Becoming very conscious of race lately. No matter how blind the society tries to be towards colours, people still look at each other as of different races, different cultures. I'm hanging around with too many chinese people, which is absolutely fine with me. I wonder how I'll feel when I go to a place with demographics like those in the midwest, or for that matter, anywhere else except for the West Coast. I don't have this feeling of I'm a different colour when I speak to non-Asians, but I'm pretty sure many of them see me first as a Chinese before anything else. It's like watching some sitcom/ drama, say Friends, and an Asian dude shows up. Not too usual eh? Summer classes. The demographics is even more skewed, 3/4 of the class are Asians, even in my music class. In labs, most if not all the undergrad lab assistants (fly carers, solution makers, autoclave people) are Asians. Someone who's obviously very sensitive to this high Asian population asked me why only Asians want lab jobs. I don't have a good answer except that maybe other people can find more interesting jobs, and that Asians are more likely to take summer classes and stay in San Diego in summer. She wasn't convinced at all.

Went to a picnic with my aunt's family and her colleagues. Her Chinese female colleagues. There are a lot of them. They are all so similar, stay in the same area with the same good schools, have young kids who need to be sent to many different classes everywhere.. Anyway, we had a picnic in a park on July 4th. The Americans next to us bbq-ed strips of meat. The latinos next to them made burgers and hotdogs and chicken. We had a potluck of all sorts of complex Chinese goodies. 粽子, 担担面, 凉粉, 素什锦, 绿豆汤, 杏仁豆腐.. Ok, you get the idea. Food is so much better than burgers, but it's not anything they'll appreciate. Just like how many Chinese never accepted eating raw vegetables.. There is definitely a culture difference that cannot be eliminated.

Last point. This person was saying how she doesn't feel like she's going 'home' when she's going back to her country and visiting parents and friends and so on cos she has no plans to stay at where 'home' is and work there. There's this conflict between integration and preserving the difference. How much should the society force integration and how much should individuals/ peoples retain their own characteristics?

4th of July. My first in this country. Fireworks are not that spectacular. Fireworks festival last yr in Singapore was much more impressive. But this country has really a lot of nationalistic songs. They can last through that 20min of fireworks. And I didn't realise that 76 trombones is an American song. Went to Coronado to watch fireworks. At a resort. There's a guy entertaining everyone before the fireworks and he has a fantastic voice. So had fun listening to him sing with his guitar and had more fun roasting marshmellows making smores =)