Learning Deep Learning

Category: Multiculturalism

  • One and a half lingual

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    wombat
    in

    When your mother tongue is not your mother’s, you grow up with an echo. In our house, English was the official language, the language of information transfer. Cantonese, my parents’ first language, was the language of emotion and of secrets. It was the language of outbursts. Here’s a typical example, an exchange between my mother…

  • My favorite feminist film

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    by

    wombat
    in ,

    Is also my favorite film. And believe me, coming up with a fave is not easy for me. I don’t think I could come up with a favorite book. This film, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, stands out because I think it’s flawless. I wouldn’t change a frame of it. The movie came out…

  • To 80s Hong Kong Pop With Love

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    wombat
    in , ,

    In the 80s, in June, when I was in graduate school, a friend called me up and asked if I wanted to make an impromptu trip from Berkeley, California to Vancouver, BC. He wanted to drive up and see his father, who was ill, and could use help driving. I had family in Vancouver too.…

  • Cumin and Hammers

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    wombat
    in

    Once, I had a difficult plane flight from Frankfurt to Nairobi. I’d purchased my ticket from Bulgarian Airlines about 30 hours before departure, at the height of the summer travel season. The plane stopped in Sofia, where I was told that I did not have a seat on the flight to Nairobi because I did…

  • Girl Mechanic Review: asianmommy.com

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    wombat
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    Yay, another blog review of the The Girl Mechanic of Wanzhou, at asianmommy.com Much appreciated!

  • Gender and The Hobbit

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    wombat
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    It’s time to come out of the closet. I love The Hobbit. I love it so much that I love the movie too. And while I usually agree with articles that deplore the absence of women in popular media and stories, in this one case I have to make a rebuttal to those who say…

  • The Four Food Groups

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    wombat
    in

    When I was a kid, four food groups competed in our house. Each group viewed the others with suspicion and claimed itself superior. My two grandmothers, and my mother, each stood like a pillar for a variant of Chinese food. My grandfather was an outpost of English food. My paternal grandmother, Annie Chan, was all…

  • Ethnic Roots: Refusal to add fractions

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    wombat
    in

    I’m a Hong Kong puppy, a little of this, a little of that from the Eurasian land mass. People often ask, are you half Chinese? How much English? And then there’s commenting on how I look racially, and all that. Do I have an English nose and Goan knees. I really can’t say. I’m under…