Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Before the COVID-19 pandemic became big news, a topic that frequently popped up in mainstream media is the damage that fast fashion does to the environment. The enormous cost of producing, transporting, and handling the disposals of clothing and shoes that go out of fashion supposedly in a year or two has been rightly pointed out as a culprit for increase in trash in the rich world and excess exploitation of both natural and human resources in poor ones. While the garment industry brought development to a few countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia, for most of the developing world, the negatives outweighed the positives.

East Asia is known to worship flight attendants. Chosen to be young, beautiful, and cosmopolitan, it is a group of people that many young women aspire to be a part of, and many men look forward to meeting when they are on planes, and date when they are off. The blatant objectification of flight attendants, as I argued in an opinion piece back in 2017, holds back efforts to advance gender equality and to allow people to have a realistic view of what flight attendants essentially are: overworked servants in cramped spaces that have been over-glamorized by society in a way that attract applicants to an otherwise unglamorous job.

Two months after the military overthrew the civilian government in Myanmar, the country is on the verge of civil war. Ethnic militias are gearing up for a fight against the increasingly violent military, which has resorted to shooting protestors to keep an increasingly tenuous peace. Protestors, not content at being shot at, have graduated from throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails to fleeing from the cities to join guerrilla groups in the mountains of the country's remote borderlands, hoping to take back their country by force. Conflicts have embroiled Burmese communities outside the country, with individual Burmese, not to mention diplomats and governments-in-exile, openly speaking out against the junta.

The National Museum of Japanese History is a sprawling complex in Sakura, in the hinterlands of Chiba prefecture west of Tokyo. Its semi-rural location perhaps allowed the government and academic facilities that together set up a building complex that, albeit briefly, goes through the entirety of Japanese history from the pre-historic to the post-World War II era. It is an ambitious project challenging for both the curators and visitors alike. I started my tour of the facility at 11:45 am and had to rush through the last two sections of the museum just to make our exit before it closed at 5 pm. 

Scholars of geopolitics have been talking about geographical chokepoints for decades. The Strait of Hormuz for oil, Malacca for Asia, and Gibraltar for the Mediterranean are all raised as fine examples of narrow waters that, if blocked, can bring national economies tumbling down. Their strategic values remain paramount, and their controls a matter of national security. The recent blockage of the Suze Canal, a manmade geographical chokepoint, showed just how vulnerable the world economy is when such a narrow body of water is suddenly rendered inaccessible. Billions of dollars of trade are lost and the attention of global media remains fixated on the blockage.

After spending months denying that COVID-19 is a big issue in Tanzania and promising that God will save the country from the epidemic, Tanzanian president John Magufuli was suddenly pronounced dead. His death only comes weeks after his public disappearance, leading to speculation that he was airlifted to Kenya for urgent medical treatment. More than his denial of the seriousness of COVID, Western media made sure to include references to his attacks on Tanzanian democratic institutions and opposition politicians since coming to power in 2015 in their obituaries of Magufuli, implying that his death provided a chance for Tanzania to reverse its democratic decline.

It has already become a cliche to say that the COVID-19 pandemic will be revolutionary for human civilization. Countries keen on securing vaccines and personal protective equipment have worked quietly to roll back globalized supply chains built up over past decades. Differing policies and level of success handling the virus' spread in different countries mean that, at least soon, the physical mingling of a globalized elite will be minimized, as airlines fail and borders shut. What people took for granted as everyday life, such as going to school and commuting to work, will remain somewhat of luxuries that are subject to cancellations and restrictions at any time based on public health concerns.