First Nations

In attending to HR duties here at work it's interesting reading through names of all the towns in Canada where you can find talented early childhood educators: Mississauga, Moose Jaw, Chilliwack, Penticton, Halifax... just some solid, strong town names here. Lots of choppy consonants and hard stops, in languages that I wish I knew but that you could only hope to learn today at a small college on a reservation. It's funny to see the terms for these town names and consider the heaps of humanity that call each of them home--from the teachers we're looking for to those now fast asleep, but maybe planning on playing frisbee in the park or going deep-sea fishing as soon as the sun comes up tomorrow. The world is such a huge place with so many people, but in hiring teachers and interacting with them once they arrive, you always get something different.. but you always kind of get something the same. Guess that might be the effect of interacting with someone with the same cultural background in the midst of a vast and ancient alien society.

Boston Marathon bombing

it is now about 7 hours after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. I've called over to family and friends in and around the city and luckily everyone is alright so far. A friend's little sister crossed the finish line in about 3:30, and the bomb went off about 30 minutes later, 4 hours into the race when many participants would be crossing the finish line.

Everything else still seems to be up in the air. News stories are coming in continuously, reports of the number of unexploded devices are going from 3 to 5 to 4, now WSJ is saying the police are saying that some of the "unexploded devices" are not bombs after all. I guess this is news in the 24/7/365 world of microblogs and viral video. I can see the blast in a YouTube video online and CNN is running photos of injured and bloodied on the sidewalk at Boylston Street. Apparently a 20-year old Saudi man is hospitalized with severe burns and under surveillance as a "possible suspect," whatever that means. They are saying the bombs seem improvised using nails and household explosive materials, like an IED.

Friends on Facebook are reacting with condolences and prayers. Some from the armed services are feeling prompted to greater action. Issac Stone Fish, an editor from Foreign Policy, has just noted that Xinhua's headline is: "Explosion at Boston Marathon: Ethiopian and Kenyan contestant take first place." Bill Maher is saying to "not overreact" and to handle things "Israel-Munich style." Mark Wahlberg sends his love back to his hometown, Boston. Tosh.0 self-gratifying noted in a tweet that he's showing his respect by not tweeting. It is just a wash of information and news and views right now.

What will be the implications for our way of life after today?

Aliens

The AC turns off at 6am at the Tohko resort and it gets hot in the bamboo cabin quickly after that. Convection caused by the sun doesn't come up until later in the day, so the breeze that I'm getting now typing this at the little shoreside restaurant wasn't there a few hours ago. To wake up, I grabbed a set of goggles from the rack, all the good pairs had been taken earlier in the day by island hoppers and the snorkels that were left were brown and dirty. Without breathing apparatus I jump in the water and doggy paddle along, seeing a few fish right as I dunk under. Huge bluepurple iridescent clams  muscled closed as I saw above them. Just below the water surface, I was surrounded by an alien world of life that you could not imagine by looking at the waves above. The sea was cloudy with millions of tiny plankton and krill. Huge schools of fish with bumblebee colors swam over and around me. As I neared the point where the reef drops off into the deep sea, I looked out on the blue abyss and felt like I was flying.

Long tails

It is amazing to be close to the water again in Thailand. Besides the beaches, with massive untouched coral heads swarming with wrasses and parrotfish just 10 yards off shore, the best part had to be the little fishing skiffs that act as boat taxis, called "long tails" for the long propeller shaft sticking out the back of the wooden transom. Basically this is a10 foot long shaft with a stainless steel ceiling fan attached to the end. Kind of looks like something out of a Saw movie. Docking doesn't get more complicated than driving the boat up onto the beach, and you hop out. I imagine someone trying to run a taxi service with one of these things back on the New Jersey shore... 3 things: 1) fighting with insurance company to see if possible to get insurance policy, 2) initial success followed by 3) public outrage at passenger or passerby being maimed by open propeller blade that should have never been allowed in the first place, even though accident was not result of boatman's negligence.

It's funny the relationship that developed-worlders maintain with the developing world. You stay in a place like this for a short-enough time that you're able to romanticize the dingy parts and the danger, they make the place more appealing, when you know that thr locals must experience this place in a very different way. In conversations over dinner with fellow travelers you deride the litigiousness of places like the US and wish people would just take it easy. Then you get back to said developed country and with a change of location comes a change of perspective.

Calm within the storm

Sprezzatura, a kind of "studied nonchalance," was described in the 16th century by Castiglione as the unique way that courtiers--gentlemen--go about life with a kind of ease that conceals the difficulty of things. I've written before about this kind of nonchalance and how it seems in harmony with the "unflappable" way that many Chinese folks appear to go about their day. But sprezzatura is supposed to denote the easy way people go about difficult tasks. People here, instead, seem to have an easy way they go about encountering near death experiences by car, bicycle, subway, or bus like 15 times every day. Instead of sprezzatura, perhaps the best way of relating this is more as a "calm within the storm." In the incredible hustle and bustle, noise and frenzy of everyday Beijing, there is a kind of serenity and practiced deliberateness that characterizes the local approach. It could be that everyone is just in shock. Or it could be that thousands of years of a deliberately-paced existence is not so soon cast off with migration into the city.

Elevators

Local folks in my building, usually ones that are past middle age, sometimes grab the elevator going up only to take it back down to the ground floor. At first, the 14 seconds that this adds to the process of leaving my apartment kinda irked me. (Typically, they will hit both up and down buttons to hedge, then the elevator stops to pick them up, then we stop again going back down.) I then realized that many of the old people taking the elevator up and then down again grew up in a time of amazing uncertainty and radical change, and that there would be no passing up of any opportunities on their watch to get in a perfectly good elevator passing their floor, whether it's going up or down. And then there's the distinct possibility that some of these guys are still profoundly amazed that the same China that experienced famines and so much upheaval is not a place where an electrical cable closet can move your up 300 feet in the air in like, 14 seconds.