"Very Bad Consequences"

July 24, 1959: Richard Nixon and Nikita Krushchev tangle on the merits of capitalism vs. communism in the “Kitchen Debate.” Visiting Moscow to open a national exhibition promoting American culture, vice-president Nixon joined Soviet leader Krushchev on a tour of displays of modern American homes. Krushchev dismissed the American wares as no better than their Soviet counterparts, and turned the conversation to politics when he slammed the U.S. Congress’s Captive Nations Resolution condemning Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. By the time they arrived at a model kitchen, the volume of the debate had spiked, with Nixon criticizing Krushchev’s constant threats about his nuclear arsenal, and Krushchev ominously warning of “very bad consequences.” As a rare outburst of genuine animosity in front of the world press, the debate made front-page news back home. [Image Source]

What I find revealing about this photograph is that Nixon is really debating Krushchev, while Krushchev is standing pugnaciously, eventually to warn of "very bad consequences."

It is the West which is always ready to "debate" and "negotiate." The rest of the world, if given the chance, simply wants to dominate.

And Brezhnev is in the background, watching, assessing, figuring out his American adversary.

Here's another:

Mexico in France (and Elsewhere): Email Interaction With Tiberge of Gallia Watch

From Daniela Rossell's 2002 book Ricas y Famosas: Mexico 1994-2001

Tiberge at Gallia Watch replies to my post (I sent her an email asking her what she thought) with these remarks. I've posted my reply below that.

Tiberge: Once a few years ago, I complained about the fact that the Indian Army was marching at the head of the Bastille Day parade. Two French readers disagreed, one saying it didn't bother him, and the other praising the quality of the Indian Army. You can review the post, and the comments:

Bastille Day, 2009 - Honoring India

The practice of a "guest star" is not new, and not always innocuous. Your information from The Telegraph seems adequate. I can't add much, except that when Sarkozy came to power in 2007 he changed the nature of most French patriotic holidays from France-oriented to "multi-culti" or "internationalist". Last year the big issue was having the Algerian Army march in the parade. I seriously objected to that, as did many others. Compared to Algeria, Mexico does not seem to be such a faux pas.

However, there were, according to Le Monde, raised eyebrows when it was learned Mexico would be honored. This was because of the corrupt nature of the Mexican government, its involvement in drugs and its mafia-style tactics.

Le Mexique, hôte problématique de la France pour le 14-Juillet

I find this a bit odd since France, though not corrupt in the same way, is also something of a mafia state when one considers Socialist theft, immoral permissiveness with regard to crime and criminals, and unfettered immigration for the purpose of replacing the French population. Mexico is corrupt, but is France much better? It was surprising to read such a condemnation of Mexico from Le Monde.

My post was done in a light-hearted way. I did not take time to delve into Mexico's presence. If I can find the time, I'll add an update with a more thorough explanation of why Mexico was a bad choice. You did not make too much of Mexico; it was probably I who did not take it seriously enough.

As for the falconers, I was just commenting on the beauty of the image, the discipline, the bird itself. Possibly "formidable" would have been more precise.

My reply:

Mexico is really far more corrupt, at every level, than is France. I lived there as a student for two years. The police would stop you if they felt they could get something, and savvy Mexicans would give them bribe money to be left alone.

Politicians were completely mistrusted by the public. They were extremely wealthy over the monies that they could and would solicit through bribes, phony projects, and extortion.

No-one could really say how wealthy Mexicans became wealthy.

The elite: professors, businessmen, artists, writers, etc. would actually say that they encourage the poor to go to America and to "get their due."

Mexicans believed that the US "stole" their land in southern Texas, Arizona, California and other neighboring states, although they were gained through legitimate wars, often started due to Mexican aggression.

Murders and assassinations were getting frequent by highway robbers. Men in expensive cars were frequently hijacked for money, unless they were also stripped off their clothes(!) and their cars.

The ordinary Mexicans know all this, but they are so involved in their families, trying to make a living, watching American TV, hating America (blaming America, as their leaders would want them to), and inhabiting another "Orwellian" sphere, that they are willing to accept all this.

This is Canada, This is Multiculturalism. We Can Speak Whatever Language We Want!

[Photo By: KPA]

The Multi-Culti Smorgasbord at Whole Foods Market in Mississauga

Canadian Flags are decorating the store for the upcoming Candada Day on July 1. My table is the one where the chair is visible, at the bottom left of the photograph.

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I was calmly getting ready to drink my coffee and work on my computer during one morning at the Mississuaga Whole Foods Market when a woman sat at the table in front of me and started to talk in some Asian language (I knew it was from the Indian sub-continent, but I couldn't identify it). Instead of telling her to stop talking so loudly (actually, to stop talking at all in that alien language), I started to bump my chair against hers. I did this partly because I was mad, and partly because she was talking in another language besides the English we speak in Canada, and I wasn't going to give her the courtesy of talking to her. She moved a little more forward, and kept on talking. I repeated the action. This got her attention, and she looked up and said "Excuse me" or some such thing.

"I don't like to hear your ugly language," I said to her.

"You don't have to listen to it," she replied.

I started to laugh. "So you agree it is ugly!"

"I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did!"

She went back to her cellphone.

I resumed bumping her chair.

"Can you stop!"

"Well, if you talk a little quieter!"

She knows the "language" of multiculturalism.

"This is Canada. This is multiculturalism. We can talk what we want!"

"No, this is Canada. We speak English!"

I continued to bump her chair.

She got up and left.

Soon after, a manager of some kind came over. He shook my hand.

"Hello, I'm Kevin. I understand you had a problem with one of my workers."

"Oh, I didn't realize she was your employee. Well, that makes it worse then, since she should know better. She was talking loudly in a foreign language and disturbing the peace, as I was drinking my coffee. She was also taking up the table for actual paying patrons."

K: I'm going to have to ask you refrain from treating my employees in such a manner in the future.

Me: Look, I apologize to you, and I don't like behaving like this, but what about her? What are you going to do about her?

K: I'll talk to her later. But, everyone can talk whatever language they want.

Kevin was mimicking the woman's response. He really does believe this!

Me: No, this is Canada. We are in an English-speaking country. We talk in English here.

Me: Also, how do I know what she's saying? She may be saying things about me, about you, that are negative or uncomplimentary. She could be maligning me. What are you going to do about her?!

K: Yes, well, she is very upset. She was on an international call.

I looked at him, and started to laugh. I think he began to realize that everything I was saying made sense. This woman was on a cellphone to a foreign country (probably Sri Lanka), holding a loud conversation in her foreign language in a Canadian restaurant.

Kevin had sat down, and seemed to want some kind of interaction with me, so I told him a little about myself, that I come to Whole Foods to have coffee and to use my laptop in this pleasant environment, that I take photographs, that I observe visually my surroundings, and that I am working on a book called Reclaiming Beauty. He seemed interested about my book, and was actually quite insightful, saying that probably materialism had a lot to do with the unattractive clothes people are wearing).

I then asked him: "Are you originally from Mississauga?"

K: Yes, Scarborough, actually.

Me: Do you still live there?

K: Well, we moved when I was younger to Markham, then to Halton. I've also lived in Ottawa. But I live around here now. My parents owned their home in Scarborough when I was growing up.

I looked at him and laughed again.

Scarborough used to be a middle-to-working class white English borough of Toronto. But, eventually, South Asian and African immigrants started to take over. White flight changed the neighborhoods, leaving them to immigrants from India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Somalia, etc.

What Kevin was talking about is the white flight from the Toronto boroughs, where families started to move further out into smaller towns to avoid this invasion of foreign, non-English-speaking, people.

Whole Foods Market, Square One, Mississauga
Photo By: KPA

Whole Foods' junior staff is almost exclusively non-white. It is as though the managers decided that they were the only kinds of staff they would hire for that level (Out of charity? cheaper labor? Mandated by employment affirmative action policies? A combination of all that, I presume). But ALL the managers are white. I wonder if Kevin had a say in hiring this Sri Lankan woman, as though to expiate for his sins of his early days when he (must have) felt bitter and angry at having to leave Scarborough to get away from the Third World invasion of his home town.

I felt his relief as I was saying these things. Clearly no-one else has said, or dares to say, such things to him. His Orwellian world was temporarily cleared with our brief conversation.

At the end, I said, "I apologize to you for disrupting the peace of your lovely place. I don't usually behave this way, but this woman was clearly getting away with a lot. I'm not sorry for how I acted towards here. She had no desire to behave with courtesy, and with due respect to the patrons around her, and this is especially grievous as she is an employee of this store."

I then showed him a photograph I took of peonies on sale in the store (I've posted it below) and how one of the staff had given me the number for the marketing department at their head office to submit the photograph. I told him I take photographs as a way of recording my environment.

"That's a good shot," said Kevin. "So you observe things around you."

"Yes. And so you see, I do like this place. I want to show it in its best light!"

He shook my hand, and left.

Addendum:

I returned today (the next day), and there was a large group of Chinese, obviously there to "celebrate" Father's Day. They were interacting in Chinese. I put on my headphones and listened to music as I worked on my laptop and drank my coffee. I'm avoiding confrontations now, unless it's absolutely necessary. I feel that people are realizing what they're having to put up with. I think that I have more on my side than is apparent.

How wonderful Canada is! All kinds of people can just show up and sit in civilized, clean, pleasant coffee houses and restaurants and enjoy the good food and environment, and the pleasant holidays. And no-one will tell them to quiet down, or to speak English, or to follow the country's customs, or, God forbid, to be Canadian.

What do they have to offer in their glorious multiculturalism other than to pull us back to their failed societies and cultures, which they fled to come and live the good life here?

How long before we become another of their failures?

Whole Foods Pink Peonies
[Photo By: KPA]

Ann Coulter: Racist - Part Dos

I wrote a post last week on Ann Coulter's new book without having read the book, started reading it, bought it, or had any other physical contact with the book.

That is a minor crime.

To rid my self of the "hypocrite" label, I bought the book two days ago from my local Chapters/Indigo bookstore. It was the only copy in the store, and I assume it really was the only copy in the store. Coulter's label of "racist" goes a long way here in Canada.

In any case, I am already into the third chapter, and it is a pleasure to read a book by a witty, intelligent, and normal human being, who hasn't caught the liberal bug of distorting words, information and reality.

Here are a few quotes (only a few, I don't want to give away the book!) that are especially Coulteresque, and I am only in the third chapter!

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Chapter 1, Page 9:

Americans ought to be suspicious about being incessantly told fences "don't work." It's like being told wheels don't work...The NEw YOrk Times explains, for example: "Would be immigrants still find ways over, under, through and around [fences]." Wheels still find ways to bend, break, or spring leaks.

[...]

Even Republicans who pretend to want a secure border are always telling us fences won't work. The NEW WAY of stopping tubs from overflowing is to use mops and blow-dryers. Sure, we can always turn to water off, but that won't work because it could always spring a leak. Let's just keep mopping.

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Chapter 2, p. 13:

Why not take in immigrants who are better than us, instead of immigrants who are worse than us?

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Chapter 2, p. 22

Leftists have no trouble adopting the persona of an oppressed Third World person. The only identity they have difficulty assuming is: "American."

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Chapter 2, p. 23:

At least liberals have a clear mission and know what they're fighting for: Their plan is to turn America into another Third World hellhole, where the two parties are the Chuck Schumer Democratic Party and the Nancy Pelosi Democratic Party. Republicans can't think past the next election. They need campaign cash, and their big donors want cheap workers now. We're lucky if we can get Republicans to think past their kids' summer jobs. Karl Rove praises illegal immigration, saying: "I don;t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas. How about one illegal alien gets to stay if Karl Rove goes?

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Chapter 2, p. 23:

Democrats love the "browning of America" because they need the votes; liberals want it because they seek the destruction of America; and certain business interests support it because they want the cheap labor.

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Chapter 2, p. 28-29:

In the section: Nowhere Left to Go:

The Third World invasion being aggressively hidden by the media will never make it to Park Avenue or Nob Hill. The price is being paid exclusively by ordinary Americans. Almost alone in the world, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America has been a haven for minorities, women, children, plants, and animals. None have fared so well in any other culture. As the lawyer for two Iraqi men charged with child rape in Nebraska said, America's views about women and children "put us in the minority position in the world." Once America is gone, there won't be anyplace left to go.

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Chapter 3, p. 31:

With immigration, the most powerful forces in our culture are all on the same page - the Democrats, the rich, Washington lobbyists, Republican consultants, and money-grubbing churches. Even stalwarts on other conservative issues, like the Wall Street Journal, are with the Left on mass immigration from the Third World. When it comes to society's rich and powerful, immigration is the great unifier. The only ones opposed to fundamentally transforming this country into some other country are the American people.

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I found a piece by Larry Auster on Ann Coulter published at VDare, where he writes:

I acknowledged that [Coulter] had written several articles on immigration, but pointed out that they were all on illegal immigration and amnesty:

“Note, March 28, 2010: I just came upon this entry, and saw my prediction that Coulter would not revisit the [legal immigration] issue again. So I did a search of her articles at AnnCoulter.com. There were a few columns, almost all from 2006-2007, criticizing amnesty. There was no further column mentioning America’s existing immigration law—particularly the 1965 Immigration Act which opened America’s borders to the world—and how it is transforming America racially, culturally, politically, and economically. So my prediction in June 2007 was correct. After coming out of the immigration closet for one second, after 13 years of stone cold silence, Coulter went back into it again and has never re-emerged. In her entire career as a prominent conservative commentator who is known for saying whatever she wants to say, no matter how outrageous or politically incorrect, her sole contribution to the immigration debate (as distinct from the no-brainer illegal immigration debate) has been a single column.”
[end of March 2010 note.]

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Coulter's book, as she says in the Fox News interview below, is almost exclusively about legal immigration, and how that is changing America. She goes through one chapter, the first chapter, outlining illegal immigration, but talks about the adverse effects of legal immigration for the rest of the book. Here is what Coulter says about the change of focus, although it sounds like a change in topic:

I found out, which is why this book became this book -- I wasn't going write a book about immigration. I was going to have a few chapters on immigration, and I had already written two chapters for the book I was planning on writing. Then I go to look up some basic, obvious facts that most Americans will be shocked the government refuses to tell us, like how many foreign born are in our prisons? How many are in state prison, how many are in federal prison, and what crimes are they in for, and what countries do they come from? Oh, no, no, no, no, read chapter seven and you will see it was written through tears of frustration and rage. That was when I called my publisher and said this is going to be a different book. You can't believe what I'm finding here.

The full interview is below:

Ann Coulter: Racist

Ann Coulter was on Hannity of Fox News recently, where she discusses her new book:


The subtitle is: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.

Coulter is her usual, feisty, self, but she will always get her battle slightly wrong, since she is fighting primarily with those "evil liberals" rather than the issues at hand. I think that is the curse of conservatives, who, rather than sticking to their principles, and setting the agenda for the battle, are sucked in to confronting liberal ideas, and perennially fighting to straighten those lopsided views rather than presenting their own.

Nonetheless, she has made, from the interview, a good and noble effort to uncover the underbelly of immigration, and specifcially the un-American nature of this immigration agenda.

Below is the video of her interview with Hannity.



Hannity starts off by telling her right at the beginning that immigration isn't a "partisan" issue, nor a liberal issue, but, says Hannity, "We have two parties that don't want to solve the problem, otherwise the fence that works at the White House and in gated communities, as you point out, would be built."

Coulter: Right, not only that, but there would be a change to the legal immigration...My book is about legal immigration. The Somalis leaving to fight with ISIS, those are legal immigrants. The Mali immigrants raping little girls, those are legal immigrants. The immigrants going on welfare, at rates far above the native rates, committing crimes at what appears to be far above the native rate - the government won't tell us.

Never has a country been transformed like this. Never in world history. And it has been done as a express plan by the left, because they want voters more favorable to liberal policies.

It is striking how all of the most avid immigration activists, and there are hundreds, probably thousands of groups, just working overtime to bring in the poorest of the poor to live in America. They're always the people who don't particularly like America. They call us racist, sexist, homophobic.

Why are they bringing these poor Third Worldists here? It's because they want to transform America, because they hate America, and Republicans aren't stopping them because the big donors want the cheap labor.

So, it boils down to greed.

But, liberals are far more "principled" than that. Yes, one effect of immigration my be cheap labor, but the essence of immigration is equality.

America is open to all. It is a country which prides itself on equality of peoples. Its original population is made of immigrants too! Remember all those whites who fled, immigrated, to a new land to find new opportunities?

Since Coulter clings on to (however subconsciously) the primarily economic and materialistic view of immigration, her conclusions will always be partially wrong (or partially right).

All cultural and social ideas, for them to take hold and germinate, have to hold more than economic and materialistic bases, and even liberals follow that premise. In their cases, it is equality that trumps everything.

Everyone is equal in immigrating to America. Everyone is equal in being free in America. Everyone is equal in living in America.

If people fall short, then the rules can be changed. If they don't qualify for legal immigration, then they can get special political or ethnic considerations. If they cannot live upto the standards of middle class Americans, then they can get special government benefits. If they don't feel "free," then the regulations and laws of America can be changed to accommodate them.

Coulter understands the deep and dire implications of this decades-long immigration policy, and especially that which brings people in from the Third World. But, she hasn't yet realized that this has become an American - Democrats or Republicans - issue, and that attacking liberals (Democrats) isn't the way to solve it.

Here is another insight by Coulter. If she goes on in this line, she might be able to make the correct conclusions, unless she capitulates as various groups wear her down with their accusations of "hate."

Coulter: First World countries, developed countries, countries where the immigrants do not go on welfare and commit crimes, they are specifically being discriminated against. So we can drag in the poorest of the poor to instantly go on welfare.

Hannity: You know you will be called racist.

Coulter: Well as I say, that's the only argument they have. But they'd prefer not to debate me at all, but if they have to they'll call me a racist.

Coulter finishes off the interview citing her final chapter where she provides solutions to the problem, which starts with closing off the borders, literal (physically closing off the Mexican border) or political (withholding or denying visas and other travel permits to America).

I don't want to be too harsh on Coulter. She is doing the best she can with the data that she has managed to discover, and about which she is shocked. She changed the original topic of her book (she didn't specify what that was) to this one as she discovered more about immigration during her research. As she goes on more speaking tours, and as she starts getting the wrath of the un-American, anti-American groups, be they white, Third World, Hispanic, black, immigrants (there are many), she will fine-tune, I am sure, her discussion of the book.

She should read Lawrence Auster's Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism and Huddled Cliches: Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments That Have Opened America’s Borders to the World (although I suspect she has), and present those ideas to the mainstream world. She will be called a racist by the usual suspects, but since that has already happened to her, I'm sure she has developed a thick skin. She has acquired her worst label, now she is free to go on with her ideas.

I should send her my experience in the Canadiana Room, and my post on the Third World, Untouchable Goddess Meena Chopra: Meena Chopra's Ephemera and David Hook's Tangible: Art in the Multiculturalism Era

Meena Chopra: Poetess, Artist, Oriental Goddess Par Excellence

A Sino-Draconian Mission

This unflattering portrayal of author Amy Chua
is posted in the the British leftist newspaper the Guardian

The paper labels the image with a quote from Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

"The solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child"

Incriminating imagery of a Western-culture denouncing non-white in a leftist newspaper? Chua is too much even for the Guardian.

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[Cross-posted at Camera Lucida]

I've noticed (and noted) a strange sinophilism going around these days. It doesn't matter if it is a left-wing or a right-wing commentator, the consensus seems to be that the Chinese (culture, at least) has got it right. One of these manifestations is the white male/Chinese female coupling I see all around me, which I've discussed here. In another post I discuss how Janice Stein, a University of Toronto academic who often appears on news shows as a political expert, excuses China's draconian measures towards its own work force by saying "that's the only way things can get done." Such behavior apparently translates down to family interactions, where Amy Chau, a Yale University law professor discloses her harsh intimidation methods to get her daughters to achieve "perfection" in her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

I skimmed through a book review of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in the January 2011 issue of Elle Magazine, but lost interest (or more like rolled my eyes), and stopped reading after the introductory paragraph:

A hyperachieving law prof and author from a cosmopolitan Chinese clan lays out a fearsome child-rearing philosophy.

Another Amy Tan type of book glorifying abusive Chinese mothers, I though.

Steve Sailer, from the anti-immigration website Vdare, which purports to eschew Western values, has posted a blog praising Amy Chau, and her draconian mothering and child-rearing techniques.

Sailer quotes from the New York Times review of Chua's memoire Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

“In retrospect, these coaching suggestions seem a bit extreme,” she writes in the book after describing how she once threatened to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she did not play a piano composition perfectly. “On the other hand, they were highly effective.”

In interviews, she comes off as unresolved. “I think I pulled back at the right time,” she said. “I do not think there was anything abusive in my house.” Yet, she added, “I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think there’s a lot of questions about how you instill true self-esteem.”

Sailer adds a one-line comment:

One thing you can say for Ms. Chua is that she’s got guts.

Guts to bully and intimidate her children into becoming classical pianists?

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is getting complementary reviews in many other venues.

- The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from Chua's book in early January. And allowed her to rebut the many negative comments she got from readers. Rather than write their own review, the editorial group at WSJ simply left the floor open to Chua. This is not a book review, but an underhanded way of giving a book a "pass".

- The reviewer from Macleans magazine from Canada, a spineless Joan Latmer writes, "I can’t think of a better rehab warden than Chua. The smart money’s on Tiger Mother."

- The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente goes all out and praises non-white, non-Western parenting techniques which border on child abuse. Here's what she says about Andre Agassi's Iranian father training techniques:

Mike Agassi, a first-generation immigrant from Iran, taped Ping-Pong paddles to his son’s hands when he was just a toddler. At 6, Andre was practising four or five hours a day.

Agassi later confessed that he’s always hated tennis “with a dark and secret passion.”

Wente writes about Chua:

Instead of false praise, [Chua] believes in high standards and criticism. She once rejected a hastily scrawled birthday card that one of her daughters had made for her. “This is garbage,” she said. “You can do better.”

The snarky Wente continues:

Cruel? Maybe. But her older daughter, Sophia, has already played at Carnegie Hall. Your children probably haven’t.

Yes, anything to glorify the glorious non-West, and demonize the West, for these leftist Globe and Mail writers.

Chua relaxed her draconian methods and let her younger daughter give up piano for tennis. But, it's not necessarily generosity (or motherly love) that made her cede, but simply that she couldn't squeeze enough talent out of her unobliging daughter. Instead, she seems to have focused her classical-pianist-for-a-daughter needs on the eldest daughter.

But so far, Chua's promising older daughter has only played once at Carnegie Hall, and she's already eighteen. She's placed high in a couple of parochial competitions: second in a piano competition in the Greater Bridgeport Symphony competition for young musicians in 2010, and first at the Music Teachers National Association piano competition in 2006. She is no child prodigy, and might turn out to be a competent pianist, and end up in her mother's alma mater as the next best thing to a performer - a music teacher.

Part of the joy of perfecting something is because one loves it, or is encouraged to love it. Grueling practice sessions, time away from friends and play, and overcoming jittery nerves before performances are then usually worth the effort. I would wager that artists are willing to spend years of financial and social insecurity because they love their craft, and are willing to sacrifice other comforts to express that love. They could not function with a stick waving above their head.

When I was started to study ballet at a young age, I was so scared of my teacher (a Bulgarian communist who would tap my knee with a stick - "your k-nee, Kidist, your k-nee) that I failed miserably and was further humiliated at being removed from a school pageant. Yet later on, while a slightly older girl in the British school system, my teachers commended my grace (I also won a third-place prize at a local, regional competition). Later still, I joined many other dance groups, including a Mexican folk dance group often as a partner to the dance instructor/leader, an American modern dance ensemble where audience members would search for me to give me compliments, and even a belly dance group (I quit that one finding little art in it). I even organized and choreographed small groups for dance performances in college.

I never became a dancer, since I didn't have enough talent, and who knows what other social reasons excluded me from this art (including an emphasis on academics rather than the arts in my family), but I was never that incompetent young girl doing plies at the mercy of a teacher's stick. And many generous teachers instilled in me a love of dance which effaced the memory of the stick, and allowed me to continue to be thrilled by it all my life. I decided to enter an art-related field, and sometimes use music and dance (pattern) analogies to "compose" my work. Relying on that stick would have killed all of that.

Chua's unobliging daughter chose tennis for her second chance at doing something well. It is interesting that the similarity between her music and her sport is not that the fields are related, but that they are very different. Yet, there is an abstract, psychological similarity between the two (or at least the way Lulu Chua interacts with them). Competition seems to be the overriding factor, to "play" and win. Perhaps it was in her nature to be athletically competitive, and piano playing couldn't give her that. But, perhaps her mother's draconian (evil) methods that art is associated with pain, and even hate, simply clinched her decision.