river town: two years on the yangtze

by peter hessler. peter is a resident of beijing whom sean met at a local book cafe. peter spent two years living in Fuling (in Schichuan Province) teaching English for the Peace Corps. The book is written as two intertwined themes. One, a story of his experiences living and teaching in Fuling, and the other are short stories of the Chinese people he meets. I liked the book because it gives an inside perspective on chinese issues like the three gorges dam, the Communist Party, democracy, america, capitalism, racism, etc. It was also good to get confirmation of my own experiences. Since I had spent the first week in china alone, i had started to wonder if the things i was seeing were as crazy as i thought they were, or if it was i who was different. Hessler's description of honking cars are a great example, and it comes as a complete shock and was one of the first things I noticed (its worth noting that the problem is compunded in Beijing where the population is insanely huge):

[the cars] were always passing each other in a mad rush to get wherever they were going. Most of them were cabs, and virtually every cabby in Fuling had rewired his horn so it was triggered by a contact point at the tip of the gearshift. They did this for convenience; because of the hills, drivers shifted gears frequently, and with their hand on the stick it was possible to touch the contact point ever so slightly and the horn would sound. They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians,. They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was nobody to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the driver's mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. ... the other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose.

Something that i learned early on in Bangkok is that "the simple truth was that you could do nothing about either the noise or the pollution, which meant that they could either become very important and very annoying, or they could become not important at all." To enjoy your time in asia, you must decide on the latter. I've decided to make honking fun. I try to predict when someone will honk. I try to make cars honk on my bicycle. The chinese ride their bikes a lot. They also ride them very very slowly (most don't have gears). So, in comparison, i'm lance armstrong and when i use the car lanes to pass the slow cyclists, any car behind me will honk if i enter their lane. It doesn't matter that i'm actually going twice as fast as the cars (which also go slow because there are too many of them). The predictability and meaninglessness of the honk is hilarious.

Something i've noticed in the states is that the chinese exhibit greater collectiveness and generosity within a family than do americans. Growing up in San Jose, we lived next to a Chinese family where the grandparents lived with their children.

They were remarkably generous with each other, and often this selflessness extended to good friends ... collective thought was particularly good for the elderly, who were much better cared for than in America ... they almost always lived with their children ... doing what they could to help out around the family farm, business, or home. There was no question that their lives had more of a sense of purpose and routine than I had seen among elderly [in America].
But such collectivism is limited to small groups, to families and close friends ... these tight social circles also acted as boundaries: they were exclusive as well as inclusive. The most common [example] was the hassle at ticket lines, which weren't lines so much as piles, great pushing mobs in which every person fought forward with no concern for anybody else. Collectively the mobs had one single idea - that tickets must be purchased - but nothing else held them together, and so each individual made every effort to fulfill his personal goal as quickly as possible.

This behavior permeates every experience in China. There is no sense of personal space, because if you're not in the person's circle, you essentially don't exist. There is constant contact (i.e. collisions) with other people who aren't looking where they're going. When there is an accident or an argument on the street, bystanders will crowd around and watch without helping or interfering. Someone could be bleeding to death on the street from a car accident, surrounded by people watching them wail in pain. I've seen it happen.

China is indeed a crazy place for an american.

beijing

so i've been in beijing for about a month now. it has been really good to be around family (i.e., sean). i've started working at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes. so i've been doing yoga everyday, and i must be improving but can't really tell. i do know i sweat a lot. the classes are mostly flow classes which means there is a lot of controlled movement between poses. this is challenging for me as i was used to my meditative iyengar classes (in san francisco) where we'd get into a pose and sit there for a couple of minutes. there is a saying in yoga that means "fierce dedication without attachment to results." this is a great saying to apply not only to yoga, but to life in general and adopting and living it is really natural, and really freeing.

my anxiety now is almost totally gone. i think the accupuncture had a great deal to do with it. for the first time in a year, i feel like myself, but also feel totally new. different. at peace. its hard to describe, but its great.

i'm working on learning chinese while i'm here. its very difficult. the tones are a bitch to get right. and even when people say them back to back, i have a hard time distinguishing them. still, its useful and the chinese people are wonderfully helpful, generous, and inquisitive. sean's landlord is an elderly chinese woman who cooks for him constantly. being a white person (or waigouren - literally "an outside person") in china is like being the focus of attention wherever you go - even in a big city like beijing that has a huge expat population: people are constantly staring and wanting to talk to you, moreso than the other places i've been.

the chinese can't drive. i'm willing to say that with absolute certainty. i bought a bike for $20 and can cruise around beijing. and people on foot, car, and bicycle really try to hit you. there can be no other explanation. there is no such thing as private space. i was riding my bike the other day, and i was cruising along in a straight line. a woman standing on the curb on the left was going to cross the street. she looked me right in the eye, about 12 feet in front of me, and proceeded to step right in front of my bike. i swerved and just barely missed her. she just kept walking. this happens daily and i really have no explanation for it. you'd really think that people who have been living in such close proximity, in such density, would figure out a way to coexist without running into each other. but they seem completely incapable of it.

its also very polluted here. when the IOC came to check out Beijing for their Olympic bid, the government shut down all the factories and seeded the clouds so it would rain. that's how bad it is. and after a month of being here, after doing anything requiring heavy breathing (running, playing ultimate, cycling, getting out of bed) i end up in coughing fits. these really gross dry coughs. but sean and i are fighting back, creating a little oasis in his apartment of plants that are supposed to remove toxins from the air.

my books arrive soon so i can begin my distance learning classes in ecological design at San Francisco Institute of Architecture. i'm stoked.

the tipping point

by malcolm gladwell. "how little things can make a big difference" is the subtitle. this is a bestseller and i was interested to see his take on phenomena and epidemics. having recently read so many critical accounts of society, agriculture, and economics i was excited to see how things might change for the better via epidemics. recycling was one epidemic i had great experience with growing up. i remember the day that san jose instituted its rather expansive recycling program. one day we were throwing everything into one bin, and the next we had bins for every type of waste; aluminum, glass, newspaper, food waste, motor oil, metals, and yard waste were all separated and laid out on the curb in a precarious rainbow stack. san jose went from not recycling at all, to being the number one city in the world (probably for about a week). i always wondered how this happened.

gladwell breaks epidemics down into classes of people that fuel the epidemic. basically, his hypothesis is that these few people (connectors, mavens, and salesmen) spread the word about an idea or product. once this idea (and the idea has to be a "sticky" idea) reaches a certain critical mass (of typically 150 people) the product tips or explodes into the mainstream. he looks at the stickiness factor of sesame street and blues clues, the massive fall of new york city crime by tweaking very small cues in the environment, the allure of suicide and smoking, and the spread of fashion from a few to the world.

in regards to the new york city crime drop:

the criminal - far from being someone who acts for fundamental intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world - is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him ... behavior is a function of social context. [Crime] has everything to do with the message sent by the graffiti on the walls and the disorder at the turnstiles [of the NYC subway].

quoting the evolutionary biologist S.L. Washburn in an attempt to pinpoint the magic number of 150, the "social channel capacity" (note the interesting parallel with Manning's Against The Grain):

Most of human evolution took place before the advent of agriculture when men lived in small groups, on a face-to-face basis. As a result human biology has evolved as an adaptive mechanism to conditions that have largely ceased to exist. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time; and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him.

Thus, the figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of people we can "know;" those who we have a genuinely social relationship with. Or, "those people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in the bar."

Gladwell references Gore Associates (makers of Gore-Tex fabric) that take this number of 150 seriously:

At Gore there are no title. If you ask people who work there for their card, it will just say their name and underneath it the word "Associate," regardless of how much money they make or how much responsibility they have or how long they have been at the company. People don't have bosses, they have sponsors - mentors - who watch out for their interests. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no elaborate strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively.

The short of the long of it is, Gore Associates is one of the most desirable companies to work for: they have a turnover rate that is 33% the industry average, they've been profitable for 35 consecutive years, and they are innovative and they are constantly growing new product lines. Whenever they grow to over 150 people, they divide the company into autonomous divisions. This way, you can work with people you feel a connection to. You know and understand everyone's job and their function. You build a relationship because you depend on them and what they do and they, likewise, rely on you.

yunnan

after playing beijing tourguide for sean's dad for two days (note: all i know how to do is say thank you and use the subway) it was time to hop on another plane to go south to yunnan. i had ants in my pants to hike the spectacular Leaping Tiger Gorge. Its a gorge where a river runs at the base of two 4000 meter mountains that are breathtakingly vertical (that's 2.5 miles high people!). Legend has it that it is so narrow in one spot a tiger escaped some hunters by leaping across. Sean and Al seemed a bit apathetic so i cracked the whip.

After the 3 hour flight, we arrived in Kunming and spent the next day in the pleasant weather. It was nice to be in cool, relatively clean air. (Beijing is as dirty as they say - if you're not choking back sand from the recent sandstorm, you're inhaling some sort of burt coal product or car exhaust.) Being in the south, there are more minorities so people seem a bit friendlier and are more exotic looking (read: more attractive). Getting to LTG was not easy, it required an overnight bus (9 hours to Lijang). Since Al is not a standard issue asian size, we had to buy him two beds in the bus and still the beds were too short, he hung over the edge at his calfs. But we made it there and it was another 2 hour car ride to the trailhead.

The walking was spectacular. We were so high, and the drop was so steep its really hard to describe. I literally almost fainted at one point it was so breathatking. I felt connected to the world. A very small part of it. At this one point the mountain was so large and sheer, you could put your chin on your chest and look down at the river, you could crane your neck back and see the mountaintop (barely), and you could look left and right and just barely make out the ends of the peaks.

All along the way the natives have donkeys to help the tourists up the mountain (because its so steep you have to use your hands in certain parts). I think even if we were to mount the little mules, they wouldn't have supported Al's weight. No asses for us.

We hiked for two nights and stayed in nice Naxi guesthouses. The Naxi are the so called "minority" people of the region. The food was excellent. They had this bread called Naxi Baba which was like a fluffy wheat pita bread that they put all sorts of toppings on: garlic, butter, bananas, chocolate, weed. you name it. it was great. The first night we arrived in the twilight (actually it was dark) and all the beds were full because of the big holiday week in china. It was 1.5 hours to the next guesthouse in the dark, and we were all very tired. The cute Naxi girls, giggiling, made us a bed on the floor and it worked superbly.

The town of Lijang was charming. Courtyard houses and a river running through the old town corresponded to what i thought china should look like.

pictures of yunnan, here

sencha photos

from the retreat

retreat

my blitzkrieg to beijing was motivated by a yoga retreat in the mountains to the north of the sprawling city. sean had signed me up for this retreat, and i was thinking it was going to be a bunch of yoga, but as it turned out it was so much more.

first, sencha is a small village perched in the steep mountains 2 hours north of beijing. when we arrived it was insanely windy and dry, but over the next few days it became warm, green, and calm. it went from winter to spring in those few days, the apricot trees coming into full pungent blossom throughout the hillsides. the retreat was led by cameron tukapua, a kind, warm new zealander versed in the art of accupuncture, chinese medicine, and qi gong. we'd awake every morning at 6:30am with 2 hours of yoga, followed by a wonderful breakfast, a lecture, lunch, a hike and lecture, 2 more hours of yoga, dinner, a talking circle, and then meditation and bedtime. it was ideal. the people were perfect and so was the food. the teachings revolved around a model of being, life, and health that are inspired by the seasons and the ecology of the planet.

for example, the cycle of summer -> indian summer -> autumn -> winter -> spring are analagous to the 5 elements of fire -> earth -> metal -> water -> wood. each of these elements has a connection to various parts of the body as well as personality archetypes, emotions, traits, etc. when we're out of balance in one element, the model shows how it can affect the others. it was a beautifully simple system, and it was exciting to learn about in such a dreamy setting. our lecture on metal/rock was delivered on the great wall itself perched high above everything - we were on top of the world.

when i returned from the retreat i got my first accupuncture treatment by the teacher, and it was really wonderful. i've had a total of 3 treatments and they've all helped in some way or another. while in china i hope to spend more time studying more about this life energy chi which i've felt in small quantities before, but never as strongly as now. the human body is truly amazing.

now sean, his dad, and myself are off to yunnan in the south of china to hike and visit the "minorities" as they're called here.

yangshou pictures

are finally here.

yangshou, china

i arrived in guilin to rain and cold. bangkok was stifling hot when i left and the south of china is just plain cold at the moment. i haven't seemed to acclimate to any sort of weather probably because i rarely stay put.

i took a ferry down the Li River to Yangshou. The river snakes its way through enormous limestone mountains. These are the same mountains that inspire all of those ink scroll paintings you see everywhere. Many of the mountains are named after objects they evoke: elephant trunk, apple, 9 horses, camel, dragon. It was like picking objects out of clouds. Dreamy.

Towards the end of the cruise, some older chinese gentlemen took a liking to me and proceeded to get me drunk on the local beer. Being that i didn't speak a word of chinese nor they a word of english, i drank what they gave me, not wanting to offend them. it was a lot of beer.

i found a guesthouse, Hotel California, and took a big nap.

waking, i went to find food. and find it i did. the street food here is pretty fresh and varied. snails, rabbits, snakes, chickens, fish, bamboo, dog, pork, EVERYTHING. i hope to try a little bit of everything while i was here, so i started in on some snails and vegetables. i need to learn how to say, "no MSG" though as it seems to be in everything. i had some cuhrazy dreams.

the next day i took a calligraphy class and climbed one of the limestone mountains. i got nearly to the top before deciding that i probably wasn't supposed to be up there. i didn't want to piss off any officials. i was using trees and small foot/hand holds to get that high. i got some good pictures though.

i decided to go live the remaining sunny days in yangshou with my calligraphy teacher. he had some extra rooms he rents out and is trying to get an actual hostel off the ground. he and his family are wonderfully kind people. i was able to eat 3 meals a day with them and their son. i hiked to the top of moon hill - this amazing limestone bridge at the top of one of the many pinnacles. i also got to practice a bit more calligraphy, some cheng-style tai chi, and do my first actual rock climbing (note: i suck).

soon i will board a train and in 27 hours arrive in beijing. i'll hopefully post some pictures when i get there.

against the grain

by richard manning. the subtitle to this book is "how argirculture has hijacked civilization" and the book is just that. although i was put off by manning's manic style, i do like the message and the argument that he delivers. in short, it is a must read.

this book is a logical extension of Ishmael in that it discusses precisely what the last 10,000 years of agriculture has grown: poverty, hunger, famine, slavery, corruption, imperialism, war, diabetes, obesity, disease, poisoned drinking water, extinction of species, etc. its a pretty damning account, but the argument is pretty sound. in the modern day, by subsidizing and supporting industrial agriculture and encouraging surpluses, the USDA has encouraged and enabled the growth of what is known as the farming of commodity goods made from wheat, rice, and corn. these grains are then processed into things like flour, high fructose corn syrup, and the like consituting nearly 66% of our caloric intake (add sugar and you nearly have the complete picture of what we eat). because they are commodities they can and are traded in markets just as currecy is. what farms grow is no food, but money. and we are fooled into eating it, pretending that it nourishes us (because we feel full).

in regards to production:

virtually all of the increases in total food production ... [in the US] ... were achieved by expansion of the arable land base ... eventually, though, expansion ran up against the limits of the planet's supply of plowable land.

we have nearly exhausted this strategy [of making a plant the most productive as possible] in a bout forty years, a period in which the world's population has doubled. There is an odd proportionality to that. It took ten thousand years to exhaust the old expansionist strategy of claiming more arable land [to increase total food production].

the farm subsidy itself encourages surplus. whatever the farmer doesn't sell, he cashes a check from the government. the surplus food is typically exported to undeveloped, famine stricken areas, which encourages further population growth, bankrupts local farmers, and adds a resource to parasitic governemnts.

in surplus, we end up with worthless products like Jell-O, "a tasteless blob of reconstituted cow's hooves artificially colored, sweetened [by corn syrup], and flavored."

on industrial ag:

the richest 2% of all farmers - 2% of 1.6% of the nation's population - account for 35% of total farm sales. At the same time, they receive 27% of federal subsidies. As many as 76% of the farms in some Colorado counties would lose money were it not for subsidies.

on fast food:

Americans spent $6 billion on fast food in 1970 and more than $110 billion in 2000. This latter figure exceeds what Americans spend annually on higher education, personal computers, or cars. It's also more than they spend on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined.

he even quotes my heroine, Alice Waters, "Every choice you make has consequences for the quality of your own life and good health, but also for agriculture and culture. If you buy food from people who take care of the land, you are supporting a while way of life."

its not all doom and gloom, as manning points to the recent surge in organic farm and farmer's markets as ways to turn the system around. from organic farming leads to sustainable agriculture, to the development of a permaculture. encapsulating the essence of nature in a farm would be ideal. closing the loop and letting the land produce. when people start caring what they eat, and learning about what they eat, they will begin to connect with people of their community and therefore lead happier, healthier lives.

the economy of cities

by jane jacobs. i didn't like this nearly as well as The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (which is fantastic) but maybe its because i know shit about economics. her basic thesis is that it is cities that allow rural land and agriculture to develop rather than the other way around. cities invent and towns and farms implement. i guess this wasn't terribly surprising to me, but, again, i've engaged in little reading on economic theory. she mentions only in passing that

The effects of economic stagnation upon nature are veiled when populations are so scanty and so primitive in their technologies that anything they do has relatively little effect upon the rest of the natural world. But once a society has developed its economy appreciably, and thus has increased its population appreciably too, any serious stagnation becomes appallingly destructive to the environment. Common sequels in the past have been deforestation, complete destruction of wild life, loss of soil fertility and the lowering of water tables.

but this is all she says about it. its not clear to me what she means by stagnation, which made me frustrated for a more telling account. this statement to me seems counter to the theory in Ishmael where she believes technological progress will right a wrong world. but i had to guess because, again, that's all she said about it.

some other nuggets.

one of the social preconditions for economic development is not so much the opportunity for a person to change his work (and his class) from that of his father, as if often supposed, but rather the possibility of changing radically his own work and his own place in society during his own working life.

so, just when i thought i wasn't contributing to the economy by leaving engineering, according to JJ, i am. neat.

and:

When organizations that are already large decide to embark on a program of adding new goods and services, they seldom start by adding onto the divisions of labor they already have. They buy up others, to provide parent work for the new purposes they have in mind.

in other words, actual R&D typically does not (and will not) come from large companies. they can't afford the risk of development costs not paying off (something like 9 of 10 ideas fail). so big companies buy small ones. this is exactly what i saw while working. new exciting work done by the start-ups whereas the larger companies work on their quarterly profits ensuring the bread will be on the table. this is what drove me mad. the tendency of the masses to participate in maintenence, not innovation.

bali

would you believe, more pictures than ever!


wowie. bali is truly a magical place. after ditching singapore i arrived late on a weekend night in bali - knowing i couldn't get to the dive location so late i decided to party it up in kuta and see what it was all about. many australians and many balineese girls looking for australians. not a very good scene but met some nice australian couples. the vibe was bad so after dealing with my stolen wallet problem (ick), i bolted for jemeluk beach on the north-east coast to get down to diving business.

i wanted to do a rescue course so i tagged along with some open water divers and helped the instructor roger. the dives were incredible. the water is even warmer in bali than in thailand and it was much clearer and the coral was in amazing shape. the variety of fish was outstanding.

i did a total of eight dives over four days including a night dive and a 39m (130 feet) dive at Gili Selang where i saw 4 (that's right 4!) Great Hammerhead sharks! they were just out there lurking off in the distance for about 10 seconds. even roger was pumped (only the second time he had ever seen them)! so i was obviously very lucky and stoked.

the fishing village i stayed in was real bali. every morning the people would wake early (at about 5:30) because it gets so hot there in the middle of the day. they had these brightly painted teak boats they use for fishing and carting tourists around. they are simple but functional - i even did a dive off of one.

after i passed my rescue test i set off for the very small village of sidemen. it is located at the base of an active volcano mt. agung. i stayed in a retreat-style bungalow. i was definately living it up. the view of the valley with rice-terraced fields and a river was almost too much. even on the third day i was pinching myself.

the day before i left i went to the biggest temple in bali on the side of mt agung. my guide, gusti, had me put on a sarong and headband so i would be properly dressed for the ceremonies that were going on. i was surprised to find thousands of people at the temple praying at this ceremony that occurs once every 5 years. they were bussing people in from all over bali to pray. gusti showed me how to pray with flowers in your hands and to drink the holy water. there was music and food all the while looking out over the beautiful bali landscape. i'll never forget it.

the balineese were really cool. so helpful and smiling all the time (even more so than the thai). all the bali boys i met always asked me if i had been in love. i had no less than 3 conversations wherein they expressed their desire to fall in love with a western woman. they asked me lots of questions about my past loves. apparently, they think bali women are only after status and money. the few bali girls i talked to seemed to confirm this as they always asked 1) where i was from and 2) what my job was. you could imagine their reaction when i told them i didn't have one. ha!

at any rate, bali wowed me. its one of those places that i will definately return to soon.

singabore

new pictures!

so, as you can tell by the nature of the last few posts, i've been hanging low for awhile. i was sick for a bit in chiang mai which allowed me ample time to read (note book reports below) and enjoy some food. and then to bangkok for some "same same". i've really been lounging. but when my visa needed renewing (every 30-days in thailand) i jumped on a cheap flight to singapore. the food was the best i was told and thai food was becoming tiresome (can you imagine?).

singapore is a strange place. basically only 40 years old, what once was a fishing village of 160 people is now a thriving commercialized metropolis. there is some excellent architecture around; namely the esplanade arts center ("durian" as its called here because it looks like the treasured spiky fruit) that is really strikingly (i.e. spikingly) beautiful as well as a new 16 story library.

its so clean here its spooky. i think like most crimes here, littering must be heavily punished because there isn't a scrap or cigarette butt or anything on the ground. no graffiti either. Anywhere! its bizarre. chinatown is clean! what the hell? who ever heard of clean chineese? and everyone is tidy and clean and there isn't any poverty to be seen. its like one big social science experiment that i'm not sure i like. in fact, there's very little for me to do here since i don't shop and that seems to be what everyone does here. its really hot though and the best way to avoid the heat are the malls.

oh yeah, and everyone speaks english! everyone! whether they are thai, chineese, malay, indian, or arab. spooky. this is clearly what the global culture is becoming: everyone still looks different, they all speak english, and they seem to exist to consume material goods.

but the singaporeans eat. and that i can do. at the hawker stalls its common to eat with strangers and for them to offer you some of their food. in fact, the common greeting here is "have you eaten?" here is an example of what i ate yesterday:

char siew bao (steamed pork buns), grass jelly drink, pork innard soup, kaya toast with coconut jam, fishball soup, carrot cake (which is actually made of radishes and isn't sweet), rice porridge with fish, coconut juice (twice), and mee chong (an indian dish of spicy fried noodles with pork).

whew!

so not being able to take the mall scene and my (surely) expanding gut any longer, i'm off to bali. i've heard that they like littering so it will at least feel homey.

p.s. this is awesome

ishmael

by daniel quinn. this book is so amazing i'm having a hard time coming up with the right things to say about it. i'm not sure how to even start. its about our global culture, and why its wrong, or why it might be. how there are messages everywhere that "Mother Culture" dictates the way we think the world operates. it deals with sustainability and living in harmony with nature and how we haven't been doing either for 10,000 years. it takes a novel look at the biblical stories of adam and eve and cain and abel. sean had recommended it to me years ago and i've just gotten around to reading it. everyone should read this book and give it a thought.

p.s. i'm in singapore.

the fountainhead

by ayn rand. my first ayn read. it was brilliant. i devoured it in just over a week (it helped that i was sick). she puts forth her theory of objectivism wherein the individual's happiness is a result of their productive achievements. as she states it:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

it is secondarily about architecture, which tickled me pink. the main character is a true modernist in his designs and his arguments against classical architecture are, in my view, dead-on. i'm definately going after atlas shrugged soon.

corrupted incorporated

shall i say it?
do i need to?

it appears that the insurance giant AIG's chairman participated in a deal that "may have been aimed at artificially bolstering the company's financial position."

doesn't this sound a tad familiar? haven't we been through all this before? weren't the new "transparent accounting" principles supposed to curtail such acts?

i'm shocked. and not because people of questionable ethics in high places exist. i know they do. sadly, its more the rule than the exception. when will we re-invent capitalism so we don't reward people for their bullshit behavior?

i'm not shocked because this exists. i'm shocked that it will be brushed under the rug tomorrow and the machine will keep on polluting and nobody will bother to make a change.

is AIG in your portfolio?
i bet it is.

skinny legs and all

by tom robbins. i can't say enough about this writer. why haven't i been reading him my whole life? he's a poetic genius. this one's about peeling back the illusions (or veils) of life. its about everything. although i'm tempted to buy all his books and read them back-to-back next up is some ayn rand.

elephant nature park (part two)

new pictures!

i've just concluded my second week at the elephant nature park, and the amazingness just kept on coming. i was finally able to meet Lek, the park owner. She is so kind and sweet and has such a huge heart. I was able to learn most of the elephants by name and even some of the 35 dogs.

later in the week we went on what's called a "Jumbo Express" - we drove out to a remote karen hill tribe village. before arriving to the village we went into the forest and tied blessed monk scarves around trees to protect them from illegal logging. it would be nearly unthinkable for a thai to cut down a blessed tree. i chose some really big trees off in the distance that i thought needed a little extra karma.

when we got to the village we administered medicine to the children and a few residents. the kids happily lined up for their shots and we would give them sweets and balloons. they loved those balloons. i'm not sure they had ever seen one before.

the next day we bamboo-rafted down the river to an elephant camp that had some sick elephants. upon arriving we were ushered into the back - as it turns out they would allow us to treat the elephants (for free mind you) but we had to do it out of sight of the tourists. we treated about 5 elephants for cracked feet. because of over-working and extra dry conditions, their feet were cracking. some were worse than others, but you could see that they were very tenuous when it came to going up or downhill. we squirted this milky solution on their feet and coated their nails with iodine. they were'nt too happy about it.

another elephant had a huge hole in its head. their mahout said he didn't know what it was from but Pom, the one running the Jumbo Express, said the mahout probably hit him with his metal hook. the final treatment involved putting anasceptic on a gash on the side of an elephant, clearly from the harness used to carry toursists. it was deep and bleeding.

the hardest thing about this trip was that we couldn't say anything to the tourists. these elephants needed to rest for about a week with no work, but instead were going to be carrying more people in about 45 minutes. i'm sure, if the tourists had known, they wouldn't have ridden the elephants. besides, elephants are slow and terribly uncomfortable to ride on for any length of time. but if we had told the tourists what was going on, the park would not allow Lek and her group to treat the elephants at all, and they would be far worse off without treatment.

sigh.

i hope to return to the park if i can find a substantial project to work on. i feel like i've cleaned up my fair share of elephant shit. still looking for an apartment here with a kitchen - you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find one.

p.s. as far as those huge spiders are concerned, they're totally harmless (although still fast as lightning). i ran into enough of them at the park that i can now expertly shoo them away. a moment of silence for the poor guy who met his demise on the bottom of my shoe the other week.

elephant nature park

so i had heard a lot about elephant abuse in thailand but didn't really know that much about it. turns out there is an excellent elephant hospital/sanctuary/park an hour north of chiang mai. you can pay them a fee and you can volunteer there for one day up to two weeks. all housing and meals are provided and you help the permanent volunteers with their daily chores.

there are about 15 elephants in the park. most of them had been abused and come to the hospital sick, and some have been purchased by the amazing park owner, Lek. some of the stories of the elephants are truly horrific. one of the elephants, Jokia, used to work in a tourist camp. she was pregnant and probably because of the harness used to carry tourists on her back, she mis-carried. she became depressed and refused to work. so, her owner took a slingshot and blinded her in one eye. still not working (obviously) the owner sold her. the new owner, unhappy that she wouldn't work, blinded her other eye. so now she is completely blind and wanders around only by aid of another elephant. this is just one story. there are 14 others with equally horrific tales.

we also learned about the way the elephants are trained using the pedjan, or "crush". when an elephant is about 3 years old they are put into this bamboo contraption that totally immobilizes them. then they are beaten for many days and nights (usually 3 days for females and 7 for males) without food or water until they are able to do some rudimentary skills. this is commonly known as "breaking the will of the elephant." the videos we saw of this ritual are awful. the elephant screams and screams and is beaten constantly while men shout at it from all directions. The thing is, all domestic elephants in thailand go through this. This is likely why you sometimes hear of elepghants going on rampages and killing people later in their lives. Lek, the park owner, rightly objects to this treatment and is working to inform the Thais, and tourists about proper elephant care. In fact, there are two babies at the park that will never go through the pedjan, proving that elephants can be trained without it.

so after a week of volunteering, its been really great. we spend most our time feeding and cleaning up dung. but we also wash and ride the elephants (the proper way, along their neck) on occasion. i learned some thai commands for driving the elephants around. they eat constantly: pinneaple, cucumber, banana (trees, leaves, fruit, and stalks), papaya, figs, grass, corn. it never ends! i've taken care of an 80 year old elephant, named Mae Tong Bai. She is a real sweetheart.

Pictures here.
More info here.

i have a week left at the camp (unless they want me to stay longer), and then its on to a new adventure. i'm not sure yet what that will be.

night of the spider

so i recently had to change guesthouses. when you tell the thais that you expect to stay for "around 3 days" they take you literally. so, unable to extend my stay, i moved down the road to this semi-swanky place (i.e., $6/night instead of $2.50).

i immediately took advantage of the hot shower and went out for a bite to eat. when i returned, i found in the bathroom a very large spider. i'm not typically afraid of spiders. but then again california spiders had nothing on this guy. he was the size of my hand.

remembering that things like to kill you in asia, i took a .picture and went to show the receptionist to see if my life was in danger. the conversation went like this:

me: "is this spider poisonous?"
receptionist: {shakes head in the negative}
me: "good spider?"
receptionist: {shakes head in the affirmative}
me: "not bad?"
receptionist: {continues shaking head} "where you find?"
me: "bathroom"
receptionist: {laughs}

so i return to my room %30 confident that the spider will not kill me. besides, he'd have to crawl a long way out of the bathroom to get to the bed, and that seemed unlikely. he seemed happy sitting there doing what spiders that size do. eat water-buffaloes i thought to myself. i didn't want to kill him, so i fell asleep after some reading.

maybe because of this, i have a nightmare. think shaun of the dead without the comedy. i was killing (or at least running away from) zombies in some crappy suburban town. it was a bit freaky. i wake up and go to the bathroom.

i notice the spider is nowhere to be seen.

hmm

as i walk back to the dark room i sleep in, i'm spooked just enough to turn the light on and have a look around. sure enough, not 3 feet from my pillow is my new buddy. maybe because of my nightmare i wasn't super freaked out. i actually took some time considering my options:

1) pick spider up on paper and shoo him outside
2) leave him there and go to sleep (yeah right!)
3) shoo him away from bed and go to sleep (maybe)
4) kill him

i didn't want to kill him. really. mosquitos, yes - dead in an instant. maybe it ain't buddha nature to kill them but i hate those little bloodsuckers. this was a big, hairy, spider who probably ate mosquitos and, like i said, waterbuffaloes. but probably wouldn't bite me. 30% sure of that. so i attempt some combination of 1 & 3.

i approach him with some paper. he sees me move and twitches very quickly - closer to the pillow. wow, he's really fast. this makes me think he can jump and i'm suddenly reliving arachnaphobia with john goodman in my mind. that's it, i thought. the little, i mean big, guy has to go.

so after another hesitation - i really didn't want to do this - i smashed him with my shoe. picked him up with some tissue and threw his twitching lifeless body in the trash. i should mention that as he hit the bottom of the bin his heavy body landed with a thump. that's how big he was.

i fell asleep in about 5 minutes, despite learning that i now have a fear (or atleast dislike) of spiders.

welcome to thailand.

chiang mai (take 2)

ahh, chiang mai. cool(er) weather and awesome classes and markets. it was good to be back. i spent the first week mostly cooking - i continued the week long class i had started previously and made some really awesome (i mean really awesome kick-ass thai food). here are some highlights:

tom yum khung (clear hot and sour soup with prawns)
tom kha gai (coconut hot and sour soup with chicken)
gaeng phed pet yang (roast duck in red curry)
chiang mai curry with pork
som tum (green papaya salad)
cashew chicken sirfry
mango sticky rice

still, though there was something missing about the class. i guess i'll have to keep looking. shucks.

for now, i'm off to the elephant nature park where i will be volunteering for at least two weeks. picking up dung will consume the majority of my days i'm guessing.