GO DUCKS

I spent Wednesday through Friday of last week in Hong Kong with my parents. It's beautiful city - I later learned that Hong Kong means fragrant harbor. And it really is. Soft green hills rise out of the ocean and the mist in a very Chinese way. The city proper is built right on the edge of the harbor, where the hills meet the water, creating a wonderful crescent of skyscrapers. The weather reminded me strongly of a foggy summer day at the Oregon coast - very tiny raindrops, a flat gray sky and flat gray water, with a pleasant (not too cold) breeze. It was definitely a change from the tropical heat and humidity of Singapore.


My parents seemed like they had a very good time in Asia. I'm glad; I feel somehow responsible for how it behaved while they were here. On a related note, I thought it very funny that their hotel in Bangkok was in the middle of the red light district...

On an unrelated note, this Friday I'm going to a public lecture by Tony Blair here at NUS. This confirms that NUS is filthy rich. Not that I'm complaining. George Bush spoke here last year. I've met three students who were invited to stand on the stage with him and got pictures taken with him. I don't know anybody at home who's met George Bush. I guess world leaders just like Singapore.

Short choppy sentences. Time for bed.

GO DUCKS

Guest Author, Tom Bode Sr.

(Tom Jr. is looking good and in fine spirits, the Singaporean life style has not dulled his wit)

‘Little India’ is a section of Singapore, alive with people, vehicles, and goods-for-sale. Every street corner is unique, generations of building and repairing has let its concrete identity organically grow.

We stroll the tourist stalls near the main streets. Small cakes, trinkets, postcards, and plastic Buddhas. Tom Jr. is guiding us past the tourist area into where Indians live, work and shop. We walk in front of, in back of, and through stalls of everyday street food: headed fish wrapped in banana leaves, grilled lamb and beef kabobs, and little plastic bags of who-knows-what. Aisleways are so cramped sometimes you just stop and reverse course. All around is the aroma of the flower threaders mingled with pungent incense and the general commotion of venders rushing for the day.

Under Tom’s persistence, we cross a bland alley and enter a concrete covered area curiously known as a wet market. Why? It will be explained later. The narrow lanes between the venders are even more crowded than the street and crammed with small frame Indians. The eldest of them showing the imperfections of life in their faces. Here a hardened man deftly trims his beef and lamb, there another hacks at unknown flesh. Now whole fish are neatly displayed side by side, cold on the ice. The smell, the noise, the faces all blend. We crisscross ourselves to the tropical vegetables. Sellers with overflowing buckets of cabbages, okra, long beans, their hands hard at work trimming. Here we are, finally near sweet eats, a bowl of dragon fruit, purple with scales of leave, creamy flesh with small black seeds. Bananas of all varieties hang from hooks, here on the floor giant pods of jack fruit. Another cut open to release the smooth yellow finger of meat. Coconuts trimmed to sit upright, and provide its milk. Swirling sounds and color and aromas and commotion. This is Asia! Intense, never ending, always working.

We snack on lime juice, coconut and jack fruit. Why wet market? Because after the trimming and cleaning the owners hose off their goods and the shaded concrete floor is sloppy with water.

Chinese Food

Yesterday, my professor returned my essay on the Cambodia trip. It was a short essay, just four pages, and is worth 10 or 15% of our overall class grade. Just a filler assignment.

But the feedback on the paper was what I would expect on a final assessment. There was a lot of it, too. My professor engaged with the ideas, disagreed or agreed with me, commented on the writing style, called me out on poorly made points, and then wrote a one page explanation of my grade. I'm astonished that he did all that for such a relatively worthless assignment.


The grade also surprised me. My expectations were based on the 200 level (non-honors) classes I've taken at Oregon, and I was expecting an A- or an A, with a one or two sentence explanation. I took two 400 level classes last year and I got almost no feedback that impacted my writing (freshman year was better in that regard). And generally, most of the feedback comes one the final paper, when it is no longer useful in the context of the class.

Here's a class (or a professor, or a university - I don't know) where the entire term is a learning process. Specific critiques he gives me now I can assimilate and use on my final paper. It's completely obvious that this is the way classes are meant to work, and sad that I'm so surprised.

***
Tomorrow I'm flying to Hong Kong. I'll meet my parents there and stay through Sunday, though they're leaving Friday. I'd be more excited if I didn't have another essay due (same class) the Monday after I get back. I'll take my laptop to H.K. and pretend I'm on a business trip, like everybody else there.

I'm expecting good Chinese food.

Conversation in Class

"Where are you from?"
"The US"
"Which part?"
"State of Oregon - heard of it?"
"No..."
He draws a map.

"How about yourself - where are you from?"
"Guess. Here, I'll give you a hint: We fought a big war with the US"

awkward

I got it first try though...guess I know my history.

Americans in Singapore

It's 8:00pm Sunday. I just finished making my powerpoint for my presentation tomorrow morning on American expatriates in Singapore. To research this project, I spoke with a American professor at NUS who's been here for 18 years and doesn't like it at all and I visited the Singapore American School where he coaches the baseball team. I talked with some of the students and their parents.

I was astonished with much of what I found. The American community in SIngapore is well established and structured in such a way that there is minimal contact - almost none - with Singapore and Singaporeans. Walking around the campus of the Singapore American School, I felt like I was back home:


And both the students and the parents had no inclination to blend in or embrace Singapore. They create a little America based around the school and the American club. The students don't speak like Singaporeans, have never ridden the bus, and don't consider it home. It seemed like everyone on the baseball team was wearing a t shirt with the name of their home on it: state, university, or country.


They come here for one reason only: to make money. The financial, IT, and oil industries want American talent, and offer high salaries with lots of benefits (free tickets home, upper class life style, club membership). They come and work here for some years, then go home. Some stay, but they still want to go home someday.

I thought that wasn't acculturating very much. But relative to the rest of the Americans here, I'm practically a native.

Parents

Mom and Dad are in town. They're stunned like I was when I first arrived in Singapore. I'm taking advantage of that and tour-guideing them to all the places too expensive for me to go on my own. Today we went to the aquarium: feed the rays from your hand, pet puffer sharks, and walk through the aquarium tunnel. Popular with everyone. For dinner we went to a seafood center and got the chili crab, a "Singapore delicacy" that seems more popular in guidebooks than with locals. Maybe because it was really expensive - oh well, I wasn't paying. (thanks dad!)

I've got a super busy next 12+ days: tour all day Friday (tomorrow); conduct interviews Saturday afternoon, then in the evening go to an event at the US ambassador's residence (!) with the vice provost of the UO who's on an Asia tour and wants to meet the UO students here; Sunday I put together a presentation for Monday with a group; Monday give the presentation; Tuesday hand in a paper that I will somehow finish (another 3000 words....) between now and then; Wednesday I go to Hong Kong to meet up with the parents again - I'll return Sunday afternoon, just in time to write the paper corresponding with the presentation on Monday. Then I have a week to write a 10 page (single spaced) economic policy brief for the following Monday....

Mom, Dad: don't worry. By the time you read this it will all have been done already.

The only reason I'm up now is laundry.

Here're some picture to redeem this post that is actually a public to-do list:

My dad vacationing in the South Pacific.




A shark at the aquarium. Look at all those teeth...

Schooool

All of a sudden I have assignments due. I have survived this far in the term doing almost nothing and now at the end they spring all these papers and projects on me. I never saw them coming!

Speaking of coming, my parents. They're taking a package "Taste of Asia" trip around SE Asia - with a stop in Singapore! They'll be here this Thursday and Friday, then they fly to Bangkok for three days, then to Hong Kong for three days. I'm meeting them in Hong Kong next week. Very exciting! Of course, you can reasonably expect pictures 6-8 weeks after... Just kidding. I'll try to be better about putting up photos from my trips. I'm still working on the second half of my Indonesia trip. I've got good pictures and bad writing. Oddly, while I care about the latter, you may be more interested in the former. Oh well - I've got the post button, you'll just wait.

Here's a good picture from Cambodia that I didn't post:


That's a tarantula, meant for eating.

It may interest you top know that although I was in a restaurant in Cambodia, the tarantulas were from a province in China known for good tarantulas. The menu said so.