by Parisa Aryán

I’ve been seeing a therapist who claims that honesty is most certainly not a virtue and that people should not abuse honesty in their relationships. He believes that, in order for a relationship to have the slightest chance of surviving the first few dates and progressing into something more long-term and serious, there are certain things that are better left unsaid, at least for a while. I really do see his point, but I’ve never really been able to put it into practice, which could explain why most of the men I go out with seem to fall off the face of the earth after the second date. There’s a term to describe this almost obscene sincerity from day one: it’s called being “emotionally slutty.” And something tells me that, nowadays, this is much worse than being just literally slutty.

When we are children, our parents do their best to try to teach us not to lie. We are told that if we lie we are “bad” and will be punished. If you belong to a religious family, you spend years being haunted by terrible nightmares about eternal flames and misery after death. If you don’t, you are just haunted by a very abstract guilt that you can’t really understand or get rid of. So it is safe to say that, either way, you are pretty screwed up with this whole lying issue for a good while.

Then, you grow up a little bit and realize that lying is actually a very big part of life. You see grown-ups lying and not worrying too much about going to Hell, and you learn the meaning of “white lies,” innocent little sentences that you throw in here and there to avoid someone getting hurt or to get out of a very difficult situation. You start hiding information from other people because “What they don’t know won’t hurt them” or because “It’s just better this way” and before you know it, you’re spending a scarily large proportion of your life lying. Read the rest of this entry »

by Kelly Ramundo

The American Heritage Dictionary lists two definitions of the word “racism”:
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

On Monday the Spanish sports daily Marca carried a full-page ad created by the Spanish Basketball Federation in the spirit of the Beijing Olympics in which the entire Spanish team is posed on a court smiling at the camera, holding back the sides of their eyes to make them appear slanted, a clear reference to their Asian hosts.

The article, immediately picked up by the British press has set into motion a furious debate on whether the ad — and to a greater extent the country — is racist, or if it was just an “affectionate gesture,” as one player has described the act.

Spaniards adamantly deny they are racist — no critique of the ad appeared in any Spanish newspaper — and will claim that countries such as England and the United States are overly sensitive to these “insignificant” gestures. They tend to agree with the player that the ad was meant to mean “We are all Chinese,” and was not done with harm in mind.

But this is not the first time in the sports arena that a Spaniard’s racially dubious act has been met with indifference by the Spanish media and public. Spaniards have on more than one occasion heckled black players on the soccer field, culminating in an infamous 2006 incident in which Barcelona idol Samuel Eto’o was bombarded with monkey calls by the Zaragoza team, eventually walking off the field. When the Spanish national team’s coach Luis Aragonés called an opposing player from France “a black piece of shit,” calls for his firing were ignored (although he was fined). There was no mass protest when fans wore blackface and harassed the black Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton during pre-season testing near Barcelona. In each case, these incidents were largely written off as harmless by a large majority of the Spanish public as the international community’s jaws dropped in disbelief. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chris Gladis

When I came to Kyoto, I knew the place was old. It’s something that you see everywhere you go: this temple was built in the 15th century, that shrine burned down in the tenth. It kind of rolls over you, this idea of the age, and I quickly got used to the idea of living in an old city — until the first time I watched the Gion Matsuri.

This is one of the three great festivals of Kyoto — the other two are the far less spectacular Jidai and Aoi festivals — and for good reason. It’s been performed almost without interruption for the last 1,145 years, since the year 863. This floored me, and it still does. To get some perspective, think about it this way: the city of Kyoto has been performing this festival for five times longer than my country has existed. Amazing.

The festival is something that many Kyoto natives never go to, much in the same way that New Yorkers never go to the New Year’s Eve party in Times Square. It’s hot, it’s humid, and there are thousands of people walking through the mostly narrow streets. For three nights, about one square mile in the center of the city is cleared of cars, and people from all over Japan and the world fill the streets. People walk about wearing their yukata, eating unhealthy festival food and looking at the yama and the hoko. It’s a grand old time. To explain these terms, I’ll give you some history. Read the rest of this entry »

by Parisa Aryán

My sister owns a plant that she keeps in our living room, right next to the TV. Don’t ask me what kind of plant it is; I have no idea. All I know is that it has huge green leaves and no flowers.

The thing about this plant is, in the two years that my sister has had it, it has died about a hundred times. I’m serious. We will wake up one day, go into the living room and find that the leaves are going brown and the plant in general looks like it will most definitely not last until the end of the week. We will go to bed that night assuming that we will soon have to throw the poor thing away, and then we will wake up again the next day to find that, out of nowhere, the plant has a new baby leaf that is the greenest of greens. And thus its cycle will begin again and it will live for another few months until one day we will wake up to see brown leaves again. And so it goes.

Because I don’t know what kind of plant it is, and because it has this freakish habit of rising again after we think it’s gone forever, I call it “the phoenix plant,” after the mythological bird that bursts into flames to reappear from its own ashes as a new baby bird to begin the cycle again. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chris Gladis

When NOVA collapsed back in October, I found myself, for the first time, in a situation for which I was not prepared: involuntary unemployment. If you haven’t had the opportunity, I certainly don’t recommend it.

At this point, I was faced with the task of looking for a new job, and a terrible truth occurred to me: I may not be as employable as I think I am. Somehow, I didn’t think that having NOVA as the last entry on my resume wouldn’t be very appealing to a new employer, all things being equal. Even with seven years of experience, I figured that I needed more. The trouble was that, while I thought I was a good, creative teacher, I had no proof.

One of the burdens of being an English conversation teacher in Japan is that companies such as NOVA, Aeon, ECC and Berlitz don’t require any actual training in TESL. As far as I can tell, the only real qualification necessary is a Bachelor’s degree, and there’s no specific requirement on what your Bachelor’s should be in. In fact, I have often speculated that NOVA, at least, prefers it that way. It’s easier, after all, to get a new teacher to follow the company’s teaching methodology (such as it is) if they don’t know any other way.

This makes us eikaiwa teachers something of a lower caste of English teachers in Japan: a class of instructors with no formal training, questionable motivation, employed by a profit-seeking corporation rather than a Respectable Educational Institution. Add to that the stigma of working for a company that had mismanaged itself into a catastrophic bankruptcy, and I began to fear for my employability, to say nothing of my future as an ESL teacher. Read the rest of this entry »

by Alejo Manrique

read part 1 here

At the same time, I have — as do many a late 20th century man — a love/hate relationship with technological nostalgia. I own not one but two worn-down, 20-plus-year-old Vespa Primaveras (old enough to be considered antique vehicles by traffic authorities). I haven’t gotten around to throwing away my old, mostly inherited vinyl records, and still own a functioning record player. For years I’ve kept a Museum-worthy Inves computer that my uncle bought in the 80s for the price of a car. And yes, I confess, I have gone more than once through my parents’ oh-so-very 60ish library: Latin American boom, Sartre, Camus, the Naked Monkey, the Second Sex, the Third Wave. I hold on to these as relics of eras past, tokens of a mind frame that rests assured that times gone by were inevitably better.

Turns out the music industry honchos know this too and it makes them all go: Yihaa! Because they sure now how to make money of this mind frame; selling the past has been music business’ business from day one, its DNA. Bottle up something that happened once and sell it to be recreated over and over again. Read the rest of this entry »

by The Baby Boomer

We took the pledge in an Italian restaurant in the North End, basking in our achievement of just completing the Boston Marathon. That race wasn’t even four hours old, none of us had even showered, and yet here we were agreeing to run the New York marathon six months hence.

Boston is the most prestigious marathon in the running world. The old saying is still true: “There are only two marathons in the world that you need to qualify for: one is Boston, and the other is the Olympic marathon.” New York, however, is a people’s race. While my four-hour finishing time in Boston put me well back in the pack, a similar time in New York would place me in the top half of the field. New York typically has two or three times the number of entrants as Boston. The race course touches all five boroughs, including a long run up 1st Avenue and a finish at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Read the rest of this entry »

by the Principal Traveler

One of the best parts about living abroad is making friends with folks who, back in real life, wouldn’t otherwise enter your world. Like the bonds formed during summer camp, expat friendships are bound by an intensity forged from shared experiences on new turf.

My first mission upon moving to Poland was to find such folks. I had only one month to cement connections with the people in my English teaching program before we were dispersed to our respective towns. Former volunteers from the program had stressed how essential it was to have other Americans to visit throughout the year, since chances for English-speaking companionship in small towns were rare. I set my sights quickly on Pam and Annie, if for no other reason than the fact that we all rolled our eyes whenever Alexa, Carrie, or Ellen from our group whined. We were also the only ones to eat what was put in front of us, no matter what part of the beast it had come from. We could deal with whatever and usually laugh about it, and that was enough. Read the rest of this entry »

by Kelly Ramundo

How long has it been since someone has really listened to you? I mean really and authentically showed interest in something you were saying? WTF?

Last week a message appeared on Facebook from two sisters I went to college with but knew only very casually. They would be in Madrid for three days at the start of a pan-European trip and would love to see me. Being a big fan of showing off my adoptive city, we set a date to meet up Tuesday night for dinner and drinks.

I didn’t really know what to expect from making plans to spend an entire evening with people I’ve had no contact with whatsoever over the last five years, and only very minimal contact during the four years when we shared a campus and little else.

I remembered them as being nice, down-to-earth girls. Not the catty, over-privileged socialite types, nor the complete squares who wouldn’t know how to have a good time even if you locked them in a room with Amy Winehouse and Robert Downey Jr.

Despite my somewhat fuzzily-remembered fondness, on Tuesday afternoon a moment of minor panic struck me. What if we really didn’t have much in common? What if I got trapped in a night-long commitment with people that I now had nothing much to talk about with or didn’t really like that much? Read the rest of this entry »

by Jacki Lewin

Some would argue that swearing is a victimless crime, yet others find it offensive enough to justify censorship in television, music and film. When a celebrity manages to swear on a live television broadcast, it makes national headlines; when the Vice President is caught doing so, it becomes legend. Men excuse themselves when they do so in front of women. One would assume based on observation that swearing is a serious social transgression.

Yet, the content of our speech marks our personalities more than anything else. Leaving aside the aggressive use of swear words — the barbs directed at and intended to insult another person — we are left with what is often called “colorful language.” And in this case I ask, what is the big deal? What is the difference between one word and another? Does swearing only matter if someone is around to hear it? Is avoiding profanity mere politeness to others or is it a matter of self-respect and moral standards, akin to having proper hygiene?

I decided to find out what a week without swearing would do to my language, conversation and sanity. A bit of background: I like swearing and I do it often; it doesn’t bother me when other people do so and I’m not of the opinion that it lowers my character, despite being raised in a society that tells me the opposite. Also, I can successfully self-censor when I’m around small children, your grandmother or a prospective employer. Yet with my friends, in my normal relaxed state, it is altogether different. And let me tell you, much harder. Read the rest of this entry »