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."

Going Places

I spend two hours every day commuting between home, school, and work. Except this commute is a lot more fun to write about than other commutes. It's absolutely ridiculous how people get around this country.

[Note: People drive very differently here. Things that would be insane in the US are actually quite safe here. Why? Because of the widespread chaos, people actually focus when they drive. They don't talk on the phone, read the paper, drink coffee, fall asleep, or do any of those other insane things that we do in the US when we “drive.” Thai drivers understand traffic flow, anticipate people around them, don't speed, and give each other space. In some ways, complete disregard for lanes, laws, or lights actually encourages better driving. And with that...]

Every morning I jump on the back of my Thai Mom's motorbike for a short ride out to the main road. It is beautiful: you can see across rice paddies to Doi Saket (the hill for which the town is named), and even the 300+ stair staircase (like when licking a Tootsie Roll Pop, I lost count. It was too hot to start over.) cutting through the trees on the side of the hill leading up to Wat Doi Saket.


At the main road, I flag down one of the many yellow songtaews, which are like local buses that run a straight route. Except they're not buses, they're pickup trucks with converted beds. A songtaew should carry about 16 people. I've been on one with 27: 3 in the cab of the pickup, 7 on a bench down each side of the bed, 2 sitting on the floor between the benches, 5 hanging off the back, and 3 on the roof.

It's hard to explain how this feels normal or safe, but it actually does. I vividly remember my first ride on a crowded songtaew: it was my very first day on the way to school, and Taw, the head guide at CMRCA, was riding with me to show me the ropes. On the way into town, the songtaew started to fill up, and Taw explained: “When the truck gets full, the men have to stand on the back, so that the women and nawng (children) have a place to sit.” At the next stop, he stood up to let a girl have his seat, stepped onto the grate welded to the back of the pickup, and held on to a couple of the many steel bars that are welded into the back of the truck.

I was terrified. Taw is a very, very strong guy, but I could see the muscles in his forearm bulge a bit as the truck accelerated back onto the highway. What if we hit a pothole and he slips off? What if we get rear ended? The songtaew slowed and another man hopped on the back. The grate flexed slightly under the extra weight. The welds look rusty. What if the grate breaks off? I think I should warn him. Should I warn him? I think I should. It started to rain a little. He's going to slip. He's going to slip off and get run over and everyone at work is going to hate me because I killed Taw. My eyes were practically bulging out of my sockets and my shoulders started to ache from the stress. I felt about ready to pass out by the time we made it to my stop.

I ride on the back of a songtaew every single day – it has become just as comfortable a part of my routine as eating with a spoon or using a squat toilet. Standing can actually be quite nice and refreshing sometimes – it's good to stretch the legs a little (songtaews are made for Thai-sized people) and get some fresh air in the morning (relatively – the pollution is horrendous). For some reason, songtaew riders are predominantly female, and tend to be considerably older or quite young – I guess everybody else rides a motorbike around. After five weeks, there are a lot of familiar faces, and they always treat me very kindly.

I've only ridden on the roof once. It was on the return trip, from Chiang Mai back home to Doi Saket. As we pulled out of Gat Luang, the bus was already quite crowded. I left work late that day, and I think it may have been the last songtaew for the night, so I think the driver felt bad about leaving anyone behind. The bus was full when it started its journey, and, to my amazement, entertainment, and incredulity, we continued to stop and pick up people. To make room for an old lady, a 12 year-old boy gave up his seat. Rather than join us on the back (he would have been the 7th), he scrambled up the side and onto the roof, which I'd never seen anyone else do. I figured I'd be better off up there with him than continuing to be squeezed on the back, so I joined him. We both sat cross-legged and I put on my new motorcycle helmet. I snapped a couple of pictures:



In a few minutes, we were joined by a third man, who was quite talkative, and found it hysterical that I was wearing a helmet on the songtaew. We talked about America, and about how gas costs just as much here in Thailand. I really liked that guy.

Back to my daily grind: In order to get to school, I meet a motorbike taxi at an intersection where the songtaew drops me off. This taxi is driven by Joe, who I call 'Pee' Joe, because he's older than me and it's Thailand, and you do that sort of thing here.


I'm finding it hard to express with words the affection I feel for P' Joe. He picks me up every morning and greets we with the kindest "Hi! How are you!" that you can imagine (Joe speaks exactly five words of English: 'hi', 'how', 'are', 'you', 'bye bye'). He often brings his 3-year old child with him (who sits on the kid's seat you can kind of see folded out in front of Joe in the picture). P' Joe and his kid wear matching helmets. I love them I love them. It breaks my heart that in a week I will buy a bike of my own and no longer need Joe's services. Seriously - if I could afford to just keep P' Joe on permanent retainer instead of buying my own bike, I would.

P' Joe drops me off at school, where I learn Thai. I say goodbye to Joe and his kid. My heart wants to jump out of its chest.

I'll post about class at some point.

I leave school on a "Red Truck" taxi. They have a monopoly over the campus, and it's expensive. Nothing too interesting here.

The red truck takes me to work. More on work in a later post, I'm sure.

After work, it's another red truck ("rote dehng") to Wororot Market ("gat luang"), where I catch a yellow songtaew home. If I time it right, I get to enjoy glorious sunsets over Doi Suthep. Now you get to enjoy one (poorly photographed):


I call Noi, and she picks me up on her motorbike. We go home, drink, eat, and make merry.

Thai People, Dear Reader

Loyal friends and (let's be honest, mostly) family:

Thanks for hanging in there. It's been a crazy two weeks, and I haven't had enough time or internet access to keep you all in the loop. According to Google, I've gotten many, many more visits than I expected, so I really do promise to most more often. Starting now.

A quick overview of things that have happened since last time:

• Went to a super-cheezy and totally lame 4th-of-July party at the Consulate. There was a Watermelon eating contest and the beer wasn't free. Apparently there are a lot of Mennonites in Chiang Mai. I think those two sentences pretty much do the party justice.

• Went caving the next day. It was pretty darn cool, and very, very muddy. I guess that's what you get for crawling around underground in the rainy season. The best pictures are here. (Pictures are captioned in Picasa, too)
  
  

• Went to the Buatong Waterfall with the family. It's about an hour outside of Chiang Mai, and apparently a popular spot with the locals. It's set up like a state park, so you just drive right in, and there's a nice picnic spot at the top of the waterfall. It's not the highest or largest waterfall ever, but it's really cool, because the whole waterfall is a flowstone that you can actually walk up. Pictures are here. More on the picnic below.
• Work has been really busy. We had two big meetings with school-group travel agents/vendors, and we needed to set our new season's prices and make a new catalog. Hence the no blogging at work. However, I'm taking on an alarming amount of responsibility here, which is fun and makes the job worthwhile.
• I've been hanging out a lot with my New Thai Family. My Thai has really been picking up, and it's really fun to try to talk with them... sometimes it ends up being a game of found poetry: how to describe this idea with the 300 or so words that I know? I am officially supposed to move out on Sunday, but I'm going to stay with them for a few extra days because 1) they like me and have offered to host me for the year, 2) they're free, and 3) I can't move into an apartment until the 1st anyway.
• Went for a bike ride around my neighborhood on Saturday. It was hot, but there was this river/irrigation canal and a Thai Gazebo next to it, so I sat in the shade for a bit, watching a waterbuffalo flick his tail while lying in a rice paddy. It was a good day.

Okay, so here it is, the best picture I've ever taken:

Let me explain. We arrive at Buatong at 11:30 in the morning and unroll a big mat for a Thai Family Picnic. Forty minutes later, we've all eaten our fill, and Uncle Tao and Brother Gaw have housed half a bottle of whiskey. Then Tao pulls out this bowie knife that he bought a few days ago. They admire its heft and its serrated edge's ability to cut small sticks. They pose, unwittingly framing their half-empty bottle of whiskey. They don't understand my bliss... it's noon.

Topics for upcoming posts include: The house, my commute, the office, etc. All will be wonderful, eloquent, and fun. Stay tuned. Miss you all dearly! More from me soon.

A Good Weekend

Sorry if this is poorly written and kind of long, but I've been exhausted, and I just really needed to post something before I accrue more to write about this upcoming weekend. Also, blogger is being really annoying, so not many embedding pictures in this one. Click through to Picasa for pictures. Sorry.

I had a pretty darn good weekend last week. Things started on Friday night, when I came home to the Thai version of grilling out back... there was a charcoal fire in a small bucket, on top of which was a slotted metal plate for grilling pork, chicken, and buffalo, and surrounding the grill was a trough of broth for boiling mushrooms, noodles, and other unidentified tasty things.

Small kids were there doing adorable things. One of my little Thai cousins speaks two phrases of English: “shake hands” and “happy birthday to you.” Actually, he knows the Happy Birthday Song. It might be the cutest thing ever. His parents make him shake my hand every time to say hello, but then he runs right back to his dad, because I think he's afraid of my pale skin. Anyway, it's adorable, and it's just so nice to be around little kids after 4 years of living in a dorm.

On Saturday I headed into Chiang Mai and met up with PiAers Nick and Ali. We rode motorbikes up Doi Suthep (actually, they drove and I rode), which is the perfect way to see a beautiful mountain. I, like an idiot, forgot my camera in Nick's apartment, and have no pictures. Will steal some from him when he posts, or I'll just take twice as many next time I go, which is likely to be soon.

Spent Saturday night in the city, and met up for dinner to celebrate PiAer Lexi's birthday. There was much rejoicing.

Sunday morning I met up with the Chiang Mai Rock Climbing crew for a totally different celebration. Marshall, an old friend of Josh's (and of the company) is leaving Thailand to go back to the States semi-permanently, so we threw him a going-away party. Except for outdoorsy types, that means doing something really really cool outdoors.

So we got up pretty early and set out for Mae On, where there was this cave that supposedly had amazing crystals inside. I say “supposedly,” because this cave was on private property, and the owner didn't appreciate people stealing crystals from his cave, and generally was very hostile to anybody interested in exploring.

Anyway, after a lot of hard work, someone found someone who knew how to get to the place and would take us there for a small fee, so six of us were able to spend most of Sunday in this super-secret/illegal/beautiful crystal cave. I have a few pictures, but they really don't do anything justice, especially because none of my pictures from inside the cave turned out at all – all of the ones here are just from the entrance. One member of our group is a real photographer, and took a few hundred photos, so if I can get my hands on any, I'll be sure to pass them along (although he's understandably nervous about posting any, because he's kind of a big deal, and needs to keep the locals happy).

Anyway, here's Marshall explaining how these things form (it's a geothermal cave with calcium carbonate and argonite crystals, for those interested). Marshall's really into caves, and did a lot to develop CMRCA's caving programs. Plus, he's a cool guy, and loves rocks. We are all sad that he's leaving us.

And here's my best effort at documenting what this place looked like. It's really unbelievable – inside there were crystals on every single surface. Some looked like huge cauliflower; others were dusted with red dirt and looked like roasted marshmallows. Some were like icicles sticking in every direction, and other formations looked exactly like freezer burn. The crystals are rock, but are pretty fragile, and now that the cave is opened, they have stopped growing – that means that the crystals are in better shape now than they ever will be again, and I feel extremely lucky to have seen them.

Anyway, this coming week(end) promises more fun. There's a 4^th of July BBQ at the US Consulate in Chiang Mai that should be fun, and then I think I have above-ground outdoor fun lined up for Saturday, so all-in-all, there should be plenty more material for next week's posts.

Sorry again for the half-assed post.