I know this is going to be weird, me bringing in US politics here, while also saying that Desk will be a magazine dedicated to Southeast Asia, primarily, and other reaches of Asia where design is concerned so professionals in graphic arts, interiors, architecture and similar fields can know more about who’s around, who’s doing what, and how it’s flowing around the region.
There aren’t many places you can go to find out what’s going on… elsewhere. The good news is, I can assemble things for u to check out. But first, I wanted to talk about how many in the Western hemisphere can misperceive ‘Asia’, lumping it into one giant thing and calling some of us ‘Asian Americans’ for example. Coming over here and seeing just how vastly different, culturally, neighboring countries are here in Southeast Asia where I live–Cambodia, Thailand, Viet Nam are so very distinct, linguistically you cannot kinda get it the way you can if you go from the US to Canada, say, or Ireland to the UK, or whatnot. Nope. It’s out of this world how different they are: but not man people know that if they’re not familiar. And why would they be?
Misunderstanding ‘Asia’
Westerners don’t really know much about here. Myself included, when I arrived, at first. Why would I? It’s not in the books we read in school, even at my fancy school, where we had to do English Lit but not other stuff, like World Lit. I don’t think that was… something I got an opportunity to know about, then. No, I didn’t. You could do that in college, of course.
Nuances are so fascinating to be able to see, up close. Being here a long time, I feel privileged. Immersion means getting acculturated. It means feeling close to the places. A little, anyway. Deeply, not superficially. Thailand’s Songkran, Viet Nam’s Tet, and Cambodia’s Water Festival all have their own fantastic styles and they’re a big part of how distinct each culture truly is. So when I read the news today that people were scanning ballots to see if they were ‘shipped in from Asia’ I was mortified. Really? Asia equals bamboo?
‘…dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia.
Wow. Bamboo on ballots? Really?
Here’s the article: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-widens-its-2020-election-probe-as-it-obtains-records-from-arizona
And on a side note, can you spot what’s wrong with this picture? I hovered on ‘Asia’, and here are the options…:
Good night from PHNOM PENH, lads.