So, here we go with my first ever compilation of amusing and/or thought-provoking things from Internet Land. Today I’ve decided to number in Thai, and all the spelling is mine so it might not be the accepted English spelling. I spell things how they sound. It’s a radical concept, I know.

Nung.1: This post is brought to you by FreeMind, the app that has taken over my life in the best of ways. Interestingly enough, I was turned on to this app from one of the new educational blogs I’m following, Unwrapping the Gifted. She suggested this app for students who struggle with organization. (Unsurprisingly considering the title of her blog, she writes primarily about working with gifted children. As a former “gifted child” I found it amusing that her list of why some gifted children are terrible at organizing themselves could also be the story of my life. I suspect I am not alone in this.)

Song.2: The 2009 PISA scores are in, and unsurprisingly, the US didn’t do so well. However, watching what four of the top performers are doing is inspiring and a good reminder that none of the top performers are doing what we’re doing.

Sam.3: Finding this challenge was like touching the great spiritual web of life. I’m not kidding, and you shouldn’t laugh at me. The Books I Should Have Read in School but Didn’t Challenge pretty much exemplifies where I’m at right now. I’m all about self-education these days, and thanks to FreeMind, I already have my list of books started. I’ve also been discussing this with one of my best friends for awhile now, and we’ve both expressed our bitter disappointment about not getting to read all the books we wanted to read while in school. Now we finally get to catch up!

See.4: The Dvorak keyboard layout makes me happy. Just read the comic.

Ha.5: South Korea has robot teachers! But on closer examination, it’s actually kind of creepy and racist… Sadness.

Hoke.6: The DSM pisses me off for a lot of reasons, the latest of which is that oh-so-soon we’ll be medicating grief, which is the point buried somewhere in this NPR story. That is, there is a qualification in the listing for Major Depression in the DSM-IV that says that grieving is a normal process that may resemble Major Depression, and the DSM-V will not have that little note. Which will then open the door for people to medicate the grieving process, because God knows that any and all pain is bad.

Jet.7: Kim Jong Il Looking at Things. There’s really nothing else to say about that.

And there we have it! Rad Roundup #1 is complete! Did we all enjoy ourselves?

Since when do satirical TV show hosts testify before Congress in character?

Congressional circus aside, the issues of migrant labor and illegal aliens have been floating around in my mind, just waiting for the right catalyst to help it come into the world. Apparently Colbert is said catalyst.

“I’ll admit, I started my workday with preconceived notions of migrant labor. But after working with these men and women, picking beans, packing corn for hours on end, side by side, in the unforgiving sun, I have to say, and I do mean this sincerely, please don’t make me do this again.” –Colbert to US Congress

USians have become so pampered that it is true; we are not made of badass enough stuff to handle hard labor. We have 9% unemployment, but how much do you want to bet that many of those unemployed would not be willing to do the same labor the migrant workers are doing? Even my own mind recoils from it: I’m educated! it yells. I’m educated and experienced in many different fields. Why should I do that hard of work for so little money?

And yet, once I shut up that little voice (not one of my favorite voices), I realize something else. Can a person ever really be above good, honest work that provides such a necessary thing as food? Of course not. Someone has to do the work, or we starve. (Possibly while still ingesting highly-processed food-like products** a la Famine’s new modus operandi in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens.)

So let’s say we give migrant workers legal status and force the giant agricultural corporations to pay them minimum wage and treat them with dignity. If that was forced upon them, employing a migrant worker would suddenly be no more cost effective than employing an US citizen. But how many US citizens would apply for the jobs? Few if any, probably.

We would then be in the peculiar situation of outsourcing ourselves. While vilifying corporations for sending other jobs overseas, we would then choose to do it within our very borders. I find irony amusing in almost any situation.

More importantly, however, we would thus create a legal second class: a group of people who are legally present (for certain months of the year) but not citizens. They would not be able to vote or participate in our government, yet that government’s choices would affect them directly. There would certainly be some benefits for the workers: a legal presence means they would have protection under the law and could not be exploited so easily. And obviously it’s better than the current system of illegal workers.

But as pragmatic as the choice may be, I would urge everyone to consider what it means to create a legal second class in a democratic country that is supposed to value liberty and equality. Must we really do it? Are we really incapable of working to provide our own food within our own country? Is the problem with the work itself, or the bloated, disgusting nature of the modern food industry? What do we become if we refuse to do our own hard work and rely on a legal second class to do it for us?

I have no answers for this. Like most problems facing the US, I find that in looking for a solution I can only come up with more questions.

This issue, of course, is inextricably linked to the problem of illegal aliens, since most migrant workers are here illegally and many illegal aliens are migrant workers. When you widen the problem of illegal migrant workers to include all illegal aliens, the whole thing becomes much dicier. On the one hand, they’re here illegally and according to some, should be thrown out of the US lock, stock, and barrel. The other side of the spectrum argues for the illegal alien’s essential humanity and their desire to seek a better life, like the ancestors of most USians.

Of course illegal aliens are people too, and therefore they have certain human rights. You might call them inalienable. You might say those rights were endowed by their Creator–or if you shy away from such gloriously simple yet irrevocably spiritual language, you might say their human rights were given by nature, that they exist because a person is human, and thus no government can give them to you or take them away (without your consent). All of this is true.

However, recognizing a person’s essential humanity does not automatically lead to giving them legal status in a country they have purposefully and knowingly entered and/or lived in illegally. I feel like many arguments on this side of the case start at Point A, everyone’s essential humanity, and skip to Point 539, legal status for illegal aliens, without tracing the logical path between the two. In fact, I’m not certain such a logical path exists in most cases.

There are, of course, exceptions there to prove the rule. You might wonder about children who were brought here by parents and didn’t know they were here illegally, for instance. But for the sake of this argument, I am going to focus on the specific group I named above: people who have purposefully and knowingly entered the US illegally or have purposefully stayed long-term in the US after their Visa expired.

My favorite analogy to use is this: There’s a big difference between one friend asking to crash on your couch and another friend breaking into your house and trying to live there without you noticing. You have every right to get angry at the friend who broke into your house and kick them out.

The problem is bigger than this, of course. Multiply your friend by millions, and there’s the problem the US is facing. Showing them all the door would be impractical, to say the least. I’m not a fan of “kick them all out” rallying cries mostly because the pragmatist in me can’t see that it’s logically possible to do so, which makes said rallying cry solely a means of emotional manipulation.

However, I do not see where the US government is obligated to provide illegal aliens with non-emergency medical care, education, or legal status. Entering illegally means that in a very real sense, the alien is not here. If the government does not officially know a person exists, how can it be responsible to that person in any way? If a person chose to come or remain in the US illegally, willfully breaking the laws of the nation s/he claims to want to join, then why should the government give that person legal status? In their first action in the US, they have shown a disregard for our laws.

I’ve started seeing another argument in favor of legal status for illegal aliens, and it’s the most personally disturbing to me. It goes as follows: once upon a time, Europeans were the “illegal aliens” in the Americas, just ask the Native Americans. Oh, wait, you can’t. Because we butchered them.

Ahem. I think Spike put it best on Buffy: “That’s what conquering nations do. That’s what Caesar did, and he’s not going around saying, ‘I came; I conquered; I felt really bad about it.’”***

Too glib?

Okay, how’s this: Technically speaking, Europeans did the first butchering, conquering, and “illegal entry”, if you want to put it that way. By the time the US was even created, generations of Euro-Americans had been born. The continued presence of said Euro-Americans was inevitable at that point. Skipping ahead to the “Manifest Destiny” that created the goal and eventual reality of coast-to-coast US, you have to recognize that as much as we absorbed Native American lands, we also pushed back European colonies and paved the way for the eventual end of the European colonization of North America.

Were we perfect and wonderful during this process? Certainly not. But if you follow this argument to its logical conclusion, it says that whatever mistakes we made then effectively destroy our sovereign rights as a nation today. This is why I find this argument so disturbing. It’s a patently ridiculous notion, as the US’ nationhood is recognized by the entire planet, including those same Native Americans we conquered centuries ago. Protecting its borders, enforcing immigration laws, and deporting illegal aliens are rights to every sovereign nation.

To be clear, I don’t think we should kick every illegal alien out. As I said, I think it’s illogical to think that such a process could actually happen. In the interest of pragmatism, I think we have to give most law-abiding illegal aliens some sort of legal status. I do not support paths to citizenship for any illegal aliens who willfully and purposefully entered the US illegally (or purposely overstayed a Visa).

For the gray areas I mentioned, with the example of the children of illegal aliens, I’m not certain yet if I support paths to citizenship. On the one hand, I think that if you grew up here, entirely unaware of being illegal, you should not have to spend your life paying for someone else’s crime. What concerns me is that if we make laws to allow the eventual citizenship of such children or other special cases, then we may inadvertently tempt even more people to enter illegally in the hopes of giving their children a chance to be US citizens. Perhaps a time-specific law of some kind? I’m not familiar enough with the law to know how to navigate that particular minefield.

What I am sick of, however, is the rhetoric that says if you want the federal government to do one of its few Constitutionally-mandated jobs of protecting our borders and eradicating the problem of illegal entry, you must be a racist, an imperialist, a bourgeois pig, whatever. String me up if you want, but at least I haven’t had to resort to slurring anyone’s character in order to make an argument.

While we’re arguing about exactly what kind of swine I am, the US Congress could be inviting even more fictional characters to testify before them. And the circus lights flash ever more brightly.

*  *  *

*As far as Twitter news sources go, @Reuters, @nprnews, and @nprpolitics have made me much happier than @AP and their increasingly mundane and irrelevant tweets.

**”Highly-processed food-like products” is a term borrowed often and with much glee from In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan.

***I fully believe there is a Joss Whedon quote for every occasion.

I’m planning to take several posts to dissect my day so that I can truly capture it as well as give some actual commentary on the many, many differences between US schools and Thai schools, and hopefully this will also give me a jump into posting more regularly. I’m considering adding pictures, but I’m having an internal debate about the inclusion of people (particularly students) in said photos. Once I reach a conclusion, I may or may not decide to add pics later. Without further ado:

A Day in the Life, Part 1

I typically wake up somewhere between 5:30 and 6AM and leave for school by 6:45. Although I don’t have to be in until 7:30, I like being early. Besides, I also need time to make my morning stop at Smile Cup, where I get my cha nom yen (spelling by yours truly), a.k.a Thai Iced Tea, a black tea-based sweet and milky concoction that gives me my much desired caffeine and sugar.

Smile Cup is pretty awesome in and of itself. The couple who owns it are both really nice, plus they have an actual espresso machine so I can treat myself to what amounts to a sweetened iced latte on occasion as well. The drink stand is outside, but if you go into the (air conditioned!) inside, they also make food and have ice cream. Mmm.

So after my morning stop at Smile Cup, I head to school and set up my laptop (though there are a couple of computers in the English Program office, it’s way easier to use my own). I usually use my early morning time to either randomly surf the internet or make any copies I need, as we’re not supposed to make copies during school hours, only before or after.

However, there’s also the marvelous school breakfast that I take advantage of a few times a week. The most awesome part about the school breakfast is that for 15 THB (Thai Baht), I can get rice and two additional things to go with it. Usually I get a fried egg and some sort of chicken. They’re little plates, but filling, and at fifty US cents, who’s complaining? Interestingly enough, Thais don’t seem to have set breakfast foods. They eat in the morning, but they typically eat the same types of food that they’d have at any other time. They even have rice soup available at the school breakfast.

At this point in the morning, there’s usually only one other teacher hanging around. For the sake of privacy, I shall call him Jersey, but he’s not from the New one. He’s from the original Jersey, as in the British Isle not far from the coast of France. Jersey’s my comrade over in the kindergarten, and thankfully we get along pretty well.

The other two farang teachers are both Americans and are also both typically late. Frat Guy teaches Health/P.E. and English for the upper grades, and Other Guy teaches English for the lower grades. Frat Guy and I get along, but Other Guy… well, let’s just say that’s the nicest nickname I could come up with for him.

Rounding out the office are the contingent of Filipino/as that have all been here much longer than any of us, at least one of them since pretty much the beginning of the English Program about five years ago. They’re definitely all more well-integrated into the school than us Western teachers, but we’re all new. In fact, as I understand it the school hasn’t had any Western teacher stay for longer than one semester (and most of them much less), which causes it’s own set of problems for us.

Since there’s been such a high turnover, the school administration doesn’t seem to expect us to stay, and there’s definitely a sense of not being part of the school family quite yet. While they’re nice and helpful generally speaking, when there are issues or problems it definitely starts to feel like an “us versus them” environment. What I find particularly mind-boggling is that they’ve had such high turnover for such a long time and yet don’t seem to have put any real thought into why they keep losing Western teachers.

In the back of the office sits the EP advisor/head. She doesn’t speak much English, and most of the translation falls to one of the Thai teachers who speaks fluent English and acts as our liaison. They’re nice, but when you’re worried about an “us versus them” environment, you also watch what you say when they’re around. The Thai teachers and assistant teachers in the EP also spend some time in the office, but they don’t have desks there. There are also two Filipina teachers who teach English in the regular Thai program, but they don’t get desks in our office.

The English Program itself is quite ambitious, particularly since this is a government school. They receive outside funding for the program, and all the students in it pay extra as well. They receive instruction almost entirely in English for every subject except Thai and Social Studies. Each class has a Head Teacher and an Assistant Teacher. The Assistant Teacher is there to translate as needed and to help with classroom management. I’m of two minds about having the ATs there for every single class; it makes it really easy for the students not to bother listening to the English if they can get a Thai translation all the time. On the other hand, it can also be really helpful, particularly with Prathom 1 (grade 1), who are in their first year of the EP.

Over at the Kindergarten, things are a little different. The building is across the street, and this is the first year they’ve started the EP there. In Thailand, there are two to three years of kindergarten, K1, K2, and K3 (but there’s no EP for K3). I’m not sure how it works out with the ages, in all honesty, because I have 4-5 year-olds in K1, but Jersey in K2 has quite a few four year-olds as well, not just 5-6 year-olds. And honestly, some of the kids in K2 and K3 look older than some of my P1 kids across the street.

Since this is the first year for the EP at the Kindergarten, we’re still figuring it out. Jersey and I are essentially the full-time Kindergarten teachers for our classes, though we also both have a Head Teacher and an Assistant Teacher. It’s really nice, though, because we spend almost all day with the same kids, from the morning through lunch and then back again after their nap time (they get a three hour nap every afternoon!).

With that background information and the shortest start to my typical day, I think I shall leave it. Next time, I shall actually start talking about the teaching I do.

However, teaching “high five” to Thai kids promises even more enjoyment. For those not familiar with the Thai language, pronouncing “high five” presents Thais with a couple of tiny little problems:

1) They don’t have the “v” sound in their language. They also don’t have “z”, “th”, and a host of other English sounds.

2) They don’t pronounce the final consonant of words.

So, I’m teaching “high five” to my kindergarteners randomly, just to get them geared up and excited. By focusing on those two minor little problems in pronunciation with them, I now have an interesting mix of students all clamoring for high fives, half of whom are yelling, “High fie, high fie!” and the other half of whom are screaming, “High fi-VUH! High fi-VUH!”

Oh, yeah.

But in the interest of revitalizing my blog (or would it just be vitalizing since it’s still a new blog?), let’s skip to the good stuff.

The good stuff being: I’ve decided blogging is not a chore.

Or in the words of every Thai teacher in my school: “Don’t be so serious!”

(I believe the admonition to “not be serious” can cover a range of emotions, i.e. don’t be so angry/upset/sad/frustrated/annoyed/not fun. At least they seem to use it for pretty much any situation under the sun in which I am not smiling sunnily, dancing through meadows, singing like a my life’s a musical, or generally having a frolicky good time.)

Thus: Changes start now. Though that’s not to say that I won’t cover serious topics. But when I read over my posts thus far, the place does really seem to be kind of a downer. Add in the color scheme, and it’s just plain dour. And damn, that’s not me. I have a quirky sense of humor. I have quirks.

Okay, let’s face facts: I’m not just quirky. I’m an eccentric hermit who needs at least a couple hours a day to just think. I’m random and odd and don’t like to go on about things ad nauseum. (Just to nauseum.)

So stay tuned, folks: fun is on the way. And now, having officially crossed over into the land of hokey, I’m out.

This is the name of a new Facebook Page. This page is absolutely unacceptable. When I saw the name after one of my friends “liked” it, I wrote her a message detailing why.

My message to her, and my message to all conservatives is this:

Look, I think we both know that there are always going to be a lot of things in politics on which we disagree. And honestly, one of my most dearly held political beliefs is that those disagreements are what make our democracy vibrant and healthy. So most of the time when I see you post things with which I disagree, I’m cool with it.

This particular group, however, seriously bothers me. Most importantly, I think that groups like that represent serious wrong steps for our democracy. Firstly because we, the People of this nation, should never, under any circumstances, be praying for the death of our leader. It’s not funny. It’s simply not acceptable. There are lines that we have to draw when it comes to what’s allowed to be cannon fodder.

I know, too, that the liberals in this country have said some really terrible, unacceptable things, and that a lot of this unacceptable disrespect for the office of the President started with liberals during the Bush years. Be that as it may, it is not acceptable for us to keep pushing that envelope. That is a lose-lose for us, for our leaders, and for the country.

Furthermore, right now the right, specifically the Tea Party movement, is being viciously attacked and accused of violence, racism, and all manner of nasty stuff. I have seen no direct evidence of said nasty stuff, but things like this Facebook group make those tales easy to believe. It is making the divide between conservatives and liberals deeper and harder to cross.

We have too many serious problems to let that divide grow. Our politicians–all of them–have been running us around for years. They’re keeping us fighting with each other as much as possible so that we forget that they’ve ALL disappointed us way more than we’ve disappointed each other. We have got to stop calling each other names and start focusing on making these civil servants do their jobs. We are their employers. We need to remind them of that.

We will not be able to do that when we have these divides between us. We all need to remember that there are always going to be things on which we disagree, and that it is to be celebrated. We have got to stop fighting about those things when we have serious problems that we could be working on together. And yes, I know that the left is just as guilty as the right in this, and right now, being the side in power, they have more responsibility that they are not living up to. This is a grave concern to me as someone who tends to fall into the liberal side of things.

And I am trying to convince people–all my people, liberals especially–that we need to stop yelling at each other and start yelling at the politicians. But I cannot do anything in the face of things like praying the President dies. You can’t talk your way out of that. I can’t say that the right is reasonable or that they have ideas we need to listen to when that is staring me in the face. Yes, the left needs to clean the political house big-time. Obama took our hope, took what we believed in, and conned us; he is pulling all the same political tricks. For that alone, I think he dealt a serious blow to our democracy. More people on the left need to recognize that and get angry.

I am asking you not to work against me on that. We have got to work together to build our democracy anew. It is time for all of us to send the message to all of our leaders that it is time for them to wake up and get serious about the real problems we’re facing.

Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as responding to the question of whether our brand new government was a monarchy or a republic by saying, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It’s time for us to prove we can keep it.

A caveat here: I’ve never taken a women’s studies course; I haven’t done my required feminist reading. I am not a girl who has studied the ins and outs of gender-based oppression; I am a girl who does a lot of thinking and analysis based on observation, a girl who asks a lot of questions. I’ve gotten my ideas of what it is to be a woman and what feminism is or should be from books like Jane Eyre, Contact, and The Mists of Avalon.

(And seriously, these are probably my three favorite books in the world; if you haven’t read them, I highly recommend you add them to your reading list. I tend to reread each of them every couple of years, and they are all rich and deep enough that I find beautiful new things on each rereading.)

Perhaps there will be a time in my life when I am ready to dig into the required feminist reading, but as I get older I’m learning more and more just how much I distrust authority in any and all forms. My knowledge isn’t perfect, it’s true, but  having had a childhood need to satisfy authority in order to win approval, I worry about a primarily subconscious impulse stopping me from fully critiquing, in either a positive or negative way, a book that I consider an authority in any subject.

Indeed, I distrust authority more because of my subconscious trust of authority than anything else.

So, with that lengthy disclaimer I shall continue.

The ideas of gender roles, gender equality, and the true meaning of freedom have all been playing in my mind for several reasons. The first being that I am living here in Pattaya, an almost Vegas-esque city if you take out the gambling and add even more girl bars. And though I am constantly surrounded by the images of prostitution, I also see plenty of women who take care of themselves (and possibly their families) in many and varied ways, including running a variety of businesses.

I have seen women who have married farangs and set up their own businesses, built family homes, and live happily. And I have heard tales of women bankrupting their farang husbands. The culturally different point of view on what constitutes a good marriage blurs the line between oppression and freedom. Here, gender roles are used to complement each other to create harmonious homes (which, I suppose, is what gender roles are really always meant to do).

What gets blurry for me here is where freedom ends and oppression begins. Women here run businesses, go to college (if they can afford it, which is a class issue and not specifically a gender issue). I cannot yet tell exactly where and how their access to male privileges is limited or denied outright, or if such access is in fact truly denied.

I have always felt that gender equality is based on access to choice. I have always felt that the choice to stay at home, raise children, and take care of your family should be more validated in US society, whether it is a man or woman making that choice. In Thailand, there are fewer choices for everyone than I am accustomed to in the US. I am still observing, and cannot yet say that I’ve come to any conclusions.

Against this backdrop of Pattaya, I have several other factors contributing to my looking at gender equality more closely, the most notable of which is that my TEFL instructor, an American, is often casually sexist by US standards today.

(As a guest in Thailand, I am opposed to judging the culture or the people here too quickly; I am here to experience their culture, not condemn it for being different from my own. However, I still hold fellow USians to the standards of our own society.)

So, my instructor has been contributing to my mindset as well, though I mostly just called out his little comments and let it slide on by. Until (you knew there as an until, didn’t you?), I made A Very Unwise Decision. Namely, I chose to engage with my instructor in a debate, to protest his increasing use of his classroom as a podium from which to trumpet his opinions as fact. The problem with this is that my instructor’s world is black and white, really black and white, and my world is so gray that true black or white might not even exist.

During the course of what became a very long debate covering many topics, the Iraq War was mentioned. Later, after we had finally moved onto class, he casually threw out there that one of the things we had done in Iraq was “free the women”. They weren’t allowed to do this, that, or the other until we went in there and made it so.

I said it to him then, and I’ll repeat it now: “Freedom is not a gift to be bestowed by a benevolent tyrant.”

The problem with the idea that the US “freed” the women of Iraq (or indeed, the women of any society including its own), is that it implies that the US, benevolent god that it is, shall bestow upon women the freedom to do… exactly what it says they’re allowed to do. If we have the power to give them freedom, then we also have the power to take it away. That is not freedom. That is a gilded fucking cage.

That is why I have such a problem with women in the US making less money per dollar than men make for equal work. That is why it’s such a problem that there’s still a glass ceiling for women at the higher levels of most professions and institutions. All of that contributes to a sense that throughout our society, women are being indulged in this latest fad of “freedom”. It says that we are not really equal, that we simply have bigger cages.

The Declaration of Independence says that all people are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. I am free because I was born free, because my Rights are inalienable and given to me by an unfathomable Creator, because any chains that bind me cannot bind my mind, my heart, or my soul. My freedom is not dependent on being given the gift of it. My freedom exists both inside and outside traditional gender roles. I am, so I am free.