Linsomnia

Title hints pretty much about what I'm gonna write in this post.

During a couple of days ago, it started with Yahoo news on an Asian American guy named Jeremy Lin. He played in NBA league, New York Knicks and kind of happened to show his skills and basketball court vision during a few minutes in Knicks Vs Celtics. Since then he appeared solidly in consequent games in Vs New Jersey Nets, Utah Jazz, and Washington Wizards. All games ended up Knicks consecutive wins after Lin showed up. After 3 games, there's been linsanity overwhelming in New York City. I watched the three games, of course I was late in catching up the news and the only resort I had was in Youtube. From all these games, he caught my impression of "being awesome". Then inevitably comes in reviewers view of his being total fluke or his being having prolonged and yet hidden basketball skills without any opportunities in NBA before. One game that will shine the spotlight on him even more was Knicks Vs Lakers. Kobe Bryant, one of the star players in NBA, from Lakers made the game even more interesting because this is Kobe, the star, who Lin will face in his breakout; the game, the testament to show if Lin could finally live up to everyone expectation or come down to earth after everyone overrating hype.

I myself was overwhelmed by the news and decided to watch the show live on Friday evening at 8:00pm. My post date here indicates that I'm writing this in Feb 12. The game was on Feb 10. So the result was officially announced. The bottom line? The game was fantastic, entertaining, thrilling and what? It's Lintertaining. Not to mention your heart pounded quickly every time Lin dribbled the ball near the arc. Was he gonna shoot 3 points? Was he gonna dribble, go in the defensive pack, lay the ball in the net? Was he gonna pass the ball? It was like you're enjoying every movement of the players in the game.

The last game I watched was Knicks Vs Minnesota. Lin was not stellar in that game, all of his shots seemed to fall short of the rim. The only time I got excited was 4th quater when there's minimum point they can take on before the buzzer sounded. There comes a savior Novak whose 3 points shot literally saved the knicks to extra time. Then comes Lin controlling the ball, dribbling near the half of the court, waiting the time to pass, and then he swerved his guarding defense, rushed into the paint, and shot. His ball didn't go in. But Minnesota was called foul for smashing the ball Lin carried with a force which accidentally dunked Lin body to the floor. Lin got a free throw. He missed the first one but got the second one which was apparently winning point for Knicks and this win made the Knicks 5 consecutive winning streak. Interesting phenomenon here is audience turnout in this game was the 4th largest in Minnesota stadium history. A part of the reasons is something to do with Linsanity? Every basketball fans know who is Jeremy lin by now.

I've been reading a lot lately, Linsanity I must confess. Watching youtube several times, reading comments and not only Lin is entertaining to me, comments and every Linsanity debate is also fun to read. I don't know if it's something to do with nowadays kids fighting over the internet or is it really a Linsensation?

Over going through those comments and extrapolating people's reaction to preconceived impression of ethnicity, I come to think of a few questions and reflection;

I enjoyed watching Tiger Woods playing golf, Michael Jordon dunking basketball, O'Sullivan neatly clearing the 146 snooker table, Ma Ling agilely playing ping pong, Russell Peter rambling his anecdotes hilariously and so on. As for me, it represents Individual talents and their inspirational achievements for generations ahead. Just because Ma Ling is chinese, he was championship doesn't mean all Chinese are automatically under the category of potential ping pong candidate. If they wanted to, they have to try. It seems to me that people, including me, enjoy living in a moment where we transform ourselves into those high achieving celebrities for a while. Those moments would be surreal. Then we come back to our real life and live on. If those moments become frequent and you can't count how many times you have transformed yourself artificially or in your imagination, you eventually develop a syndrome "He's Chinese, I'm Chinese, that's why I'm proud of being Chinese". No one likes to assume a scoundrel life for a second, no one likes to experience a swindler life, feel good stories are alive only when they transform you high.

By the time Yao Ming was a representative of China basketball player in Houston Rockets, aka, China Ambassador, most of the Asians must feel like "Who told you Asians can't play basketball?" Yao Ming playing basketball actually didn't represent entire population of China can play basketball. Neither did Ma Ling championship in table tennis to all chinese people as well. I believe in pride of being a particular guy, girl, school, university, place, and so on. The way I took from those situation is their achievements do not represent automatic license for us to become a potential follower of their paths.

When Yao Ming played basketball, chinese look-alike people behaved like I can also play basketball, making it like he's gonna be next Yao Ming. Chinese look-alike? Yeah...people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore ..... you can envision every corner of the globe, there will be china town. But then when Jeremy Lin became popular, they claim he's from Taiwan, not from China. I was like... Just have some perspective. All I'm saying is it is individual talent, their achievements don't represent all taiwanese can play basketball like Lin.

While Russell Peters is really good stand-up comedian, I can tell you that we all asians feel like we like Russell Peters, we're proud of being asians. But then when you visit India and see a lot of indian people are dirty and not really hygienic, then we claim we are chinese, we're not indians.

But then when China is now world leading country in economy, apparently the biggest creditor to US, stashing US greens in their coffers, we all wonder if this Aquarius era is awaiting for Asians to rise. Literally all products these days are made in China. One good thing about is you can get everything cheap made in China. Without consistent cheap labor, and mass-production, I honestly don't think people all over the world can buy iPhone less than a few hundred dollars. Seems like China is world economy powerhouse while US is technology powerhouse. In such instance, every asian feel like we asians are rising stars. We're gonna dominate the world in every sector. Every asians, even Koreans, Japanese, Indians, or remotely asians, Australians come into the world stage. But then when there was a terrible news in Xinhua; apparently the driver ran over the kid on the street and nobody gave a damn about the dying kid on the street, everybody was like that's communist chinese, they are really bad. Chinese don't have etiquette. And then they claim they are Koreans, not chineses. They are taiwanese, not from China.

What does it tell me? We all want to live in or transform ourselves into those feel-good moments when someones achieve in their lives. What's even more? When their ethnicity becomes exactly the same, it's like season-pass for us to claim I'm from "whatever".

In such situation, if opportunities come in, I go out into the space and claim the other aliens from outerspace that "I myself come from the Earth". You know why? Because it will be the greatest transformation of myself telling aliens that how far I, human, have evolved and achieved on this planet called the Earth.