House Hunting in Chiang Mai

Spent a little time each day looking for places to stay. Here's a glimpse of things I saw - first day in a car, second day walking to work and on the back of a motorcycle. There are houses and some turned out to be more like private dorms for students. Apartment houses. But finally someone in the office brought in a brochure that turned out to be the perfect place. Well, pretty good. It's in a quiet pocket, but a few minute walk to a main road. It's also about a 20-30 minute walk to my office. As you can see, I found my card reader to download the pictures.






Here's the place I liked, I've described it to Joan and she says to take it. So I'll go by today again. They are decent sized rooms, great windows, lots of trees around and view of Doi Suthep, the mountain next to Chiengmai.






They don't expect people to cook.



It's on the 4th floor, so we won't have to go to the gym, just up and down the stairs. It includes tv, internet. Electricity and water are extra. That makes sense since I'm sure farang (foreigners - actually I've heard people say "people from other countries" mostly rather than 'farang" this trip)tend to use a lot of water and electricity. Altogether it should be around $325 per month I'm guessing.

Mauer and Kizzia's Story on Seward

Jetleg had me awake at 4am yesterday and as I tried to go back to sleep, Monday's ADN story on Seward's part in the FBI investigations by Rich Mauer and Tom Kizzia wandered back into my consciousness from when I had quickly read the story on line a couple days earlier.

I have a couple of observations and a couple more details on the story.

Summary:

1. Rich and Tom did a fine job of reporting.
2. In this case the City of Seward public administrators (the career bureaucrats) courageously fought the decisions of the politicians, even putting their jobs on the line.
3. The case of Tylan Schrock again shows the corrupting power of power.

1. Rich Mauer and Tom Kizzia's good journalism.

Rich and Tom have been holding this story for a long time. I know Rich was interviewing people in the Seward city government back in August. I have two former students in Seward and I talked to one of them about all this back then. Rich was trying to get interviews. Would the student's job be in jeopardy for speaking to the press? The prospect was strong. The student had been warned by the then City Manager not to raise issues (just in the office, let alone the press.) So I only mentioned the story obliquely not wanting risk my former student's job. So while Rich had much of this story back in August, he held onto it until he got all the corroborating evidence - the documents he requested from the city, the key interviews (while the ex-student was already talking to the FBI, the student did also agree to talk to Rich.) And Rich has been respectful of the people he interviewed recognizing that they were taking risks just talking to him. So, all in all, this is some outstanding journalism that the people of Anchorage should be appreciative of. And it's part of a growing collection of pieces that the ADN, Rich particularly, has been offering the public on these topics. (I don't mean to downplay Tom's part in this, but I have talked to Rich about this story, but not to Tom.)

2. Public Administrators vs. Politicians

This is a distinction that is often lost on most people when they complain about government. It's really a story for another post. But I would point out it is the career politicians who do the daily work of government, who carry out the laws that politicians pass. And in the Seward story, it was the public administrators who strongly opposed the City's purchase of the earmarked property. What isn't mentioned in the story is that the public administrators put together a powerpoint presentation for the City Council that showed point by point the contractual relationship between the City and the Sealife Center and why, if I remember the details correctly, they shouldn't even allow the Sealife Center to purchase the property. The hope was that while enough Council members had personal interests in the property, at least the public would see what was going on when the powerpoint was shown at the meeting. But the Council decided to show the powerpoint in a closed session. At least one of the public administrators had foreseen this possibility and had distributed CD's of the powerpoint to some key Seward citizens, and the city manager approved posting it on the city website. The council (or maybe just the mayor) had it removed soon after, and the city manager was removed as well. The good news is that the fired city manager was elected mayor of Seward in the November election as were some less conflicted council members and the jobs of the public administrators who fought this are now much more secure again.

3. Tylan Schrock and the power of power

Tylan was also one of my students. He was very bright, very competent, and eager to make the world a better place when he graduated. In the Mauer/Kizzia story, Tylan is portrayed as the evasive director of the SeaLife Center, who appears to have arranged for the SeaLife Center to buy the property when the City of Seward said 'no', and who has recently announced his upcoming resignation.

I know Tylan pretty well. I was one of the people who recommended him for the job as assistant to the city manager at Seward when he graduated. And it was the right thing to do. Tylan had everything right and going for him. And he did such a good job for the City that they moved him over to the SeaLife Center because it belongs to the City and was not doing well. And since he moved there it has been doing very well. But it is important to note this line from the article:

The Alaska SeaLife Center has long been a favorite of Stevens, who has steered more than $50 million in federal funds to the nonprofit facility since it opened in 1998, including more than $3.5 million in the most recent appropriations bills. Schrock has been executive director for more than seven of those years.

There's no question that the SeaLife Center would be nowhere without the initial funding and continuing support of Ted Stevens' earmarks. (But I would also add that even with money an organization can be poorly managed. In fact having lots of money can make people careless - just watch the legislature. So while the money made Tylan's job easier, it alone didn't guarantee the success of the Center.)

My point, though, is that the Center was overwhelmingly dependent on Ted Stevens' earmarks. And remember that this earmark for purchasing McCabe's building was made in 2005. That was still a time when most Alaskan's were willing to look the other way while Ted was passing them money. It is easy to jump in and criticize Tylan, but it is also easy to see how difficult it might be to say no to person whose continuing financial support has made your organization possible.

That was how you played the game back then. It would be interesting to get a list of the people who have said 'no' to Ted Stevens when he was giving out money. Tylan didn't know the unofficial rules of the game were about the change. Neither did Anderson, Kott, or Kohring.

Now, we only have Mauer's story on this, so I don't want to say that Tylan is guilty of anything at this point (though Mauer's story is consistent with what I have heard myself). I'm not sure that he actually broke any laws. But let's assume that Tylan did knowingly arrange to use the earmark to buy the property through the SeaLife Center. My discussion above is only to understand why it happened, not to condone it.

The employees at the City of Seward had, in fact, said 'no' to the deal. They knew it was a bad deal and politically motivated. While the City of Seward is nowhere as dependent on Stevens as was the SeaLife Center, the employees themselves were risking their jobs in this action. And the City Manager lost his job. And, now, three years later Tylan has tendered his resignation (apparently, from what I've heard, not under pressure from the board) anyway. Doing what is right pays off in the long term.

As I watched the three trials last year I couldn't help but think about Pleasure Island in the movie Pinocchio.

Pleasure Island serves as a haven for wayward boys, allowing them to drink, smoke, and vandalize without recrimination. One of those boys is Lampwick, a tough bully of a boy that Pinocchio befriends. He smokes, drinks, plays pool, and then gets turned into a donkey. (from Duckman)

Luckily for Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, his conscience, helps him escape that fate. (While googling on this I found an accounting ethics book that uses the story of Pinocchio to help talk about ethics.)

Juneau is a lot like Pleasure Island. It's full of temptations, and three of the wicked boys who were sent to Juneau have been turned into donkeys. If anyone has any weaknesses the lobbyists in Juneau, like Stromboli, the puppeteer on Pleasure Island, exploit them. So far, the people who have been tried and convicted have been among the exploited. Anderson and Kott and Kohring are not wicked people, though they all had issues that made them exploitable. Three of the exploiters - Bill Allen, Rick Smith, and Frank Prewitt (and to a lesser degree Bill Bobrick) - have all made deals with the FBI and the Prosecutors. Maybe that is why they were the exploiters and not the exploited. They were smart enough to see the writing on the wall. I keep hearing rumors that more indictments are due any day (and since I'm not getting the ADN at my doorstep here in Thailand, they may have already come - I better look online before I post this.) and am hopeful that the drug lords (in this case money and power were the drugs) will be among the indicted, and not just the addicts.

This whole culture of power and money, I think sucked Tylan into a situation where he didn't thnk he could say no to the people who had made the SeaLife Center, itself a worthy institution, possible.

Quick Update

Going to visit some of the villages today with Bing. Not sur what that means. I worked on my work plans yesterday - writing in details of the general plan AJWS gave me before I came. Mostly working on strategic planning and staff development. Also found a place I think we'll take. It just feels right and the location is good and the price is reasonable by ex-pat standards and amazing by US standards if expensive to my co-workers.

I misplaced my card reader so I can't post any picture until I find it or get a new one. Had lunch at Wat Rampoeng yesterday. Turn out to not be 'down the street" from work, but next door. Very peaceful place. And they apparently have a fair number of foreigners meditating there.

Note: The blog is on Anchorage time. In Chiang Mai it is Feb. 14, 8:10am. Happy Valentines Day. Joan will be here Tuesday if all goes right.

Work - Day 1

Awake early again. 4am. Yesterday Grib and I got to the offices at 10. It really isn’t very far out - 3 or 4 kilometers at most in a pocket of less urbanity just south of Chiengmai University. The office is among a cluster of NGO offices all related to sustainable development, rights of local people, etc. I don’t recall ever being with Thai activists who were self identified that way.

Everyone was great. Patient with my slow Thai, ready to answer any and all questions and to get me settled in as easily and quickly as possible.

Here are my immediate co-workers.



And an overview of what the organization is doing. The five things the project is focused on:

Land, water, Forest land, debt, and prices of products.







Had lunch with Bing who eventually revealed that he has an extensive English vocabuluary. Then we drove around the area looking for places for rent. The only place we actually went into would have been perfect except that it would qualify as an extreme ‘fixer upper.” We went back to the office and looked on the internet. A friend of someone they knew had two places for us to look at. One is in a brandnew (no electricity yet, the pool is “½ month away from completion” - my interpretation was it won’t have water till we are back in Anchorage) hotel these people own. The rooms are ready and beautiful, but it’s kind of far away and the neighborhood isn’t very exciting. They also showed us a house they own. Again, it was very nice its way, but Joan would be pretty isolated and I’d have a long trek to work.


Some of the new vocabulary I’m working on:


Coordinate
Federation
Natural Resources
Organic (the Thai word is the same as the Thai word for eagle อินทรี , with an extra letter อินทรีย์ . The pronunciation is easy to remember - “In Sea”)
Land Reform
Action
Support
Empowerment

Lazy Sunday

Yesterday was spent doing errands. I was able to plug into the modem at the Guest House front office directly this morning to post and check email.. The router for the wifi wasn’t working. Then I went off to do my errands - get Thai money, get a sim card and program for my Thai cell phone
that we bought last year, lunch, found a bike shop, but put that on hold, got a bunch of bananas, then came home. All this I did in a big mall that everything I needed with air conditioning. But I really hate these malls. The picture is where I bought the cell phone, one of about 50 similar little cell phone shops in the same location at the mall.




While things are very commercial, there are still hints of old Thai culture like this Wat (temple.)








This is a typical street scene. When the bicycles became motorcycles and then cars, the streets just weren't ready and pedestrians and bikes really get little consideration in the infrastructure.


Here's another temple I walked through on the way back to the Pooh Cottage Guest House where I'm staying.




Melissa, the volunteer who had moved out last night was back because she’d left her towel here. She told me a little about apartment hunting and showed me the apartment she’d chosen, about a five minute walk away. The street is an expat section with lots of high rise apartment/condotels in all stages of construction. Her room is a spare white hotel room like setup. The main attraction is a large swimming pool on the third floor. B5000 /month, or about $150. But it’s pretty barren - lots of concrete, very little green. I felt a little guilty, I guess I should have spent the day looking at apartments. But she lives in New York City and so she’s more intuned with that sort of activity. We’ll see what the people at my organization have in mind for me.

Here's Melissa's pool.


We agreed to meet at 6:30 and go to the Sunday Night market. The weather was comfortable in the evening and we walked around a lot and found a very plain Thai restaurant with good food in the middle of the market.

Today Grib picks me up at 9:45am to take me to meet the staff at my NGO (Non-Governmental Organization.) I'm staying a little vague my work relationship with these people is more important than blogging. I'll try to write about this in as much detail as I can without compromising confidentiality and general human trust.

Some Thai Headlines

Saturday's paper was with this morning's (Sunday) breakfast. Here are a few of the stories from The Nation.[Link is apparently to the current edition. As part of my internet addiction withdrawal program, I'm not going to pursue how to get the Saturday edition.]

Noppadon: Thaksin to come back before May

The foreign ministers says that overthrown prime minister is due back soon now that his party has won the recent election.

Thaksin's wife Khunying (like Mrs. not her name) Pojaman had said earlier that her hsuband would return in May to defend himself aginst charges of abuse of power...

Street racers complete 'shock therapy'

After five days of 'shock therapy' at the Baan Metta Remand Home, 74 teenage boys arrested for street racing [motorcycles on a main street in Bangkok] were yesterday relaeased into the embrace of their waiting parents.

"I'm very glad that I'm going back home with ou, Mum. I will obey what you tell me," one 17 year old boy...told his mother ....

Department of Juvenile Observation and Protection director-general...said shock therapy was aimed at improving youth's behaviour in the short time. The authorities instructed them in many activities to improve their discipline, life skills and moral ethics, including painting, listening to sermons by monks, studying laws and practising military drills.

"On the fifth day of the program, they looked completely different fromt he first day, when ti was obvious that they were serious and distraught. Now they look cheerful..."

Producers Irked over price cuts

[The government has identified 30 items to have price cuts]

Aids activists fear about-face by Chaiya

Paisan and others met with Chaiya [new health minister] to ask him not to revoke compulsory licensing on Aids medicine. During the meeting Paisan mentioned that he might need to take weedkiller if he lost access to the medicine. "Then Chaiya said he would send jan flowers," Paisan said.
Thais lay jan in crematoriums as they bid their last farewells to the dead.

This was on the first page of the paper.


Shooting Death - Police tale fabricated: Pornthip This is about a 'top forensic doctor' (she has hip spiked hair in the picture) saying the police had to be lying about how a Canadian tourist was killed.

Valentine Kits

Members of the World Bank Youth Club hand out roses and condoms in Bangkok's Siam Square yesterday in a campaign ahead of Valentine's Day to urge young Thais to refrain from unsafe sex.

"Teachers needed, not computers."


Corruption Scandal: Saprang blames his 'crooked' friends

Enough, I've got things to do.

Arrival in Chiang Mai

When I first arrived in Kamphaengphet many years ago as a 22 year old, many of the men asked me, leeringly, มา ถึง แล้วหรือ ยัง? Have you arrived yet? The slang meaning - have you gotten laid yet? Fortunately, they had taught us this slang before we got to Thailand so we were in on the joke, but it didn't stop people from asking and laughing hard. I have arrived in Chiengmai in the literal sense only. And no one has asked. I got picked up at the airport by Grib who is the Chiang Mai representative of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) who we'd met last year when we were here and taken to the Pooh Guest house. By about two I was asleep and with a few brief sleepy intervals, stayed that way until this morning's breakfast.


View from my room



The wifi in the guest house isn't working so after a great breakfast of boiled rice soup, some Thai sweets, I'm sitting at the front desk with my laptop connected to the internet. Soon I'm hoping I will reduce this addiction. I have to get to an ATM for some Thai money and to a place to see if my I can renew the old simcard in the phone we bought last year when we were here. I start work tomorrow Grib said and have to look at a couple of housing options nearer the office. Joan should be headed for Seattle in a few hours - if I've got my dual time function on my watch working right - and then LA and should be here in ten days. I'm already missing her.

Scott Gant: We’re All Journalists Now

Attorney Scott Gant takes up two causes in this book.

1. The Supreme Court needs to better spell out the Constitutional role of the press - recognizing that the press has some unique rights, as government watchdogs, above those of individual free speech.
2. The dominant model of journalists needs to be broadened from 'professional who is employed by a print or broadcast organization' to the 'activity of reporting events to the world through any medium' (not exact quotes, I returned the book to the library before I left) - internet is the key focus here.

As a blogger I only began thinking (and blogging) about journalistic privileges when the trials I was blogging about suddenly allowed ‘journalists’ to bring cell phones and laptops into the courtroom, but not other non-attorney attendees. So this book’s topic has a lot of interest for me. I posted a brief snippet when I first checked the book out, and finally got it finished before I left. Waiting to be on jury duty helped me get through it. So let me post this while my brain is partly still in the US and my 'normal' life.

Gant is passionate about the need for special privileges for journalists, mainly for shield laws to protect them from divulging the identity of sources, but also for access to events and documents in their role as watchdogs for the public.

He recognizes, though, that it might be possible to win universal recognition of journalistic privileges he wants, but have it limited to a narrow definition of journalist, which would cut out bloggers and others. So, he is also passionate about reframing the concept of journalist from it describing a profession to describing an activity. This, then would include all people who are reporting with the intent of telling others what is happening. He would get rid of requirements of training and certification as a journalist, of percent of income received as a journalist, of employment by a traditional journalistic medium such as newspapers, tv, radio, magazines.

On the way he walks us through the legal history of press rights, pointing out that the Suprement Court has tended to lump press freedoms into individual free speech rights and thus not accorded the press any special privileges as the press. It is mainly state laws which inconsistently give some rights in some states, but not in others - particularly shield laws. Custom, too, defers privileges to the press - the White House, Congression, and Supreme Court all have special access and facilities for selected journalists.

He also recognizes that there are some counter arguments and tells us why his soutions outweigh them.

His best arguments (from my perspective) are:

1. The government shouldn’t be in the business of licensing the press. This concern is precisely why press rights are mentioned in the First Amendment. The biggest concern is that the government use this right to affect the content of journalism. But he does recognize there are some reasons to distinguish who is a journalist - particularly in situations where there is limited access, such as a courtroom.
2. While the Constitution was written when ‘media’ (a word that didn’t then exist) was, literally, a printing press, and access to a press to print one’s opinion was relatively easy, the world is different now. Most traditional newspapers are now owned by conglomerates, not by families. These conglomerates see their media holdings as a business, not as a watchdog, and that these conglomerates now use the media directly or indirectly as part of their marketing campaigns.
3. Thus, bloggers are more truly reflective of what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they put ‘freedom of the press’ into the US Constitution.
   

This is worth reading for those seriously interested in these issues, but be warned, it is repetitious. Most of it can be skimmed because he pushes the same points over and over and you are bound to read them even if you skip around. The legal history had the most hard information and least amount of opinion.

Even though he’s opposed to the notion of the government certifying journalists, he does talk about standards for journalists that relate to the activity of gathering information with the intent to report it. The real thorny question is the shield law question. Who should get the right to withhold information about criminal activity? If everyone can blog, at what point would attorneys advise their clients to start blogging so they got shield law protection? Like all the hokey religions that form so they can get a tax deductible status. (As I wrote that I wonder how many there actually are or whether I'm just repeating an urban legend. I couldn't find anything with a quick google on the topic. Here's one I found that's sort of related.) Gant at one points mentions that a journalist got the information with the intent to publish as one criterion. Though my first day in the courtroom was not with that intent in mind, I had been blogging, and it was a natural outcome of attending the trial.

I basically agree with Gant’s direction and pushing the idea of an activity rather than a profession. There already are, as he points out, lousy journalists who otherwise meet the standard criteria and outstanding bloggers who don’t. But he is also battling, as he recognizes, an uphill battle. I think these may be the first salvos and it will be a long hot battle.

In the meantime, I would push for an even more radical concept shift - that bloggers not worry that much about whether they become ‘mainstream journalists’ but rather push the boundaries of how one gathers and reports important information. Few of us are going to get called before grand juries and while the traditional media get information from the traditional places, we can look in other places instead. Meanwhile, the custom that has afforded journalists non-statutory privileges, the same will happen for good bloggers, and already has as some courtrooms and Congressional hearings with limited space have allocated some of that space to bloggers.

In Transit in Taipei - Happy Chinese New Year

We parked our van at a friends on the hillside - of course, 6 hours before moving it for two months, the snow plows come down our street to clear the berms. When I said it was lucky I was home and could move it, the guy said, "Yeah, otherwise it would have been towed." That's crazy. They give you no warning they're coming and you can't park in front of your house? But a project for when I get back. Here's the view on our way bck from the hillside.

The woman in front of me waiting to check-in at the Airport had flown up to Anchorage to catch this plane to Taipei and then was going on to Vietnam where her husband was in the hospital very ill. He couldn't even talk. When we got to the counter she was told she couldn't go because she didn't have a visa to Vietnam. She said she was told she could get one at the airport because of the emergency. But since she had no letter or anything, they said no.

I suggested she could go at least to Taipei and then figure out things from there. Though that was iffy since it's Chinese New Years, but they said ok. Inside the terminal, I was able to go on the internet and find out she could get a visa at the airport in Pnom Penh, Cambodia, which neighbors Vietnam. She has a friend there and that's where she's headed now.




The plane had red Chinese paper with black characters posted around the plane for New Years. And it was packed. But I had a good sleep by the window.



This was a 747 - no seat back videos or legroom. Here we are about 90 minutes out of Taipei.



I was able to switch my Taipei-Bangkok-Chiang Mai ticket to a Taipei-Chiang Mai ticket, but only here in Taipei. Here's the little internet oasis. My Macbook is on the ledge outside the room on the right.

It was 48F and raining when we landed.

[A little later: I didn't need to stand by the wifi booth because there's free wifi at the gate too. But there were some free computers available in there. So, Taipei Airport is a free wifi zone.]

And the Academy Award for Best Travel Agent goes to

Lynda McMahon of Navigant. Well, it's been a number of companies, reflecting the path of American businesses buying each other up over the years. It was about 1991 when someone connected me to Lynda to help plan a graduate class that studied Chinese Civil Service Reform in Anchorage, Hong Kong, and Beijing. Lynda has saved my tail and generally made my life easier ever since.

Think of it. A travel agent who is smart, cheeky, laughs at my bad jokes as if they were funny, and knows how get things done. I even got a call from an assistant to the President of Delta once to apologize for how they handled a trip. Lynda had gotten through to someone who got the complaint to the top. She also got me to Bangkok on that trip after Delta change my return from a 16 hour trip from Bangkok-Seoul-Anchorage to about a 36 hour trip through LA, Salt Lake City and an overnight somewhere at my expense.

And the last two weeks she did 50 little things to make my trip easier and faster. So, if you are looking for a fantastic travel agent, I owe her big time for all she's done over the years. Her number is 907 seven eight six three two two six. (If you call her, congratulate her on the Oscar and tell her Steve says thanks, thanks, thanks.)

And so I'm presenting the Oscar for life time achievement as a travel agent to Lynda McMahon.

And I did find the bird book, but not the extra battery. The plane leaves at 2:45am.