Observation
When the rice in the bottom of the rice cooker gets a little overdone, it turns brown and crunchy, and begins to smell like Rice Krispies cereal.

"Now Playing" and other rants
3:50pm
My sister and her hipster friends write online journals on xanga.com. Xanga has a nifty marketing feature of which I?m a little jealous; at the beginning of each journal entry, my sister can put an icon that says ?now playing? or ?now watching? or ?now reading? and a picture of the cover of the cd, movie, or book that she is playing, watching, or reading. The picture is also a link to the product at amazon.

Now, this is slightly troubling, because it?s an indication of how much we in America define ourselves by our consumer products. In the beginning of the movie ?Fight Club,? the narrator talks about how he started living the ?Ikea? life, buying Ikea products until his apartment matched the advertising photos in the Ikea catalog. The movie points out that finding identity in consumer products is emasculating, but it?s actually more than emasculating. It?s un-identifying yourself at the same time as you are identifying yourself. It?s limiting, in several ways. And defining yourself by the music you listen to is little different from defining yourself by how Ikea-savvy you are.
Now Playing: Dear Chicago (Ryan Adams)
(Do I want to be defined as a person who listens to Ryan Adams? Shoot?it?s too mainstream. Ok.)
Now Playing: New South (Kate Campbell)
(You think it?s too twangy?Fine.)
Now Playing: You Know So Well (Sondre Lerche)
(You think I just like him cause he?s cute? Yeah, you?re right.)

Ah, the anxieties of defining yourself in the consumer culture. I?m still writhing over my decision. Should I have gone with Rosie Thomas or Patty Griffin or stuck with a trustworthy Belle and Sebastian? Of course you must be ?unique,? since in America we are all non-conformist individuals; however, only some kinds of ?different? are cool. So it?s tough. It?s tricky. You gotta be light on your feet.
I hope you can read my tone.
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Today we have spring weather and sunny skies in Vinh. It?s been cloudy and chilly for a couple of weeks, and the change in weather motivated me to get out on my bike (not my electric bike, which isn?t here yet because I don?t yet have a garage, but the old fashioned cycle). I had been putting off my shopping, but really, with warm weather - with a mother who yesterday ran a marathon - and with the fact that a year ago at the time I was nearly killing myself hiking down into the Grand Canyon - there was just no excuse for me to avoid the 101 stairs and couple of kilometers to the supermarket. Our supermarket is so amazing for a provincial town in Vietnam. This week we actually have salsa and raisin bran. It?s wonderful.
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I just finished reading Catfish and Mandala by Andrew Pham, a Vietnamese-American. It was really moving. That and some reading I?m doing for Wheaton are leading me to think a lot about cross-cultural attitudes.

In centuries past, when people went abroad, they far too often took an imperialistic sense of cultural superiority with them. They went to teach the ?uncivilized? peoples the ?right? way to live. Now, in western countries that attitude is far less prevalent, though certainly not dead. Now, scholars teach us that all cultures are good, and one culture is not better than another; thus, we should go and learn from other cultures with an open mind, never imposing our value systems on them.

This is a good and helpful way of thinking about cross-cultural interaction, but not an entirely correct one. It?s true that we should go to a new culture with the open mind of a learner, but at some point we also have to pass judgment. At some point, we have to be willing to say, ?This is a good aspect of the cultural tradition, and this is an aspect that ought to be changed.? If we?re afraid to say that, then we won?t really be able to learn anything about that culture or about the culture from which we?ve come.

Young Americans often take the popular liberal attitude to an extreme, rejecting western cultural imperialism and universalism so strongly that they reject the entire culture with it. They come to travel in eastern countries seeking a ?simplicity? and ?goodness? that they believe cannot be found in their home culture, which they see as decadent and ruined. Reading Andrew Pham?s view of America and Vietnam helped me to realize the good that exists even in the flawed American culture.
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I really miss my car today. I find it hard to appreciate music as much without the highway. There's nothing like a couple of hours alone in the car with some tapes.

The Foreigner's Short Guide to Vietnamese Culture
By Class 42
Things you should know:
1. When giving or recieveing something, show your respect by using two hands.
2. Don't point with one finger.
3. Give your guests water when they come over, whether they drink it or not.
4. Don't kiss in public.
5. Don't eat in the class.
6. If a person dies, burn everything related to that person.
7. If a parent dies, the child must wait three years before getting married.
8. The usual greeting is "where are you going?"
9. People in the North like sour food; people in the center like sugary food; and people in the south like chili food.
10. Before traveling or taking an exam, you should eat fish; you should not eat eggs or dog meat.
11. Girls aren't allowed to sit on a broom. (?)
12. It's impolite if you don't say "hello" first when you meet an older person.
13. If you invite someone to go eat or drink something, you must pay for both of you.
14. Don't open a present in front of the giver.
15. It takes three days for a dead person's soul to escape the body.
16. When a mother thinks a child is difficult to bring up, she will sell the child's soul to the pagoda so that the baby will become easier to bring up.
17. At a funeral you should wear white and dark clothes, not wonderful clothes.
18. If two weddings meet each other on the road, the brides should exchange flowers.
19. Vietnamese often ask some questions about your salary, age, marriage status...don't be offended.
20. In Vietnam, there are usually three generations living under one roof.
21. Vietnamese usually drink boiled water instead of coffee or tea.
22. Foreign people shouldn't dance or shake their bodies in public.
23. Don't be surprised when people put food in your bowl. They are being friendly.
24. Don't praise a pretty baby in public. It's bad luck for the child.
25. Don't be surprised if you find this country more peaceful and its people more kind and hospitable than any other.

On the Road

Now I?m reading Catfish and Mandala , a ?Vietnamese odyssey? by Andrew Pham. The author, who left Vietnam with his family at a young age and grew up in California, chronicles his return to Vietnam. He returns with a bike and little money. In his story, interlaced with flashbacks to his parents? early life in Vietnam, the you can see his struggle to define his identity as a Vietnamese-American. I?m not far into it yet, but I think it has promise.

Before beginning his journey, Andrew muses on it. His words belong in my research thesis on wanderlust:

?Riding out my front door on a bicycle for the defining event of my life. It is so American, pioneering, courageous, romantic, self-indulgent. I?d read Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage, who had ridden her bike around the world with her husband, Larry. It is so simple. All I need I learned in grade school.?
Catfish and Mandala, p.29

Book Recommendations


First of all, my favorite novel of the last few months has been Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. Check it out.

Second of all: I'm currently working on a book review for one of my Wheaton summer classes. The book is Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald. It is a book to be approached skeptically. MacDonald has 35 years of pastoring experience in New England, and his book has impressive endorsements. However, the book is a well-packaged national bestseller ?updated for the 21st century? with a study guide included, and I tend to be wary of savvy marketing techniques. The inner flap of the book cover promises that the book will lead you to ?true success ? a peace-filled, ordered inner world.? Having seen too many well-marketed books promising three simple steps to victory in one area or another of life, I always - and I think, justifiably - approach such books skeptically.

However, I've been really wonderfully surprised by this book. MacDonald talks about the basics, but in a way that is both refreshingly graceful and disciplined. It's a convicting book. I recommend it (to everyone, that is, except people like my Mom, who already has everything in it mastered. You don't need to bother with it :-)).

February 29: Ladies, It's Our Last Chance for Four Years...

"Scotland's St Margaret is generally credited with having originated the custom, about 1288, whereby women were allowed to propose marriage on this day so long as they wore red petticoats. The Scottish Parliament went so far as to pass a law forbidding a man to reject a woman's proposal, even imposing still penalties for violations. Eventually it was decided that a man could refuse, as long as he brought his admirer a new pair of gloves."
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Last night's dream:
Jason and Mai and Eponine and Tim Davis (President of ELIC) and I were driving home. We stopped at a place for Taco Bell, but after they brought out our dinner, Jason found dog meat mixed in it, so he took it back and ordered something else.

Later, I had arrived at home and was going to get my haircut. There, Tim Davis and two other men were working as barbers, and all three of them had brand new iPods that they had gotten for Christmas from their wives. They also had new waterproof cases for their iPods. Then, Anne Henderson Stockett came by with Jonathon and their new twin girls, and with Olivia and Jeff. I ran out to give Anne a hug, and you couldn?t tell at all that she had just been pregnant for nine months. She said the labor was long?

Dad's Haiku Response

Horror of horrors
I've raised a daughter who's hooked
Noodles and codeine

haikus for health

day:

instant noodles and
instant coffee; don't neglect
multivitamins.


night:

cough syrup temptress
sits on my bedside table -
green smile every night.

What's News; Plus Anguish, Literature, and Kayaks
The real news is that I've definitely decided to come back to Vinh next year and that I am going to look into purchasing a motorscooter. That's the news.

This morning I?m reading about some of the first healings, in Matthew?s fourth chapter. The son of man has just called the first four disciples. He?s turned water into wine, and he?s taught in the synagogue and cast out a demon. And then the crowds begin. Masses of people follow him, and they bring, ?all who are ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed.?

I try to picture each of those groups of people. It?s hard, because in America, our sicknesses and pains are covered up. They are treated or they are hidden. We always try to look ?okay?. Not so in Galilee and Syria at that time.

I am asked how I respond when I see people in great pain. At first, I can?t remember the last time I saw people in great pain. And then I can. I can remember the man without a leg, and maybe without some mental abilities, whom I saw crawling along the ground. I can remember people who were in great emotional, though not physical, pain. Honestly, how do I respond to these people?

I respond out of fear. Recognition of my helplessness. Pity mixed with revulsion. And avoidance. I?d rather pretend that such raw pain and anguish don?t exist. I?m embarrassed for the person who is so open about their emotional suffering, and I want to help her pretend that she?s ok.

I?m convicted. These were the people who surrounded the son of man when he began. The weak, the honest, the anguishing. They are not the people whom I would want to follow me around town. But he welcomed them with compassion, and he healed them. When I want to ignore people, I show my lack of faith in his ability to still heal today. I show my lack of compassion. And also, I fail to realize that I too am weak and needy.
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It?s back to school for real this week! I?m really glad to be settled back into Vinh University for the semester. I?ll be teaching Speaking for 2nd and 3rd year students, as well as writing for first year students. And a lot is going on in some of my personal relationships here - if you want to know about it, email me! Today at Vinh University we have a two guest lecturers. One of them is Dr. Don Wood, a Fulbright Scholar who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He?s lecturing to the third year students about ?The Ideal of Individualism in American Literature and Culture?. Although it?s a fairly basic lecture, I?m having fun listening to him. His handout including one of my favorite poems from the modern poetry class I took in college - Elizabeth Bishop?s ?One Art?.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.


Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.


Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.


I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.


I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Here?s my question - help me out - I see two interpretations of ?(the joking voice, a gesture/ I love)?. Does she mean that she is using a joking voice, a gesture that she likes to use in writing; or, does she mean that she has lost his joking voice, which was a gesture of his that she loved? Or, is she being purposefully ambiguous? Please explain to me.
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Thailand, by the way, was great. For the most part, I enjoyed my Wheaton classes and the ELIC Mid-Year Conference. It was wonderful to spend time with friends and colleagues. After conference, I went to a beach in the south for a few days, which turned out to be as tiring as it was relaxing. To get there, we had to travel by plane, bus, ferry, and taxi, and then we had to hike a bit, carrying a month?s worth of luggage?By the time we made it, all I wanted to do was lay motionless on the sand for the next three days. Actually, though, one of the most fun things we did was to rent a kayak and paddle over to a nearby island. It was gorgeous. Check out the photos on my main website.

Warfare, Good vs. Evil, iPods, and Chiang Mai
Saturday, January 10, 2004
9:43
Chiang Mai YMCA

Last night I went to see the Return of the King with the other teachers who are here early. I had been planning to go see it anyway, and so when I ran into them and that?s what they were doing, I agreed to go with them. During the evening, I was reminded that this is why it?s more difficult to be with Americans my own age than to be with my students -- being with these teachers only reminds me of how much better it is to be with Jason, Mollie, Anna, my old friends from high school?I sat in the dark theatre wishing I were sitting next to Jason. I sat there remembering the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, both of which I saw with the Bakke?s on opening night. I remembered talking at IHOP late into the night after the first one - or, more correctly, listening as Seth and Jason talked about interpretations, allegory, and philosophy. I sat there thinking of David Hudson standing up after the movie was over and shouting out the story of the true return of the King for all the moviegoers to hear.

I enjoyed the movie, though I wished desperately that I hadn?t read the article on Slate.com talking about ?hobbit-love? in the movie, accusing the hobbits of closet homosexuality. Yep, that ruined a bit of it for me. There was another article on Slate that I didn?t read, but that apparently dealt with the question ?Why don?t girls like the Lord of the Rings?? and I thought about that as I watched it. I do like Lord of the Rings, and I?m a girl, and I know a lot of girls who like the trilogy, even a few who are slightly fanatical about it.

But the thing I thought about most as I watched was the battle, the climactic battle between good and evil. I could never be a soldier, or a warrior, I thought as I watched the men fight towards certain death -- death for what? For honor, because they are ?men of Rohan,? and that?s what men of Rohan do? Because it is Right? Because it is against Evil? War requires such moral certainty. To be willing to march towards death, knowing how slight your chances of survival are - being willing to kill, not to mention taking joy in it as you keep a count of how many you?ve slain - certainly you must be completely convinced that you are in the right.

In Middle Earth, it?s true, right and wrong are clearly delineated. The Good are Beautiful (Aragorn, Legolas?) and the Evil are too hideous to name. And so, maybe in that case, maybe in Middle Earth, I could ride to war. Maybe in that place I could be a hero.

But in this Earth, sometimes evil is beautiful, and good is difficult to recognize. I have trouble believing that I, like Frodo and Sam, am involved in a fight of epic proportions, an ultimate battle of good vs. evil. While I can say that I believe, as an objective fact, that such a war is raging, that fact doesn?t influence my daily life, choices, or thought patterns. I don?t think that my personal decisions have any part in or impact on that war.

There are times when Evil is clear. But for the most part, I lack the moral certainty of a warrior. There is too much grey, too much ambiguity or overlap, too many things influencing my own sight and interpretation for me to feel certain enough to argue for Right, much less give my life for it. It?s a weak attitude - maybe an attitude of a scribe on the sidelines, who cannot fight but only report what she sees, recognizing that even that is incomplete and biased - but for now, it?s who I am.

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The Secret Hand Signals of my Generation (or, how to pick up a Backpacker)

A couple of years ago, a book was published that talked about the Bohemian Bourgeoisie - BoBo?s - the new upper middle class in America. The author was talking mainly about my parents? generation, baby boomers who try to blend the values of WASPy success with the values that they claimed to live by in their earlier hippie phase. He explained the popularity of trends like yoga and backpacking by attributing them to the upper-middle class trying to justify their wealth and make it mesh with the values of the sixties.

But you can see the characteristics of the Bohemian Bourgeoisie in my generation too. For the Bo-Bo?s in their twenties, a stint backpacking overseas is practically mandatory. When I was traveling through Bavaria, I met Mike, who had just finished an internship in Germany and was taking a month for traveling - ?I figured I?d better go ahead and get the college Europe trip out of the way, so I don?t have to do it later,? he said, implying that every college student must complete the ritual backpack through Europe test before being allowed to move into adulthood. He made it sound as if traveling wasn?t really enjoyable, but simply a necessary rite of passage. While hopefully most find a little more pleasure in their backpacking than Mike, his implication isn?t far off from the truth. For most American college Bo-Bo?s, the backpack trip has become an expected ceremonial journey. You can spot us in most any airport or train station, in Europe, Asia, or South America. There are several tell-tale signs, useful not only for recognizing the backpacking Bo-Bo?s, but if acknowledged and returned correctly, useful for hooking up with them.

Of course, the most obvious sign is the backpack. Usually covered with country patches, it?s often a North Face, lowe alpine, or other pricey brand pack. Bad pick up line: ?So, have you really been all those places (pointing to the country patches)?? Better pick up line: ?You prefer an internal frame pack to an external frame?? Knowledge of the terms makes you sound like a coolly seasoned backpacker, while the first question makes you sound like a naive first-timer. Speaking of looking seasoned: if you are in Europe, you should be carrying either Rick Steve?s or Let?s Go, but if you are in Asia, you must have the Lonely Planet guidebook. If you are a true backpacking Bo-Bo, you will know that.

But if you?re in an airport, waiting for a flight, you have to watch for more subtle signs - the backpack is already checked luggage. There are several things to look for at this stage. The best is the Nalgene bottle, which will be covered with stickers like the backpack is covered with patches. The Nalgene bottle itself has become so ubiquitous that it?s not a completely reliable sign, but if you can get close enough to take a look at the stickers on the Nalgene, you can pick up all kinds of information - about nationality, musical interests, and backpacking brands preferred.

The Nalgene is a useful pick-up tool even outside of traveling; in a college English class, the guy sitting next to me said, ?So, do you like camping? I mean, I just saw your Nalgene?? thus opening the way for a nice conversation, leading to a date later that week. Note: If asked about camping, never, never say that you don?t like it. It is death for the Bo-Bo to admit this.

Finally, the most powerful pick-up tool for backpacking Bo-Bo?s: the secret iPod hand signal. Requiring no words, this signal works from all the way across waiting rooms. I?ve used it twice so far, both times very effective. The first was in a train traveling south through Vietnam. Standing outside the sleeper compartment watching the green countryside change through the window, I noticed a guy down the hall doing the same, but with headphones on and the sleek white iPod barely sticking out of his pocket. Hmm, I thought, who is this? The next time I left my sleeper compartment, I too wore my iPod, purposefully avoiding the gaze of the guy down the hall. Finally, he caught my eye and pointed to his iPod and to mine, and murmured something like, ?Nice.?

The second use was in an airport in Thailand. I had already noted these two guys, who carried Nalgenes and thick paperbacks, but I wasn?t sure if they had noticed me. Looking bored, I pulled out my iPod and started playing the old school games it has - solitare, brick, parachute. While ?engrossed? in my games, one of the two guys pulled out his iPod and put on his headphones? thus signaling to me that he was indeed aware and watching and interested.

A final tip for all backpacking Bo-Bo?s, or those wishing to pick them up: Beware of backpackers with laptops, even if they flash the secret iPod hand signal- they might be writing about you.