Erev Yom Kippur

Before sundown:

1. Make sure dress is of a properly somber color. God is extra serious today. You should be too.

2. Polish engagement ring to make sure that it shines as brilliantly as possible. It will be on full display. Remember - a cleaner ring is a bigger ring.

3. Book mani/pedi. Be sure to tell the manicurist you want the "I am Not a Stripper French Manicure."

4. Stock up on lots of DVDs and books. In 2 hours, your blood sugar levels will plummet. You will want to fucking kill each other, and thus need plenty of distraction.


After sundown:

1. Apply lipstick. Blot. Apply sheer coat of powder. Reapply lipstick. You are now ready to be kissed by 10,000 acquaintances with weird breath. No, wait. That's you with the weird breath.

2. Pop breath mint.

3. Wrap shawl around torso, as air conditioning is going full blast right now, and your nipples are no doubt fully erect and visible.

4. Help your man inspect his yarmulke for signs of grease and dandruff.

5. Stop trying to decipher how much Yo-yo Ma's going rate is for Kol Nidre.

6. Stop staring at the 16 year old's boob job. This is a day for seeking forgiveness, dammit.

7. Realize that the 16 year old is a dude, and that he has man boobs. Seriously ponder if you are now beyond all redemption.

8. Breath smells weird. Pop another breath mint.

9. Discreetly take out pen and NY Times crossword puzzle

10. Nudge your man awake when his drooling and snoring becomes too apparent.

11. Both of your breaths smell like Soviet-era bathroom stalls. Resolve to not kiss for the next 24 hours.

Yom Kippur

Sunrise:

1. Wake up feeling ravenous. Breath smells like a cat shat in your mouth. Swallow entire can of breath mints. Feel 100% better because of sudden sugar rush.

2. Blood sugar level plummets suddenly.

3. If in room with significant other and sharp objects, leave premises immediately, as you are likely to inflict bodily harm.

4. Discover that being starved and light headed feels almost like being stoned, except munchies are not allowed. Listen to Pink Floyd and The Beatles on repeat.

5. Become very, very depressed.

Sundown:

1. Blood sugar levels now dangerously low. Bring economy pack of breath mints. Suck on them continuously for extra calories.

2. Refrain from wondering about the sex lives of old people. You are here on serious forgiveness type business.

3. Wrap shawl around torso asap, as the old people are now staring at your too-cold pointy nipples.

4. Hunger level at maximum. Trip hardcore on all the pretty temple lights.

5. Refrain from asking significant other to "talk me down, man, talk me down."

6. Shofar sounds. Try not to cry tears of joy.

6. Take dinner rolls out of purse. Share bounty with significant other.

7. Reflect on world and state of affairs, like how you both are so much closer now, having suffered through a famine together.

What's in a name? A lot, it seems.

Growing up in Singapore, I was indifferent to being a Tan. "Tan" is like "Smith" in Singapore - you can't swing a purse without knocking over six of us. 9.5% of Singapore's population shares my last name. Statistically speaking, this means that I could conceivably walk into a party of 50 people in Singapore, and meet 5 other Tans. That is some crazy shit.

But for all it's foibles, being a Tan in Singapore was easy. No one misspelled my name. No one inclined their heads at a 45 degree angle, and told me spell it out, s-l-o-w-l-y, one letter at a time. Being a Tan was easy, identifiable, vanilla. School officials and government clerks would scan my face in a bored, purely perfunctory fashion, before checking off the "Chinese" box on forms. I felt sorry for the East Indian kids with long names like "Shankaranarayanan." The Chinese kids would tease them mercilessly by saying their first names out loud, then replacing last names with a series of ugly, nonsensical gurgles. Not me though. Never me. Being a Tan afforded the comfort and arrogance with never having to prove yourself to the status quo, because you were the status quo.

Then, we moved to California, and my name became a point of interest. Wonder of wonders, for the first time ever, people were actually misspelling my name. I never thought it was possible for three letters to have these many permutations. "Ten". "Tam". "Tang." Some immigrants recount tales of their first American grocery store shopping trip, or the first time they caught sight of sprawling, interconnected highways. My own immigrant experience is distilled in this sing song exchange, repeated ad nauseum "T as in Tom A as in Apple N as in Nancy no not M N as in Nancy yes my last name is Tan with an n." In that naively enthusiastic, guileless, uniquely American way, people would attempt to place me in their world order by saying, "Tan...is that....?"

"Chinese." I would finish for them.

Ah! A smile of relief. All was good in the world. I was figured out. Sometimes a little joke would follow, "That makes you a California Tan!"

Indeed. In the years that would follow, this California Tan started attending college. At house parties and keggers, when the beer was flowing and everyone was swaying gently to Sublime, I'd have my signature socio-political rants with fellow nerds, and declaim things like global warming, the gradual erosion of our civil rights, and the horribly archaic practice of changing one's name when one got married. "It's pathetic," I remember saying. "It's like giving your family background the finger. Does your heritage not count anymore?" The logic was infallible, I felt. If men could segue in and out of the cycles of life without any changes in their name, it stood to reason that women should enjoy that same privilege as well. Later on, as a newbie marketer in corporate America, I watched women around me get married. Half of them kept their last names, citing "their identity" and "professional reasons." I cheered them on silently. If the personal was political, I too was determined to never embody this sexist tradition.

I don't know when I changed my mind. I only know for a fact that it was after I met him. It could have been on one of our long walks up West Avenue, when he'd walk me back to my apartment from a date. Or, it could have been when we were at a party, the two of us laughing at an inside joke to which no one else was privy. Perhaps it happened when we first moved in together, on a lazy Sunday morning, over spinach omelets and the Miami Herald. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to look at myself as part of whole, and not a separate unit. Was I was losing my identity? No. On the contrary, I was with someone who inspired me to be a better version of myself. Sort of like an enhanced, debugged, Bev Ver 2.0. Sharing a name with him stood for partnership and solidarity, not subjugation and sexism. And the most profound symbolism of all - that no matter what differences we may have, no matter difficulties life throws our way - we weather these storms as a team.

I still have three more months of being a Tan. These days, I have come to look upon my name as an old friend, one whose company I sometimes took for granted. We grew up together, discovered the world together, questioned god, the meaning of life, and everything in between. Who I am, what I've seen and done - my old friend has been there for it all, since the beginning, since Day One. I don't give up old friends easily. Thankfully, I won't have to. Tan will still be a part of me. A middle-name, and therefore one that is not front and center. Still, a part of me. No final goodbyes, this one's too hard. More importantly, I'll be saying hello to my new name. Murray. Old Irish in origin, it makes me want to skip and dance. It sounds jolly, like a whole bunch of people laughing out loud, like someone you would have multiple pints and crack dirty jokes with. In the history of his family at least, I'll be the first Chinese Murray. I like seeing our names side-by-side, two worlds coming together. Part of a whole. The same team. One family. I like that.

"Oh dude. Not again."

That was my exact reaction, when news of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) Law School scandal broke. As it happened, I was holed up in my apartment, nursing a cold, and wearing my favorite gray UCI sweatshirt that proclaimed, "Once an Anteater, Always an Anteater."

No stranger to the spotlight, UCI has, in recent years, had what us PR and marketing folks call a "compound fiasco." This is a polite, more dignified manner of saying "cluster f**k." My alma mater has had a string of these PR stink bombs, ranging from the heart rendering (deaths due to mismanagement of it's liver transplant program), to the macabre (the illegal sale of body parts), to the flat out bizarre (surgeons stealing eggs and embryos, and implanting them in unsuspecting women).

The latest scandal hits a little closer home. And by "home," I am referring to the scattered, but ever growing community of UCI alums who graduated from the school of Criminology or Poli Sci. Back then, when OC ska-punk still ruled the air waves, and Gwen Stefani was still her bindi and midriff phase, the graduating class of 1999 preoccupied itself with three things: How to sneak pizza from the cafeteria, who had the best fake ID, and why in god's name didn't UCI have a law school already? In between tequila binges and LSAT cramming sessions, one of us would inevitably get a gleam in his eye. "Man, if they opened up a law school here, my life would be so much easier. Who the fuck wants to go to law school in Ithaca?" My friend wound up dissing Cornell for Columbia (he heard the girls were hotter), and went on to become a high powered IP attorney for MoFo. He moved back to Southern California recently. The winters got to him.

So, what is UCI waiting for? A non-controversial dean, it looks like. Just when it looked like Eriwn Chereminsky was going to be officially instated for the position of UCI's first ever law school, Chancellor Michael Drake pulled the rug out from under him. Drake cited discomfort with Chereminksy's left-wing op-ed articles, the most recent of which was scathing rebuke of Alberto Gonzalez. Chereminksy has since crowed to the press that Drake hold told him, "I knew you were liberal, but I didn't realize how controversial you'd be." And so, in a unilateral, highly drake-conian fashion, Chereminsky's appointment was rescinded.

The media backlash continues to rage like a midsummer fire through California chaparral. It is widely speculated that Drake was under pressure from real estate mogul Donald Bren, an avowed conservative who has contributed $20 million to to hire top scholars for UCI's law school. Bren's support for Republican candidates reads like a who's-who list, and includes former President George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, former California governor Pete Wilson, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Drake denies allegations that Bren placed pressure on him to rescind Chereminsky's appointment, stating that his decision not to hire professor Chereminsky "had nothing to do with academic freedom or the infringement of academic freedom in any way."

Uh, what?

This has everything to do with academic freedom. The very definition of academic freedom allows for current faculty members to express their opinions openly and freely in public forums, without fear of censure or corrective action from the institution. The key is, faculty members have to show restraint, and must not claim to speak on behalf of the institution. For all of Chereminsky's well-known track record as a liberal raconteur, he has in no way overstepped academic policy as outlined by the UC Regents. In addition (after looking at my fiance's old law school casebooks on our bookshelves) - hello? The man is a renowned Constitutional Law scholar! If anyone knows how to successfully navigate the treacherous waters of church versus state (or in this case, personal opinion versus academic policy), it'd be this guy. In the immortal words of Smokey from the stoner cult classic, "Friday", Drake done fucked up the rotation.

The saddest part of this latest debacle, is that UCI's plans for a 2009 launch of their new law school has been blown off course, and possibly, derailed. It remains to be seen what corrective action UCI will take, and whether the legal luminaries of our time will be permanently deterred from seeking faculty positions. So far, the UC Regents and current faculty have done an admirable job of calling for review and accountability. I'd like to see fellow Anteaters, past and present to do the same. Start a petition, write your congressperson, raise awareness wherever you can. Protest on Ring Road, or chain yourself to the railings outside Bren Events Center. They took away our football team. Let's not let them take away our law school.

"You can't be serious."

"I don't know, it looks pretty cheesy."

"Do I get to see J. Lo's bare ass in this one, cuz that's the only way you'll get me to go."

"Fuuuuck no."

Those were the reactions I got, when I announced that I wanted to see "El Cantante." The strange thing was, I knew exactly what I was in for. I knew J Lo was going to suck (evidence: her entire body of work), that Marc Anthony was going overdo his musical numbers in lieu of actual acting, and that the movie was going to focus on Hector Lavoe's sex and drug addiction. A heady combo, sure. But the lowest common denominator nonetheless.

So I went, and I went alone. I did this, because I had a feeling that my desire to see El Cantante, was directly correlated with my conflicting feelings about leaving Miami. Was this accurate? In a word, yes.

El Cantante is thin on the plot, with heavy reliance on music, color, and sweeping cinematography to underscore emotion. Nuance is conveyed by a wisp of cigarette smoke, by a slightly off-frame shot. Urgency abounds too - in the congo drums, the honks of New York taxicabs, in the roar of a stadium packed to capacity, all screaming out for a singularly moving sensual experience. There are glimpses of normalcy in the cobblestone streets of San Juan where people gather to hear a barbershop quartet, where a beleaguered mother comforts her crying son.

And above all - color. Color is the principal character in this movie. There is something almost wanton and orgiastic about it. Splashed across the screen, shimmering on girls' dresses, leaping out from palm fronds against blue Puerto Rican skies. Color was aggressive and in-your-face. No insipid Marriott hotel room watercolors for the producers. These were bright, incandescent, tropical. El Cantante understands the allure that is created when color, music, and sex intersect. And once I realized this, I realized exactly what I would miss about Miami.

This is a city like no other. Say what you will about it's foibles (and I have) - it is undeniably, unavoidably, unerringly beautiful. "You hear this? This is our heartbeat," said the Cuban guy at a salsa club whom I danced with, on one of my first nights here. "These drums, this is Miami." I never forgot that statement. It was so true. It still is. I grew into my own person here, I met some of my best friends here, I fell in love here. And come January, I will be getting married here. But the feeling of saturation, of sensory overload, of watching the sun rise, and seeing this city slowly throb to life - that was why I moved here. Yes, a city like no other. Certainly not like Orange County.

Where Miami's landscape is arresting and in your face, Orange County's is reserved, drab, understated. Huntington and Laguna Beach have a special place in my heart, for balmy summer nights and fish tacos, for bonfires and friends' laughter. But they never clamored for my attention the way Miami did. At a time in my life when I was restless and hungry for environmental stimulation, living in Orange County felt like a noose around my neck. I didn't want to get that acquainted with different shades of beige. I wanted noise! Music! Bright colors! And so I moved.

Four years later, I visited Orange County again. And for the first time, with my fiance. I was unprepared for how visceral that experience was. Standing in the sand on Laguna Beach with the roar of the Pacific Ocean, watching the sun dip lower and lower behind the jagged cliffs - I remembered what it felt like to dip my toes in the cold, cold water - even in 90 degree weather. I relaxed in the easy smiles of the people, loved how my tofu-mushroom burger was topped with fresh salsa and avocado. I closed my eyes and listened for the distinctive sound of waves breaking close to the shore, so close that you were reminded of how small and insignificant you were in the big picture. It took four years of being away from Orange County, to realize just how very breathtaking my old home was.

Next year, when my fiance becomes my husband, we're packing our bags and moving to Austin. People have varied reactions to this. "Uh...Texas???" is the most common one. "You'll see," I say. I hate the state of Texas, but Austin is a different story. Austin, I love. I love Austin because it is curious hybrid of Miami and Orange County - cities that have a special place in my heart. Like Miami, Austin is colorful and arresting. Austin, with it's tiled store fronts, guitar sculptures, and rockabilly punk rockers. Congo drums may not punctuate the landscape, but snares do. There is live music everywhere, every night, and I cannot wait to delve into it. It stands proudly as a bastion of liberalism in a rabidly red state, gives the finger to the rest of the good ol' boys, and that warms the cockles of my little pinko-Commie heart. And, like Orange County, there is hilly terrain. There are creeks and hiking trails, and green belts lush and spacious. It gets cold in the winter, cold enough to have to wear boots and a coat, cold enough to turn your cheeks pink. I already have plans for the cold. I want to sit in front of our fireplace and read. Or, more likely, I want to go drunken caroling over the holidays, punk rock style of course.

That is the funny thing about landscapes. You get sick of them. You grow bored, get tired. You want out. You clamor for something more colorful, more "you." The truth is, landscapes don't change. You do. So, I wonder what moving to Austin means to me. I think it means I'm growing up. I think it means that I will always, on some level, be restless. That I need the distractions of the city and nightlife to keep me sane. But that I need the creeks, the green, the good hearts as well. I think it means that I'm seeking balance. I'd also like to think, as the bumper stickers say, that I'm "keeping Austin weird."