Quotable:“Greeting Asians in the West with 'konichiwa,' 'sawadee' or 'neehow' is patronizing and presumptuous. It is a way of asserting that English, French, Swedish, etc. cannot possibly be their own language and reinforcing their status as eternally inassimilable foreigners by the virtue of their skin color. Believing that culture or ability is inseparable from genetics is racism, and racism is all too often disguised as a friendly greeting.” Zak Keith, author of My Life as a Squint-Eyed Chink |
 NEW ARTICLES/PAGES: Autobiography — 351 pages including: 6 pages of pictures & 8 pages of endnotes. On the death of his eccentric soprano mother, Zak finds himself on a plane to rendezvous with siblings he hasn't seen in decades, the entire trip culminating in a black comedy at her funeral. He begins unearthing a past he didn't know he had, learning the truth about his parents' secretive lives. My Life as a Squint-Eyed Chink reads like a psychological thriller or mystery novel — only the story that it tells is true. Unique insights into the human condition, fascinating vignettes from mid-20th-century China, and uncommon sanity amidst maddening events characterize this poignant, thought-provoking and beautifully written tale of a Brit forced to adapt to finding himself ‘not looking English.’ In pages filled with both gritty facts and almost-lyrical prose punctuated with wry humor, you walk with Zak, the journeyman, as he learns what it is like to bridge several different worlds with all their allure, beauty, pain and mystery; to survive the most unsettling of situations; to find sense in a baffling, sometimes terrible, past and setting out on the ultimate quest to put all the pieces together and find out who you truly are. » more about My Life as a Squint-Eyed Chink » Born in England and based in Stockholm, Sweden since 1988, Zak divides his time between his very separate worlds of being a Musician (multi-genre free-lance guitarist), Technology Consultant (software design, website management, HCI, UCD, Usability, SEO, IT-management...), Writer (research articles, educational books, non-fiction, editing services), Translator (for companies listed on the NASDAQ OMX), Traveler (escapist & curious by nature; a fan of interpersonal, cultural exchanges in faraway places) and Volunteer (abuse recovery, fundraising, community services)...
ZakKeith.com is about things that matter to me, Zak
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It was launched on Nov. 26, 2008 due to the fact that I lead a rather busy life, parts of it are still under construction. My original idea was to use the site to demonstrate a clean 'n' lean, robust, secure, interactive, standards-compliant web interface with up-to-date technology behind it. I'm responsible for
what you can and can't see—every dot and pixel of the front-end design, as well as the back-end scripts that dynamically generate these pages, such as perl, PHP, databases, server scripts and CMS (content-management software), etc. All my scripts are custom-designed—I don't use freeware out of a can. Many of my creative designs were a first on the world-wide web, but as the cliché goes in the perpetually-changing cyber world: you can only be the “first” for 6 months at best. There's always more than meets the eye, lots of behind-the-scenes tehcnological know-how to make a site like this function well. So if you happen to like what you do see, I'm available for hire as a site designer and software architect. For further information:
This page is fully compliant with Strict 4.0 HTML standards
All content on this page © Zak Keith, 2008 - 2012 (unless copyright/authorship is explicitly attributed to other parties)