The ants go marching one-hundred by one-hundred...

So, Wednesdays at work are "office days," meaning there is no clinic and therefore I cannot go pack pills in the pharmacy when I get bored of staring at the ceiling waiting to meet with my supervisor. And if you were wondering what one does at an office on "office day" when one doesn't actually have any office work, I am here to answer that question:

Obviously, you drink a cup of tea and then watch as thousands of ants appear from nowhere to attack your cup of tea.

Ants are very mesmerizing creatures, especially when you start looking around your tiny little office to see where on earth the thousands of ants crawling all over the place have come from.

Then you see this on the wall:

And if you keep following the windy train of ants up towards the ceiling,

you see this:

(That is the little open corner above the door, by the way.)

And then you begin to realize how extraordinary it is that these ants have been following eachother on a very very long and treacherous office journey (probably the equivalent of several miles if you were the size of an ant) to reach this apparent oasis of sugary goodness...They proceed to battle eachother across the wobbly confusing mess of a crumpled napkin and ascend the steep vertical incline of my teacup...

Only to inevitably fall into a deep well of misery and meet their unfortunate demise:

(Poor fallen soldiers. Never had a chance.)

All this makes me wonder how ants have survived as a species for, umm, forever because this behavior strikes me as incredibly stupid. They expend a whole lot of time and energy to reach this sugar hotspot, and then they keep on going until they die. Hedonism is obviously not working out too hot for them. I hope they were at least really really happy and blissful before they drowned.

If only we had the power to hear the thoughts of ants. That would be so cool, like being able to watch a live-action version of the movie "ANTZ" unfold before your eyes.

What I'm doing here; also, Cambodian history

I don’t think I ever really answered that question in the blog! I decided to come to Vietnam (and Cambodia for 5 weeks) because I knew little of the country except for America's involvement here (and I have a fairly limited understanding of that as well). I also wanted to see another side of Asia, as I had already studied Japan and its language. Also, it's just a thrill to live in a dense city for once! In Ho Chi Minh City (aka Sai Gon), I’m taking a sociology class (Contemporary Vietnamese Society), the equivalent of two semesters of Beginning Vietnamese Language, the History of Indochina, and a political science course called “Nation Building After the Khmer Rouge.” History is the one I wanted to talk about in detail here.

Our professor’s name is Michael Vickery, a septuagenarian scholar on Cambodia. From what I know of his background, he’s an American who’s been living in Southeast Asia for at least several decades. On day one, my first thought was “where did they dig this guy up?”: Vickery looks as if he hiked for 2 weeks through the jungle to get to class. Vickery is bald, white haired, and his skin is splotched all over with different skin tones-- you can tell he's been around alot! To every class he wears what I can only describe as a Chinese-style shirt (think this link without a collar; not the one pictured here) along with tan cargo pants and boots. White hair sprouts up through the neck of his shirt and out his ears. He's still got a pretty incredible memory of historical events, though he does make some slips. Probably his best line was while he was discussing a Cham artifact in one of his slides. Vickery said "this piece was found 10 years ago," only to be corrected by our program coordinator who was also present: "you mean 1978."

Still, Michael Vickery is a well-known expert on the history of Cambodia— he’s shown us photos he took in the 1960s of temples when they were still overgrown with jungle. His scholarship on recent Cambodia history is far more controversial: he considers the Khmer Rouge’s genocide to have been far less a product of a radical conception of Marxism and more peasant revolution. He also contests the official casualty count of the Khmer Rouge genocide, placing it at almost half of what other academics consider it to be. Strange when I sometimes think Vickery looks like he's been tortured by several governments! Be sure to check out the reader reviews for his book Cambodia 1975-1983 on Amazon.com.

Vickery is currently advising the defense counsel to the Khmer Rouge leaders and jailers on tribunal right now. I've been told that he once had Duch (the jailer) as a student!

Our class is currently on hiatus while Vickery is in Cambodia for a month, but when the study abroad group I'm part of moves there for rest of the semester, we’ll resume the course and begin learning about the the 1940s onward— and we’ll also get to visit the site where the tribunals are being held! Still, I don’t know if we’ll get to actually see anything transpire. Should be interesting, so I'll report more then.

As for the class itself, just briefly, it's fascinating when we review parts of history Vickery is clearly well versed in, such as the historiography dealing with 7th and 8th century Cambodia, but the classes on 19th and 20th Century have been a drag, even though I was fascinated by those parts of Vietnam: A History (Amazon needs to pay me for all these links!). Most of our readings are from Vickery himself-- as he tells us, everything else that has been written about SE Asia up to the 15th Century or so is wrong! It's great seeing him rip to shreds the other theories about the region, though his tremendous confidence in his own conclusions worries me; less so when he's talking about the ancient Cham empire, but much more when he has talked about the Khmer Rouge!

You can take the girl out of Kansas, but you can't take Kansas out of the only bar in town that carries March Madness AND lets me hog the TV for hours

***DISCLAIMER*** This post may have zero relevance to your life and may stimulate little-to-no interest in anyone not familiar with the absolute and perpetual glory that is Jayhawk basketball. Continue reading at your own risk.

So once upon a time (i.e. last Friday), it struck me that never since I've been a conscious, thinking human being have I ever missed my beloved Kansas Jayhawks play in the NCAA tournament. I have seriously spent a good portion of every Spring Break I've ever had curled up on my couch watching and analyzing every game with every team, deconstructing how we the Jayhawks could positively crush them (even on occasions after we the Jayhawks had, in fact, already been crushed). March Madness is that special time of year where one can leave the Real World behind and, between the actual games and the seemingly ceaseless bracket analysis and commentary on ESPN, actually live 24-7 in College Basketball World. And when you're a Kansas Jayhawk, there's no better place to live than College Basketball World.

Now, there are a lot of things I'm willing to give up to be in Uganda (stable electricity, flushing toilets, and Ben & Jerry's to name a few), but March Madness is not one of them. I spent all day Friday (well, I did some real work, I guess) trying to come up with ingenious ways to force the internet to conjure up a live video stream, or at least a live audio stream, of the tournament, but to no avail. Then I began the agonizing process of trying to let myself down easy and eliminate any faint hopes I had of getting to experience even the tiniest taste of March Madness this year.

Just when I had finally arrived at a little spot of zen and acceptance that my life would indeed go on if I were to miss KU playing -- and that my heart would even continue beating if we lost to the NDSU Bison as with the Bucknell Bison -- my friend David called me and said, "Why don't you try to go find some mzungu place with satellite TV and see if anywhere is broadcasting the tournament? Chances are slim, but it's at least worth a shot if you really want to see the game..." And that's when it struck me that I really did want to see the game. Some little parts of me, most especially the parts of me that pump crimson and blue through my veins, just don't let go of wild hopefulness that easy. So I hopped on my bike and sped off to this one bar at a place called Safari Inn where my friend Sacha and I had watched a really dreadful Nigerian movie on DStv a few weeks back and I walked up to the bar and said "Can we check if there is American basketball on the TV?" and then they scanned through all the channels and found ESPN but it was poker and I was like "NOOOOOO..." but they told me to come back later. Boo.

Nearly defeated, I headed over to Flavours (a.k.a. magic coffee shop with wi-fi and the best brownies on the planet) to sulk and eat a giant plate of pasta. But while I was there, trying fruitlessly to get MMOD (mmod.ncaa.com) to load on my sad little computer, I decided to take a stab at it and see if there was a DStv schedule posted online. To my ultimate shock, coming up on ESPN in 15 minutes was the FIRST ROUND OF THE 2009 NCAA TOURNAMENT!!!! I nearly flipped out and promptly hopped back on my bike and sped back across town to Safari Inn, where the staff turned on ESPN for me and miraculously there appeared the image of CBS's March Madness coverage. I cannot even explain the ecstasy that overwhelmed me in that moment. I jumped up and down squealing and gave the bartender a HUGE hug and spent the next 5 hours (yep, 5 hours...) in complete awe at the complete serendipity of this situation. Despite the minor frustration of having to watch more of Oklahoma State vs. Tennessee than Kansas vs. NDSU (apparently defending national champions are NOT worthy of equal coverage... hmmpf), I was in pure bliss. Sometimes life just surprises you in the best way possible, like when you sit back and realize that you are sitting in a random bar in the middle of Uganda watching the Kansas Jayhawks playing live half a world away while a bunch of Ugandans are behind you drinking merrilly to the sounds of Michael Jackson and Madonna circa like 1985.

I am still in awe of this whole thing. In a land where I can hardly get my e-mail to load most days, I can watch Jayhawk basketball live on CBS being simulcast on ESPN International on some TV in some bar. It's beyond wonderful. This is thereby one of the rare occasions when I can honestly say with no hesitation: praise be to globalization.

So every time a KU game is on between now and April 6, I know where I'll be! How about you? For all you Sun Devils out there, I propose you hop on the KU bandwagon for no other reason than that we're in U of A's bracket and if we end up crossing paths you can be sure we'll avenge our regular season loss and demolish them on your behalf. Just a suggestion.

PATRICK LIVES!!!

Just when you think you are so far away from Patrick, you go to a German birthday party and hear the techno-remix of Born To Be Alive.

Please please read my desperate call to action! We need your help!

I'm serious, help us out here...

http://thehopejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/open-letter.html

Job Opening: Umbrella Repairman

One person needed to save abandoned umbrellas from public trashcans. After bringing the umbrellas back to life, they can be re-sold for a profit to others tourists who just threw their umbrella away.

I took a little journey into Vienna this weekend and would say that water would be the best word to describe the city. First off, it rained everyday. The rainstorm resulted in massive umbrella graveyards in garbage cans throughout the city. I captured as many of these sad little umbrella graveyards as I could. You could make enough money as an umbrella repairman to rent an apartment in the same castle that the president of Austria lives in (because in Austria they trust the public enough to let them live in the same building as the president).

Fun Fact about Vienna: Tap water comes straight from the Alps! MMMMMM

Writing poems is a great procrastination strategy, no matter what continent you're on!

I am feeling particularly poetic at the moment (maybe because I'd rather write poetry than rewrite my entire grant proposal), so here are some impromptu poems for your reading pleasure. They have sadly not been written on Fatburger napkins, but I think you'll be able to manage.

Ode to Fene

I used to think that there was only such a thing as fruit-flavored Starburst, not Starburst-flavored fruit.
That was until I met fene, the most magical fruit on the planet.
Tasting fene for the first time was like experiencing Plato's allegory of the cave, but with my tongue.
The first magical thing about fene is that it tastes like Starburst.
It doesn't taste like any particular flavor of Starburst, but more like what the ultimate flavor of Starburst would taste like.
The second magical thing about fene is that it looks really cool on the outside.
It is bright green and bumpy and looks like aliens brought it from outer space.
The third magical thing about fene is that it looks really cool on the inside.
It is bright yellow and looks like some strange flowy sea creature.
The fourth magical thing about fene is that it is really giant.
It is fun to watch boda-boda guys with mass amounts of fene strapped to their bikes.
In conclusion, fene is the best thing ever to happen to the genre of fruit.
I am very perplexed as to why we don't eat fene in America.

Oops

Placing your iPod in your bra so you can continue listening to it while you jolt to the bathroom to have diarrhea may seem like a good idea, but it really isn't.
Why, you ask?
Because your iPod will slip out of your shirt, down between your legs, and into the diarrhea-filled toilet.
Then, without thinking, you will instantly reach into the toilet to retrieve your poor little iPod.
Then you will be left with a wet, defiled iPod and wet, defiled hands, and you will have nothing left to do except laugh really really hard at yourself.
Then you will be stuck in the middle of Uganda without an iPod, pondering how you will ever fall asleep at night because you can no longer listen to Enya and This American Life until you pass out.
At least this is my current predicament.
Oops.

Second Chance Haiku #1

Salvador is strange.
Find Second Chance on You Tube.
You will understand.

#2
Andre is evil.
So is Walter, he should die.
So what happens next?




Okay I really need to stop this poetry business, I actually have work to do.

Where I am

Instead of writing a blog post this week, I thought I'd make a map (using Google Maps) to give people a sense of where I am in HCMC and where I go throughout the city. Click on the icons, lines, or boxes to see descriptions. To use a better interface and see a full list of the places I marked, follow this link.


It's also worth zooming out all the way to get a sense of perspective and to see two of the placemarks that are further out.


View Larger Map

I'm kinda famous

http://spa.asu.edu/pdffiles/urbanite/VOL1_ISS2.pdf

Check it yo.

Not “weird,” but “different”: Part II

I had some new thoughts on adapting to a different culture.

I was with my friends Dave and Lauren in Ho Chi Minh City’s Chinatown on Friday, seeing some of the mosques and Chinese pagodas in the area and just generally enjoying the city life. At this point, we’ve learned some basic Vietnamese and are starting to try out some of the local behavior.

Photos— As we’ve learned from our Vietnamese program coordinator Ky, it’s not actually rude here to take pictures of people without asking (Vietnam seems to be, comparatively, a very casual country). Dave is a great photographer and is taking full use of this freedom to take some great shots of people. On the one hand, I understand that he’s not out of line from their standpoint to be snapping away, but I have a hard time breaking with what I feel is acceptable by American standards. I think this is part of a larger problem I’ll have with “doing as the Romans do.”
(Right: One of Dave's photos of a woman on a boat at the floating market in Chau Doc in the Mekong River Delta.)

Litter— Ho Chi Minh City has tremendous amounts of litter in the streets, to the point where it detracts from what would be otherwise beautiful places. I’m fairly repulsed by the normalcy of littering here, even though along major roadways there’s usually a road crew cleaning up. I’ve heard, however, that some Confucian traditions may be playing into how the Vietnamese regard public space. Apparently, in China the concept of public space has arisen only in recent decades, so I’m told [I really need work on finding better citations!]. As a consequence, the public spaces outside homes are treated like something of a no-man’s-land, with less public regard for keeping the streets clean. I’m still stuck, however, on the fact that dirty streets lead to public health issues and less community pride from my American perspective.

Diet — I had thought that I’d be able to just accept eating meat while in Vietnam, but in the last week it’s become more and more difficult to continue doing so because of my reservations about the use of animal products. It doesn’t help that my diet is now more out of my hands as my homestay gets underway! I think I may attempt to go vegetarian by the end of the week, and it may be somewhat feasible with egg and cheese dishes and fresh fruit always close at hand. However, I've had something of a mental block doing so: after so long being a vegan, I see all animal products as being morally equivalent. So, if I'm eating cheese, I feel like there's not really a jump to eating meat as well!
(Right: Fish farm in the Mekong River. We're in sort of a floating structure in the middle of the river.)

All told, I was hoping that while studying abroad I’d be able to adapt to this new culture, but I’m surprised to find myself resisting like this. Our sociology classwork has been helping me with this dilemma tremendously, however. One concept that helps is that of participant observation, which entails “subjecting yourself, your own body, and your own personality, and your own social situation, to the set of contingencies that play upon a set of individuals, so that you can physically and ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social situation, or their work situation, or their ethnic situation.” So now, instead of feeling like some kind of ethnocentrist for sticking to my cultural norms, now I just feel like a poor sociologist!