Whiskey 101 [repost]

I don't know what I did, but I accidentally deleted the entire article. Hopefully this repost is as good as the previous one. REMINDER: DO NOT HIT REDO AND THEN SAVE!

My family has owned a piano bar since I was a teenager, and I had been playing piano since the age of 3, so I was constantly asked to play in the bar. Also, I had the chance to drink some cocktails even under drinking age (DON'T DO THAT). In my culture, being able to drink a lot of liquor shows masculinity. I started drinking a lot of different beers, wines, champagnes, spirits, and whiskeys. 

After countless bad hangovers and terrible drunk stories, I realised that drinking does not release any pressure, or give happiness, or solve any problems. Now, I don't drink a lot, but from time to time, I like to have a glass of whiskey after dinner, and watch a classic movie.

Whiskey is not the easiest drink to appreciate. It is much stronger than most beer and wine, and some of the names, like those Scotch Whiskeys, are hard to pronounce. Whiskeys are rich and diverse in flavours, more than any other distilled spirit. But for me, whiskey is like an adventure. It invites me to explore and indulge in its diversity.

Whisky or whisky-like products are produced in most grain-growing areas. They differ in base product, alcoholic content, and quality.

• Malt whisky is made primarily from malted barley.
• Grain whisky is made from any type of grains.

Malts and grains are combined in various ways:

• Single malt whisky
• Blended malt whisky
• Blended whisky
• Cask strength (also known as barrel proof)
• Single cask (also known as single barrel)

My personal favourite is THE BALVENIE SINGLE BARREL 15, which is a 15 year old single malt Scotch whiskey drawn from a single traditional oak whisky cask of a single distillation.

If you are interested in getting rid of premature drinker friends, introduce them to whiskey. There are much to learn.

Stereotypes of Chinese People

I have been hearing  A LOT OF stereotypes of Chinese people, both in the US and China. Most of them were told as a joke, while other seem to be believed by a majority of people. The purpose of this article is not to attack or humiliate anyone, but to help people know more about Chinese people.

Stereotype 1 - Chinese people eat everything that moves.
Fact - Some food materials we use do seem frightening to most people (i.e. animal blood, animal guts, chicken feet, etc.), but some food materials have been part of traditional food style of the area that we live in. There are eight culinary traditions in China, and each culinary tradition is distinctly different from another. For example, Hunan style is spicy, while Zhejiang style is sweet. If you are interested in Chinese culinary traditions, click the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cuisine

Stereotype 2 - China has only one ethnic group.
Fact - There are 56 officially recognized ethnic groups. The largest ethnic group is Han, with a population of over 1.18 billion (data of 2005).

Stereotype 3 - Chinese is the official language of China.
Fact - 'Chinese' is not a name of any language. The official language in China is mandarin. Besides mandarin, there are 129 different dialects in China. Some dialects are more popular, such as Kantonese, while others may be spoken by only one ethnic group which has only a little more than 2,000 people.

Stereotype 4 - Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world.
Fact - The grammar system of Chinese is quite simple when compared to other languages. There are 50,000 characters in Chinese, but learning 1,500 to 3,000 characters is sufficient to read newspapers and books.

Stereotype 5 - All Chinese are good at math.
Fact - A large group of Chinese students are excellent at math, but not all Chinese are math geniuses. I myself am TERRIBLE at math.

TO BE CONTINUED...

How to Teach Culture to ESL Students (Part II)

To continue my previous post on teaching culture to ESL students, here are some more topics to teach culture.

5. Money

Have your students bring some bills and coins of their native culture to the class. They can pass these money around and look at them. For younger students, this can be a good chance to teach some basic knowledge about currency, exchange rate, international finance, etc. For more sophisticated students, you can have students introduce the people printed on their native current, and share stories.

6. Tales

Folk tales or tall tales are a great way of bringing culture and customs into classrooms. You can have your students prepare and read some traditional tales of their native culture, in English version of course. By looking at the prominent role and how he handles issues, we can learn about different groups of people. Sometimes, you will find out that some stories, once believed to be unique in one culture, has a similar 'sibling' in another culture.

7. Family

Family is such a classic topic in language lessons that we actually avoid it more often than not. However, we can alternate this topic a little and make it a critical thinking activity. Have different students from the same native culture share their family stories, at the same time students from other cultures have to conclude what is a common view of value within that culture, and what may vary among different families. 

Now, below are some topics about culture that you may want to be decide carefully whether to use in classrooms or not. These topic may work fine with a certain group of students, but others may find it offensive or inappropriate. Always keep in mind of the age, gender, language sophistication, or extent of open-mindedness of your students. 

• Politics
• Wealth
• Religion
• Historical/On-going Conflicts
• Sex/Sexuality
• Stereotypes

Do you see yourself?

Please look at the video first!

Dude Perfect, the group that does trick shots on Youtube, posted a new series of videos, the 'stereotypes' series. I found this particular video hilarious, because I see a lot of my friends being those types of people.

I have a lot of friends who are smugglers, but I wouldn't blame them. Those food in movie theatres are so overcharged, sometimes I bring some snack with me too. I saw online that movie theatres make an 85% profit on overpriced soda, candy, nachos, hot dogs and, of course, popcorn. Movie theatre popcorn has been called one of America’s biggest rip-offs. 

My favourite type was the cold girl, because actually I dated one. After several months of dating, she found another guy to bring her jackets.

The texter is the one I hate the most. It seems like the text message was so important, that he cannot even wait for a little while to read it after the movie is over. Whenever I find someone looking at their cell phone during movie, I always, and I mean always, find a way to remind him, whether a shoulder tap, a low-volume reminder, or a popcorn.

Do you see yourself? Do you see your friends?

How to Teach Culture to ESL Students

Over years of teaching I find that language is not the most difficult thing to teach in ESL classes. Language has patterns, which can be put into order and taught systematically. Culture, on the other hand, is something that a lot of students are interested in, but cannot gain access to. Culture is vague, broad, eclectic, therefore it becomes 'too much to handle' for ESL students.

However, we can break down the abstract notion of 'culture' into different concrete activities.

1. Music

Music is a great way to attract students' interest and induce them to interact with each other. The teacher can start the activity by introducing some popular artists/celebrities, and then ask students to share their favourite artist/celebrity with the class. Different people like different artists, different genre, and also students from different cultural background may introduce some types of music of their own culture.

2. Holiday

Holiday reveals a great deal about native culture. Holidays comes up every month, so there are a lot of opportunities to teach where holidays came from and the story behind each holiday. Again, students can share their favourite holiday in their own cultural background.

3. Food

Food is a perfect topic to teach culture, especially in a city like Los Angeles, where so many different people from different cultures merge together. A food fair can be a good activity to bring students together and introduce the food they like in their own culture and in US.

4. History

The teacher can introduce some significant historical moments or events in US history. Students can also share significant historical stories in their cultural history. You can also ask students the reason why these events are so significant, and what impact it has on modern day life.

To be continued...

My Response on Donald Sterling's Remarks on Anderson Cooper 360

On Monday May 12th, former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, had an interview with CNN's anchor Anderson Cooper. His remarks during the interview, did nothing else than reminding everyone what he did, and who he really is.

During first half of the interview, he was apologetic to his racist remarks that were released weeks earlier, but as the interview continued, when Donald Sterling mentioned that he spoke with Magic Johnson after the tape was released, Anderson Cooper asked, 'Did you apologize?' Donald Sterling's immediate response was hesitation, head tilt, hands raised in the air, shoulder shrug, and the utterance of 'eh...'

Psychological researches have shown that shoulder shrug is usually understood as a typical sign of deceit. It represents that a person is not sure what he was saying. In this case, I believe in the Donald Sterling in the released tape, but I would not believe a single word that came out of his mouth during the interview. This man is a lawyer, and yet he had various legal records of being a racist. Although there were nobody on scene during the interview to instruct Donald Sterling what to say, I still believe that he was saying those words to prevent further punishment.

Later on in the interview, Donald Sterling went on to attack Magic Johnson of not being 'a good example for the children of Los Angeles'. Apparently, Donald Sterling believes that Magic Johnson has 'done nothing for the kids in the LA area'.

In fact, Magic Johnson, the legendary NBA player and survivor of HIV, did not only succeeded on the basketball court, he also started the Magic Johnson Foundation, which donated millions of dollars over the years to raise people's awareness of HIV. Of course he did much more than the foundation, but it seems like Mr. Sterling was too ignorant to notice any of that.

Donald Sterling is a man of racial mindset, without doubt. Whatever he says is not going to change that. He claims that he is asking for forgiveness, yet he does not understand that forgiveness can be earned only when you are truly sorry and sincerely apologize to people you have harmed. I have not seen him sincerely apologizing to the players, the fans, the league, or to Magic Johnson. Furthermore he does not seem to be willing to give up the ownership of the Clippers team. He constantly contradicts with himself, and it only shows one thing -- he is still lying.