[Sunday, Feb. 22 (Happy Birthday George), 2009, 11 am Thai time] When I saw Slumdog Millionaire, I posted that I liked the movie, but it was basically Hollywood formula and glitz in a new setting. I was also concerned that the movie didn't really convey the complexity and richness of the Mumbai slums. I wrote:

Gregory David Roberts, for example in his book Shantaram seems to capture some of the spirit of the Bombay slums. He makes us feel its oppression, but also to see that despite what looks totally unlivable from a Western perspective, the inhabitants, like everyone else, live rich lives with joys as well as suffering.

A NY Times article today on protests in Mumbai against using the word slum in the movie, does a much more thorough job describing that these 'slums' are really very vibrant communities. Here's an excerpt - go to the link for the rest:

Its depiction as a slum does little justice to the reality of Dharavi. Well over a million “eyes on the street,” to use Jane Jacobs’s phrase, keep Dharavi perhaps safer than most American cities. Yet Dharavi’s extreme population density doesn’t translate into oppressiveness. The crowd is efficiently absorbed by the thousands of tiny streets branching off bustling commercial arteries. Also, you won’t be chased by beggars or see hopeless people loitering — Dharavi is probably the most active and lively part of an incredibly industrious city. People have learned to respond in creative ways to the indifference of the state — including having set up a highly functional recycling industry that serves the whole city.

Dharavi is all about such resourcefulness. Over 60 years ago, it started off as a small village in the marshlands and grew, with no government support, to become a million-dollar economic miracle providing food to Mumbai and exporting crafts and manufactured goods to places as far away as Sweden.

Certainly the movie brings much more attention to the situation and perhaps more people will actually be moved to find out more about this huge city within a city.

I see that I used both Bombay and Mumbai. The later is the new name for the city, but many, still use the older name.

Updating My Alaska Blog List

When I first starting blogging and only three or four people a day (counting my mother) were looking at my blog, I checked out posts on how to increase readership. One way that everyone recommended was to trade links with other bloggers.

But I really didn't want to have long lists of bloggers I didn't read or really care about just to get them to put my link up on their blogs.

Some time ago, I posted about Alaska blogs I liked. But didn't get around to putting them all up. Then Blogger offered a widget that put the blog list in order of the most recent post and allowed the reader to see the title of the newest post. I could see the benefit of that approach by the traffic it brought to my blog from other bloggers who used that widget - thanks especially to Immoral Minority for the links from there.

But there are way too many Alaska blogs to list them all. So my approach was to keep the list relatively short by doing the ones I really like a lot, and to leave off the blogs that are already on everyone else's lists (except those I had up before they were 'famous'.)

Then I saw that the blogger widget also let's me limit how many blogs with titles of their latest posts are on the list. So today I added about half a dozen links, but limited the total number to ten. So, only the ten blogs with the most recent posts will be showing. That means the blogs whose last post was three weeks ago probably won't be on the list.

It also means that the links I had to Alaskarants,Alaska Blogs, and Globe of Blogs, which are not blogs, but lists of blogs, won't show up at all because they don't have any latest posts.

When the King of Rock and Roll met the King of Thailand

[Update October 13, 2016: The King died today. My post today includes a picture of him I took at the Royal Ploughing Ceremony in 1969 and a few other pictures and thoughts.]



The King of Thailand was 7 years old when Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935. Today in a restaurant in Hang Dong, a district of Chiang Mai, there was a picture on the wall of the King and Queen of Thailand meeting Elvis Presley in the Buddhist year 2503 during the filming of GI Blues. (It's currently 2552 so that was 49 years ago, or 1960.) Elvis was 25 and the King was 32.



That also means that today, when the King is 81, Elvis would be 74



This is the coffee shop/restaurant where the picture was hanging on the wall.

Google provided a bit more background. Eric, on Ajarnforum (teacherforum) wrote a couple of years ago:

HM King of Thailand meets the King of Rock & Roll
I had read that His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit had met Elvis Presley at Paramount Studios, on the set of one of his movies, in June 1960. Apparently Duke Ellington was also present. HMK was 32 years old at the time and had just begun the 10th year of his reign.
After much scouring of the internet and eventually sending a guy $3 USD via PayPal I came up with this pic: [I couldn't open the link to the picture, but presumably it is the same one.)

Poking further I found this Youtube Thai television newscast of the event posted by Trevormeech. The newscast puts the date at May 21, 1960.

How Things Get Misconstrued - Setting the Record Straight

[Sat. Feb. 21, 2009, 8:15pm Thai time]
For the record, Steve Aufrecht is NOT investigating the terms of the BP-ARCO charter agreement with the university. At best, he's been poking around the subject. (For those of you wondering about the use of the 3rd person, while I'm not hiding my identity here, I'm also not trying to advertise it either.)

I got an email today telling me about this opinion piece in the ADN by history professor Steve Haycox. He's discussing Rep. Anna Fairclough's questions to University President Mark Hamilton regarding UA student lobbying and their opposition to development in Alaska. In it he writes:

His [Hamilton's] response is most welcome, for there have been questions raised recently about sanctions against respected university researchers who have produced reports critical of sacred cows. Biologist Rick Steiner criticized a Sea Grant initiative on offshore oil development; emeritus professor Steve Aufrecht is investigating the terms of the BP-ARCO charter agreement with the university.

I just want to set the record straight here. There's an implication: "questions have been raised recently about sanctions against respected university researchers." Then two university faculty are mentioned. First, as I said above, Steve Aufrecht has blogged about and raised some questions, but really has done nothing that he would claim to be 'investigating.' Second, to my knowledge, sanctions have not been discussed about him. I could be wrong on that score, but what sort of sanctions does one impose on faculty emerita? (From the University [of Alaska] Regulations 04.04.070: "the position of professor emeritus is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a retiring faculty member. ")

So, how did Dr. Haycox come to these conclusions? My guess is that "there have been questions raised" refers to Philip Munger's post on his blog Progressive Alaska where he first discusses how Dr. Rick Steiner's signing of an open letter critical of the "North Aleutian Basin Energy-Fisheries Initiative, being implemented by the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and Alaska Sea Grant" resulted in his Dean chastising him in a three year post-tenure review for abusing his academic freedom.

Then, Munger raises another issue of interest to the university. He writes:

2. Dr. Steve Aufrecht's Investigation into the BP-ARCO Merger Charter Agreement and the University of Alaska

University of Alaska Professor Emeritus Steve Aufrecht has been trying to determine whether or not the so-called "Merger Charter Agreement" that enabled the formation of the entity now known as Conoco-Phillips is legally enforceable, or is a mere scrap of paper. If the agreement is enforceable, it appears quite likely that Conoco-Phillips owes the University of Alaska money. A lot of money.

I had considered commenting on this post to say that 'investigation' was probably a bit strong. Two blog posts and some inquiries, the way I see things, do not an investigation make. But since the rest of the post described what little had been actually done in this 'investigation' I decided to let it pass. (As I look at it again now, I'd say that I was reasonably sure it is enforceable and what I'd been asking was who was monitoring it to be sure the conditions were met.)

But now Haycox picks up the word investigation and lumps the two profs together to suggest that both face sanctions for their activities, when really only Steiner did according to Munger.

Many of us played a game as kids, where one person is given a short phrase to pass on to the next person and that person passes it on to the next, then the next, and the next for five or six more people. At the end, the phrase that the last person tells the group is often totally unrecognizable from the one that was given to the first person.

Here, a couple of blog posts and inquiries become an 'investigation.' And by not reading quite carefully enough, two people get lumped into the same category, though they really aren't. And people reading the opinion piece will come away with something else altogether.

And that's why I try to be really, really careful when I write, when I choose my words. And even if I were 100% successful in writing clearly - don't worry, not even close - everyone comes to a story with their own preconceptions and so they see what they want or expect to see. But I don't want to help them by using vague or misleading language.

Two Different Nights, Two very Different Dinners

Thursday night J's Thai class had it's final dinner. I've been hearing about her class mates - a collection of mostly (13) Western men mostly of a certain age with either Thai girlfriends or wives. And five women. Some of whom had Thai boyfriends. And one of the best foreign language teachers Joan has ever had. And she learned a number of sentence patterns and vocabulary words and it's obvious she's got a lot more Thai now. I did talk to her teacher and asked about program for people like me who can basically get along, but with lots of gaps in terms of grammar and vocabulary.

The dinner was at a Thai buffet'barbecue' place. That means there are tables full of food which you cook over charcoal in little - I have no idea what they are called and I didn't take a picture, but they're aluminum 'pots' with a broth, but also in the middle an area you can cook fish or other things outside the broth.

You can see the vegies (to be cooked in the broth, but you can't see all the fish and shrimps and other things I don't even know waiting to be dropped into the broth.



And here are the pseudo Western sweets on the left and Thai sweets on the right. Those bright yellow ones, if I recall right are made with egg yokes and lots of sugar.



And here are some more Thai desserts. I'm not sure what these are, but I know them and love them. You get these noodley, dumpling like things, with a little coconut milk and some crushed ice on a hot night. MMMMMMMMMMMMM. So goood. We paid much, much more than we do for a normal dinner which can range from100-150 Baht ($3-5) for the two of us. I'm not sure what the buffet was, but we all got asked to put in 200 Baht apiece (which covered the drinks) or about $6 each.


These two guys are Australians. The one in the white whose face was blurred to protect him (actually there just wasn't that much light and he moved during the slow shutter click) was an undercover detective for 30 or more years. So I filled him in on some of the things going on in the Ted Stevens case. His reaction that some sort of fix was in. He also said he spent five, I think, months in Iraq to pay off his house. He had nothing good to say about what is going on. Well, he did say while there may be some issues with the Americans, their behavior is far more exemplary than that of most of the other players. But he was obviously upset when he talked about some guys he met early on who said they wanted the war to last forever. "Don't you care about all the people who are getting killed?" "Hell, we're getting $40,000 a month and we want that to go on forever." What would have taken him ten years to pay off working in Australia took five or six months in Iraq he said. Thanks to the American tax payer.

Let's see, the guy on the right in the orange is a Brit who lives in Hungary and is here teaching cricket to kids and a couple of orphanages. The lady on the right is a 20 year old Brit who has a Thai boyfriend. The woman at the end of the table - almost in the middle of the picture - is the teacher.

It was a loud and raucous dinner - Thai music coming from one side, televisions going as well. The group went to karaoke afterward, but we went on home.


Tonight was a totally different experience. We'd run into Mike on the street the other night and he emailed the invitation:

We are very happy to invite you to a Shabbat celebration to be held at the Blue Pearl Yoga Studio.

We hope this will be the start of a more regular format instead of the smaller gatherings

It would be great if you could come. The more the merrier and we encourage members of all faiths and paths to join us.

Friday, 20/2/09 at 18:45

As usual, the food will be Pot Luck - Please bring whatever you like to eat but strictly vegetarian

The handouts with the words for the songs called it a Kabbalah Shabbat. So, from outdoor (but under cover) the size almost of a football field on Thursday, Friday was in a Yoga studio.
And we had four Cambodian monks from Wat Suandoke there to join us. Unfortunately, Thai Buddhist monks don't eat after 12 noon.

Azreal led the short shabbat service - he's originally a Canadian but, if I recall right, he's lived in the US and Israel and now has been in Chiang Mai six months. In addition to Canadians and Americans, there were two Thais, some Brits, and Italian, a couple of Austrians, and a German of Philipino/Chinese origin. It was really a special night. I'm glad did't succumb to my thoughts of just staying home tonight and taking it easy.

Buffalo Plane Crash and Our Small World

When the plane crashed in Buffalo, I thought about Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld who had been rabbi in Anchorage for many years before moving to a new congregation in Buffalo. I checked his blog but there was nothing there. (Now he has his comments from last Friday's Shabbat service about his cantor Susan Wehle who died in the crash.) Today someone emailed me this New York Times article about people gathering at Rabbi Rosenfeld's synagogue and home and [another nearby synagogue] to grieve.

. . . Close-knit is an understatement. In the suburbs of Buffalo, with their succession of two-story colonials and rambling ranches, residents spent the first half of the weekend piecing together how they were linked to the 50 people killed in the crash, including one man inside the home hit by the plane.

The ties to the victims were complex and overlapping. They sold them mulch, dined at their restaurants, planned funerals together and listened to their mothers chat proudly about them while getting pedicures.

They didn’t just know their names: they knew their histories and quirks. They knew who was allergic to flowers, what they liked to read and who had attended their daughters’ soccer games. . .

Better Barbet

[Friday, Feb.20, 2009 8am Thai Time]
The lineated barbet pictures the other day, well, you pretty much had to take my word for it. But today the barbets got into a tree much nearer our balcony - close enough for even my little powershot to get a recognizable shot. I know, it's still not one of those great telephoto shots, but for three times optical zoom it's not bad.

There were also koels calling, some red whiskered bulbuls, and a glimpse of what I think is a malkoha. We've only seen these far off or in today's case fairly close by well hidden in the tree and gone before we could really see it in the binoculars. We had some olive backed sunbirds the other day.

Greater Racket Tailed Drongo

J was sitting on the balcony watching this guy way out there in the tree. With the binoculars you could see his crest and the long dangly tail crisply. He even shimmered dark green. When I looked at the photo I was pretty sure that the black spot below the branch below the bird was the end of his tail. He flew away before I could check They have long strings with these little feather puffs way at the end. You can see it clearly on my favorite drongo picture which I extracted from a video I managed to catch of it flying near our balcony last year.

Overnight Changes

Literally overnight (and a little of yesterday) there were two changes in my environment.Until yesterday, the parking lot at our building for motorcycles and bikes was pretty much a free for all. Here's a picture from last year. There are a lot more motorcycles and bikes this year.
I did see them working on this when I left for work yesterday and by last night it had been transformed.




And then, near my office, was this newly erected billboard - there was literally nothing there the morning before - urging the people of Chiangmai to stop fires and help reduce global warming. As an Alaskan, where billboards are banned statewide to protect the spectacular view, it was a little jarring to have my view of Doi Suthep at this point so suddenly blocked. But the poles holding the sign up are made of bamboo, so there is a possibility that this is a temporary sign.

Alaska in the News

I learned from a Monday Bangkok Post article which has a National Geographic.com byline, that

Hunting the biggest 'trophy' individuals, including caribou in Alaska, influences plant and animal populations faster than natural selection and even other human impacts, a study found. Such preferences leave a disproportionate number of smaller animals and plants to reproduce.

The rest is at the link.