Adamu is in Thailand – some initial thoughts

Hi everyone.

Blogging has taken something of a backseat in my life right now as I work on getting adjusted to my new life in Bangkok, where I’ll be based for the next year or so. I decided to come here and reunite with Mrs. Adamu (who’s working at an NGO here) after visiting in May and seeing that it wouldn’t be a complete disaster for me.

While I’ve traveled to several countries in Asia, this is my first time living someplace other than the US or Japan – the two parts of the world with possibly the highest living standards. Now I am living in a strange country that I know next to nothing about. I’m aware of some of the basic stuff, but certainly not enough to rant about it semi-coherently on this blog. But while I’m here, I’ll give you a list of some aspects of Thailand that have culture-shocked me so far:

Outlets that spark when you plug something into them.
Badly designed infrastructure (random low ceilings on staircases, doorknobs with sharp objects jutting out from them, unevenly spaced stairs, a tangle of low-hanging electrical wires in the streets with the occasional loose dangler) forcing me to stay extra vigilant.
Bangkok, a city the size of New York, has next no traffic lights.
Grime on the street (supposedly caused by diesel trucks and “tuktuks” – little scooter-taxis). The grime turns to grime-mud when it rains, making the streets slippery.
Speaking of the streets, they smell of funky Thai food constantly because they are lined with street vendors selling guavas, some kind of stinky spiked fruit, sausages, chicken, and other meats exposed to the open air and thus made inedible (to me anyway).
Constant reminders of how great the king is. It’s illegal to criticize the king here, but just to let you know I already think the king is great – I don’t really need to be reminded of it every day.
TV shows in Thailand make liberal use of cliched comedy sound effects – lots of slide whistles and BOIOIOING!
Living somewhere where I speak none of the language – but thankfully gesturing isn’t that tough and most Thai people can communicate with you in Tinglish. In fact, I would say that in general Thais’ English communication skills surpass those of the Japanese.
Aggressive salesmanship – tuktuk drivers scream “WHERE YOU GO” at me, the DVD sellers at Pintip Plaza get right in your damn face, Big C (a discount store, Thailand’s got lots of them) employs something like 6 people in their electronics section whose sole job is to approach people and sling them some jive.
There is a general chaos about this city. Thai people seem to like their driving aggressive, their crowds dense, and their food outside and on the sidewalk.

Just to name a few. That’s not to say things are all that bad here. It’s wonderful to be back with Mrs. Adamu, the food is generally pretty good, many people are friendly, and I can find more good American food (Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut – you know, only the best) here than I could in Japan.

I still really need to learn the language though. Thai is a little similar to Chinese in that it’s a tonal language. Right now most people just chuckle whenever I try and say something since I am just randomly stabbing at the tones.

I’ll try and keep you posted on interesting stuff I notice here. I’m especially interested in getting at some of the more interesting aspects of the Thailand-Japan relationship (though supply channels/factory management/FTA negotiations tend not to make great conversation starters), as that’s at least some sort of perspective I can start with.

William Gibson sort of mentions us

Actually he was only pasting this post from Marxy’s blog. So Marxy gets called William Gibson’s “current favorite English-language blog from Japan,” I am insanely jealous, and I consider digging up a copy of the Japanese translation of Neuromancer to write up my analysis of how unique tricks of Japanese orthography were used by the translator to reflect the situation of foreigners speaking Japanese in Japan in the hopes that it will attract some attention from the man himself.

Aso’s plan to de-Shintoize Yasukuni

Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who is still trying to become the next prime minister despite not having a snowball’s chance in hell, has a new plan to save Japan. He reckons that by taking the gods out of Yasukuni, the Emperor will be able to visit and none of those pesky lawsuits will have any standing. The English report:

Aso, known as a diplomatic hawk who has offended China and South Korea with remarks in the past, said his plan was not aimed at mollifying foreign countries. Instead, he hopes to resolve a domestic debate that flares up whenever a Japanese leader visits the shrine and has prevented the emperor from going there since 14 “Class A” war criminals were added to the lists of those honored at the shrine in 1978.

“It’s about expressing our respect and gratitude for those who died for their country and praying for the peace of the souls of those who died…without all this fuss,” Aso told a news conference.

“The tens of thousands of soldiers who died crying ‘Long Life to the Emperor’ filled those words with deep emotion,” Aso said in a statement outlining his idea. “So I strongly pray that the emperor can visit Yasukuni.”

Yomiuri Shimbun’s blurb says that the strategy to pull this off goes roughly as follows:

  1. Dissolve the religious foundation that administers Yasukuni and set up a new private foundation (zaidan hojin) to run the shrine.
  2. By special act of the Diet, establish a special corporation to administer Yasukuni.
  3. Most amusingly, change the shrine’s official name to 靖国社 – removing the character for “god” in the word “shrine.”

Adding to the craziness of this scheme, Yomiuri mentions at the end of its article that Aso wants this process implemented for all of the “gokoku jinja”—a group of 52 shrines scattered across Japan enshrining those from the area who died at war–“regional Yasukunis,” so to speak.

Needless to say, if you can’t de-enshrine war criminals, it’s gonna be tough to de-Shintoize Yasukuni (and, for that matter, 52 other shrines).

Just in case you’re worried, Aso still does not have enough support to run and hasn’t officially announced his candidacy yet. UPDATE 8/10: I spoke too soon. Muddafugga gots his twenty. Looks like he’s announcing later this month.

Switching hosts

Mutantfrog.com will be switching to another web host some time in the next week, so don’t expect any new posts for a few days, and don’t be concerned over any temporary service outages.

Lunarpages complaining about CPU usage again

More of this crap–

Ticket Ref : 8728-RAJB-9771
Ticket Subject : Account Moved to Sputnik – Excessive Resources

Reply:
Hello,

We have not recieved a response from you regarding your move to our Quantz
abuse server. Please respond as soon as possible to avoid permanent account
disable. Below is a copy of site usage as of 7/27/06

mutant2 mutantfrog.com 1.02 0.35 0.1
Top Process %CPU 67.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 34.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 28.0 /usr/bin/php

Thank you for your time and prompt response.

—
Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions

Victor Lerma
support@lunarpages.com
Phone: 1-877-LUNARPAGES/1-877-586-2772 (U.S. & Canada – Toll-free)
Phone: 0800-072-9150 (U.K – Toll-free)
Phone: 1-714-521-8150 (International)

I switched from the Mutantfrog theme (which was a barely modified default theme, just different graphics and colors) to the totally untouched default just in case there IS some bug in there causing excessive usage.

I can’t understand how a simple install of WordPress on a fairly low traffic blog could be causing such enormous spikes, but I clearly can’t tell them that their own server has something odd with it.

Does anyone have a good host to suggest, that is friendly to running PHP based blogs, and does not sell unrealisticly cheap storage plans to lure you in, and then threaten to cancel the contract and keep your money for excessive CPU usage?

“Taiwan still a good place to learn Mandarin”

The following is an op-ed piece from yesterday’s edition of the Taipei Times that considering I myself went to Taiwan instead of China to study Chinese makes a very good point. Time Magazine’s goddawful article on learning Mandarin can be found at their web site here.

Taiwan still a good place to learn Mandarin
By Dan Bloom

Tuesday, Jul 25, 2006,Page 8

“Time” magazine published a long feature in its June 19 edition about the benefits of studying Mandarin — in China. Not once did the magazine’s 10-page report mention that Taiwan is also a good place to study, learn and live the Chinese language. How could such a reputable, international magazine, with many readers in Taiwan miss the boat on this?

When a reporter in Taiwan queried a Time editor in Hong Kong about the cover story, which was titled “Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin,” he received the following note: “The story did not discuss Taiwan because the subject of our cover story that issue was the rising interest in studying Chinese. That phenomenon is directly related to the growth of the Chinese economy, hence the focus on China. People study Mandarin in Taiwan, of course, but that has long been the case and isn’t really news.”

Good answer, but it didn’t really answer my question. When an international news magazine devotes its cover story to “learning Mandarin” in Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea and does not once mention the country of Taiwan as a place to learn Chinese, something is very wrong in the biased way the editors perceive things. Perhaps Time’s editors in Hong Kong believe that Taiwan is a mere province of China and therefore not worth a mention in the article in question?

Mark Caltonhill, a longtime resident of Taiwan, recently wrote an online commentary in the Taiwan Journal about his own learning curve in acquiring Mandarin. He noted that Taiwan was a very good place to learn and live the Chinese language, and is not in any way inferior to China.

Caltonhill wrote: “Whatever [a] student’s interests and specialties — art or history, religion or philosophy, literature, martial arts or Chinese cuisine — Taiwan has as much or more to offer [than China].”

Taipei, of course, is a very good place to study Chinese. Time’s editors know that. Time even has reporters who work for the magazine here. And there are many schools here that offer Mandarin classes, such as National Taiwan Normal University’s Center for Chinese Language and Culture, the National Taiwan University Language Center and the Tamkang University Language Center.

The Time article stressed that “while English may be the only truly international language, millions of tongues are wagging over what is rapidly becoming the world’s other lingua franca: Mandarin.”

Quoting a statement by British linguist David Gaddol, the magazine added: “In many Asian countries, in Europe and the US, Mandarin has emerged as the new must-have language.”

Time even quoted a professor in China, who said: “Promoting the use of Chinese among overseas people has gone beyond purely cultural issues. It can help build up our national strength and should be taken as a way to develop our country’s `soft power.'” That was Hu Youqing, a Chinese-language professor at Nanjing University talking.

Time mentioned that China has sent more than 2,000 volunteers to teach Mandarin overseas, mostly in Asian nations such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. Why didn’t it also mention that Taiwan also has sent volunteer teachers to several Asian countries? China’s goal is to have 100 million foreigners studying Mandarin by the end of the decade. Well, won’t some of them be studying Mandarin in Taipei or Kaohsiung? Time missed the boat again.

Will Mandarin ever overtake English as the world’s common language? Probably not, but as Time notes, “just as knowing English proved a key to getting ahead in the 20th century, learning Chinese will provide an edge in the 21st.” This was a good point and was an important theme of the entire cover story. But by ignoring Taiwan — not mentioning Taiwan even once in the entire feature — the magazine’s editors showed their ignorance and bias against Taiwan, even though they work and live in Asia.

Taipei is a very good place to learn and live the Chinese language, and Time magazine did a huge disservice to its readers around the world by ignoring Taiwan completely in its June 19 cover story.

Wake up, Time magazine, China does not have a monopoly on Chinese-language centers and Mandarin schools. Wake up and smell the coffee — in Taiwan, too.

Dan Bloom is a freelance writer based in Chiayi.

DPP factions banned

Following on the heals of Joe’s post on factionalism in the LDP and the campaign for a new Prime Minister, it’s interesting to note that Taiwan’s DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) just voted to ban factions entirely. The move is designed to help strengthen the party’s central governance in the wake of a series of corruption scandals (even involving members of President Chen Shui-bian’s own family) that have helped to shatter Chen’s reputation as an effective administrator and probably weakened the party’s chances of retaining the presidency and winning back control of the legislature in the next election cycle.

I remain unclear on how this will actually help, however. While there have been a number of DPP affiliated politicians implicated in corruption (although the rates of such taint in the DPP are still lower than in the period of former KMT rule), I am not sure how this is in any way related to the faction system. While a unified party platform may help them win elections, voter discontent with the ruling DPP has had more to do with a lack of competence and integrity than their political rhetoric. Will the elimination of the faction system simply make the party less open to contratian opinions, and come to more closely resemble their Nationalist Party opponents, whose top down decision making system was originally based on a Leninist model?

Perhaps a more desirable solution would be to embrace a system more similar to a US caucus style system, in which a legislator may choose to affiliate themselves with a group organized around a specific issue or constituency that they endorse. While a caucus (they may also be referred to as Study Groups, Coalitions etc.) is a formally registered group within the Congress, they are not exclusive. That is, a congressman can belong to any number of Caucuses that he or she supports. Also unlike a faction, a caucus is not a division of a political party, and not necessarily partisan at all. To pluck an example totally at random, take the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, whose four co-chairs include two Republicans and two Democrats (as well as 148 other congressmembers.) US politics may be bitterly partisan, but the level of cooperation between the two major parties is still approximately a million times better than between Taiwan’s own two major parties.

As for the ostensible reason for eliminating party factions, the DPP national convention did in fact pass a separate anti-corruption resolution, which includes such measures as mandating a special party investigation should a DPP-affiliated government official be charged with corruption. The measure was named in honor of the President’s indicted son-in-law, Chao Chien-ming, who just this past Thursday was seen in the presence of mysterious men in black reputed to be gangsters at his own bail hearing. Following the scandal, Chao’s attorney advised him “to be more careful when seeking assistance from friends.”

The hiragana fad continues

First it was みずほ銀行 (Mizuho Bank), then it was さいたま市 (Saitama City). Now the word is that two of the new companies coming out of the postal privatization will be ゆうちょ銀行 (Yucho Bank) and かんぽ生命保険 (Kampo Life Insurance).

What is it with hiragana names these days? Have I studied kanji for so long, only to have the language be dumbed down before my eyes?