Minh-Anh Mia Do

Reading {J}ournal—on Japanese Short Stories—1: Rewind

On the memories of the Japanese fiction books I have had my nose stuck in so far and my upcoming autoethnographic journey into Japanese short stories

Here’s to all the memories of the very few Japanese fiction books I have had my nose stuck in so far and my upcoming autoethnographic journey into Japanese short stories.

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From my love of reading

I first picked up a copy of Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto eight years ago, when I was bored out of my wits at a sleepover at my cousins’. I barely remember the details of that story now—other than that it is a short window into the life of a make-shift family of a young orphan, her friend and his transgender mother—but the afterward melancholic feeling and indescribable thoughts, so alien to a thirteen-year-old back then, still surface so vividly at any sight of the book cover.

Continue reading “Reading {J}ournal—on Japanese Short Stories—1: Rewind”

Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the ‘Human’ in ‘Humanities’

In my version of the future of work, STEM will not dominate over the humanities. For the “human” in “humanities” is what allows us to work with ambiguity and make sense of our complex narratives.

“Humanists ‘have known there is no right answer for hundreds of years,’ and they are comfortable with that.”

(David Blei, cited in Mackenzie 2013)

A few days ago, in my Future of Work seminar, all of us made a human bar chart which I titled in my notes ’30 Average Uni Students’ Level of Tolerance of Ambiguity’.

Later, I added a line about where I was among those 30—the highest end of the tolerance spectrum, along with another friend. I scored 30 (the median was about 55-60) on the Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale, a psychometric testing instrument of which the design alone seems to be another embedded test for a person’s patience towards confusing instructions. One is supposed to reverse the score they get for even-numbered questions, and the higher the final result, the less tolerant they are of uncertainty and change. Continue reading “Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the ‘Human’ in ‘Humanities’”

Puff Pastries

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday, and I am stress-baking.

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday, I have a metre-long to-do list for the weekend, and I am typing away while waiting for my batch of puff pastries to rise nicely in the oven. Stress-baking, that’s what it might be.

When I was around 11-12, my Mum, my very Vietnamese Mum, took up baking—at the time, to most households, a convection oven was treated as a luxury. French gâteaux. French pastries. She printed out stacks of recipes on A5 sheets—with ingredients put in bold, measurements underlined, important notes in italic—all neatly laminated, hole-punched, and bound with a gold ribbon. Her proudest moment, one that I can recall vividly, was when she took a tray full of puffy croissants out of our tiny oven, joy dancing in her eyes; she had spent that entire Sunday folding and rolling out, from scratch, a batch of puff pastry.

For years, up until her career took a turn, Mum had kneaded and mixed and baked. These days, whenever they are flooding back, my teenage memories always fill me with the smell of dough and fresh cream and butter. Continue reading “Puff Pastries”

Delicately Blunt—on Laura Bates & the Everyday Sexism Project

On a project, a movement, a collection of blunt stories delicately handled.

entry_everdaysexism — A recent entry on the website

Of the 60,000 stories contributed by visitors worldwide on the Everyday Sexism website (Kellaway 2014), such raw, uneasy stories occupy a significant portion. Blunt as they sound, they are handled delicately by the team behind the project. Founded in 2012 by Laura Bates—a British feminist writer frustrated with blatant harassment—it aims to counter societal denial towards existing sexism (Everyday Sexism Project n.d.) through an ever-growing collection of stories, small and large. Visitors are greeted by a textbox asking them to recount any sexist incidents in their daily lives, and they can do so anonymously. Currently, the website comes in 25 country-versions and roughly 20 languages, including Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, and many more. Continue reading “Delicately Blunt—on Laura Bates & the Everyday Sexism Project”

On ‘Akira’ (1988)—The Beginning of the End

My take on the 1988 anime Akira.

It’s almost the end of the film and I’m still very, very lost. So you’re not alone.

— Mia (Minh-Anh) Do (@thespecsofMia) August 9, 2018

The 1988 anime Akira has officially topped my list of hardest-to-watch films, packing millions of details in both the graphics and the content of each sequence, in the span of more than two hours. Admittedly, I yawned rather widely during the middle part, since it started to drag on and became too slippery (plus excessively violent) for my attention to grab on. Continue reading “On ‘Akira’ (1988)—The Beginning of the End”

Being comfortable with being uncomfortable*

*Titled borrowed from TED Talk Get comfortable with being uncomfortable by Nigerian author/speaker Luvvie Ajayi, although the talk is not completely related to this reflection.

Were I an inanimate object, I bet I’d make a great label maker. The fact that a personal hand-held label maker is on my all-time wish list certainly doesn’t alleviate the comicality.

Continue reading “Being comfortable with being uncomfortable*”

On ‘Gojira’ (Godzilla) 1954—A Natural Embodiment of a Man-Made Disaster

My takeaways from the 1954 iconic Japanese sci-fi Kaiju film Gojira (Godzilla)

“To say that this Oriental monster is fantastic is to state but half the case. Godzilla, produced in a Japanese studio, is an incredibly awful film … the whole thing is in the cheap cinematic-horror stuff … ” (Crowther 1956).

Continue reading “On ‘Gojira’ (Godzilla) 1954—A Natural Embodiment of a Man-Made Disaster”

A reflection on writing reflections

Dedicated to the celebration of—finally, finally—handing in my last assignment of the semester.

Dedicated to the celebration of—finally, finally—handing in my last assignment of the semester.

Also, this post has not been through my usual religious routine of proofreading and editing, so everything is everywhere. But since it reflects (no pun intended) my current post-final-assignments state of mind, I’ll be this unruly version of me for a while.

For one of our subjects this session, the final task is to write a (compared to the usual 300-level word limits, very) short reflection that is worth 20% of our final mark—no scholarly sources were required, the only criteria were honesty and insightfulness.

That, to me, was the hardest assignment to write in this first half of my third year. It is not the academic rigour that challenges me anymore; it’s original thinking that does. Continue reading “A reflection on writing reflections”

#BCM325 Live-Tweeting a.k.a. the (Joyful) Trials and Tribulations of Multitasking

A reflection on my live-tweeting of our weekly BCM325 screenings. Warning: Spoilers.

*Spoilers ahead; you might not want to read this post if you have yet to watch one of the following films: Ghost in the Shell (1995), WestWorld (1973), The Matrix (1999), Be Right Back (Black Mirror S2E1, 2013), Robot & Frank (2012), Hated in the Nation (Black Mirror S3E6, 2016).

This session, I have sailed (waddled, more like) into uncharted waters, thanks to BCM325’s live-Tweeting requirement. Throughout the first eight weeks of this subject, Future Cultures, eight films were screened and analysed/commented on in real time by us students. Continue reading “#BCM325 Live-Tweeting a.k.a. the (Joyful) Trials and Tribulations of Multitasking”

[Update] BCM325 Digital Artefact: Virtual Reality & Storytelling

Some progress I have made so far on my BCM325 Digital Artefact.

A few weeks ago, I announced my choice of topic for my BCM325 Digital Artefact, which is Virtual Reality (VR) and related ethical issues. However, further research has proven that VR-in-general is too large a topic; combined with my passion for writing and storytelling, this means I have narrowed the scope down, focusing on the application of VR in storytelling to create compelling narratives. Continue reading “[Update] BCM325 Digital Artefact: Virtual Reality & Storytelling”