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Unnecessary censorship

There is an English teacher at my school whose name pronounced “porn” at the end. One day she showed me her name in English and it wrote it as “bporn” then asked me if it still pronounced like “porn” in Thai. I said no and simply asked why she wanted to change it. She said “porn” is a dirty word in English and she didn’t want to associate with it. I simply told her that it is unnecessary and the “dirty word” doesn’t mean anything in this context. I don’t think she got what I said and we moved on. And I thought about it from time to time, if one language has a word that sounds like a bad, offensive word in other language, how do you proceed?

Number “8″ in Burmese pronounced literally like “shit”. I will not avoid the word if I am speaking Burmese in front of a non-Burmese speak just because I might offend to that person. Because it is not offensive at all. The pronunciation of the word “Lee” that is very common in Chinese, Korean sounded like dirty swearing word that means “penis” in Burmese. So, “Bruce Lee” means “Bruce’s penis” in Burmese? Hack, no. It is his name and doesn’t mean anything else beside that.

This is exactly what happened with the new BTS song “Fake Love” that was released 2 days ago. US radio stations received censored version the song. Apparently, a line in the song's lyrics that refers to the Korean word for "I, Me, Myself", "naega," is being censored because it sounds like n-word to some people. There is an email from the radio regarding the issue that i found on the internet.

In Chinese the word “that” (那個) sounds like (na ge), also sounds like the n-word. So my question to you, do Asian words that has similar pronunciation as offensive word in your language offend you?

#bts #fake love #censorship #unnecessary censorship

The time I biked to the beautiful beach in my community. 50km round trip.

When it rains 8 months out of a year

#rainyday #Thailand #Volunteer #Volunteer lifestyle

A bike ride to my local beach. Site life

#Thailand #Beach #Volunteer #bicycle ride #Cycling #Chumphon #Travel

First solo cycling trip and 5 things I learned

I only “knew” how to ride a bicycle before I arrived Thailand, and had never ridden one on the road. It was funny to think today that on the first practice ride during Pre-service training, I asked a PCV friend to stay behind me because I was the slowest rider and I didn’t want to left behind alone just in case something happened and no one was near me to help. But I was pretty scared on that day. The first new days, weeks, and months was extremely horrible for me since I had to readjust my surrounding environment and also riding a bicycle in “extreme” heat condition. The first time I ride to a market and 7-11 9km away was 6 months after I got to Thailand, 13km after 9 months and 18km after 12, etc. I can only say “I am proud of myself” considering my progress.

Fast forward 20 months later, I ran into a travel blog about cycling trip in Taiwan 170km in 3 days. I thought about it for a month, if I was able to do it or not since I had never done cycling trip for 3 consecutive days let alone doing it solo in a foreign country. Trust me, I found a million of “excuses” and “what if” reasons not to do it in my head and only one good reason to do it. “Learn and experience new things.” Now, 24 months and I actually did it.

Here is a list of things I learned.

Plan ahead. Internet is my friend. I googled the route, the difficulty level, and logistics like where to eat, sleep and rest and how to ship my bags to another city to my name. It gave me a peace of mind that I am going to be okay.

Have a Plan B. After planning, have a plan if things go wrong. I looked for bus or train options and police stations on the route. Got a bus schedule on the route just in case. It gave me another layer of security. I found out that Plan B would not work when I almost tripped and fell from my bike. It was really freaky for me, and I had to stop and took a break for a moment in order to continue with the ride. Believe it, it was only about 30 mins in on a very first day. Not a good start.

Just do it. I thought of many reasons not to continue with the plan. The loudest voice that was freaking me out was my own in my head. I have to remind myself that I have plans, and know what to do in case of emergency. And I got rewarded with beautiful scenery and a tour of 7-11 stores in the east coast of Taiwan. FYI, there are 5 along the route.

Be flexible. When I got a flat tire, I have no clue of what to do. That was unexpected. I stopped and pushed to nearest shop and asked for a shop that will help me since I don’t have any tool to fix it. I guess I am unprepared in a way. Luckily, I found a shop with grandpa and grandma and i watched them fixed my bike while I stood there and did nothing. What a nice young man.

Pride. I was too proud not to deal with loneliness during the trip. I was pretty much a lone most of the trip because the route is not a popular route and only a few cars passed by. I told myself appreciate nature helped a lot and not just riding every seconds and hours of the day. I made more stops on second day, beside taking a break for riding, also enjoying why I ride in the first place. Listened to nature and the sound that is following me, can be wind, or ocean wave or just birds singing. It was beautiful.

Would I do it again. It is an absolute YES.

Alone? Why not.

Hopeful

An education supervisor from my school district talked to me after the first day of the training.

“I am doing this type of (teacher) training because of my son. A teacher at my son school made my son panic. One day he came home and said “I hate English,” I asked him why. He said teacher scolded him when he made mistake, scolded him and always angry. The teacher smiled to other teachers at school who passed by the classroom and then turned into angry face again when she talked to students. She scolded me so much that my hands were shaking during a test and couldn’t write a thing. I looked at the test and it was all blank, and teacher wrote 0/5 in red. It was vocabulary spelling test about family. I know my son knew the words because he did it very well at home. My son told me to sit in the back of class quietly without the teacher knowing and observe the class. Seeing him sad, it motivates me to do better for teacher technique training more. Instead of preparing for training sessions, I could just sit in my office to do other work. My son is 8 years old, I told him that I cannot just come and sit down in the back of the class, but I can share new way to teach English with teachers and then I hugged my son. After the training, teachers said they will use new games, and techniques with students and make the classroom fun. I don’t want to send my son to English Program (EP) because it is so expensive, cost 30,000 baht (about 900US$) for a term (semester). I have foreigner friends coming in and out of my house as guests, and in the beginning he just listened to the conversation. Now, he answers and talks to my guests. I want to tell teachers that the first thing they could do is not to let students hate English.”

After hearing that I couldn’t say a word. Word coming out of my mouth at the moment couldn’t justify how I felt sad, hurt and disappointed, yet hopeful and motivated even though I just know the person and haven’t even met his son. I wanted to cry. But I checked with myself why? Is it because it is inspiring to hear someone who work hard against all odd? I didn’t know, but then I didn’t cry as well. However, I told myself that I am hopeful to see a different side of government officer working hard to benefit the local students not just to keep the job. Then, when I actually hosted my session on the writing activity, I didn’t focus on teachers who took pictures for half of the session, who fell asleep in the back, who were on their phone the time or who simply didn’t want to be in the training but were forced to be there. I engaged with teachers who participated, who wanted to learn new way to organize and write.

At the closing statement, he encouraged teachers to be nice, kind and approachable to the students. He explained that students will learn more from a teacher they love. When students love the teacher, they will listen to the teacher, pay attention to what the teacher says and do the work and participate in class which will make the learning fun. That story coming from him made me want to work hard to create the environment for students to learn and grow.

Meeting my childhood hero

Growing up in Burma, my exposure to the outside world is limited. There was only government TV programs, and newspaper, and my family didn’t have satellite TV channels from neighbouring countries and western paid cable channels. One day, I saw a picture of a condom fashion show in Thailand in Burmese state run newspaper. I was amazed, surprised, and impressed by it, I was inspired by the creativity of the idea and the show and I was only a middle school student at that time. At that time, I was told by people in my surroundings that condom were dirty, disgusting, embarrassing and should avoid it. I remembered thinking, it was very daring of the organizer and the creator of the event and thought it is probably not as dirty as people said. What do i know, I was still in the middle school and moved on very quickly, after all it was a picture of a model in condom dress that one time in highly censored government run newspaper.

Fast forward, I saw video of Dr. Mechai a few years ago in college then i quickly remembered that model in condom dress. It is him, he is the man behind this creation that I never knew about. He quickly became my hero for making such “a socially awkward embarrassed product” to everyday product like, clothes, or accessories. I never imagined that I would meet him in this life so then I moved on with my studies and my job.

Today, while I was serving in Thailand, I finally got an opportunity to meet my childhood hero that I never imagined of meeting him in person. He changed a teenage boy to look at condom differently than what his environment told him. That is me. I was completely starstruck, if I could see myself in the mirror while shaking his hand, it would be like a face of teenage boy looking at something bigger than himself that he knew possible.

Mount Zwe Ka Min (Myanmar trip)

Kyite Htee Yoe Pagoda on Mount Kyite Htee Yoe (Myanmar trip)

I am privileged

Today is a first day of school of a new school year in my community. My last year 7th graders are now 8th graders in the new room with new teacher. I saw a few students are missing in the classes in 9th grade class. My teacher told me that they are not coming back to school, and she changed the subject. Then my thoughts wonder.

I grew up in Yangon the time under the military junta where so called “freedom” was nowhere to be found. But I need to say this about me first that I am privileged in a lot of ways. I have access to education, work opportunities, and family support. I am privileged in a way that growing up, all I have to worry about is my homework and my grade in school. I have access to a telephone when it was one of the sacred thing to get at the time. Even though I didn’t grow up rich, there was always food there to eat and I never had to worry about not being able to have breakfast or dinner. I could walk to school from my house and not feeling afraid. I didn’t get pocket money like my classmates, but I always get what I needed for school, clothing and accessories. Of course, I didn’t really appreciate all of those when I was young as I was a typical teenager. But I learn to appreciate more and more when I get older. And one of the most important of all is that I always have hope, no matter what.

What does this relate to my current state of mind? I am not sure, I will let you know next time.

Mother Water

Language is such a beautiful tool human has ever invented. Because of language, we can communicate with each others and make sense of things that surround us. But then language is also power, and cultural identity and also tradition of the community. I am lucky enough to know 3 languages, and 2 of which are spoken by 1.5 Billion people around the world. And now, I am lucky to be a part of Peace Corps, living and learning local language and culture in Thailand.

Words has meaning. It is so awesome to learn the language and I can see what are local people values. Like this word for example, the word for “river” in Thai can be directly translated to “mother water”. River means food, water source, culture, transportation and boost of economy for a lot of Thai communities. River means giving life as a mother does to her children. River means mother of water. This is just one example, and there are many other ways words represent how local value or emphasize things.

#Language #Thai #peacecorps #peace corps #Thailand

What changed?

It is easy to get upset and offended when things don’t go my way and don’t fit my idea. The hard part though is that how I am going to do something about it. I didn’t tell this story last year, because I have other things to focus on but I am going to tell this story now.

Last year when I just got to my permanent site for not too long, one coworker laughed and tried to make fun of me that “I don’t speak English, and I have accent speaking English.” No one knows that it is one of my insecurity living in USA as an immigrant. I felt like I was being monitored the way I speak, I drive, I eat, I act, I work or what I value. When I couldn’t speak like “American”, I felt the judgment.

However I was smiling just like PST taught me, and tried so hard not to bother me that the one who said that to me doesn’t even speak English. I told him that the fact that “I don’t speak English” is exactly why you should encourage me to speak English. I have accent speaking English because I also happen to know other languages beside English. English is never my first language. No one has the “right” accent, different region has different way of speaking it. I gave him Thai language as an example, Northern, Central, Northeastern, Southern accent. I later found out that Supanburi province has it own unique accent, according to my supervisor. At this point, he wasn’t laughing anymore. I spoke to him with very simple, broken, inaccurate tone Thai that I knew at that point. My counterpart then jumped in and tried to save face by saying “he was just joking.”

I see that happens in class everyday at school. Students laugh each other for not speaking “right accent” that they themselves cannot speak it. I witnessed one student who just refuse to pronounce English words to me. I only got just blank stares from that particular student. It is very ironic for me to see it. When I was in class, I told them no one was allowed to laugh at their classmate when they were trying to speak. I believe a year later; things got better.

Then one day an English teacher asked me how to pronounce some English word. Now, I feel like I need to have the same conversation with her again, but this time I go way beyond than the first. I told her that student shouldn’t be discouraged to speak English because they couldn’t speak some English sound. The main thing is that communication happens and points get across. I gave her an example that if someone said, “uni-ber-sity” I know that person was trying to say “university” because “v” sound is difficult for local mother tongue. One accent doesn’t make the whole word invalid. I wasn’t sure she understood the concept, but she totally knew what I meant. Then, the next day, things went back to “normal”.

People say things that upset and offend me or things I don’t agree with all the time here. I always pick my battle and access the situation if it is worth emotional mind F. Accessing situation like, if there are other people around, especially lower rank officer than the person because hierarchy at the office is very important. I am going to admit that when something offensive happened to me in USA, I stopped talking to that person indefinitely. I blocked that person from all social media platform and would avoid that person altogether. I never thought of engaging in a conversation because it was too hard, and too emotionally draining. I instantly get defensive and then stop listening altogether. I also know that I am not alone in this when I look at “political conversation” in media, and among politicians. But this need to change, or at least should go to the direction of engagement rather than posting headline like someone shut someone down, from both sides. Can we have a respectful engagement like the foundation of free society that democracy build upon?

I got a T-shirt! #1 How I became “Tourist Assistance Volunteer” in Thailand

Wednesday at 5:00pm chilling on the couch. I saw a missed call on my phone, since I silenced my phone. It was from my supervisor at the office so I called her back.

Me: “Hello, Sawadee Krap.”

Supervisor: “Where are you? Yan” She always asks me this every time she calls, knowing I have nowhere to go.

Me: “I just got back from school like an hour ago.”

Supervisor: “okay, do you want to go for an overnight trip tomorrow?”

Me: Thinking, “Umm, I have nothing better to do tomorrow and the next day is my office day,” then I said, “Yes, I am free and available to go.”

Supervisor: “Pack a bag for 2 days and 1 night trip, we are going to a meeting and also we will have fun traveling around our province. I will pick you up at 8:00 AM”

Thursday at 8:00 AM. Finished packing my bag and had breakfast, I was ready. Are you going to ask if I know where I am going? The answer will be a big NO. Usually that’s how PCVs roll in Thailand. We have a term called, “ThaiNapped” just like “kidnapped”. She arrived at 8:20 AM, then we started heading to whatever we were supposed to go. After talking to my supervisor, she explained that we were going to a meeting on how to help tourists. I didn’t know what it really meant and I was excited to find out.

The whole day, I was sitting in a hotel conference room, speaker after speaker, I got a clue what was going on. It was a training to become “Tourist Assistance Volunteer.” There were about 30 people like me sitting in the room. I saw one of their booth in Ayutthaya, where tourists can ask for the help they need at the time, it can be health related, crime related or maybe just where to go and how to go to places to places. They will connect to appropriate help that tourists need. I also learned that Department of Tourism and Sports of Thailand wanted to promote community travel for local citizens.

This is the story of how I become “Tourist Assistance Volunteer” in my province. The next day we got a big tour bus and went around community tourist sites that included museum, beach, river market, weekend market and eco-friendly homestay.

During the visits, the training organizers staged a robbery scene. I was like “WTF is going on,” and then found out it was a staged event and wanted to talk about the most common crime against tourists in Thailand, “robbery”. They talked about how to respond and how to get help. I was so unexpected that sparked attention and created a healthy environment for discussion.

Toys in the library.

When I was in shopping in Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok one day, I saw those wooden puzzle boxes and Jenga set, so I bought it without thinking what I would use it for beside play with students in class. I then stocked up more toys every time I get a chance to go to Bangkok.

The library at my school looks like it is turned into teacher’s office. Teacher desk, computer, documents all over the reading tables and stock full of stuff for different school events. And then there are also books on the shelf, they are all in new condition. Sometime library is turned into a classroom because teacher wants to use big computer. But no students really come to the library in their free time. When I arrived at the school in the morning, I use the library as my working station because I don’t have a teacher desk in the office. And of course, I keep all my toys in the library store room.

I was in the library that one day during lunch time, Anuban students knocked at the library opened door and asked me if they could come in and hang out with me. I think myself, “sure, why not.” I welcomed them to the library and didn’t know what to entertain them, I gave them Jenga set and taught them how to play. They were not really interested in playing Jenga, and they just played with wooden blocks and that was it. I guess somehow words got out and the next day, more students from different grade came to the library. So, I set up all the toys in different area of the library and students chose to play with whatever they wanted to play. Students looked at books on the shelf and when they saw an English book. I can still picture the student face as he threw look away, looked disgusted and said, “Oh, English” like it was a bag of rotten food.

The next day, I set up an English reading station and read books to students. At first students don’t find it interesting because it is all in English and they don’t understand at all. Then I found more English and Thai story books in the library, and then students read them in Thai and I read them in English. I always assume that all Thai students can read and write Thai, and It never come to me that some of them have trouble reading Thai. So, I encouraged them to read Thai in group and then I did voice acting in English. That day was a success to me. I then talk to my co-teacher about library hours and she told me that it will be her project next school term.

From that moment on, I open the library during their lunch free time and students come and go as they pleased. Some students read the books, some flip through English books instead of throwing them aside. And there are still games and puzzles set up in different part of the library and I am in charge of the reading 20 to 30 minutes a day. One day, a student told me that library is his favourite room in the school because there are a lot of things he could do.

A few weeks later older students come and hangout. I hope my co-teacher will get the concept that toys play a role in attracting students to the library and it is not main reason they stay because after a few times of playing the same toy, they will get bored of it. And there is a hidden agenda behind the toys in the library. It doesn’t matter to me if they are reading books or flipping through and looking at pictures, I believe it is the beginning of the beautiful new habit for some students. And all of the sudden library books don’t look new to me anymore and I believe that’s a good thing.

#peacecorpsthailand #peace corps #english #reading #library

A bike ride around town

New Year Day in my community

We had a Thai pork BBQ hotpot at the office with my coworkers to celebrate new year. Middle part is BBQ surrounded by soup and vegetable. We had so much fun cooking and eating it. Then on actually new year day, people in my community go to give donations to monks and monks wished them well for the coming new year.

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