Being Political

I use Google Reader to read through blogs, news, and my favorite websites. It's really really great. Today, I noticed that the McCain and Obama campaigns are using Reader to "share" articles.

I found it very interesting to note the differences in the articles being shared. McCain's page is a laundry list of every negative article run on Obama. Obama's page features articles that only tangentially mention McCain. I'm sure those of you back in the states already have a feel for the tone of the tone of the race, but I found it almost shocking how transparently different the two campaigns are being run.

Also, to contrast how intellectual an audience they are targeting, I offer you this: Obama featured this article, and McCain featured this one.

Not making any judgements... I mean, our Pres had better be a baller, and who better to make that call than Dick Durbin? Oh, wait. That's not what he said? Looks like that metaphor went right over everybody's head.

Because there's never any time!

Just a few quick notes to hold you over for now:

• Work is moving along. We ran a teambuilding program for 105 7th- to 12th-graders on Friday. Our hours (and hours) of preparation were more or less squandered by the fact that we were drastically misinformed about the English language aptitude of our students. There may be nothing more exhausting than trying to corral, excite, instruct, and debrief hordes of middle schoolers who don't really know what you're saying and don't really want to try anything you ask them. Oh, and since this was at the American-Pacific International School, speaking Thai was outlawed.
  
• Julia is in town, spending three weeks in Chiang Mai between meditating in southern Thailand and learning to be a yoga instructor in India. It's great to have her here - she's been in Thailand for quite a while, but we both know such different parts of the country. She teaches me about Bubble Tea, and I teach her about soda straws. We make a good team.
  
• We just got back from a 4-night trip north, to Pai, Soppong, and Cave Lodge, just 3 kilometers from the Burmese border. This trip was really incredible and affected me quite a bit. I have a lot of thoughts that have been jotted in note form, and which I hope to turn into a post when I have some time in the coming days.
• I bought a motor bike! She's a real beaute - a 10 year-old Honda Dream, with 125cc of unstoppable two-wheeled power. A post on my bike and my current living arrangements whenever more interesting things stop happening. At that time, I'll be holding a bike-naming contest, so get your creative juices ready.
  

I've spoken with some of you recently, and I've expressed that my only real disappointment thus far with my New Thai Life is that I haven't really had much time to just decompress, process, read, write, reflect, and keep in touch. I'm working on re-prioritizing.

See you back here soon.

Of Medals, Medals, and Metal

Today, on the first day of the Olympic games, Russia won a Silver Medal and also killed 1,500 people. In the ensuing days, their Olympic team of over 500 people will be painted as heroes, while their political team of precisely two will likely be vilified. Just one of Lioubov Galkina's air rifle pellets failed to find its mark, but as many as ten Russian planes were shot down over Georgia.

Remember eight years ago in Sydney when governments weren't quite so keen on shooting each other? When words like "self-determinism," "ethnic cleansing," and "insurgency" didn't appear in headlines next to "Michael Phelps Wins Gold?"

My housemate, Jeff (more on my new house in a later post!), is a big Free Tibet activist and is friends with a lot of people who are getting arrested in protests throughout Beijing. Jeff himself was arrested in Dharamsala earlier this year. He's been watching things very, very closely, and we've both been expecting some disturbances and are aware of the obvious China Olympic/human rights hypocrisy that has been getting plenty of press.

But I sort of think that Georgia and Russia take the cake on this one. Since the Soviet Union fell, Georgia has attempted to hold on to Southern Ossetia, a province that contains predominantly ethnic Russians. Southern Ossetia won "de facto autonomy" from Georgia roughly fifteen years ago, but for some reason this week Georgia decided to roll the tanks through that region, removing UN Peacekeeping forces and effectively invading Russia; somewhere between 60 and 1,500 civilians died during the clash.

Russia responded by bombing a city that is in Georgia proper, roughly 30 miles south, extracting a matching death toll of 1,500.

I'm writing this now, in a bit of a state of shock, because I had no idea that a war had started until I checked the New York Times website 30 minutes ago. I watched a fair bit of Thai TV today, and there was absolutely no mention of it. News here is censored heavily, and frankly, it makes sense why this story wouldn't be allowed to be published: there are eerie parallels between the situation in Southern Ossetia and Southern Thailand.

The population of Thailand is approximately 95% Buddhist, but the four southern-most provinces (adjacent to Malaysia) are predominantly Muslim. For a number of years, these Muslim groups have been asking for independence so that they can join Malaysia, which, as a predominantly Muslim nation, would surely welcome them. There is ongoing terrorist activity in the south as the Thai Muslims not only vie for independence, but also for basic human rights: for the past few years, partially using the violence as an excuse, the Thai government has failed to provide roads, electricity, water, or education to the Muslim populations in the south.

So in both parts of the world (not to even mention Tibet...), we see the same pattern: a locally dominant ethnic group wishing to move a border so that they can be a part of a nation that shares a history and ethnicity with them and that would surely provide them with better services. And why don't we just let this happen? Why can't we let marginalized populations near borders determine their own nationality?

For the same reason that we love for our team to win in the Olympics! Pride! Nationalism! A completely artificial sense of internal harmony while embracing Diversity!

So doesn't it actually make sense that this war would have started today, when an athlete becomes merely an agent for his Nation, and when people around the globe are glued to their TV's to see how many medals the people who were born on the same side of some line on some map as they were manage to accrue?

Do Purple Hearts count?

Word Games

Loyal readers,
I've been shocked by how quickly time passes here. And not in the I'm-on-vacation-and-I-can't-believe-it's-already-been-8-days way. This is more like the holy-crap-is-it-really-midterms-week-already? way. I was kind of anticipating a relaxed lifestyle that included lots of free time to read and reflect. I found a rather hectic lifestyle full of errands and activities. I love it, don't get me wrong, but when I look back at what I thought life would be like here a few months ago, I think it's amazing how off-base I was.

But it's time to take a little step back from that and play with words for a little bit. As most of you know, I've been taking Thai classes every morning, which include both spoken and written components. Then I go to work, where I hear (if I don't exactly speak) a lot of Thai, and then I leave work and hang out with mostly Thai people, white people who speak a fair bit of Thai, and other PiA fellows who are convinced I have mythical language skills and who therefore like to practice Thai with me.

Thai is fun for two big reasons: 1) It's not at all based in roots like Latin/Greek languages are, and 2) It's totally based on roots/compound words in a way that is artistic, fun, completely non-intuitive, but actually really logical.

Let me explain: We like roots. It's how we learn vocab and study for the SAT. We expect that if we know part of a word, we can figure out the rest of it from context. This does not apply to Thai. At all. Some examples:

• Pĕe means "ghost." Sêua means "shirt." What does "pĕe sêua" mean? Butterfly! (of course, flying butter isn't really sensical either)
• Dtèun is the action of waking up. Dtên is the action of dancing. Any guesses? "Dtèun dtên" means "to be excited."

This leads me to my next point, which is that literal translation of Thai can yield wonderfully simple explanations of complex feelings. How excited would you have to be to wake up dancing??

Lots of words in Thai are based around "jai," which means "heart/mind/spirit." A kind person has "jai dee" (a good heart) or "nám jai" (a heart of water). An excited or excitable person has "jai dtên" (a dancing heart). Someone who is startled has "dtòk jai" (a heart that has tripped/fallen). A stubborn and unyielding person has "jai kăeng" (a hard heart). Someone who is impatient has "jai ráwn" (a hot heart). When you understand someone, you "kâo jai," or enter their heart. There are literally dozens of "jai words" that can describe pretty much any feeling. If I were taking another 8 weeks of Thai classes (which unfortunately I'm not), I would spend several days learning about them.

What's interesting, though, is that there is nothing that differentiates between words like "Dtèun dtên" and words like "jai dee." In written Thai, there are no spaces between words, so there is absolutely nothing to clue you in to whether a pair of words that you know can each be taken separately, or whether you need to consider them as a single word.

What's even more interesting, is that native Thai speakers don't consider "jai" words (or others like them) to be two words that work together to form a single meaning: they are a single word, and have a unique definition. In Thai, being polite and showing respect to elders is extremely important, and the way that you speak changes drastically depending on your audience. But what I find crazy is that individual words can transcend their impoliteness if they are just part of a larger, compound word.

"Kêe" is possibly my favorite word in Thai. It means (in the words of Benjawan Poomsan Becker, author of the best Thai-English English-Thai dictionary around) "shit/excrement/to defecate." It is probably roughly as impolite as the English word. The guys at work like to screw with each other a lot - Thais love slapstick - which inevitably results in the tormented guy telling the others "bai gin kêe" (go eat shit).

But "kêe" also pops up in dozens of other words! There are termites that live in wood doors here that cause little brown spots to appear on your door jamb. How do you tell your 80-year old neighbor/grandmother/landlady that you have this problem? "pŏm mee kêe bpratu" (I have door shit). What's the clinical term for the gunk in your eyes in the morning? "Kêe dta" (eye shit). How about earwax? "Kêe hŏo " (ear shit).

Strangely, "kêe" is also a prefix that means "characterized by, given to, having a tendency to." This confused me for a couple of weeks, while my Thai mom kept saying to me "kêe leum" (i.e. forget shit): she was just commenting that I was forgetful. Similarly, "kêe dtèun" is someone who is excitable (prone to waking up?!), "kêe mow" and "kêe ya" (drunk shit and drug shit) are alcholics and drug addicts, and I suppose that this whole post makes me "kêe kêe."