What? You mean Aperture didn’t support plugins before?
It seems like a pretty basic feature to have been missing until now. For those keeping score, Photoshop has had plugins since 1991.
Ok, this kind of freaked me out. My sister, who is visiting here from Seattle with her boyfriend, found this photo in an old family photo album:
It’s a picture of my dad in 1979, holding my sister, coming home from the maternity ward. It was weird to see how much he looks like me, especially wearing that jacket. I had a jacket custom-made last year that looks very much like that.
I don’t really have a long enough arm to properly show you with a self-portrait, but you get the picture.
Anyway, at least I know what I’ll be wearing in 30 years: Dockers and plaid shirts. 
I found this old essay online today, titled Why the Joy Luck Club Sucks. I was happy to find it, because for years I’ve had the same opinion, yet whenever I’d tell people that I hated this film, they would say, “Why? It’s such a great movie!” They fail to see that it’s a story that perpetrates negative stereotypes about Chinese men. The essay does a great job illustrating that, so I’m not going to rehash it.
I am pleased to say that there has been some progress in creating more realistic Asian male characters in the past few years. The reason I’m concentrating on Asian male characters is because I think they’ve been more heavily maligned in the media than Asian female characters. Asian females, although often portrayed as sex symbols or fetish objects, have usually been portrayed more positively than males.
Anyway, I would like to thank the writers of Lost for creating Jin. Jin is a realistic character. He has depth and personality not usually found in Hollywood depictions of Asians, who are usually placed in stories to provide a specific “flavor” to the narrative, whether that be comic relief, mysticism, or violence. I like that Jin is just a normal guy who happens to be Asian. His character might be shaped by Korean culture, but he is not a caricature. He is capable of transformation and growth, just like any other character.
Two other characters I admire are Hiro and Ando from Heroes. Again, these are two ordinary guys–office workers–who happen to be Asian. Heroes allows them to be Japanese without exaggerating or parodying them.
Both of these shows also depict these characters speaking their native languages instead of broken English. They only speak broken English when it is realistic or meaningful for them to do so. I think it’s the right thing to do to use subtitles. It puts the onus on the audience to receive and understand what a character is saying. A character that panders to the audience by speaking in broken English with a bad accent only sabotages himself by making himself look more simplistic than he should be.
I do not want to say that Lost and Heroes are the only two shows to more fairly portray Asian male characters. In fact, a classic TV show was a real ground-breaker. The original Star Trek series had Sulu, an Asian male character in a high ranking position. What was great about Sulu was that he didn’t have to be Asian. He could have been black, white, Hispanic, Aboriginal, and it wouldn’t have changed his character at all. That was progressive thinking for the 1960s. Unfortunately, the ground didn’t stay broken, and we went through several decades of horrible stereotyping before arriving where we are today.
Why is any of this important? It is important to me because I grew up watching the lampooning and caricaturing of Asian male characters in the entertainment media. It was hard not to believe that to be Asian meant that I could only either be a math geek, Triad, or a kung fu master. For me, I had to fight an uphill battle against my own beliefs, especially when everyone around me was happy enoughto follow along with them as well. I hope that this newer generation of Asian characters serves to inspire, rather than constrain.
I flew into Montreal for my last weekly trip for a while. Montreal looked ghostly as I arrived. It was snowing yet again, and as the plane descended through the clouds, I saw that the entire city was cloaked in shades of white. On the tarmac, airplanes coasted silently by, swirling up powdery white wreaths behind them. The image of snow has a way of implying silence, even in noisy places.
My one year commitment at my second job ends at the end of the month, and I’m in Montreal to tie up some loose ends, and to initiate my replacement into the company. To be honest, I’ll be glad that this phase of my life is ending. To be sure, I’ve made some good friends here, and cemented old friendships too. I’ve experienced a lot, and grown a lot as a person. That being said, I’m happy that the end is within sight. With each end, there is a new beginning. That might sound like a cliché, but every cliché has roots in truth.
One of the reasons I’ll be glad to be home more or less permanently is that I won’t miss opportunities. One good example happened this week. Laura managed to score free tickets to see Paul Potts in concert in Hamilton on Thursday night. He’s someone significant to me, because he took his life from zero to superhero in about 30 seconds, realizing a lifelong dream. I must have seen it about 20 times, but I still get emotional watching that video. That’s enormously embarrassing to me because I loathe reality TV. Anyway, needless to say, I couldn’t go, because I’m here. I was in a meeting with one of my clients, and told him about it. Friday morning, he emailed me to say he heard Paul Potts was performing in Montreal that night, and that he could tell I was disappointed that I couldn’t go see the show in Hamilton, so he sent me a link to buy tickets. To me it’s amazing how little connections like that happen. I bought a ticket right away.
The concert was wonderful. It wasn’t entirely because of the music. Potts was clearly not at the top of his game. He had picked up a cold during his tour, and I could hear it in his voice. While he was talking, he was congested, and the cold was taking its toll on his singing voice too. Between songs he would sip a cup of tea, and that would restore him temporarily, but the strain of performing while ill was apparent. Somewhat disappointingly, even a lengthy standing ovation could not bring him back out to perform his signature piece, Nessun Dorma. He is living his dream, but I’m sure that he’s not used to the kind of pressure that this kind of tour creates.
What I found wonderful was watching what has been created in such a short period of time. The hall was packed with almost 3000 people, most of whom seemed to be francophone. Watching the seemingly never-ending stream of people filing into La Salle Wilfred-Pelletier at Place des Arts was truly inspiring. Knowing that this happens at every stop on his North American tour is mind-blowing. Paul Potts has become an overnight, worldwide phenomenon, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.