Ditzy Geek Performances

Vancouver was such a delight. It was a city of hospitality and diversity. Of good food and good people. I reunited with old friends and made lovely new ones. And one such friend is Prof Brenda Yeoh.

Prof Brenda Yeoh is head of NUS' (National University of Singapore) migration program in the Asia Research Institute. Jason and Lawrence had met her before in their stints at NUS, and they have hyped her as an exceedingly brilliant lecturer and researcher. And so, she was definitely one of the reasons I *had* to go to the Vancouver conference entitled Pacific Worlds in Motion (so it's not a dance troupe, Ayee). I had to travel and meet "the most powerful scholar in Asia" (Santiago 2008). See her mind-boggling bio HERE.

As Madianou (2005) has argued, identity is not an essence, it is a performance. This makes sense. But during my stay there, for some reason, all my performances to impress Brenda kinda fell flat on my face. In my many attempts to perform "cosmopolitan intellectual", my "essence" as ditzy geek just breaks through and ruptures through the (mis)representation.

Consider:
1) So Prof Yeoh delivered a brilliant lecture reviewing research on migration and proposing new directions for future research. She even had a fantastic review of cosmopolitanism from a geography/cities perspective.

Anywayz, right after her lecture we proceeded to the reception in the other room. We were sitting on a table chatting amongst ourselves when suddenly I see Brenda with her bouquet of flowers approaching me. "What could she possibly want?" I thought. Then she said, "Hi. Are you the Cambridge student? I saw a notebook with Cambridge on it in the room. You must have left it."

Impression: absent-minded

2) It was our panel on Philippine media and migration. It was also the closing panel of the entire conference. Lawrence, Jason and I were speaking, with Prof Nora Angeles (Pinay in UBC Urban Planning) as our discussant. Before we went on though, there was a nice coffee break. And they served the yummiest cookies I've had in a while--the type that's freshly baked with the chocolate all oozy. And I had one too many chocolate cookies... to the point that I got a huge chocolate stain on my white shirt. While I wanted to run to my room and get my stain remover, apparently we had no time for retouch. So I moved my nametag from my chest to my tummy. See below.

I thought it best to play it up though, lest Brenda's impression of me as absent-minded would be confirmed. So I opened with a reflexive performance: "Hi. I'm Jonathan (points to nametag in the bottom of shirt). I had too many cookies over the break so I had to patch it up. You see, I was trying to perform cosmopolitanism today. But as the previous speaker has pointed out, it's a fragile identity." In fairness, natawa sila. I didn't know I could pull self-deprecating jokes pala.

Impression: vain fashionista

3) The actual talk went really well. I didn't expect my karaoke project to be welcomed so warmly. I did find it curious though that they laughed in my conclusion. I said something like, "So here it's not just the serious media of news as implicated in issues of inclusion and exclusion, but it's also the flimsy, floopy stuff that media scholars are criticized for studying such as karaoke."

Impression: flimsy, floopy media person

Post-conference, some fellows and grad students came up to me saying that I was charismatic, relaxed, and entertaining. That sounds like a description of a talk show host, not a serious academic.

4) After the conference, UBC's infinite hospitality showed again as Prof Henry Yu took Brenda and several grad students, including myself, to a tour of downtown. And here was my chance then to redeem myself in Brenda's eyes.

Prof Yu was soooo nice that he even treated us to ice cream, where I caught Brenda staring when Jason took this photo:

But the kicker was the dinner. We had dinner in an Indian-run Chinese restaurant called Green Lettuce. It was seriously one of the best Chinese food I've ever had. They substituted Indian spices for 'traditional' Chinese dishes, and it was soooo good. Brenda, Henry, and two students sat on one table, while me and my cohort sat on another. Brenda kept passing the dishes to our side of the table though, and she remarked, "You guys are obviously hungry." By the end of the night, this was their side of their table:

And this was ours:

So embarrassing!

Impression: bottomless pit

5) Then Brenda, to my mind, gave me chances to redeem myself. Having studied geography in Cambridge, she asked me about Cambridge life. Apparently she was at Emmanuel College, which is the 'smart' college. And then she asked me why I chose Corpus Christi College. And I said, "Oh, it's superstition really. My mother's last name is Corpus. So I thought Corpus Christi for luck." She was laughing so hard and remarked, "Oh. I've never heard THAT before!"

Then, in the ride back, she hollered from the front seat, "Jonathan, why did you decide to study in the UK?" And I went, "Ummm... actually... it's just... funding!" Again she laughed so hard. As we were nearing UBC, I attempted to save myself by saying, "Oh! And because UK media schools are qualitative and US media schools are quantitative. But by this time, I think the impression most firmly is: DITZ.

FINAL IMPRESSION: DITZ