Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Chagrin
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I used to find the ads for St. Mary's emergency room playful. The billboards show a person about to have a comical accident, and promise emergency room care within thirty minutes. These promises hurt health care workers.
Another source of chagrin: a critic took a column about Indian media as evidence that all I write about is "not being white." Wow! I had no idea that there was nothing more to my ethnicity and culture than a lack of whiteness! This explains so much! Also, all feminists have penis envy!
I can understand a person getting sick of the Amy Tan stuff - "oh, I am so torn and bicultural" over and over gets old. So I started out with those columns, and now I'm pausing those for TV reviews ("service journalism") and other light material. For a person to mistake "Bollywood shows you might enjoy" for "The Mistress Woman Warrior Joy Luck Spices Club" betrays a stunning lapse in cognition.
Oh yeah. The main chagrin: that I let her get to me before realizing her complaint was [expletive denoting worthless matter].
