A.Connector

No not from the Twitter (pick a color) Team

I received a Facebook message from Garsen Subramoney someone I know through Facebook and Twitter. he contacted me on quite a serious subject actually, not the inane Ze Frank initiated color team war meme on Twitter. In fact this involves the future of a young democracy, one of the few hopeful spots in a a troubled continent: Africa. In this case South Africa-Garsen’s country. It is quite concerning and maybe merits you reading of the article in it’s entirety.

It seems that the world has a series of challenging forces and factors to deal with: presidential elections in Taiwan and USA, Tibet pushing against Beijing control, and now this political change for the worse in South Africa. Let us be aware of these places and issues and do what ever we can in what ever way we can to try to make a difference. Many would say why bother in this corrupt dystopian world we live in? I’d say that partial idealism is much more hopeful and potentially helpful than complete apathy.

A lesson learned?

Yesterday I was watching the Chinese Taipei baseball team battle the Canadian national team on the baseball field here in Taichung. The Taiwan team got off to a good start and overall it was quite a good contest. In the latter innings with the score seesawing back and forth between the local and visiting teams, the Canadians got in scoring position and the big Canadian player bulldozed the much smaller Taiwanese catcher. Amazingly, the much smaller Taiwanese catcher held on to ball and successfully tagged out the Canadian runner.The crowd instantly started booing and felt like the big guy was picking on the little guy. In fact many made it a personal thing, like “the big white guy picking on the little Asian guy.”

Oddly, I’ve had some personal experiences like that here. Fortunately, not for many years. There was one time that a local guy and I were heading for the same spot at the same time. To be frank, we were probably playing chicken and guess what? We collided. Now the local guy got all stinky faced and abusive because I was bigger and surely was taking advantage of size… Well surprise surprise. No I didn’t want to hurt the guy, but I have enough common sense not to play chicken with someone much bigger than me if the downside is having it sting.

Back to the baseball game. My wife came in when she heard the furor of the crowd and even she was unhappy with what she saw on the replay screen. My son then informed her that the Canadian player was simply doing what any runner would do and going for broke in a close game and shot at home with catcher blocking the plate. This explained by a loyal Taiwan team fan to his mom.

Sadly, the Canadian team won. The moral of the story-if you want to dance, you need to pay the band. Kudos to that Taiwan catcher for holding on to the ball after being steam-rolled. You rock!
Story link here.