be too
careful.
“There is clearly an opportunity to take existing mobile
properties to other channels and generate revenues,” said
Jack Kent, director of mobile media research at IHS
Technology.
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