GlobalityApr03

April 2003

Exploring the globalization of everyday life

“We have a lot of people who are Web-savvy and bilingual and getting information
that is not under our control. ... That is making it much harder.”

-- Dr. Susan E. Fernyak of the San Francisco Department of Health on dispelling fears about SARS in San Francisco. (See April 18.)

April 18, 2003

I don’t want to overdo the SARS items, nor the New York Times links (free registration required), but this article has some great examples of what I’m talking about on the site. There are very few cases of SARS in the United States (about 30), but some people are acting as if it’s much bigger, especially in Asian-American communities. I’ve seen this myself. One reason for this perception is that a lot of immigrant Chinese-Americans live in the physical space of the U.S. but in an informational space that’s centered in Hong Kong. They may just have more friends and native-language news media available to them from that part of the world than from here. The Internet plays a big part in that. I do take issue with one quote in the story, which says that there’s confusion over what’s happening here vs. what’s happening in Hong Kong. I suspect it’s more that the immigrants know they live in a community that spans the Pacific, and they sense that as rumors and information are “communicable” across that community, SARS might be, too, official health precautions or no.

We have been providing Ontario cottage rental service since 1988.

April 12, 2003

The Concorde, that enduring symbol of the Jet Set, is about to stop enduring. Commercial service on the supersonic airliner will end in October, according to this article on CNN.com. The planes debuted in 1969, back before the 747, the 1973 oil crisis, and the last chopper out of Saigon. I see them as symbols of the “old” globality, the ability of millionaires and pop stars to be on two sides of the Atlantic in one day. The globality of colonial subjects and poor migrants predates that era, but the arrival of a visibly globe-trotting helped solidify the idea of people belonging to two places at once. I’ll never forget Live Aid, the 1985 televised concert for famine relief that took place on both sides of the Atlantic (and some other countries, via satellite). Phil Collins played in the U.K., hopped on the Concorde, and played again in Philadelphia.

Клиника рентген круглосуточно. Чистые пруды.

Of course, Richard Branson wants to buy the seven British Airways Concordes, presumably to make Virgin Atlantic even more ironic than it already is. BA says it will give them to museums. Survey of the day: Who should get a Concorde? Send your vote to Globalityorg! (I vote for Michael York.)

April 11, 2003

Better Luck Tomorrow opens in selected U.S. cities today.

I haven’t posted a lot of items about the war in Iraq, partly because I’ve been too busy going through the war news every day. I know there’s a touch of irony there somewhere. Also, this site is about everyday life, so I’m less interested in the globalization that’s happening under these extraordinary circumstances and more in the long-term effects and the long-range impact beyond the war zone. This is probably only the beginning of a transformation of Iraq and the Middle East that will insert global effects into daily life in that region and beyond.

Is there an angle I’m missing here? Let me know. Here’s the contact page.

There are some intesting glimpses of globalized everyday life in this Washington Post description of what was found in the home of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.

April 10, 2003

Last night I met Sanjana Chopra of DestinationOverseas.com, a travelogue, travel information, and travel industry news site tailored to outbound South Asian travelers. That’s a growing market, I’m told. The site’s run from the Bay Area, one of those global perks of the Internet.

April 8, 2003

Waves has been pretty quiet lately, but I just put a new review and some important movie news there. Check it out.

April 6, 2003

The SARS outbreak is starting to affect some people who have to travel to Asia for business or family reasons. One man in Canada was forced into quarantine by the government because of concern he might have been exposed to the disease. U.S. federal officials also can impose involuntary quarantine for suspected SARS carriers now. Are we going to see mass relocations of people with ties across the Pacific? Probably not. But for now, ordinary people are being linked to an international threat just because of their transnational lifestyles. The Seattles Times tells how in this article and describes one man’s rude awakening at the airport.

April 5, 2003

I have to admit that a few days after moving to Hong Kong, I started to find the whole experience somewhat frightening. Maybe it was the nature of the place, walking around in the shadows of old dark, sooty buildings. But it was also that I felt, for a while, almost totally at the mercy of a place I didn’t really understand. Not understanding it meant I didn’t know how things would turn out there. After months of knowing that the whole idea was perfectly feasible in theory, and still knowing that, I was faced with living it in reality, night and day.

I can’t compare those days to a soldier’s first week in Iraq or Kuwait, not in any overall sense. For one thing, I went of my own free will. But reading and thinking about a great essay by novelist Allan Gurganus in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine (free registration required) in which he tells how the war news from Iraq stirs long-forgotten memories of Vietnam, I had glimmers of understanding. I’m thinking of someone noticing the smells of the place, the way the air feels, and the colors around him and the lack of other colors, and not really knowing how long he’ll be there or what the place will demand of him. Globality can be about music and friendships and dreams, but there’s a dark side, too.

Медиксити центр андрологии Пражская.

On the bright side, science has a lot of global communities working toward the goal of expanding human knowledge. That’s as good an excuse as I can think of for linking to a fascinating Web site about the Subaru Telescope, which the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan operates in Hawaii. (It’s unrelated to the car brand.)

April 3, 2003

Basketball is a part of everyday life for so many Americans that Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets’ star center, is probably the most familiar face of China in this country. He’s also bringing NBA basketball into China as a friendly face of America. Soccer (football to the rest of the world) has been an international world for years. Yao is the latest and best example of how major-league American sports are going the same way. NBA Commissioner David Stern knows that, and this week he duly recognized Yao for his game, his humor, and his grace under pressure, the Houston Chronicle reports here. (Thanks to Yao fan Phil of AngryAsianMan.com for the link.)

April 2, 2003

SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which appears to have originated in southern China and is having a severe impact in Hong Kong, is having ripple effects on the Chinese diaspora. In Chinatowns in the United States, it’s beating Iraq war news to the top headlines of local newspapers and travel agencies are hurting, according to CNN.com. Now some San Francisco Chinatown residents buying face masks, worried that the disease will spread into their community, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. A San Francisco epidemiologist says in the article that there’s no reason to wear one unless you come into contact with other people who have traveled to Asia recently and show symptoms of the disease.