Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

More than a year ago, when the author was still a high-flying businessman for one of Southeast Asia's most hyped-up e-commerce startups , he made frequent business trips to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from his homebase in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  At the immigration check area in the Ho Chi Minh City airport, there was always a familiar sight.  In an area with a couple of dozen booths for passport stamping, only two or three are staffed with grim-faced immigration officers in uniform, doing their inspections at a leisurely pace while the line for entry in front of the booths get longer and longer as more passengers arrive.

Today, it is precisely one year since the author first stepped off the plane in the little town of Iringa, Tanzania for his interview at the organization where he currently works.  The sentiment at that time has been one of surprise, not simply for a land that he has never stepped into as a full-time resident, but also one of superficial conviction that the land is plagued by some sort of social disease, one that has and continue to retard real economic developments that can pull people out of endless poverty.  The thought at that time was one of genuine excitement, a realization that something can be done to change people's lives.

在東非，今天不過是有一個普通的星期四，大家照常工作，照常生活。可惜著者的臉書可是從早到晚充滿了來自亞洲各地的“節日快報“。哪裏有龍舟賽啦，哪裏的粽子比較好啦，哪裏的連假塞車啦，哪裏成爲旅游熱點啦...實在是無法讓人安心工作。雖説 著者也算是剛剛度假完畢回來上班 ，但是看到世界另一端新聞上、朋友圈裏的歡樂，難免感覺異常的孤獨寂寞冷。在此情況下，回憶一下亞洲各地特殊的節日情節，在祝各位讀者端午節快樂的同時，也希望對自己有一定的”劃梅止渴”作用。

This blog has been quite persistent in posts remembering the June 4 pro-democracy protests in China every year, and this year is no different.  It is only unfortunate that with each passing year, the memories of the events fade, with a younger generation, both in China and abroad, too preoccupied with contemporary issues to be mindful of the sacrifices made by idealists of 20-odd years ago (as they continue to do so, quietly, today).  It is not surprising that this is the case considering China of today is a much more different place, with a twisted civic society that imbue new, darker issues.

As a crazy traveler himself, the author is quite fond of trading travel stories with fellow travelers met anywhere, for short-term or long-term.  Talking about travel stories is especially exciting when the person or people being spoken to has been to the same destinations as the author.  But asking them about their impressions of the same places, the author can gain whole new perspectives that he did not acquire firsthand during his own travels to those places, while giving himself another, second opportunities to savor the beauty and greatness of those destinations, days, months, and even years after the actual travels happened.

The author is quite used to having the ease of currency exchange as an expected convenience. In particular, he is quite used to the situation in Asia, where currency exchanges in all countries nearly always operate with no less than 15 currencies, taking in the standard set of hard currencies (USD, Euro, British pounds, Swiss francs) while making available practically all currencies of East and Southeast Asia, barring only those with small/closed economies (Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, to name a few).

In supposedly war-torn Cyprus, the United Nations headquarters is aptly located in a bombed out hotel.  During the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Ledra Palace Hotel, one of the best in Cypriot capital of Nicosia, at the time, was on the receiving end of the constant barrages.  With the hotel situated directly on the UN-mandated "Green Line" that separated the city's northern Turkish districts from the southern Greek zones, the 1974 war saw it become the very frontlines of devastating military conflict that left millions internally displaced in its aftermath.

Another day, another plane crash.  This time with Egyptair over the Mediterranean.  Like the times of old, global media wasted no time in jumping with their various versions of speculations and conspiracy theories .  Now everyone flying the general region is all tensed up as TV coverage repeat the videos of crying family members and terse official statements from the Egyptian government.  Like the fiasco faced by Malaysian Airlines after two crashes, the company's image and revenues are both bound to suffer, a true misfortune to the first commercial airlines of the Middle East.

"Oh, I am from (Country A or B or C), but I am Jewish and just got to Israel as a new immigrant."  This was one of the oft-repeated lines from self-introductions when the author spent his Wednesday night in Tel Aviv mingling with the local expat working crowd in one of the city's high-end beach bars.  "I still need to settle down, take those Hebrew lessons, and find a job, but so far it is great," the new immigrants would mention, quite hopeful of their situations in a completely new country for many of them despite their Jewish heritage.

This blog previously described Singapore as a country perpetually insecure but achieved prosperity nonetheless .  To say that Israel is the Middle Eastern equivalent of Singapore in this aspect may easily draw agreements from the local populace.  Despite peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, the country still face attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas, and face threats from likes of Iran and ISIS further afield.  "To defend the country," here, is not just an empty patriotic statement taught to students in school, it is a very real duty required of every citizen.

For a country that is relatively economically developed compared to some of its neighbors , Jordan does pretty terribly in one area: the provision of comprehensive and timely public transport.  Some of the country's population centers are served by minibuses, but they are often available during daylight hours and leave only when full.  For tourist destinations not near any towns of significant size, there may or may not be a couple of buses a day at odd hours.  For the traveler with limited funds and time, Jordan might as well be the least convenient location to travel in the general region.

As he came in from Amman's North Bus Station to his hotel for the night, the author got into a quick conversation with the taxi driver getting him to his destination. "Where are you coming in from," the driver, in his fifties, asked in perfectly proficient English. "Oh, just came in from Egypt," the author replied, continuing the conversation with a rather light-hearted remark: "it is quite different from here."

On his way out of Egypt, the author goes to the foreign exchange counter at Cairo Airport to get his Egyptian Pounds changed into Jordanian Dinar for the next leg of the journey.  It is a transaction that cannot be any more mundane for banks at the international terminal of a country’s main international gateway.  As the author goes up to the bank counter in the departure, he gets a blank stare and from the guy behind the counter.  Before the author opens his mouth, the guy harshly says, “No."  

On paper, the rules for tourists at Luxor's famed Valley of Kings seem pretty strict.  No photos inside or outside the tombs, no speaking or even fast walking inside, and definitely no touching of any walls.  The reason is plain and simple: after 3000 years sealed underground, the world is lucky to just see the colorful wall painting of the royal tombs at all; the paintings are so fragile that anything that can possibly damage it must be avoided.  The strict rules, at least in theory, are the main ways to keep the paintings alive for posterity while keeping the tourists coming.

The Lebanese, especially the men, are not a people conducive to smiling.  Many seem to be keen on maintaining a sense of personal gravitas through almost a poker face, staring down others in serious expressions that may easily frighten the clueless.  Any smile that come out of such situation probably borders more on the sneer to the point of ridicule, rather than anything that can remotely be taken as courtesy or congeniality.  If anything, smiling between strangers should be avoided in certain cases, for fear that it is taken as a personal offence in disguise.

Being in Beirut, it is just too easy for one to forget for a moment that the sources of some of the Middle East's most violent religious conflicts are but a few hundred kilometers away.  While ISIS, Hamas, and to a lesser extent, Hezbollah, impose their versions of religious orthodoxy on a hapless local population , Beirutis are still out in force, displaying their socially liberal tendencies that is increasingly one the wane in the region.  One of the most visible, and beautiful, ways for Beirutis to express that freedom, is through how they dress.

On his way to Beirut to begin his two-week journey across the Middle East, the author notices an interesting phenomenon at the now-too-familiar waiting areas of Addis airport .  Standing between the author and the boarding gate for the flight to Beirut are 40-some young Ethiopian women, getting their work permits confirmed by the airport officials before preparing themselves for what seems to all, their first-ever flights.  All seemed nervous, clueless as to what is happening around them, and surely uncertain of what awaits them in the completely foreign country they will head to.

Back in those undergrad years, a common refrain among the author's classmates were the sheer pointlessness of paying such high prices for education .  In that process, the college diploma, or as everyone called it, "a piece of paper bought with four years of life and tens of thousands of dollars," was consistently butt of jokes.  Even to this day, the author's diploma sits inside a folder in his cabinet, occasionally brought out to serve as paperwork for visa, grad school, or job applications, but never framed or hung on the wall, like it was intended to be upon its creation and reception.

It is a common sight among all tropical countries with distinct rain seasons.   When the monsoon is in town, a moment of completely unhindered sunshine is followed by draining downpour , with consistent, rapidly falling water drops better than anything created with the finest of man-made shower heads.  Streets turn into rivers after minutes, and visibility becomes no more than a curtain of watery white.  People quickly run under the nearest roofs, into their houses, deserting the busy streets of the central market, that, moments ago, was bustling with street-side vendors and pedestrians.

When the author was growing up as a high school student in San Diego, one of his favorite family vacation spots was the city's fame Wild Animal Park.  It is a place of massive enclosures, simulating the wild African savanna in a highly accessible way.  Around bushes where lions and tigers chase (introduced) antelopes and deer are human spectators being carried in neat little trains, equipped with loudspeakers that constantly inform passengers of the animals and sights of a faraway land with little human habitation.

The biggest news out of the tech world this morning was Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba's one-billion USD investment in Lazada, from which the author made his exit about ten months ago .  The deal saw both Rocket Internet, Lazada's original incubator, as well as Tesco, the British supermarket chain, cashing out half of their shares, in the process giving Alibaba almost complete control over the overall operations and future directions of what meant be termed Southeast Asia's largest ecommerce platform at the moment.

In all non-urban areas in the world, police enforcement tends to be sparse.  Farming communities, separated by acres of fields, evidently cannot be conducive to constant patrolling presence of uniformed officers.  In fact, police presence can be so distant that when crimes and disputes occur, reporting to the police may not even bring officers to the scenes of conflict in time for fruitful resolution.  In the case of crimes by stealth, it is highly likely that by the time the police can assess the situation, neither the victim nor the victimizer will be there for questioning.

Out in the village of rural Tanzania, "let me find some money to do X" is one of the most common phrases heard when conducting business transactions. Widely used among people who obviously do not have any money with them or at disposal in personal possession, it simultaneously denotes a desire to spend money to get what is wanted and a determination to find the means of getting the needed money through completely flexible yet currently unknown ways. As unsatisfactory as the phrases sound, most of the time, sooner or later, the money is actually somehow "found."

In rural Tanzania, cinemas are non-existent and TV access requires expensive satellite dishes that few people can afford. To entertain themselves during their free time, locals tend to buy cheap pirated DVDs for computer gaming , or more commonly, drama series and movies. Carts and shops selling these DVDs exist not just in market towns but even in some bigger villages, allowing common people to access some of the latest visual entertainment from the outside world at quite affordable prices (if not the best of quality).

In rural Tanzania, the locals have a habit of referring to any poor-quality product as "kichina," which, in Swahili, roughly means "a thing of China." Whenever something they use breaks or gets damaged when they think the product should not be, they just shrug and casually blurt out, "well, it's kichina." It is not particularly targeted toward Chinese products though; in fact, the saying is used for all products, whether or not the product is from China. The connotation, however, is pretty clear: it goes without saying that Chinese products, as they have elsewhere, acquired a negative reputation in Tanzania.

昨日であの当時日本在住だったの皆さんの人生を変えた事件から五年になる。マスコミの報道を見ると、福島の復活や被害者の「第二人生」を描く楽観的なストーリーがあれば、被害地の人口が6％減るとか、現地の経済が完全に国の支援だけでまわされているなど、悲観的な指摘も少なくはない。だが、これらの報道に一つ残念なことがあるとしたら、たぶん「量」である。前年度に比べると、この記念すべき一日は人々の注目を浴びなくなっている。各報道局はこの傾向を認知しているのに違いない。

As the NGO industry expands, the broad all-inclusive term "development" has become more and more vague over time.  Anything that remotely suggest provision of additional resources for betterment of people's lives have now fallen under the category of "development."  The methodologies f implementation and assessments have only become more and more varied as a wider and wider spectrum of ideas and personnel have involved themselves in the industry.  Thankfully, the central goal of an NGO is still clear: the job is to ultimately make people's living standards higher.

著者記得從小頻頻聽到父母如此般的教導：“人窮但不能窮志氣”。當時以他那乳臭未乾的小孩身份，對這類教導的具體理解不外于“不能嫉妒同學課後買的零食”這類非常幼稚的想法。坦白講，當時的自己總會覺得“不窮志氣”不過就是爲吝嗇的父母爭面子的某種心態。但是人總會改變。著者走入了勞動者社會，變爲一名 被好奇心和刺激感所驅動的國際打工仔 。在這個過程中，漸漸的，原來對吝嗇的怨恨被“自我控制”的需求所代替。有限的薪水能滿足一些自我需求，但絕不會是全部。如何選擇突然變成了“志氣”的一個代號。

It is not every day that a rural Tanzanian government official goes around the village with a loudspeaker to make announcements. And it is even rarer when the announcement called for all eateries in the area to shut down until further notice. But the government officials went around this time to sound the alarm for a massive cholera outbreak, people obliged quickly. When they heard that 80-some victims of the outbreak are already lying in the hospital, having a proper sit-down lunch, no matter how simple , becomes much less important.

It is a bit unfortunate, but it suffices to say that the average African's hair is not particularly suitable for styling.  Genetically created to be hard and not so malleable, attempts at being creative with what is on top of one's head often involves donning a stylized wig.  Of course, for most local males, who neither see the need nor have the financial resources to keep up with such superficial pursuits , the average hair cut becomes not much beyond shaving off extra hair with a simple electric shaver.  With foreign clientele so few and far in between, foreign males pretty much get the same treatment.

The expatriate community in rural Tanzania is quite separate from the local one. Expats come to have their own restaurants, shops, and hobbies that are often not only financially unreachable but also culturally unpalatable for Tanzanians. The sad reality is that the phenomenon is not limited to foreigners. A holdover from the continent's colonial era, still active populations of white and Indian Tanzanians dot even the remote landscapes of rural townships, sometimes making their presence felt in ethnically familiar expatriate communities or creating their own separate ones.

In the past couple of years, there is a growing focus in the tech world on the topic of mobile payment platforms.  The idea is to use smartphone apps loaded with money as replacement of cash in everyday business transactions.  Paying for groceries, restaurant bills, and transport will no longer involve searching for petty cash, not only reducing time and hassle for digging through small change, but also dramatically decreasing possibilities of errors, frauds, and thefts while making it all the easier for tracking spending, checking available balances, and splitting bills across multiple people.

In rural Tanzania, I ate the same lunch every workday when I went to the villages. It was a combination of rice, boiled beans, boil vegetables, and beef chunks stewed in tomato sauce. In this little local street-side eatery in the rural village where I went to work, this combo plate is the only thing on the menu. The young owner of the shop makes the exact same thing for lunch and dinner every day, day in and day out. Interestingly enough, her eatery is sustained by the same customers who work in the area, who come to eat the exact same thing, day in and day out.  I was one of them.

It is interesting to see that a day before Taiwanese head to ballot boxes to participate in what many calls the "most pivotal" presidential election in its still-short democratic history, a 16-year-old Kpop band member has taken over the headlines across all local media outlets.  Chou Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese member of Kpop band TWICE, posted a video apologizing for waving the Taiwanese flag in the band's recent publicity video that quickly draw fire from politicized netizens on the Chines mainland.  In the apology video, the girl showed feigned sorrow as she read mechanically from written script.

Many countries have one of these.  Promising, self-confident young men and women are thrown into almost endless lectures of political orthodoxy, of the need to serve their country, and of uploading its law, without questioning its underlying morality and validity.  Years later, the indoctrinated youth become government officials, dictating the policies that affect the very future and fortune of the country.  Unfortunately, being isolated in an entirely different academic and living environment makes youth educated under "bureaucrat schools" lose connection with society at large.  As such, government bureaucrats should not be trained in special schools.

That was the key phrase of the night as the author found himself at a posh poolside bar on the rooftop of an otherwise ordinary-looking hotel inside a walled compound of an obscure side street.  It was the last few minutes of 2015, and this neighborhood, like any other in Nairobi after nightfall, remained dark, quiet, and devoid of pedestrians.  But as soon as the heavy metal gates of the high-security walled compounds are flung open, a whole new world opens up .  Smartly dressed young locals and expats (but vast majority being locals) headed up to where the DJ was keeping the music thumping.