it's always funnier when you can you can relate to something.
http://mylifeisaverage.com/
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Magic Happens
It’s been a special day, and not just because I rode to work in bike shorts and forgot to bring underwear. Today a small miracle happened during third period English.
Our speech repetitions were suddenly interrupted by a crash on the hall window followed by a little brown wren slamming into a boy's shoulder in the back corner before ricocheting off onto the ground and feebly fluttering in circles on the floor. Immediately my heart sank- the bird was a goner. I'd seen this before. I exchanged sympathetic looks with the handful of students comfortable with openly expressing emotions as my teacher, Kawaguchi Sensei, tenderly gathered the injured bird into her hands. She then cupped it firmly between her palms and slowly paced back to the front of the room, resuming the lecture as she walked. The students seemed to accept that class would go on as normal as their teacher held a perishing kamikaze bird in her hands.
Kawaguchi Sensei then asked me to lead a few pages of reading while she carried the bird out to the sink in the hallway. Was she going to put it out of its misery by drowning it? Let it struggle harmlessly around the sink basin until class ended? Turns out she was just giving it a little drink and smoothing its feathers.
Reading aloud from the textbook, "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi", I couldn't help glancing over to watch her curious efforts with the doomed bird. Teenage voices repeated "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi" back in the usual narrow spectrum of monotones, though the attention of several students was openly fixated on the sink outside.
"Hi, Takeshi. I'm Andy". Kawaguchi Sensei now had the wren on its side, balanced between her two open palms, and was shifting its weight back and forth. "Hi Takeshi. I'm Andy."
"Hi, Andy." The bird was upright, standing on her finger. "Hi, Andy."
"Are you a soccer fan?" She held the poor flightless bird out the window, looking like she was about to fling it into space and let it arc down like a feathery stone into the ground two stories below. "Are you a soccer fan?" I didn't have a great alternative in mind for disposing of live birds that crash into the classroom, so I looked on with trepidation out of the corner of my eye and continued reading.
"Yes, I-." One final launching swing of her hand and the bird suddenly and miraculously took off through the air, flying up freely into the blue sky! I literally stopped talking in mid-sentence. The class laughed as I tried again, "Yes, I am", and Kawaguchi Sensei reentered the room.
"What- how did... Sensei, did you just heal that bird?"
She smiled cheerily. "Re-ha-bilitation, ne?"
"Rehabilitation? That... was magic!"
"Hahaha, yes! I am magic."
I went from wondering if my teacher was picking the broken wren up to snap its neck, to watching it effortlessly take off with a rapid fluttering of functional wings in five minutes. It made me uniquely happy to witness that. Even some of the students appeared to look at their teacher and calm, confident healer of our wayward animal friends with a new sense of respect. At least the class behaved itself for the last ten minutes, a small miracle in itself at this school. So you never really know when magic will happen.
Our speech repetitions were suddenly interrupted by a crash on the hall window followed by a little brown wren slamming into a boy's shoulder in the back corner before ricocheting off onto the ground and feebly fluttering in circles on the floor. Immediately my heart sank- the bird was a goner. I'd seen this before. I exchanged sympathetic looks with the handful of students comfortable with openly expressing emotions as my teacher, Kawaguchi Sensei, tenderly gathered the injured bird into her hands. She then cupped it firmly between her palms and slowly paced back to the front of the room, resuming the lecture as she walked. The students seemed to accept that class would go on as normal as their teacher held a perishing kamikaze bird in her hands.
Kawaguchi Sensei then asked me to lead a few pages of reading while she carried the bird out to the sink in the hallway. Was she going to put it out of its misery by drowning it? Let it struggle harmlessly around the sink basin until class ended? Turns out she was just giving it a little drink and smoothing its feathers.
Reading aloud from the textbook, "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi", I couldn't help glancing over to watch her curious efforts with the doomed bird. Teenage voices repeated "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi" back in the usual narrow spectrum of monotones, though the attention of several students was openly fixated on the sink outside.
"Hi, Takeshi. I'm Andy". Kawaguchi Sensei now had the wren on its side, balanced between her two open palms, and was shifting its weight back and forth. "Hi Takeshi. I'm Andy."
"Hi, Andy." The bird was upright, standing on her finger. "Hi, Andy."
"Are you a soccer fan?" She held the poor flightless bird out the window, looking like she was about to fling it into space and let it arc down like a feathery stone into the ground two stories below. "Are you a soccer fan?" I didn't have a great alternative in mind for disposing of live birds that crash into the classroom, so I looked on with trepidation out of the corner of my eye and continued reading.
"Yes, I-." One final launching swing of her hand and the bird suddenly and miraculously took off through the air, flying up freely into the blue sky! I literally stopped talking in mid-sentence. The class laughed as I tried again, "Yes, I am", and Kawaguchi Sensei reentered the room.
"What- how did... Sensei, did you just heal that bird?"
She smiled cheerily. "Re-ha-bilitation, ne?"
"Rehabilitation? That... was magic!"
"Hahaha, yes! I am magic."
I went from wondering if my teacher was picking the broken wren up to snap its neck, to watching it effortlessly take off with a rapid fluttering of functional wings in five minutes. It made me uniquely happy to witness that. Even some of the students appeared to look at their teacher and calm, confident healer of our wayward animal friends with a new sense of respect. At least the class behaved itself for the last ten minutes, a small miracle in itself at this school. So you never really know when magic will happen.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
the world as seen through the eyes of an amateur investor
Looks like the global economic crisis is wrapping up. East Asia is doing a lot of the work in making that happen. And now is still probably a good time to buy strong next generation tech stocks- Apple alone has gone up over 30% in the last few months, and Google's looking real good too. Now's the time people! Invest!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Day Six in Andhra Pradesh
I woke up to a phone ringing at 6am this morning, as I have most mornings this week. Sometimes the call is earlier, later, doesn’t come at all, or in the case of this morning, the sleepy young man inexplicably rings one minute after the 6:00 call to say “Hello.” “Hello again”, I respond. “It’s 6:01 sir.” “Thank you?” “You're welcome sir.”
A few leftover scraps of butter nan and empty bottles of Thums Up cola litter the hotel room Taylor and I share. Last night we played cards and ordered room service, the night before we watched a lightning storm knock out the city’s power from the hotel rooftop.
We gather in the hotel lobby at 6:30am and board a rented tour bus to the village, where a cheering throng of village children greet us every morning. Their stream of delighted energy hits us as strong as a pot of black coffee to the face and continues unabated throughout the day, making it impossible not to return some of the love. We spin them and toss them in the air, play cricket and volleyball and a complex variety of hand games, practice English, recite 1-10 in Telegu or simply provide a climbing structure as we lose the strength to lift them by the end of the day.
The work itself is exhausting, passing cement trays and bricks to form foundations, corner pillars, walls and slabbed roofs. By noon we are soaked in sweat, our clothes filthy with dirt, dried cement and brick dust. A vegetarian lunch and one-hour siesta follow before getting back to work for the cooler afternoon work session. At dusk we eat dinner, play with the kids and unwind, pleasantly exhausted, having shared and accomplished a very tangible goal for the day. The bus ride back provides an opportunity to mitigate the profound ninety-minute transition from mudflat village to bustling industrial city by playing word games, sharing travel stories or quietly listening to music and processing the last thirteen hours.
Allow me to shed some light on this experience by sharing some fast facts about the Dalit.
1. The Hindu potential of rebirth within a higher caste functions as justification for keeping the Atai Shudra (Untouchables; slaves) subjugated throughout their lifetime.
2. In addition to being physically separated from the rest of society, in the economic sphere Dalits are explicitly restricted to a few undesirable trades. In the traditional regions of India, only Dalits (still) do leather tanning and shoe-making.
3. Dalit means “broken people” in Sanskrit. They prefer to go by “Shudra”, meaning “lowest caste”.
4. Brahma (God) is synonymous with justice, and Dalits are born believing that their position is sanctioned by transcendent authorities. Not surprisingly, the village we work in and many others are increasingly turning to Christianity instead...
Despite the heavy burdens placed upon Gummallapadu Village, hope exists not only by means of external volunteer efforts, but from the internal resiliency of its citizens and healthy ambitions of its younger members (one of whom will leave in a few weeks to study as a mechanical engineer in Shanghai). Along with the open communication, honesty, and a strong sense of community pervading the village where we did our work, this is proof that beautiful things often grow in harsh environments.
A few leftover scraps of butter nan and empty bottles of Thums Up cola litter the hotel room Taylor and I share. Last night we played cards and ordered room service, the night before we watched a lightning storm knock out the city’s power from the hotel rooftop.
We gather in the hotel lobby at 6:30am and board a rented tour bus to the village, where a cheering throng of village children greet us every morning. Their stream of delighted energy hits us as strong as a pot of black coffee to the face and continues unabated throughout the day, making it impossible not to return some of the love. We spin them and toss them in the air, play cricket and volleyball and a complex variety of hand games, practice English, recite 1-10 in Telegu or simply provide a climbing structure as we lose the strength to lift them by the end of the day.
The work itself is exhausting, passing cement trays and bricks to form foundations, corner pillars, walls and slabbed roofs. By noon we are soaked in sweat, our clothes filthy with dirt, dried cement and brick dust. A vegetarian lunch and one-hour siesta follow before getting back to work for the cooler afternoon work session. At dusk we eat dinner, play with the kids and unwind, pleasantly exhausted, having shared and accomplished a very tangible goal for the day. The bus ride back provides an opportunity to mitigate the profound ninety-minute transition from mudflat village to bustling industrial city by playing word games, sharing travel stories or quietly listening to music and processing the last thirteen hours.
Allow me to shed some light on this experience by sharing some fast facts about the Dalit.
1. The Hindu potential of rebirth within a higher caste functions as justification for keeping the Atai Shudra (Untouchables; slaves) subjugated throughout their lifetime.
2. In addition to being physically separated from the rest of society, in the economic sphere Dalits are explicitly restricted to a few undesirable trades. In the traditional regions of India, only Dalits (still) do leather tanning and shoe-making.
3. Dalit means “broken people” in Sanskrit. They prefer to go by “Shudra”, meaning “lowest caste”.
4. Brahma (God) is synonymous with justice, and Dalits are born believing that their position is sanctioned by transcendent authorities. Not surprisingly, the village we work in and many others are increasingly turning to Christianity instead...
Despite the heavy burdens placed upon Gummallapadu Village, hope exists not only by means of external volunteer efforts, but from the internal resiliency of its citizens and healthy ambitions of its younger members (one of whom will leave in a few weeks to study as a mechanical engineer in Shanghai). Along with the open communication, honesty, and a strong sense of community pervading the village where we did our work, this is proof that beautiful things often grow in harsh environments.
home/sickness
I'm now on my 6th day home sick from work after returning from India. Nothing serious, and I'll be back at work tomorrow, but I've had an expansive amount of down time to listen to music, read, watch movies and tv shows, eat cereal and make cocoa, do those kinds of things. In spite of the heroic bacterial war being fought in my intestines it's been pretty nice to sit around and unwind.
Unfortunately this all means I've been fully immersing myself in American creature comforts for the past week. A few minutes ago "Hate It or Love It" by 50 Cent came on the tail of a long progression of other random songs chosen by shuffle on iTunes which formed the secret combination of emoti-musical stimuli that would trigger a chain reaction of fond Seattle summer memories, evoking a cresting wave of homesickness from deep within me that rose high over my head, paused a moment for me to consider my reflection standing under it here in Japan, and then sort of knocked me flat.
As a man I'm not expected to focus on or talk about my emotions too much (I've been thinking more about such things since reading Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex", highly recommended), but when I closed my eyes to envision driving south on I-5 into the city with the windows down and 95.7 up on one of those rare blue-skied Seattle days where the Columbia Center gleams on the horizon next to the looming majesty of Rainier and the trees lining the highway seem too vividly green to be real and you come around that last bend in the road and see Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound sweeping out in front of you... as I did again now when writing it, I opened my eyes to find a tear or two in them and felt a little empty space inside carved out by memories of home. For real.
Thank you, 50 Cent, for helping me to explore my emotions as a man.
Unfortunately this all means I've been fully immersing myself in American creature comforts for the past week. A few minutes ago "Hate It or Love It" by 50 Cent came on the tail of a long progression of other random songs chosen by shuffle on iTunes which formed the secret combination of emoti-musical stimuli that would trigger a chain reaction of fond Seattle summer memories, evoking a cresting wave of homesickness from deep within me that rose high over my head, paused a moment for me to consider my reflection standing under it here in Japan, and then sort of knocked me flat.
As a man I'm not expected to focus on or talk about my emotions too much (I've been thinking more about such things since reading Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex", highly recommended), but when I closed my eyes to envision driving south on I-5 into the city with the windows down and 95.7 up on one of those rare blue-skied Seattle days where the Columbia Center gleams on the horizon next to the looming majesty of Rainier and the trees lining the highway seem too vividly green to be real and you come around that last bend in the road and see Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound sweeping out in front of you... as I did again now when writing it, I opened my eyes to find a tear or two in them and felt a little empty space inside carved out by memories of home. For real.
Thank you, 50 Cent, for helping me to explore my emotions as a man.
Monday, April 27, 2009
things not to forget about Mumbai
here I sit in an internet cafe, sweating profusely, fresh out of a tour of asia's largest slum.
slum tour- we went on a tour of Mumbai's (and Asia's) largest slum, Dharavi, and got exposed to what it's like to have more than a million people packed into a square mile. The residents make do though, and keep busy with countless mini industries, including processing recycled goods from both the city and abroad, then selling the raw materials back to manufacturers.
gandhi museum- Gandhi's old house in Mumbai was turned into a museum about his life and work.
raj from rajhastan- Raj was a friendly young man who introduced himself on the street, then took us out for chai tea, then drinks, and offered to help us find pants or anything we needed in the city the next day. then we deduced that he was just interested in our girls.
jain temple- as part of a city tour we embarked upon the second day, we were lucky enough to see an annual festival held at the Jain temple. it gave us a chance to see Hinduism in action.
mumbai trains- the ones we rode had no doors, letting you lean out the side into the night air as you rode.
mumbai markets- spent a whole lot of time bargaining in these. all the fine silks you've ever dreamed of, and the price is right.
calaba's back streets after midnight- dangerous.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
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