Sustainability and shrimp farms on my vacation
I’ve been reading this amazing book called “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” by Thomas L. Friedman. Currently I’m at chapter 4 but this book inspired me so much so I think I should blog about it.
“Hot, Flat, and Crowded” talks about how Americans need to become more sustain and regain their old American spirit of hard working and freedom in order to win back their global super power position. It talks about how the Subprime crisis happened back in 2008-2009 from bad habits and financial recklessness. While sustainability is mentioned as “value” that will lead America out of it. Read more…
I got a chance to go on the trip for new KMUTT’s international students yesterday (which school paid for it.) So we went to the Emerald Buddha Temple/Grand Palace in the morning to see this beautiful, glorified architectures.
But as a Thai who’s been to this place a few times, I got nothing to be excited about (don’t get me wrong, it’s still awesome). So the highlight for me was the new exhibition hall where we went to see in the afternoon.
My F.R.I.E.N.D.S obsession
I am a huge fan of sit-com TV series “Friends”. I have watched the entire series for countless of times (seriously) and I can proudly say that I learn English from it.
I recommend every Thai friends of mine who wants to get better at English to watch this show. Not just because it’s fun, the language used in the show is also very practical for daily use. Plus Friends is a long series (10 reasons) and it includes almost every situations you can think of in city lives: birthdays, weddings, funerals, relationship problems, work problems, etc. I can’t tell how many times I borrowed lines from Friends to express myself.
All I can say is, after repeatedly watching Friends for almost 10 years, I learned many slangs, expressions, body languages, and American cultures from it. It’s a great show, and I applaud the creators and the casts for creating this magical show for us all.
Creative Economy: Thai style
Our beloved PM Abhisit Vejjajiva announced that, by using our cultural diversity, creative economy will boost Thailand’s economic growth. And I’m sure it will, just not with current implementation.
In my opinion, South Korea is one of the biggest cultural exporters and I think S.Korea’s creative economy is very unique and effective. Let’s see some examples:
Think Global, Act Local
‘Think Global, Act Local’ is not a new concept. It’s all about we human caring about things around us. And it’s a fairly similar concept to ‘The Butterfly Effect’, although we are not going to talk about time paradox or anything like that. Instead, let’s talk environment.
Global warming is a global issue and everybody knows it. However, people might think that since it’s such a big issue, only governments or big corporations should do their jobs to solve this and your action is too small to make anything different. Well, think again. If you do care about the Earth (think globally), then you should change your habits accordingly (act locally).
For example, if you normally buy imported food, maybe you should switch to domestic produce instead (I changed my brand of cereal to the one that produced in Thailand.) I remember this quote from one of my textbooks: “Buying green isn’t as important as buying local”. Sure, some European or Japanese products might have low carbon footprints on their labels, but they have to be shipped all the way to Thailand so you can buy those “green products”. However, emissions from transportation phase will make them not “so green anymore. If you buy local product, on the other hand, you don’t pay for this transportation emissions and you also help local economy growth.
Or if you care more about poor education in Thailand, instead of complaining about it, you can just teach your children to be more creative, more innovative, more analytical…any quality you want to see in your kids. And by doing this, your kids will stand out at school, and make their friends intimidating and want to improve themselves. There you go, better education!
Basically I want Thai people to care more about everything around us. Environment, society, politics, whatever. We’re going through some difficult times but if we start open our minds and make changes on things that you think helpful, even the smallest thing like buying different brand of cereal, a better future we’re all looking for will come true faster.
2011: Reform Thailand
2010 was a rough year for Thailand: with the months-long UDD ‘Red-shirt’ protests , Floods, Thailand-Cambodia disputes, fail 3G auction, and etc. Thailand has managed to survive with no coup (shocking!). However, despite all these bad news, there’re movements, and involvements from many sections in Thailand that quietly started their own ‘Reform Thailand’ campaign on the internet (along with the government’s efforts). You can check some of them here (Thaireform, IgniteThailand, ideasforThailand). By using websites, blogs, microblogs, social networks; Thai people are now more aware of the country’s problems and hopefully they want to start doing something. These online movements haven’t been seen before in our history and I, for one, am so intrigued to see what will happen to Thailand in this shiny 2011 and the upcoming years. Let’s keep the ball rolling, people!
Inspiration from Japanese manga
Recently, I just finished reading a manga series called The Silent Service by Kaiji Kawaguchi. It was first released in 1988 and ended in 1996. This is not another dumb, silly manga. To me, The Silent Service is 
one of the best manga I’ve ever read. The Silent Service is the story of Captain Kiada Chiro of the US-Japan jointly-developed nuclear submarine (Codename ‘Sea Bat’), who later declares his submarine as an independent state, Yamato, and offers the way to reduce nuclear weapons using just nuclear submarines because the world is connected with the sea.
The story set piece during the Cold War, thus Kiada’s idea is almost impossible in the time when many countries accumulate atomic bombs to threaten the oppositions. Yamato faces waves after waves of attack from the US and USSR and, with Japan’s support, finally convince the world to accept the idea of independent nuclear submarines to act as nuclear regulator of the world.
This manga has much more detail to write it down here. But the thing is, I was so inspired when I read it. I think Japan delivers tons of messages to its people through manga. And the writers also have high responsibility to do so. They consult the experts or do the researches on what they will write about. Moreover, since manga is fictional, they can deliver “imaginations”. They deliver many out-there imaginations and complicated messages though graphical, easy-to-understand media and I kudo them on that. I think it’s even appropriate to say that Japan built its nation from manga. Many gadgets or technologies we have today were once appeared on Doraemon; this is a proof of the above statement.
I look back to Thailand. What do we have? Stupid, brainless, bad-acted soap operas? This is what we want for our children? This needs to be changed quickly. Because, seriously, what Thai media we feel comfortable enough to let children watch, read, or listen to?
I think I need time to find the answer.
Blog vs. Microblog
As you might have noticed that I haven’t wrote anything for quite awhile (well, if there is anyone check out my blog). It’s because I’ve been busy lately. But seriously, I had LOTS of things I wanted to write. And most of them ended up on my tweets as scattered thoughts. I start to think that microblogs like Twitter, Facebook, or any other social networks can really ruin your creativity because they don’t need much considerations or refinements before you post them. They come out of your brain as small pieces of thoughts and ideas and go right into the giant stream of information on the internet. Those pieces of thoughts leave your mind and you’re unlikely to get them back, or you’re unlikely to even want to get them back. It’s just like chatting with your friends in the cafeteria, you don’t care much what you talked about at lunch. I think microblogging is getting to that point, because you can do it any where right from your mobile phones.
In contrast, when you write a blog entry, you think – and think hard because blogging is more like writing a book (at least to me, but maybe I take it too seriously). Your blog entries will be there every time you access your blog. So you want to give it some thinking about what to put on your blog, which word to use, spacing, format, blah blah blah, while you hardly think about that when you tweet (ok, maybe you do think about words because of amount of letters limit).
But then again, not all people are like that. Some people I know take their tweets (or microblogs) quite seriously as well. They tell stories, jokes, or other things worth being in blogs. But to my experiences, there’re not quite a lot of those people.
I just want to say that microblogging sometimes can be really disruptive. And maybe we all should take a little break from it and do some ‘real’ stuff like write a stupid blog entry like this one (oh yes, I do think this entry is kinda silly!)
Cheers.
About me
I just realized this after months since I started this blog that I don’t even have the ‘About me’ page. So I just want to write something about myself here. Currently, I am a graduate student at The Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment. I major in Environmental technology and also have a Bachelor in Biology major. In spite of those, I don’t really want to be a scientist. I am passionate in politics, economics, sciences, and environment. I also love to write (why else do I keep a blog?), and I enjoy having discussions with interesting people in interesting topics.
So that’s just some superficial info about myself. And to you visitors, feel free to leave comments, questions, or suggestions as you like 
[Blog Action Day] The upcoming Loy Kratong Festival
Loy kratong festival is one of the most beautiful festivals in Thailand. On every full moon in November, Thais celebrate this day by making little boats (the Kratong) out of banana trunks, banana leaves, flowers, candles, and incents. Although some might use plastics, foams, or even bread to make their Kratongs. Then we go to the river, pond, lake, or sea; and float these Kratong (Loy means ‘to float’ in Thai) in the water as the way to pay respect to the goddess of river. We apologize to her that we make the water dirty. It is also the way to float away bad lucks in Thai belief.
While this festival is beautiful, it creates TONS of waste in the water bodies. We are talking about decomposable biomass and some plastic/foam floating along the rivers. Of course, we collect them after the Loy Kratong night but definitely some of them might not be picked up, especially those in the rivers or the seas. So my opinions on this festival are:
- Use natural components for your Kratong: For obvious reason – we don’t want any plastic or foam in our rivers, do we? I know biomass can get rotten and smell, but it’s still less harmful than those synthetic materials.
- One Kratong is enough: If you’re going to this festival with your friends, maybe you should just float only one Kratong together. Less waste going in the water, right? (I’m not talking about couples or lovers, they usually float their Kratong together because Loy Kratong is a romantic night for Thai people – cool breeze, moon light, candles. What more do you want, eh?
) - Choose to Loy your Kratong in enclosed water bodies: make it easier to clean up.
I don’t want to ruin the fun of the festival though, just keep in mind that we technically dump the soon-to-be waste, pretty, flowery boat in the water. So consider my tricks, and have fun!
