Bangkok-based Rakluke Group has expanded into online business via its website www.momypedia.com and plans to provide personal information to users.
The group's president Subhawadee Harnmethee, said Rakluke (love children) intended the website to create a community of families and parents who wanted to communicate and share experiences and knowledge via an online network.
The company is also keen to sell advertising space on the website to companies wanting to promote their business on a family-based network, and is open to application for membership registration from Internet users who are prepared to pay for its services.
Subhawadee said the website would provide online media and solution services and business services such as online research and surveying.
The marketing manager of www.momypedia.com, Vatayos Atvisejsiwakul, said that in a "next step", the website planned to provide Web 3.0 - creating a large collection of databases that could be connected on demand. This will enable users to access information on demand, providing them with knowledge to support their lifestyles.
Www.momypedia.com will also provide live chat facilities with experts such as doctors next year, as well as producing online television programmes and radio over its online network. It will also begin marketing commercial businesses to customers next year, Subhawadee said
Rakluke Group's managing director Chanida Intaravisut said the website was not only a Web-based community for families, enabling members to create activities together, but was also a new marketing channel for businesses.
It has already won three international awards, including bronze awards from 8th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards and the 2009 Summit Creative Awards, both in the United States. It also won an Award of Distinction at the 15th Communicator Awards, Chanida said.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Amish newspaper succeeds the old-fashioned way
The writers' grievances came in the form of angry letters,carried over bumpy rural roads to the newspaper office serving the Amish community.
In a world where news still travels at a mail carrier's pace,the farmers, preachers and mechanics responsible for filling The Budget threatened to go on strike if the 119-year-old Amish weekly went ahead with its plan to go online.
The Budget is the dominant means of comunication among the Amish, a Christian denomination with about 227,000 members in the US,who shun cars for horse-drawn buggies and avoid hooking up to the electrical grid.
The writers, known asscribes, feared their plainspoken dispatches would become fodder for entertainment in the "English", or non-Amish,world. The editors hastily rescinded the plan shortly after proposing it in 2006, and today,only local news briefs appear onThe Budget 's bare-bones website.
"My gosh, they spoke in volume," said Keith Rathbun,publisher of The Budget , a newspaper mailed to nearly 20,000 subscribers across the US and Canada."I'd be a fool to not pay attention to it."
Far from impeding the newspaper's success, shunning the internet actually solidified its steadfast fan base.
As other newspapers increasingly shed staff and reduce the frequency of their print editions in the face of growing competition from the internet,The Budget is plodding along comfortably in the recession.
Subscriptions, which cost $42(1,433 baht) a year and account for most of the newspaper's revenue, have dropped by just a few hundred in the past year.Advertisers, who are mostly Amish, are not fleeing to the internet. And plans are in the works to add a couple of reporters to The Budget 's editorial staff of about 12 people.
Rathbun's most pressing concern isn't the threat of the internet but ensuring that his readers, scattered across remote stretches of farmland, get their newspapers on time.
"People call The Budget the Amish internet," Rathbun says."It's nonelectric, it's on paper, but it's the same thing."
The local edition, mailed to about 10,000 Ohio subscribers, is a typical community newspaper produced by The Budget 's own employees, and their local stories are all that appear online. There's a page dedicated to church news and another to farming - there you get the going price for alfalfa and hay.
The national edition and the source of its faithful following - is a patchwork of dispatches from scribes,which include both freshfaced teenagers and bearded old men.
"Supper and singing were held at our house last night,so have been busy this morning getting dishes away and house in order," says a writer from Sligo, Pennsylvania.
"We've had some nice rain the last few days and grass is greening up nicely," says another in Middlebury, Indiana.
On white sheets of paper or "tablets",the scribes chronicle the fabric of their daily lives, generally writing them by hand and submitting them weekly by airmail or fax.
The news isn't always upbeat. They'll write about the child whose arm got caught in a threshing machine, and the family that was killed in a buggy accident.When a gunman shot and killed five Amish girls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006, the scribes detailed the aftermath.
The Budget is published in Sugarcreek,an eastern Ohio town of dairy farmers and bricklayers at the heart of the US's largest Amish settlement. It was born in 1890 as a series of letters swapped among Amish families who had dispersed across the Midwest.
It is the oldest and largest among Amish publications, which include Die Botschaft , a rival weekly formed in the 1970s by people who believed The Budget was too liberal.
Inside The Budget 's brown-shuttered office, tables are piled with handwritten letters and the computers look dusty.On Rathbun's desk is a beige box filled with contacts written on index cards and a clunky calculator that spits out receipt paper.
The archives, preserved on microfilm,are "a history of a people", explains Fannie Erb-Miller, who edits the scribes'letters. A copy of The Budget is sometimes the only record of a birth in the Amish world, where official birth certificates are scarce.
Amish newspapers provide a sort of social glue for the community, says Don Kraybill, a leading expert on the Amish.
"They may not be able to worship together or collaborate together, but they can learn about each other through these newspapers," Kraybill explains.
Rathbun, who is not Amish, took over The Budget eight years ago after running an alternative weekly newspaper in Cleveland.
The Budget 's owners - a local, nonAmish family who own a chain of dry goods shops that cater to the Amish wanted to bring in someone with a fresh perspective and a background in journalism, Rathbun explains. He later bought a 10 percent stake in the newspaper.
Rathbun grins proudly as he boasts about The Budget 'ssuccess, but grows nervous when the conversation turns to his readers.
"I need to be really careful about this," he says."So I don't betray a confidence with them."
Rathbun declined to release The Budget 's annual profits but admitted that he worries about the future of the printing industry. Newsprint is expensive,and he has refused to raise advertising rates for the past three years.
Unlike most of its counterparts,The Budget has a staff that is not Amish (the unpaid scribes, on the other hand, are typically Amish). As such, the selfdescribed newspaper of "good news"takes pains not to offend its pious readers,who are quick to revolt at any whiff of impropriety in its pages.
The newspaper rejects advertisements for products considered taboo, such as beer, tobacco and drugs that treat sexual dysfunction. A public outcry ensued when the newspaper ran an illustration of a woman clad in a bra.
In a world where news still travels at a mail carrier's pace,the farmers, preachers and mechanics responsible for filling The Budget threatened to go on strike if the 119-year-old Amish weekly went ahead with its plan to go online.
The Budget is the dominant means of comunication among the Amish, a Christian denomination with about 227,000 members in the US,who shun cars for horse-drawn buggies and avoid hooking up to the electrical grid.
The writers, known asscribes, feared their plainspoken dispatches would become fodder for entertainment in the "English", or non-Amish,world. The editors hastily rescinded the plan shortly after proposing it in 2006, and today,only local news briefs appear onThe Budget 's bare-bones website.
"My gosh, they spoke in volume," said Keith Rathbun,publisher of The Budget , a newspaper mailed to nearly 20,000 subscribers across the US and Canada."I'd be a fool to not pay attention to it."
Far from impeding the newspaper's success, shunning the internet actually solidified its steadfast fan base.
As other newspapers increasingly shed staff and reduce the frequency of their print editions in the face of growing competition from the internet,The Budget is plodding along comfortably in the recession.
Subscriptions, which cost $42(1,433 baht) a year and account for most of the newspaper's revenue, have dropped by just a few hundred in the past year.Advertisers, who are mostly Amish, are not fleeing to the internet. And plans are in the works to add a couple of reporters to The Budget 's editorial staff of about 12 people.
Rathbun's most pressing concern isn't the threat of the internet but ensuring that his readers, scattered across remote stretches of farmland, get their newspapers on time.
"People call The Budget the Amish internet," Rathbun says."It's nonelectric, it's on paper, but it's the same thing."
The local edition, mailed to about 10,000 Ohio subscribers, is a typical community newspaper produced by The Budget 's own employees, and their local stories are all that appear online. There's a page dedicated to church news and another to farming - there you get the going price for alfalfa and hay.
The national edition and the source of its faithful following - is a patchwork of dispatches from scribes,which include both freshfaced teenagers and bearded old men.
"Supper and singing were held at our house last night,so have been busy this morning getting dishes away and house in order," says a writer from Sligo, Pennsylvania.
"We've had some nice rain the last few days and grass is greening up nicely," says another in Middlebury, Indiana.
On white sheets of paper or "tablets",the scribes chronicle the fabric of their daily lives, generally writing them by hand and submitting them weekly by airmail or fax.
The news isn't always upbeat. They'll write about the child whose arm got caught in a threshing machine, and the family that was killed in a buggy accident.When a gunman shot and killed five Amish girls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006, the scribes detailed the aftermath.
The Budget is published in Sugarcreek,an eastern Ohio town of dairy farmers and bricklayers at the heart of the US's largest Amish settlement. It was born in 1890 as a series of letters swapped among Amish families who had dispersed across the Midwest.
It is the oldest and largest among Amish publications, which include Die Botschaft , a rival weekly formed in the 1970s by people who believed The Budget was too liberal.
Inside The Budget 's brown-shuttered office, tables are piled with handwritten letters and the computers look dusty.On Rathbun's desk is a beige box filled with contacts written on index cards and a clunky calculator that spits out receipt paper.
The archives, preserved on microfilm,are "a history of a people", explains Fannie Erb-Miller, who edits the scribes'letters. A copy of The Budget is sometimes the only record of a birth in the Amish world, where official birth certificates are scarce.
Amish newspapers provide a sort of social glue for the community, says Don Kraybill, a leading expert on the Amish.
"They may not be able to worship together or collaborate together, but they can learn about each other through these newspapers," Kraybill explains.
Rathbun, who is not Amish, took over The Budget eight years ago after running an alternative weekly newspaper in Cleveland.
The Budget 's owners - a local, nonAmish family who own a chain of dry goods shops that cater to the Amish wanted to bring in someone with a fresh perspective and a background in journalism, Rathbun explains. He later bought a 10 percent stake in the newspaper.
Rathbun grins proudly as he boasts about The Budget 'ssuccess, but grows nervous when the conversation turns to his readers.
"I need to be really careful about this," he says."So I don't betray a confidence with them."
Rathbun declined to release The Budget 's annual profits but admitted that he worries about the future of the printing industry. Newsprint is expensive,and he has refused to raise advertising rates for the past three years.
Unlike most of its counterparts,The Budget has a staff that is not Amish (the unpaid scribes, on the other hand, are typically Amish). As such, the selfdescribed newspaper of "good news"takes pains not to offend its pious readers,who are quick to revolt at any whiff of impropriety in its pages.
The newspaper rejects advertisements for products considered taboo, such as beer, tobacco and drugs that treat sexual dysfunction. A public outcry ensued when the newspaper ran an illustration of a woman clad in a bra.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Ad revenue dries up for Nation
Nation Multimedia expects its 2009 revenues to drop to 2.3 billion baht from 3.2 billion last year as advertising fell sharply with the global downturn.
NMG, the publisher of The Nation and Krungthep Turakij dailies, expects to move forward with plans to list two subsidiaries on the Market for Alternative Investment in the fourth quarter.
Chief executive Thanachai Santichaikul said that if sentiment remained weak, listing could be delayed until 2010.
NMG reported first half losses of 110 million baht, compared with a profit of 1.11 million the same period last year. Second-quarter losses were 33.47 million baht, compared with a loss of 5.83 million the same period last year.
The company blamed a 27% decline in ad revenues in the first half for the loss. Sales and service revenues in the first half fell 21% compared with the same period last year, with print ad revenues off 36% and new media advertising down 8%. Broadcast ad revenues rose 16% year-on-year for the first half.
Circulation revenues fell 19% in the first half from the same period last year, with newspaper circulation down 8% and revenues from pocket books and comic books down 33%. Revenues from printing, magazine distribution and logistics services rose 35% year-on-year.
Cost of sales and operating expenses for the first six months of 2009 decreased by 14% compared to the same period of 2008, thanks largely to a 13% decline in transport costs as a result of falling fuel prices. Sales promotion expenses fell by 36% in the first half from last year.
Printing operations accounted for 75% of group revenues in the first half, with TV accounting for another 15% and other businesses the rest.
NMG plans to list Nation International Edutainment (NINE), which prints pocket books and other publications, and Nation Broadcasting Corp, the Nation Channel's TV operator, on the MAI.
Shares of NMG closed yesterday on the SET at 3.32 baht, up two satang, in trade worth 52,000 baht.
NMG, the publisher of The Nation and Krungthep Turakij dailies, expects to move forward with plans to list two subsidiaries on the Market for Alternative Investment in the fourth quarter.
Chief executive Thanachai Santichaikul said that if sentiment remained weak, listing could be delayed until 2010.
NMG reported first half losses of 110 million baht, compared with a profit of 1.11 million the same period last year. Second-quarter losses were 33.47 million baht, compared with a loss of 5.83 million the same period last year.
The company blamed a 27% decline in ad revenues in the first half for the loss. Sales and service revenues in the first half fell 21% compared with the same period last year, with print ad revenues off 36% and new media advertising down 8%. Broadcast ad revenues rose 16% year-on-year for the first half.
Circulation revenues fell 19% in the first half from the same period last year, with newspaper circulation down 8% and revenues from pocket books and comic books down 33%. Revenues from printing, magazine distribution and logistics services rose 35% year-on-year.
Cost of sales and operating expenses for the first six months of 2009 decreased by 14% compared to the same period of 2008, thanks largely to a 13% decline in transport costs as a result of falling fuel prices. Sales promotion expenses fell by 36% in the first half from last year.
Printing operations accounted for 75% of group revenues in the first half, with TV accounting for another 15% and other businesses the rest.
NMG plans to list Nation International Edutainment (NINE), which prints pocket books and other publications, and Nation Broadcasting Corp, the Nation Channel's TV operator, on the MAI.
Shares of NMG closed yesterday on the SET at 3.32 baht, up two satang, in trade worth 52,000 baht.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
BANGKOK DAYS Lawrence Osborne
Lawrence Osborne wanders aimlessly around Bangkok, stopping only to loiter with intent in Bangkok Days , a meandering travelogue described on the blurb as:"A love letter to the city that revived [his] faith in adventure and the world."
These "adventures and misadventures in the world's hottest metropolis"have a dream-like quality,written in a languid style that drifts at a lilting pace,much like the author's walks around town.
Osborne examines the theme of loneliness, asking why men, older men especially, leave the West to settle here. He theorises that it's all about contact - not necessarily sex. Be it a foot massage,a meal at a "no hands" restaurant, or simply crowded streets, Bangkok offers a tactile experience lacking in the sterile West.
For many of the characters that Osborne introduces us to - a retired Aussie bank manager marking time on Soi 22 with painting and cheap hookers,a Scottish ex-soldier who runs an ecolodge in the Cambodian jungle, or McGinnis, an eccentric Englishman who claims to sell air-conditioning units isolation seems no stranger.
Osborne's prose borders on the pseudo-intellectual at times:"I dreamt I was lying with a girl on a river beach,
painting her body with a fine calligraphic brush dipped in dark-green paint."
He also describes walking down his street,"sniffing in the industrial aromas of the hairdressing salons and the sweetness of fried doughnuts and pork crackling as familiar things that had long ago become a molecular part of me."
The only thing I can smell on my soi is the drains. Nevertheless, it would be unfair to criticise what is an entertaining read because of a couple of suspect paragraphs.
And although his description of a short-lived career as a gigolo seems unbelievable, in Osborne's Bangkok the absurd or incredible is often the reality.G
Available at Asia Books priced B650.
These "adventures and misadventures in the world's hottest metropolis"have a dream-like quality,written in a languid style that drifts at a lilting pace,much like the author's walks around town.
Osborne examines the theme of loneliness, asking why men, older men especially, leave the West to settle here. He theorises that it's all about contact - not necessarily sex. Be it a foot massage,a meal at a "no hands" restaurant, or simply crowded streets, Bangkok offers a tactile experience lacking in the sterile West.
For many of the characters that Osborne introduces us to - a retired Aussie bank manager marking time on Soi 22 with painting and cheap hookers,a Scottish ex-soldier who runs an ecolodge in the Cambodian jungle, or McGinnis, an eccentric Englishman who claims to sell air-conditioning units isolation seems no stranger.
Osborne's prose borders on the pseudo-intellectual at times:"I dreamt I was lying with a girl on a river beach,
painting her body with a fine calligraphic brush dipped in dark-green paint."
He also describes walking down his street,"sniffing in the industrial aromas of the hairdressing salons and the sweetness of fried doughnuts and pork crackling as familiar things that had long ago become a molecular part of me."
The only thing I can smell on my soi is the drains. Nevertheless, it would be unfair to criticise what is an entertaining read because of a couple of suspect paragraphs.
And although his description of a short-lived career as a gigolo seems unbelievable, in Osborne's Bangkok the absurd or incredible is often the reality.G
Available at Asia Books priced B650.
Media to monitor projects
Members of the media will be invited to sit on a committee to monitor the scandal-plagued community sufficiency programme, says Mechai Viravaidya who is tipped to head the scheme.
The vice chairman of the Community Sufficiency Economy Project said he would set up the committee to work on new strategies to clean up the programme as soon as he was appointed by the prime minister as chairman of the board of directors of the Sufficiency Economy for Community Development Programme.
The committee's duties would include keeping track on sufficiency project activities. It would include at least two members of the media who would follow up on the projects.
Mr Mechai said he had been thinking of ways to overhaul the programme but said he could not say much because he had not yet been named chairman.
He would present his plans for a revamp of the programme when he meets the prime minister.
Sufficiency projects have come under the spotlight after it was found equipment such as water machines bought by villagers were grossly overpriced.
Complaints have also been raised about a monopoly on the sale of the equipment enjoyed by suppliers with links to the government and officials.
Mr Mechai, the founder of the Population and Development Association, said the programme must adhere to key fundamental principles.
Villagers must take the initiative in running the projects, which must strengthen the villages.
He said communities in the past had not participated actively in the projects because they were not adequately informed about them.
The vice chairman of the Community Sufficiency Economy Project said he would set up the committee to work on new strategies to clean up the programme as soon as he was appointed by the prime minister as chairman of the board of directors of the Sufficiency Economy for Community Development Programme.
The committee's duties would include keeping track on sufficiency project activities. It would include at least two members of the media who would follow up on the projects.
Mr Mechai said he had been thinking of ways to overhaul the programme but said he could not say much because he had not yet been named chairman.
He would present his plans for a revamp of the programme when he meets the prime minister.
Sufficiency projects have come under the spotlight after it was found equipment such as water machines bought by villagers were grossly overpriced.
Complaints have also been raised about a monopoly on the sale of the equipment enjoyed by suppliers with links to the government and officials.
Mr Mechai, the founder of the Population and Development Association, said the programme must adhere to key fundamental principles.
Villagers must take the initiative in running the projects, which must strengthen the villages.
He said communities in the past had not participated actively in the projects because they were not adequately informed about them.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
McCurry gazes eastwards
His best-known image is that haunting depiction of an Afghan girl staring out from the cover of the June,1985 issue of National Geographic ,but for Steve McCurry, the Philadelphia-born lensman who's been covering wars around the world for the past three decades, the initial motivation was not a thirst for the truth but simple wanderlust.
"I have curiosity about life so I travel to see the world"is how he put it.
McCurry got his first camera at the age of 18 from a photographer uncle and not long afterwards began having photos published in The Daily Collegian newspaper at Pennsylvania State University. It was while he was studying there that he first started travelling abroad, to various countries in Latin America and Africa. He initially dabbled with film history, cinematography and film-making, but ended up with a degree in theatre arts and graduating cum laude in 1974.He worked as a news photographer for two years before chucking it in to fly to India and try his hand at freelance photojournalism. It was "curiosity" which impelled him to cross the Pakistani border into Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion in late 1979.
"For journalists, covering areas of conflict is important.We want to find out for ourselves what's going on. It's insane to do that, but it isimportant for the world to know."
His coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan later won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad."It was a human drama," he noted with great understatement."Life and death."
After two years getting a portfolio together, he approached National Geographic magazine."To get to that point [took]four and a half years ...24/7... of work. A big commitment ... it was intense."
Style and approach
McCurry has the uncommon ability to see beauty in common objects. After several years' experience, he said,a photographer begins to see things in a particular, individual way and starts to express himself.
For him,"light is important. It's everything.My style comes out of a particular light that I like to work in ... I enjoy playing with light."
He prefers to work with the minimum of colours - a couple in one photo is sufficient - in the early morning or at dusk. He finds the sky especially beautiful 10 minutes after sunset and said there's the added benefit of not having to use a filter or flash at this time.
To obtain the most representative image he'll often return to the same location on numerous occasions. To get the perfect shot of Angkor Wat, for example, he visited the temple complex dozens of times to capture it in different moods - in full sunlight, on rainy days, when the place was crowded and when it was quiet. Eventually he got a tableau he considered satisfactory - that of a group of monks walking peacefully in the rain.
McCurry also has a passion for doing portraiture."I like taking photos of people on the street. Mostly my portraits are of individuals I just bump into," he said.
He likes to make direct eye contact and wait until the ambient light is dim enough to force the subject's eyes to open fully.
To capture the mood of strangers to depict them while they're most natural, he must first break the ice and win their trust. He does this by using body language to demonstrate respect and let the person know that he finds them fascinating."You either work fast before people notice you. Or you hang around for so long that people get bored or forget that you're there."
A sense of humour is also a big help, he said."I'm happy working with Asian people. I'm short so I don't always show up in their radar," he joked.
Does he always ask permission before taking someone's
photo? Not necessarily.
"I have bunches of pictures of people sleeping," he said, adding:"It's fun trying to capture human behaviour, how [people] are in real life."
He strives to avoid any conflict and disturbances from the environment so that he can work with a "clear and calm mind".
In the field
Before setting out on an assignment, he'll research his destination and recruit a fixer.
"If I was assigned to take pictures of Bangkok I'll analyse what the story is to be about, what makes this city different from others. I'll look for particular situations, like the monsoon, for instance."
He might take a helicopter ride to get a broad perspective on a metropolis then walk the streets to snap portraits of its residents.
He'll take anything from five to 20 shots of one subject or location, changing the perspective - moving a little bit forward, backwards, a little to the left or right; going for both vertical and horizontal angles. Then he'll try out different exposures and change lenses for different results."You think you have something wonderful, but you don't know for sure ... something might turn out to be better [when you look at the pics later]."
Going digital
"The benefit of digital cameras is that you can review your work quickly and shoot in impossibly low light."
But this technology also has its drawbacks."With a slide or negative that you keep in a drawer, you have a real thing to go back to 20 years from now. Going digital and storing your work on a hard-disk drive, on the other hand,can be problematic as data can get corrupted," he said,revealing that he spent US$40,000(about 1.3 million baht)last year on data recovery alone.
He recommends that photographers keep at least three back-ups."Keeping only one copy is insane. Two is risky.Three is sensible."
Advances in technology also mean that he can now do lab-quality prints himself at home.
He has four large-format Epson printers in his studio in New York."I'm pleased with the quality in terms of realistic colours."
"I generally don't crop [pictures]," he went on."And if I take 100 pictures [of one subject/location], I might choose only one because I've got to maintain high standards."
On the road
Now 59, McCurry is still on the move for an average of nine months of the year, but always travels light, making do with a single camera and a 28-70mm zoom lens.
"It's enough for me. I like to keep things as light as possible."
Anyone thinking of becoming a professional photojournalist needs both an insatiable sense of curiosity, he said, plus oodles of dedication."If you work hard, you'll have a certain degree of success."
His current interest is Buddhism and his forthcoming book will cover the practice of that philosophy in several countries in this region including Tibet, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand.
"My job is to tell a story in virtual terms. Life is so short,so we should do things that please us and are meaningful."
"I love what I do, so it's great!"
GIRLS HUDDLE TOGETHER FOR PROTECTION DURING A DUST STORM IN INDIA.
"I have curiosity about life so I travel to see the world"is how he put it.
McCurry got his first camera at the age of 18 from a photographer uncle and not long afterwards began having photos published in The Daily Collegian newspaper at Pennsylvania State University. It was while he was studying there that he first started travelling abroad, to various countries in Latin America and Africa. He initially dabbled with film history, cinematography and film-making, but ended up with a degree in theatre arts and graduating cum laude in 1974.He worked as a news photographer for two years before chucking it in to fly to India and try his hand at freelance photojournalism. It was "curiosity" which impelled him to cross the Pakistani border into Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion in late 1979.
"For journalists, covering areas of conflict is important.We want to find out for ourselves what's going on. It's insane to do that, but it isimportant for the world to know."
His coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan later won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad."It was a human drama," he noted with great understatement."Life and death."
After two years getting a portfolio together, he approached National Geographic magazine."To get to that point [took]four and a half years ...24/7... of work. A big commitment ... it was intense."
Style and approach
McCurry has the uncommon ability to see beauty in common objects. After several years' experience, he said,a photographer begins to see things in a particular, individual way and starts to express himself.
For him,"light is important. It's everything.My style comes out of a particular light that I like to work in ... I enjoy playing with light."
He prefers to work with the minimum of colours - a couple in one photo is sufficient - in the early morning or at dusk. He finds the sky especially beautiful 10 minutes after sunset and said there's the added benefit of not having to use a filter or flash at this time.
To obtain the most representative image he'll often return to the same location on numerous occasions. To get the perfect shot of Angkor Wat, for example, he visited the temple complex dozens of times to capture it in different moods - in full sunlight, on rainy days, when the place was crowded and when it was quiet. Eventually he got a tableau he considered satisfactory - that of a group of monks walking peacefully in the rain.
McCurry also has a passion for doing portraiture."I like taking photos of people on the street. Mostly my portraits are of individuals I just bump into," he said.
He likes to make direct eye contact and wait until the ambient light is dim enough to force the subject's eyes to open fully.
To capture the mood of strangers to depict them while they're most natural, he must first break the ice and win their trust. He does this by using body language to demonstrate respect and let the person know that he finds them fascinating."You either work fast before people notice you. Or you hang around for so long that people get bored or forget that you're there."
A sense of humour is also a big help, he said."I'm happy working with Asian people. I'm short so I don't always show up in their radar," he joked.
Does he always ask permission before taking someone's
photo? Not necessarily.
"I have bunches of pictures of people sleeping," he said, adding:"It's fun trying to capture human behaviour, how [people] are in real life."
He strives to avoid any conflict and disturbances from the environment so that he can work with a "clear and calm mind".
In the field
Before setting out on an assignment, he'll research his destination and recruit a fixer.
"If I was assigned to take pictures of Bangkok I'll analyse what the story is to be about, what makes this city different from others. I'll look for particular situations, like the monsoon, for instance."
He might take a helicopter ride to get a broad perspective on a metropolis then walk the streets to snap portraits of its residents.
He'll take anything from five to 20 shots of one subject or location, changing the perspective - moving a little bit forward, backwards, a little to the left or right; going for both vertical and horizontal angles. Then he'll try out different exposures and change lenses for different results."You think you have something wonderful, but you don't know for sure ... something might turn out to be better [when you look at the pics later]."
Going digital
"The benefit of digital cameras is that you can review your work quickly and shoot in impossibly low light."
But this technology also has its drawbacks."With a slide or negative that you keep in a drawer, you have a real thing to go back to 20 years from now. Going digital and storing your work on a hard-disk drive, on the other hand,can be problematic as data can get corrupted," he said,revealing that he spent US$40,000(about 1.3 million baht)last year on data recovery alone.
He recommends that photographers keep at least three back-ups."Keeping only one copy is insane. Two is risky.Three is sensible."
Advances in technology also mean that he can now do lab-quality prints himself at home.
He has four large-format Epson printers in his studio in New York."I'm pleased with the quality in terms of realistic colours."
"I generally don't crop [pictures]," he went on."And if I take 100 pictures [of one subject/location], I might choose only one because I've got to maintain high standards."
On the road
Now 59, McCurry is still on the move for an average of nine months of the year, but always travels light, making do with a single camera and a 28-70mm zoom lens.
"It's enough for me. I like to keep things as light as possible."
Anyone thinking of becoming a professional photojournalist needs both an insatiable sense of curiosity, he said, plus oodles of dedication."If you work hard, you'll have a certain degree of success."
His current interest is Buddhism and his forthcoming book will cover the practice of that philosophy in several countries in this region including Tibet, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand.
"My job is to tell a story in virtual terms. Life is so short,so we should do things that please us and are meaningful."
"I love what I do, so it's great!"
GIRLS HUDDLE TOGETHER FOR PROTECTION DURING A DUST STORM IN INDIA.
WPP sees profit slump
WPP, the world's secondbiggest advertising group, said yesterday its first-half net profit sank 47.9% because of the global downturn but forecast a brighter performance for the rest of 2009.
Net earnings sank to ฃ108.4 million ($177 million) in the six months to June from ฃ208.2 million a year earlier, WPP said in a results statement.
Pre-tax profits dived 47% to ฃ179.3 million as a result of the "severe" worldwide recession.
"The results continue to reflect the impact of the significant global economic contraction on most regions and service sectors," WPP said."The impact continued to intensify in the second quarter,though results for July did indicate a 'less-worse' picture."
The group said revenues increased 28.4% to ฃ4.29 billion, boosted by the takeover of market research company Taylor Nelson Sofres.
WPP, which ranks second behind the US giant Omnicom, said it had slashed around 6,525 jobs over the past year as it sought to improve profitability.
"The impact of the recession on the group's profitability in the first half was severe," WPP said, adding that action had also been taken to cut discretionary costs such as travel and training.
"Further cost actions have been taken in the second quarter, which have also impacted profitability in the first half,through additional severance costs but [this] will improve the picture in the second half."
The group also predicted that revenues would be flat next year despite a host of large events that should boost spending on advertising.
"Although it is still very early to budget or forecast what may happen in 2010,top line revenues will probably be (flat)despite the positive impact of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the World Expo in Shanghai, the Asian Games in Guangzhou, the Fifa World Cup in South Africa and the mid-term Congressional elections in the United States," WPP said.
The group bought British firm Taylor Nelson Sofres for ฃ1.2 billion in late 2008.
Net earnings sank to ฃ108.4 million ($177 million) in the six months to June from ฃ208.2 million a year earlier, WPP said in a results statement.
Pre-tax profits dived 47% to ฃ179.3 million as a result of the "severe" worldwide recession.
"The results continue to reflect the impact of the significant global economic contraction on most regions and service sectors," WPP said."The impact continued to intensify in the second quarter,though results for July did indicate a 'less-worse' picture."
The group said revenues increased 28.4% to ฃ4.29 billion, boosted by the takeover of market research company Taylor Nelson Sofres.
WPP, which ranks second behind the US giant Omnicom, said it had slashed around 6,525 jobs over the past year as it sought to improve profitability.
"The impact of the recession on the group's profitability in the first half was severe," WPP said, adding that action had also been taken to cut discretionary costs such as travel and training.
"Further cost actions have been taken in the second quarter, which have also impacted profitability in the first half,through additional severance costs but [this] will improve the picture in the second half."
The group also predicted that revenues would be flat next year despite a host of large events that should boost spending on advertising.
"Although it is still very early to budget or forecast what may happen in 2010,top line revenues will probably be (flat)despite the positive impact of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the World Expo in Shanghai, the Asian Games in Guangzhou, the Fifa World Cup in South Africa and the mid-term Congressional elections in the United States," WPP said.
The group bought British firm Taylor Nelson Sofres for ฃ1.2 billion in late 2008.
Korn warns upturn at risk
Renewed political violence could jeopardise Thailand's budding economic recovery, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij warns.
"The economy is improving, thanks to the efforts of all parties," he said yesterday."But [violence] will certainly hurt the business environment, and be a drag on efforts towards economic recovery."
The Democrat-led government has announced it would use powers under the Internal Security Act to keep law and order from Saturday to Tuesday in anticipation of red shirt protests in the capital on Sunday.
The protesters, under the banner of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, oppose the government and are largely supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Last April, UDD-led protests led to the disruption of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Pattaya and several days of rioting in Bangkok.
Mr Korn asked all parties to "remain within the limits of the law", saying the government respected the people's right to peaceful assembly.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the Thai-Asean News Network, Mr Korn insisted the government had made strides in reviving the economy.
The National Economic and Social Development Board this week said the economy shrank 4.9% in the second quarter from last year, a slower pace of decline compared with the 7.1%year-on-year contraction in the first quarter. The economy in the second quarter grew 2.3% from the end of March, compared with a 1.8% decline quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year.
Mr Korn said there were clear signals of economic recovery, and state stimulus programmes had played a key part in helping to reduce job losses as a result of the global economic crisis.
Unemployment now stood at700,000 people, a significantly better outcome than had been originally feared of 2 million without work.
The "Thailand Strength" investment programme, to be formally launched next week, would create 2 million new jobs over the next three years and pave the way for sustained, medium-term growth, the minister said.
Mr Korn said 1.06 trillion baht worth of investment projects under the Thai-land Strength programme had been approved and were ready to begin,out of a total 1.5 trillion baht in spending earmarked through 2012.
A website would be set up for the public to monitor the progress of each project to ensure the transparency of the programme.
"The Thailand Strength projects were selected from among those ready to go. We dropped a number of projects,not because they were bad but because they were not ready," Mr Korn said.
"[These are the] projects that the public have been waiting for."
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva welcomed the launch of the Thai-Asean News Network.
He said the country remained fully committed to press freedom.
A strong, free press helped increase transparency within a society as well as support democracy, he said.
"The economy is improving, thanks to the efforts of all parties," he said yesterday."But [violence] will certainly hurt the business environment, and be a drag on efforts towards economic recovery."
The Democrat-led government has announced it would use powers under the Internal Security Act to keep law and order from Saturday to Tuesday in anticipation of red shirt protests in the capital on Sunday.
The protesters, under the banner of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, oppose the government and are largely supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Last April, UDD-led protests led to the disruption of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Pattaya and several days of rioting in Bangkok.
Mr Korn asked all parties to "remain within the limits of the law", saying the government respected the people's right to peaceful assembly.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the Thai-Asean News Network, Mr Korn insisted the government had made strides in reviving the economy.
The National Economic and Social Development Board this week said the economy shrank 4.9% in the second quarter from last year, a slower pace of decline compared with the 7.1%year-on-year contraction in the first quarter. The economy in the second quarter grew 2.3% from the end of March, compared with a 1.8% decline quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year.
Mr Korn said there were clear signals of economic recovery, and state stimulus programmes had played a key part in helping to reduce job losses as a result of the global economic crisis.
Unemployment now stood at700,000 people, a significantly better outcome than had been originally feared of 2 million without work.
The "Thailand Strength" investment programme, to be formally launched next week, would create 2 million new jobs over the next three years and pave the way for sustained, medium-term growth, the minister said.
Mr Korn said 1.06 trillion baht worth of investment projects under the Thai-land Strength programme had been approved and were ready to begin,out of a total 1.5 trillion baht in spending earmarked through 2012.
A website would be set up for the public to monitor the progress of each project to ensure the transparency of the programme.
"The Thailand Strength projects were selected from among those ready to go. We dropped a number of projects,not because they were bad but because they were not ready," Mr Korn said.
"[These are the] projects that the public have been waiting for."
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva welcomed the launch of the Thai-Asean News Network.
He said the country remained fully committed to press freedom.
A strong, free press helped increase transparency within a society as well as support democracy, he said.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Top Khatami aides put on trial
Several aides to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami were out on trial yesterday on charges of masterminding post-election unrest and plotting a "soft coup" in the Islamic republic.
Among the 20 or so people in the dock in the revolutionary court in tehran were a former minister and a number of other top political figures as well as reformist journalists and academics, local media reported.
The prosecution charged that some political groups "with the cooperation of Western media and colonial embassies disrupted the situation and misused the supporters of defeated candidates to launch a soft coup d'etat."
Iran has alreadt stagejd mass trials of around 140 people on offences linked to the massive demonstrations and street violence that followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hotly-disputed victory in the June election.
The court proceedings, which are open only to Iranian news agencies and which opposition leaders denounced as "show trials", have angered the international community and heightened political tensions as Iran battles its worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The prosecution called for the dissolition of reformist movements such as the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organisation after accusing them of "lying" and spreading "rumours of fraud in the election".
The news agencies said those in the dock included Khatami aides such as former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajazadeh, former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh, ex-deputy economy minister Mohsen Ssafaie-Farahani and reformist activists Mohsen Mirdamadi and Abdollah Ramezanzadeh.
Another leading reformist Saeed Hajjarian, who has been under house arrest since his detention on June 16 was also in court, the ISNA news agency said.
In written testimony read out on his behalf by another defendant, apparently for health reasons, Hajjarian apologised for "huge mistakes" he committed due to "wrong analysis."
Among the 20 or so people in the dock in the revolutionary court in tehran were a former minister and a number of other top political figures as well as reformist journalists and academics, local media reported.
The prosecution charged that some political groups "with the cooperation of Western media and colonial embassies disrupted the situation and misused the supporters of defeated candidates to launch a soft coup d'etat."
Iran has alreadt stagejd mass trials of around 140 people on offences linked to the massive demonstrations and street violence that followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hotly-disputed victory in the June election.
The court proceedings, which are open only to Iranian news agencies and which opposition leaders denounced as "show trials", have angered the international community and heightened political tensions as Iran battles its worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The prosecution called for the dissolition of reformist movements such as the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organisation after accusing them of "lying" and spreading "rumours of fraud in the election".
The news agencies said those in the dock included Khatami aides such as former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajazadeh, former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh, ex-deputy economy minister Mohsen Ssafaie-Farahani and reformist activists Mohsen Mirdamadi and Abdollah Ramezanzadeh.
Another leading reformist Saeed Hajjarian, who has been under house arrest since his detention on June 16 was also in court, the ISNA news agency said.
In written testimony read out on his behalf by another defendant, apparently for health reasons, Hajjarian apologised for "huge mistakes" he committed due to "wrong analysis."
Monday, August 24, 2009
Fairfax books loss on writedowns, ad fall
Australia's second-largest newspaper group Fairfax Media Ltd yesterday reported an annual net loss of A$380.0 million (US$315.4 million) as the global downturn and the Internet hit earnings.
Fairfax, which publishes the flagship Sydney Morning Herald and the Age in Melbourne, said the same factors that had caused numerous newspaper closures around the globe weighed on the bottom line.
"Over the past financial year, the company has faced a business environment unprecedented in its long history," it said.
"Three factors have had a major im-pact - the speed of the economic slowdown, particularly in the second half, cuts to discretionary advertising (and) the necessity to respond to online challenges."
The result for the year to June, which included writedowns of A$664.3 million,turned around a $386.9 million net profit in the previous financial year.
Fairfax, said net profit excluding writedowns was down 40% at A$226.7 million.
"Performance for the 2009 financial year reflects a fundamentally profitable business with a number of one-off charges," the company said.
It said most of the one-off costs related to writedowns in the carrying value of its mastheads and goodwill.
Fairfax, which announced at the start of the financial year that it would slash 5% of its workforce or 550 jobs, said underlying earnings were down 27.2%at $605.0 million.
The company also said that it would not pay an annual dividend but offered some hope that advertising revenues were stabilising.
"Trading results in the first seven weeks of the new financial year indicate that the decline in advertising revenues appears to have bottomed but a material recovery in advertising has not yet commenced," it said.
Fairfax, which publishes the flagship Sydney Morning Herald and the Age in Melbourne, said the same factors that had caused numerous newspaper closures around the globe weighed on the bottom line.
"Over the past financial year, the company has faced a business environment unprecedented in its long history," it said.
"Three factors have had a major im-pact - the speed of the economic slowdown, particularly in the second half, cuts to discretionary advertising (and) the necessity to respond to online challenges."
The result for the year to June, which included writedowns of A$664.3 million,turned around a $386.9 million net profit in the previous financial year.
Fairfax, said net profit excluding writedowns was down 40% at A$226.7 million.
"Performance for the 2009 financial year reflects a fundamentally profitable business with a number of one-off charges," the company said.
It said most of the one-off costs related to writedowns in the carrying value of its mastheads and goodwill.
Fairfax, which announced at the start of the financial year that it would slash 5% of its workforce or 550 jobs, said underlying earnings were down 27.2%at $605.0 million.
The company also said that it would not pay an annual dividend but offered some hope that advertising revenues were stabilising.
"Trading results in the first seven weeks of the new financial year indicate that the decline in advertising revenues appears to have bottomed but a material recovery in advertising has not yet commenced," it said.
A PRIZE FOR THE PRODIGAL
SeaWrite Award winner Uthit Haemamoon left home at 15, but his heart returns again and again.
"Lap Lae Khaeng Khoi" ("Mysteries of Khaeng Khoi"), the novel that this year's SeaWrite judges just "couldn't put down", stays close to the heart of author Uthit Haemamoon.
Told as a somewhat mysterious and complex first-person narrative, it's an emotional, semi-autobiographical story about an ordinary family of the Thai countryside dealing with its problems.
Uthit, a 34-year-old Saraburi native, is proud of his humble background.
He wanted to go into visual arts he told reporters at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel last week, but his parents thought it inappropriate. Nevertheless, rebellious Uthit left home at 15 to pursue his dream, taking a series of odd jobs to support his education.
Uthit's experiences in youth shaped both who he is and his Sea Write-winning novel, which offers a vivid depicition of his life and family and the community in which he grew up.
"Looking back, I think my world was very narrow", he said. "My house and my family were in the country-side. My whole life revolved around that small village.
"I felt when I was in primary school that I was happiest when I was doing art.
"My life changed even before I was a student at Silpakorn University in Bangkok. Since I was a village guy, my lifestyle was very backward and I was narrow-minded. So when I came to the city it was an eye-opener. I saw and experienced many new things.
"I was excited and eager to absorb these new ideas. My friends often shared their opinions about music, books, art and culture, so I became more interested in reading books and writing."
At university, Uthit spent most of his time reading literary classics, both Thai and foreign. He loves the way Italo Calvino, for example, explores the subjectivity of meaning and the relation between fiction and life, themes that are resonant in his own novel.
"Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' has a plot that's an open trajectory, where the author intervenes to question himself about his motives for writing," Uthit pointed out.
"Like Calvino, there were times I felt that I was too fed up to carry on, and there were times I was happy and eager to continue my work."
Uthit also drew inspiration from Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and the writing of 2003 Nobel laureate JM Coetzee.
"Ive been working on another novel for a few months now, which I look forward to publishing soon," he said.
"Lap Lae Khaeng Khoi" ("Mysteries of Khaeng Khoi"), the novel that this year's SeaWrite judges just "couldn't put down", stays close to the heart of author Uthit Haemamoon.
Told as a somewhat mysterious and complex first-person narrative, it's an emotional, semi-autobiographical story about an ordinary family of the Thai countryside dealing with its problems.
Uthit, a 34-year-old Saraburi native, is proud of his humble background.
He wanted to go into visual arts he told reporters at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel last week, but his parents thought it inappropriate. Nevertheless, rebellious Uthit left home at 15 to pursue his dream, taking a series of odd jobs to support his education.
Uthit's experiences in youth shaped both who he is and his Sea Write-winning novel, which offers a vivid depicition of his life and family and the community in which he grew up.
"Looking back, I think my world was very narrow", he said. "My house and my family were in the country-side. My whole life revolved around that small village.
"I felt when I was in primary school that I was happiest when I was doing art.
"My life changed even before I was a student at Silpakorn University in Bangkok. Since I was a village guy, my lifestyle was very backward and I was narrow-minded. So when I came to the city it was an eye-opener. I saw and experienced many new things.
"I was excited and eager to absorb these new ideas. My friends often shared their opinions about music, books, art and culture, so I became more interested in reading books and writing."
At university, Uthit spent most of his time reading literary classics, both Thai and foreign. He loves the way Italo Calvino, for example, explores the subjectivity of meaning and the relation between fiction and life, themes that are resonant in his own novel.
"Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' has a plot that's an open trajectory, where the author intervenes to question himself about his motives for writing," Uthit pointed out.
"Like Calvino, there were times I felt that I was too fed up to carry on, and there were times I was happy and eager to continue my work."
Uthit also drew inspiration from Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and the writing of 2003 Nobel laureate JM Coetzee.
"Ive been working on another novel for a few months now, which I look forward to publishing soon," he said.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Moving to a digital future, where textbooks are history
AtEmpire High School inVail,Arizona, students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers'science lectures.
Down the road, at Cienega High School,students who own laptops can register for "digital sections" of several English, history and science classes.
And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create and share - lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable websites.
Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions,or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the internet.
"Kids are wired differently these days," said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles,Louisiana."They're digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.
"They don't engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote," Abshire continued."Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikipedias that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks."
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and maths textbooks with free "open-source" digital versions.
With California in dire straits, the governor hopes that free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
And given that students already receive so much information from the internet, iPods and Twitter feeds, he said, digital texts could save them from lugging around "antiquated, heavy,expensive textbooks".
The initiative, the first such statewide effort,has attracted widespread attention, since California, together with Texas, dominates the nation's textbook market.
Many superintendents are enthusiastic."In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks," said William M.Habermehl, superintendent of the 500,000-student Orange County schools."They can be better than traditional textbooks."
Schools that do not make the switch, Habermehl said, could lose their constituency.
"We're still in a brick-and-mortar,30-studentsto-one-teacher paradigm," Habermehl said,"but we need to get out of that framework to having 200 or 300 kids taking courses online, at night,24/7, whenever they want."
"I don't believe that charters and vouchers are the threat to schools in Orange County," he continued."What's a threat is the digital world - that someone's going to put together brilliant $200[6,825 baht] courses in French, in geometry by the best teachers in the world."
But the digital future is not quite on the horizon in most classrooms. For one thing, there is still a large digital divide. Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.
"A large portion of our kids don't have computers at home, and it would be way too costly to print out the digital textbooks," said Tim Ward, assistant superintendent for instruction in California's 24,000-student Chaffey Joint Union High School District, where almost half the students are from low-income families.
Many educators expect that digital textbooks and online courses will start small, perhaps for those who want to study a subject they cannot fit into their school schedule, or for those who need a few more credits to graduate.
Although California education authorities are reviewing 20 open-source high school maths and science texts to make sure they meet California's academic standards in time for use this autumn - and will soon announce which ones meet state standards - quick adoption is unlikely.
"I want our teachers to have the best materials available, and with digital textbooks, we could see the best lessons taught by the most dynamic teachers," said John A. Roach, superintendent of the Carlsbad, California, schools."But they're not going to replace paper texts right away."
Whenever it comes, the online onslaught and the competition from open-source materials - poses a real threat to traditional textbook publishers.
Pearson, the nation's largest one, submitted four texts in California, all of them already available online, as free supplements to their texts.
"We believe that the world is going digital,but the jury's still out on how this will evolve,"said Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokesperson."We're agnostic, so we'll provide digital, we'll provide print, and we'll see what our customers want."
Most of the digital texts submitted for review in California came from a non-profit group, CK-12 Foundation, which develops free "flexbooks"that can be customised to meet state standards,and added to by teachers. Its physics flexbook,a web-based, open-content compilation, was introduced in Virginia in March.
"The good part of our flexbooks is that they can be anything you want," said Neeru Khosla,a founder of the group."You can use them online,you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customise them, you can embed video. When people get over the mindset issue, they'll see that there's no reason to pay $100[3,412 baht] a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free."
The move to open-source materials is well under way in higher education, and may be accelerated by President Barack Obama's proposal to invest in creating free online courses as part of his push to improve community colleges.
Around the world, hundreds of universities,including MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, now use and share open-source courses. Connexions,a Rice University non-profit organisation devoted to open-source learning, submitted an algebra text to California.
But given the economy, many educators and technology experts agree that the K-12 digital revolution may be further off.
"There's a lot of stalled purchasing and decision making right now," said Mark Schneiderman,director of federal education policy at the Software & Information Industry Association."But it's going to happen."
For all the attention to the California initiative,digital textbooks are only the start of the revolution in educational technology.
"We should be bracing ourselves for way more interactive, way more engaging videos, activities and games," said Marina Leight of the Centre for Digital Education, which promotes digital education through surveys, publications and meetings.
Vail's Beyond Textbooks effort has moved in that direction. In an Empire High School history class on elections, for example, students created their own political parties, campaign websites and videos.
"Students learn the same concepts, but in a different way," said Matt Donaldson, Empire's principal.
"We've mapped out our state standards,"Donaldson said,"and our teachers have identified whatever resources they feel best covers them,whether it's a project they created themselves or an interesting site on the internet. What they don't do, generally, is take chapters from textbooks."
Down the road, at Cienega High School,students who own laptops can register for "digital sections" of several English, history and science classes.
And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create and share - lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable websites.
Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions,or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the internet.
"Kids are wired differently these days," said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles,Louisiana."They're digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.
"They don't engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote," Abshire continued."Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikipedias that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks."
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and maths textbooks with free "open-source" digital versions.
With California in dire straits, the governor hopes that free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
And given that students already receive so much information from the internet, iPods and Twitter feeds, he said, digital texts could save them from lugging around "antiquated, heavy,expensive textbooks".
The initiative, the first such statewide effort,has attracted widespread attention, since California, together with Texas, dominates the nation's textbook market.
Many superintendents are enthusiastic."In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks," said William M.Habermehl, superintendent of the 500,000-student Orange County schools."They can be better than traditional textbooks."
Schools that do not make the switch, Habermehl said, could lose their constituency.
"We're still in a brick-and-mortar,30-studentsto-one-teacher paradigm," Habermehl said,"but we need to get out of that framework to having 200 or 300 kids taking courses online, at night,24/7, whenever they want."
"I don't believe that charters and vouchers are the threat to schools in Orange County," he continued."What's a threat is the digital world - that someone's going to put together brilliant $200[6,825 baht] courses in French, in geometry by the best teachers in the world."
But the digital future is not quite on the horizon in most classrooms. For one thing, there is still a large digital divide. Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.
"A large portion of our kids don't have computers at home, and it would be way too costly to print out the digital textbooks," said Tim Ward, assistant superintendent for instruction in California's 24,000-student Chaffey Joint Union High School District, where almost half the students are from low-income families.
Many educators expect that digital textbooks and online courses will start small, perhaps for those who want to study a subject they cannot fit into their school schedule, or for those who need a few more credits to graduate.
Although California education authorities are reviewing 20 open-source high school maths and science texts to make sure they meet California's academic standards in time for use this autumn - and will soon announce which ones meet state standards - quick adoption is unlikely.
"I want our teachers to have the best materials available, and with digital textbooks, we could see the best lessons taught by the most dynamic teachers," said John A. Roach, superintendent of the Carlsbad, California, schools."But they're not going to replace paper texts right away."
Whenever it comes, the online onslaught and the competition from open-source materials - poses a real threat to traditional textbook publishers.
Pearson, the nation's largest one, submitted four texts in California, all of them already available online, as free supplements to their texts.
"We believe that the world is going digital,but the jury's still out on how this will evolve,"said Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokesperson."We're agnostic, so we'll provide digital, we'll provide print, and we'll see what our customers want."
Most of the digital texts submitted for review in California came from a non-profit group, CK-12 Foundation, which develops free "flexbooks"that can be customised to meet state standards,and added to by teachers. Its physics flexbook,a web-based, open-content compilation, was introduced in Virginia in March.
"The good part of our flexbooks is that they can be anything you want," said Neeru Khosla,a founder of the group."You can use them online,you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customise them, you can embed video. When people get over the mindset issue, they'll see that there's no reason to pay $100[3,412 baht] a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free."
The move to open-source materials is well under way in higher education, and may be accelerated by President Barack Obama's proposal to invest in creating free online courses as part of his push to improve community colleges.
Around the world, hundreds of universities,including MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, now use and share open-source courses. Connexions,a Rice University non-profit organisation devoted to open-source learning, submitted an algebra text to California.
But given the economy, many educators and technology experts agree that the K-12 digital revolution may be further off.
"There's a lot of stalled purchasing and decision making right now," said Mark Schneiderman,director of federal education policy at the Software & Information Industry Association."But it's going to happen."
For all the attention to the California initiative,digital textbooks are only the start of the revolution in educational technology.
"We should be bracing ourselves for way more interactive, way more engaging videos, activities and games," said Marina Leight of the Centre for Digital Education, which promotes digital education through surveys, publications and meetings.
Vail's Beyond Textbooks effort has moved in that direction. In an Empire High School history class on elections, for example, students created their own political parties, campaign websites and videos.
"Students learn the same concepts, but in a different way," said Matt Donaldson, Empire's principal.
"We've mapped out our state standards,"Donaldson said,"and our teachers have identified whatever resources they feel best covers them,whether it's a project they created themselves or an interesting site on the internet. What they don't do, generally, is take chapters from textbooks."
A second wind of grown-up parodies
The years between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I, it has often been remarked, were a golden age in Britain for the writing of children's books. Among the books published then are most of what we remember of Beatrix Potter; several of E. Nesbit's novels; Kipling's Jungle Book and Just So stories,J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens ,which became the basis for the stage play; Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows ; and A Little Princess and The Secret Garden , by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who eventually became a US citizen but was born in Manchester, England. In hindsight these books seem to reflect the long, sunny afternoon of Edwardian Britain, a moment of arrested innocence before the outbreak of the Great War. Many of them also yearn for a rural,pre-industrial Britain that was already vanishing. Part of their appeal is that they're nostalgic, as we are, for childhood itself, or for a simpler past that seems to embody childhood virtue.
Of all these books The Wind in the Willows may be the oddest and most endearing. Too late for the centennial of its original publication in 1908, but 150 years after the birth of the author, it has been reissued in two largeformat annotated editions - one edited by Seth Lerer and published by the Belknap imprint of Harvard University Press, the other edited by Annie Gauger and published by Norton as part of its well-established series that already includes Alice in Wonderland ,The Wizard of Oz and three volumes of Sherlock Holmes.
The Wind in the Willows is probably most famous for a single line, Rat's remark to Mole:"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats". But the boating adventures, charming as they are,are the least of what makes the book so singular.The Wind in the Willows is a children's book that, unlike most, doesn't describe a world without grown-ups; instead, it parodies the grownup world. The characters - Rat, Mole,Badger, Otter, Toad - aren't just woodland creatures with a few anthropomorphic traits. They're of indeterminate scale Toad is toad-size in some scenes but in others big enough to disguise himself as a human - and they have full-blown adult personalities, more nearly Edwardian clubmen than rodents,burrow-dwelling mammals or amphibians.Toad, who has certain traits in common with the overweight, fun-loving King Edward, even parts his hair in the middle, a detail that Beatrix Potter famously took exception to."A frog may wear galoshes," she wrote."But I don't hold with toads wearing beards or wigs!"
The adventures depicted in the book include the famous riverine idylls and a couple of almost equally well-known scenes of cosy underground bachelor life, which Lerer says owe something to Ruskin's ideal of British domesticity. There are also the much wilder episodes of Toad's manic car theft and car smashing; a Bolshevik takeover of Toad's great manor house, Toad Hall, by the lower-class stoats and weasels;and, most bizarre of all, a moment of sexual and religious ecstasy when Mole and Rat behold, in the silvery, creeping light of dawn, no less than a naked, shaggyflanked goat god, Pan himself, taking a break from his piping.
This scene is so charged that Gauger detects an element of homoeroticism. But then she, by far the more extensive and detailed of the two annotators, is quick to find an erotic subtext throughout a work that Grahame declared to be "free of the clash of sex". After Toad and Mole companionably spend the night together, she notes,"If this were a novel for adults, Mole and Rat would perhaps consummate their relationship amorously".
This kind of observation is indicative of the problems inherent in annotating a classic text,even one as well-known as this. On the one hand, parts of the cultural landscape that inspired the book are already lost to us, and there are echoes and allusions that we remain deaf to even after having them pointed out, others that we are apt to misinterpret from our habit of seeing sex everywhere. On the other hand, the book is still perfectly readable without pedantic notes or explanations, and Gauger's edition, in particular, is so laden with commentary that it sometimes resembles the Talmud, with more commentary than text on the page.
Both editors devote vast amounts of space to defining words such as "panoply","repast","provender","vouchsafe","sniffy","fusty" and "hummocky", which are all in the dictionary and whose meaning hasn't changed much, if at all, since 1908. And neither is entirely reliable:Both think that a "well-metalled road" is one literally paved with metal when a glance at Google would have told them that the term is a synonym for what we think of as tarmac.
Both editors, to be fair, are very good at picking up echoes of Romantic poetry, huge chunks of which were clearly swirling inside Kenneth Grahame's head while he was writing The Wind in the Willows , and both illuminate the text by suggesting, among other things, that Toad blusterer, aesthete, jailed prisoner - was inspired in part by Oscar Wilde. He probably also owes something to Horatio Bottomley, a flamboyant,gasbag journalist and politician of the time. Lerer further suggests that Toad's mania, his grandiosity,his compulsive lies and self-deceptions may derive from Grahame's reading in Krafft-Ebbing's Textbook of Insanity . A simpler explanation of Grahame's understanding of wild, unpredictable personality may be that he grew up with an unreliable, alcoholic father who eventually abandoned his two sons.
In general, Gauger is more willing than Lerer to find the roots of The Wind in the Willows inGrahame's biography, and though she sometimes overdoes it, or explains the parallels at tedious length, her commentary nevertheless provides a sad and illuminating subplot of sorts. In many ways, Grahame resembles A.A. Milne, who in 1929 dramatised the Toad sections of The Wind in the Willows , which always remained his favourite book. Both, though they had little use for women, were married to remote, difficult wives (Grahame courted his by writing to her in baby talk), and each had a single son whom he both doted on and neglected.
The Wind in the Willows began as a bedtime story and evolved over a series of letters (reproduced in the Gauger edition) that Grahame wrote to his son, Alastair, during the long months when he was farmed out to a nanny. Alastair Grahame was born part blind (an inspiration for Mole?)and appears to have been emotionally disturbed.After a miserable experience at school, he lay down on some train tracks while an undergraduate at Oxford and was decapitated.
Kenneth Grahame's own early life was scarcely much happier. His mother died when he was five, his father ran off, and he was raised by relatives who were too stingy to send him to university. Like P.G. Wodehouse, another aspiring writer with a blighted childhood, Grahame went into the banking business. Unlike Wodehouse,he stuck it out, and by the age of 39 had risen to become secretary of the Bank of England, a post that doesn't seem to have required him to do a whole lot.
His ostensible life was that of a proper Edwardian gent, with lots of male bonding and messing about in boats, and yet privately he burned to write, to live in his imagination. For all its apparent celebration of neatness and domestic orderliness,The Wind in the Willows is really a book about letting go. It begins with Mole, tired of spring cleaning, putting aside his whitewash brush and taking to the road, and its true hero is Toad, who is anarchy incarnate.
Officially, the text seems to disapprove of him:vain, swaggering and boastful, Toad isreprimanded and briefly chastened, and at one point the other characters even stage what we would call a full-scale intervention to confront him with his car-wrecking addiction. But he nonetheless runs away with the book, just as he runs away from prison disguised as a washerwoman, and supplies most of its narrative energy.
Though Rat is supposed to be a poet, Toad's Song of Himself, sung to an imaginary audience near the end, is the novel's most exuberant creation. To say that he is Grahame's alter ego is too simple. More likely he's the alter ego Grahame wished he could have but was also a little afraid of. Like a surprising number of stuffy-seeming Edwardians, Grahame was half in love with, and half terrified of, the idea of Pan, who never grows old, never goes to the office, never even bothers to put on clothes, and yet embodies all that is magical about the world we imagined we grew up in.
Of all these books The Wind in the Willows may be the oddest and most endearing. Too late for the centennial of its original publication in 1908, but 150 years after the birth of the author, it has been reissued in two largeformat annotated editions - one edited by Seth Lerer and published by the Belknap imprint of Harvard University Press, the other edited by Annie Gauger and published by Norton as part of its well-established series that already includes Alice in Wonderland ,The Wizard of Oz and three volumes of Sherlock Holmes.
The Wind in the Willows is probably most famous for a single line, Rat's remark to Mole:"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats". But the boating adventures, charming as they are,are the least of what makes the book so singular.The Wind in the Willows is a children's book that, unlike most, doesn't describe a world without grown-ups; instead, it parodies the grownup world. The characters - Rat, Mole,Badger, Otter, Toad - aren't just woodland creatures with a few anthropomorphic traits. They're of indeterminate scale Toad is toad-size in some scenes but in others big enough to disguise himself as a human - and they have full-blown adult personalities, more nearly Edwardian clubmen than rodents,burrow-dwelling mammals or amphibians.Toad, who has certain traits in common with the overweight, fun-loving King Edward, even parts his hair in the middle, a detail that Beatrix Potter famously took exception to."A frog may wear galoshes," she wrote."But I don't hold with toads wearing beards or wigs!"
The adventures depicted in the book include the famous riverine idylls and a couple of almost equally well-known scenes of cosy underground bachelor life, which Lerer says owe something to Ruskin's ideal of British domesticity. There are also the much wilder episodes of Toad's manic car theft and car smashing; a Bolshevik takeover of Toad's great manor house, Toad Hall, by the lower-class stoats and weasels;and, most bizarre of all, a moment of sexual and religious ecstasy when Mole and Rat behold, in the silvery, creeping light of dawn, no less than a naked, shaggyflanked goat god, Pan himself, taking a break from his piping.
This scene is so charged that Gauger detects an element of homoeroticism. But then she, by far the more extensive and detailed of the two annotators, is quick to find an erotic subtext throughout a work that Grahame declared to be "free of the clash of sex". After Toad and Mole companionably spend the night together, she notes,"If this were a novel for adults, Mole and Rat would perhaps consummate their relationship amorously".
This kind of observation is indicative of the problems inherent in annotating a classic text,even one as well-known as this. On the one hand, parts of the cultural landscape that inspired the book are already lost to us, and there are echoes and allusions that we remain deaf to even after having them pointed out, others that we are apt to misinterpret from our habit of seeing sex everywhere. On the other hand, the book is still perfectly readable without pedantic notes or explanations, and Gauger's edition, in particular, is so laden with commentary that it sometimes resembles the Talmud, with more commentary than text on the page.
Both editors devote vast amounts of space to defining words such as "panoply","repast","provender","vouchsafe","sniffy","fusty" and "hummocky", which are all in the dictionary and whose meaning hasn't changed much, if at all, since 1908. And neither is entirely reliable:Both think that a "well-metalled road" is one literally paved with metal when a glance at Google would have told them that the term is a synonym for what we think of as tarmac.
Both editors, to be fair, are very good at picking up echoes of Romantic poetry, huge chunks of which were clearly swirling inside Kenneth Grahame's head while he was writing The Wind in the Willows , and both illuminate the text by suggesting, among other things, that Toad blusterer, aesthete, jailed prisoner - was inspired in part by Oscar Wilde. He probably also owes something to Horatio Bottomley, a flamboyant,gasbag journalist and politician of the time. Lerer further suggests that Toad's mania, his grandiosity,his compulsive lies and self-deceptions may derive from Grahame's reading in Krafft-Ebbing's Textbook of Insanity . A simpler explanation of Grahame's understanding of wild, unpredictable personality may be that he grew up with an unreliable, alcoholic father who eventually abandoned his two sons.
In general, Gauger is more willing than Lerer to find the roots of The Wind in the Willows inGrahame's biography, and though she sometimes overdoes it, or explains the parallels at tedious length, her commentary nevertheless provides a sad and illuminating subplot of sorts. In many ways, Grahame resembles A.A. Milne, who in 1929 dramatised the Toad sections of The Wind in the Willows , which always remained his favourite book. Both, though they had little use for women, were married to remote, difficult wives (Grahame courted his by writing to her in baby talk), and each had a single son whom he both doted on and neglected.
The Wind in the Willows began as a bedtime story and evolved over a series of letters (reproduced in the Gauger edition) that Grahame wrote to his son, Alastair, during the long months when he was farmed out to a nanny. Alastair Grahame was born part blind (an inspiration for Mole?)and appears to have been emotionally disturbed.After a miserable experience at school, he lay down on some train tracks while an undergraduate at Oxford and was decapitated.
Kenneth Grahame's own early life was scarcely much happier. His mother died when he was five, his father ran off, and he was raised by relatives who were too stingy to send him to university. Like P.G. Wodehouse, another aspiring writer with a blighted childhood, Grahame went into the banking business. Unlike Wodehouse,he stuck it out, and by the age of 39 had risen to become secretary of the Bank of England, a post that doesn't seem to have required him to do a whole lot.
His ostensible life was that of a proper Edwardian gent, with lots of male bonding and messing about in boats, and yet privately he burned to write, to live in his imagination. For all its apparent celebration of neatness and domestic orderliness,The Wind in the Willows is really a book about letting go. It begins with Mole, tired of spring cleaning, putting aside his whitewash brush and taking to the road, and its true hero is Toad, who is anarchy incarnate.
Officially, the text seems to disapprove of him:vain, swaggering and boastful, Toad isreprimanded and briefly chastened, and at one point the other characters even stage what we would call a full-scale intervention to confront him with his car-wrecking addiction. But he nonetheless runs away with the book, just as he runs away from prison disguised as a washerwoman, and supplies most of its narrative energy.
Though Rat is supposed to be a poet, Toad's Song of Himself, sung to an imaginary audience near the end, is the novel's most exuberant creation. To say that he is Grahame's alter ego is too simple. More likely he's the alter ego Grahame wished he could have but was also a little afraid of. Like a surprising number of stuffy-seeming Edwardians, Grahame was half in love with, and half terrified of, the idea of Pan, who never grows old, never goes to the office, never even bothers to put on clothes, and yet embodies all that is magical about the world we imagined we grew up in.
Clark's latest rivals Agatha Christie's best
DYING FOR MERCY Mary Jane Clark William Morrow,377 pp,$24.99 ISBN 978-0061286117 By WAKA TSUNODA NEW YORK
Some thrillers end when a character commits suicide. In Mary Jane Clark's ingeniously plotted Dying for Mercy , everything begins with a suicide committed in a most bizarre manner.
Innis Wheelock is the husband of Valentina, a former New York governor who also served as ambassador to Italy.While living in Rome, he becomes obsessed with St Francis of Assisi, who taught repentance, and decides he must repent for "ugly things" he has done to ensure his wife's political success.
Once they return to the exclusive town of Tuxedo Park, New York, Innis renovates their family home to his specifications and renames it,"Pentimento",which comes from "pentire", the Italian word for repent. He then hosts a posh party in honour of St Francis, but before it ends, he is found dead, having stabbed himself in the hands and feet, and his left side, copying the wounds Jesus Christ suffered at his crucifixion.
Eliza Blake, co-host of the country's premier TV show,KEY to America , and one of the party guests, recalls a cryptic remark Innis made to her earlier that evening:"You care about right and wrong. I know you do." She has no idea what he meant, but takes mobile phone photos of the suicide scene before she is stopped by the police. Examining the photos later, her colleagues at the broadcast network, producer Annabelle Murphy and cameraman B.J. D'Elia,discover the first clue to the intricate puzzle Innis built into Pentimento's architecture. His posthumous hope: As each piece of the puzzle is revealed,each guilty party involved in the "ugly things" will come forward to confess and repent.
Of course, there is someone who doesn't want the puzzle solved and longburied secrets to come out. This shadowy figure begins bumping off potential threats in a grisly manner that mirrors Innis's obsession with religion.
As Agatha Christie did with her classic,And Then There were None , Clark deftly combines the clue-searching and puzzlesolving fun of mysteries, and the actionpacked and emotion-driven narrative thrust of thrillers. Her usual short, tothe-point chapters, lucid prose, numerous suspects and a faceless murderer's creepy monologues work together to keep the suspense at its chilliest level and the story moving at a brisk clip.
Eliza, who starred in Clark's previous novels such as Close to You and Do You Want to Know a Secret?again has the dubious honour of being almost murdered. She makes an attractive protagonist,but Annabelle,the memorable heroine of Nowhere to Run ,almost overshadows Eliza with her brain power and the strength of her character.This intrepid journalist could very well be the alter ego of the author, who worked as a producer-writer at CBS before turning to writing full-time.
Some thrillers end when a character commits suicide. In Mary Jane Clark's ingeniously plotted Dying for Mercy , everything begins with a suicide committed in a most bizarre manner.
Innis Wheelock is the husband of Valentina, a former New York governor who also served as ambassador to Italy.While living in Rome, he becomes obsessed with St Francis of Assisi, who taught repentance, and decides he must repent for "ugly things" he has done to ensure his wife's political success.
Once they return to the exclusive town of Tuxedo Park, New York, Innis renovates their family home to his specifications and renames it,"Pentimento",which comes from "pentire", the Italian word for repent. He then hosts a posh party in honour of St Francis, but before it ends, he is found dead, having stabbed himself in the hands and feet, and his left side, copying the wounds Jesus Christ suffered at his crucifixion.
Eliza Blake, co-host of the country's premier TV show,KEY to America , and one of the party guests, recalls a cryptic remark Innis made to her earlier that evening:"You care about right and wrong. I know you do." She has no idea what he meant, but takes mobile phone photos of the suicide scene before she is stopped by the police. Examining the photos later, her colleagues at the broadcast network, producer Annabelle Murphy and cameraman B.J. D'Elia,discover the first clue to the intricate puzzle Innis built into Pentimento's architecture. His posthumous hope: As each piece of the puzzle is revealed,each guilty party involved in the "ugly things" will come forward to confess and repent.
Of course, there is someone who doesn't want the puzzle solved and longburied secrets to come out. This shadowy figure begins bumping off potential threats in a grisly manner that mirrors Innis's obsession with religion.
As Agatha Christie did with her classic,And Then There were None , Clark deftly combines the clue-searching and puzzlesolving fun of mysteries, and the actionpacked and emotion-driven narrative thrust of thrillers. Her usual short, tothe-point chapters, lucid prose, numerous suspects and a faceless murderer's creepy monologues work together to keep the suspense at its chilliest level and the story moving at a brisk clip.
Eliza, who starred in Clark's previous novels such as Close to You and Do You Want to Know a Secret?again has the dubious honour of being almost murdered. She makes an attractive protagonist,but Annabelle,the memorable heroine of Nowhere to Run ,almost overshadows Eliza with her brain power and the strength of her character.This intrepid journalist could very well be the alter ego of the author, who worked as a producer-writer at CBS before turning to writing full-time.
The last marathon
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Karuna while trekking through the jungle of Burma on his way to India while
a novice (second from right with a blanket);Buddhadasa Bhikkhu who called Karuna his 'dharma
brother'; samples of his translations of works by
Indian greats; during his dangerous mission to mainland China (fourth from right); posing with Sang Pathanothai at the Lardyao Political Jail, and with one
of Karuna's many benefactors, Pandit Raghunath Sharma, director of the Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge.
"Life's journey is along an unchartered path, here hills and hollows overtake us unawares."
Thus Karuna Kusalasaya cited Rabindranath Tagore in the last chapter of his autobiography,Life Without A Choice , which he penned as a series of letters to his three children in the mid-1980's. The book relates an amazing life of ordeals, often wrought by forces beyond the owner's control or anticipations. But Karuna's "life without a choice" is also about human courage and perseverance - to face every twist and turn without a grudge. In person as in words, Ajarn Karuna was that gentle,humble soul whose "lion-hearted"strength was concealed in his frail,diminutive physique.
I first met Ajarn Karuna by sheer coincidence. A friend and former 'Outlook' colleague mentioned one day she would like to interview the "master" of Indian studies at his house on Prannok Road. Prannok? That was soo close to my house, and I immediately volunteered to tag along with her and our photographer friend to do the interview.
That was almost 12 years ago, a traditional cycle of years by 12 zodiac signs already completed. But the first impressions of his spartan shophouse were as vivid as ever. Right next to the busy street of Prannok, the entrance door, painted in pale blue, was swung open by his young, a bit shy-looking maid. The three of us followed her through the dimly-lit and narrow hall,on both sides flanked by bookshelves,on the walls were hung photographs and/or frames of quotations by some historic figures from India. I recognised Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharal Nehru. Thanks to Karuna and also to his wife, Rueng-urai, his cotranslator on several occasions, works by those Indian luminaries have become accessible to the Thai public in wellpolished Thai prose, and ties between the two countries thus strengthened over the half past century.
Then in his late seventies, and a longestablished reputation as the "guru"about all things Indian, Ajarn Karuna turned out to be a lively and friendly old man, the kind you would like to have for a next door neighbour. He took delight in our visit, and answered every single question filed by us in so obliging a manner. How he became an orphan from a very young age after his father was wrongfully charged and thrown into a prison where he died a few years later,and his mother had also passed away some time before, totally broken by the family's misfortune; how he had to toil for a living carrying buckets of water from the Kwai Yai River to his boss'house in Pak Nam Pho, Nakhon Sawan;how he was slapped and kicked out by his boss after he accidentally slipped and broke their crockery; how penniless,he decided to join an arduous trek led by an Italian monk from Thailand to India where he would be spending the next 13 years, the last four in the Internees-of-War camps during World War II; how later back in his homeland he would be put in jail again, this time for more than eight years, on another unjust charge of being a communist sympathiser (due to his joining two secret missions to re-establish diplomatic relationships with mainland China during the Pibulsongkram regime).
Listening to our conversation that dragged on and on, his wife Rueng-urai chipped in and offered bits of comments
every now and then.(For Karuna's almost 10-year detention she struggled to bring up the children, took care of the house,as well as nurtured her husband's morale and prodded him to embark on his muchpraised translation works - Karuna would refer to his wife as his ardhangini - better half.) But most of the time, she just smiled her kind, serene smiles. By that time, Ajarn Rueng-urai had more or less lost her eyesight. Still, I could not help feeling the lady emanated a remarkable sense of calmness and insight into how to sustain a peaceful life not unlike her husband.
From that first interview, I would return to their house again and again.Looking back, I wish I had done more.For in the elderly couple's presence, I would feel refreshed and my faith in humanity regained. Here are two individuals who have been through so much,but still managed to maintain a healthy view of life, and try their best to make it as meaningful as possible. Re-reading Karuna's autobiography again recently,I could imagine his "fatherly" voice narrating the past events in his turbulent life, but with very little trace of bitterness or cynicism. He rarely speaks ill of anyone,even recalling how the group of police officers who arrested him in 1958 were "very polite" and allowed him to leave his house without being handcuffed.Regarding the time he spent at the "University of Lardyao Political Jail", he said it has enabled him to concentrate on writing and translating books, including Tagore's Gitanjali , Nehru's The Discovery of India , Gandhi's autobiography MyExperiments With Truth , and so on.
"I may add that I touch on this issue without any sense of sarcasm," Karuna wrote in his book."What I wish to bring home to you is that by being in detention and cut off from the outside world, I was able to attend to literary work more fruitfully. To me, Sarit's coup d'etat [which entailed McCarthyite mass arrests of hundreds of Thai intellectuals including Karuna] was, therefore,'a blessing in disguise'(but, let me point out, with regard to literary work only)."
Another constant trait of the man is his humility. Throughout his memoirs,Karuna would every now and then express his gratefulness to several individuals whose kindness, he says, has enabled him to become what he is, be they the Italian monk Venerable Lokanatha, his Hindi teacher Venerable Ananda Kausalyayana, HRH Prince Paribatra (who provided him a scholarship for a couple of years of his study in India),Professor Tan Yun-Shan of the Shantiniketan University, and so on.
But when it concerns his own conduct,Ajarn Karuna seems to adopt a somewhat less forgiving attitude. One episode in Life Without A Choice described how his over-diligence to do his journalism work inadvertently put his then pregnant wife in a dangerous childbirth situation.
"Every time I think of the events that took place on that day I cannot but censure myself with shame. I was really ashamed of myself. Even today, a husband and a father in the full sense,I can't forget this sin on my part."
If only the leaders of our country could be this honest and willing to make such amends! A few years ago, while walking along the bustling street of Prannok, I chanced upon a moving sight - that of Ajarn Karuna tenderly holding his wife's hand, guiding her to walk across the zebra crossing, step by step. Little did they realise how their act has sparked a warm flutter inside of me and made me smile the rest of the day.
One does not need much in order to be content. Toward the end of his autobiography, Karuna compares his life to a long marathon walk:
"My Dear Children, at this twilight of life which soon will turn into 'dark night'in accordance with the law of nature,you may like to ask me how I feel about my life that has gone by. In reply let me say that I am satisfied with all that have taken place and do not feel slighted in the least. If I were to be compared with a marathon race walker, despite all the disadvantages suffered by me from the very outset, I think I am justified to claim that I also reached the victory line like others. In any case, I have nothing to complain against life because life is struggle and none can choose his birth".
Last week, at his funeral held at Wat Kruawan on the Thon Buri side of the Chao Phraya River, I was told by the organisers that only "Ajarn's nails and hair" were placed as his symbolic presence throughout the service. Long before his recent demise, he had offered to donate his body to the medical school for further study. After all, his name,Karuna , does means compassion.
OBITUARY FOR KARUNA KUSALASAYA
(MAY 10,1920 TO AUGUST 13,2009)
a novice (second from right with a blanket);Buddhadasa Bhikkhu who called Karuna his 'dharma
brother'; samples of his translations of works by
Indian greats; during his dangerous mission to mainland China (fourth from right); posing with Sang Pathanothai at the Lardyao Political Jail, and with one
of Karuna's many benefactors, Pandit Raghunath Sharma, director of the Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge.
"Life's journey is along an unchartered path, here hills and hollows overtake us unawares."
Thus Karuna Kusalasaya cited Rabindranath Tagore in the last chapter of his autobiography,Life Without A Choice , which he penned as a series of letters to his three children in the mid-1980's. The book relates an amazing life of ordeals, often wrought by forces beyond the owner's control or anticipations. But Karuna's "life without a choice" is also about human courage and perseverance - to face every twist and turn without a grudge. In person as in words, Ajarn Karuna was that gentle,humble soul whose "lion-hearted"strength was concealed in his frail,diminutive physique.
I first met Ajarn Karuna by sheer coincidence. A friend and former 'Outlook' colleague mentioned one day she would like to interview the "master" of Indian studies at his house on Prannok Road. Prannok? That was soo close to my house, and I immediately volunteered to tag along with her and our photographer friend to do the interview.
That was almost 12 years ago, a traditional cycle of years by 12 zodiac signs already completed. But the first impressions of his spartan shophouse were as vivid as ever. Right next to the busy street of Prannok, the entrance door, painted in pale blue, was swung open by his young, a bit shy-looking maid. The three of us followed her through the dimly-lit and narrow hall,on both sides flanked by bookshelves,on the walls were hung photographs and/or frames of quotations by some historic figures from India. I recognised Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharal Nehru. Thanks to Karuna and also to his wife, Rueng-urai, his cotranslator on several occasions, works by those Indian luminaries have become accessible to the Thai public in wellpolished Thai prose, and ties between the two countries thus strengthened over the half past century.
Then in his late seventies, and a longestablished reputation as the "guru"about all things Indian, Ajarn Karuna turned out to be a lively and friendly old man, the kind you would like to have for a next door neighbour. He took delight in our visit, and answered every single question filed by us in so obliging a manner. How he became an orphan from a very young age after his father was wrongfully charged and thrown into a prison where he died a few years later,and his mother had also passed away some time before, totally broken by the family's misfortune; how he had to toil for a living carrying buckets of water from the Kwai Yai River to his boss'house in Pak Nam Pho, Nakhon Sawan;how he was slapped and kicked out by his boss after he accidentally slipped and broke their crockery; how penniless,he decided to join an arduous trek led by an Italian monk from Thailand to India where he would be spending the next 13 years, the last four in the Internees-of-War camps during World War II; how later back in his homeland he would be put in jail again, this time for more than eight years, on another unjust charge of being a communist sympathiser (due to his joining two secret missions to re-establish diplomatic relationships with mainland China during the Pibulsongkram regime).
Listening to our conversation that dragged on and on, his wife Rueng-urai chipped in and offered bits of comments
every now and then.(For Karuna's almost 10-year detention she struggled to bring up the children, took care of the house,as well as nurtured her husband's morale and prodded him to embark on his muchpraised translation works - Karuna would refer to his wife as his ardhangini - better half.) But most of the time, she just smiled her kind, serene smiles. By that time, Ajarn Rueng-urai had more or less lost her eyesight. Still, I could not help feeling the lady emanated a remarkable sense of calmness and insight into how to sustain a peaceful life not unlike her husband.
From that first interview, I would return to their house again and again.Looking back, I wish I had done more.For in the elderly couple's presence, I would feel refreshed and my faith in humanity regained. Here are two individuals who have been through so much,but still managed to maintain a healthy view of life, and try their best to make it as meaningful as possible. Re-reading Karuna's autobiography again recently,I could imagine his "fatherly" voice narrating the past events in his turbulent life, but with very little trace of bitterness or cynicism. He rarely speaks ill of anyone,even recalling how the group of police officers who arrested him in 1958 were "very polite" and allowed him to leave his house without being handcuffed.Regarding the time he spent at the "University of Lardyao Political Jail", he said it has enabled him to concentrate on writing and translating books, including Tagore's Gitanjali , Nehru's The Discovery of India , Gandhi's autobiography MyExperiments With Truth , and so on.
"I may add that I touch on this issue without any sense of sarcasm," Karuna wrote in his book."What I wish to bring home to you is that by being in detention and cut off from the outside world, I was able to attend to literary work more fruitfully. To me, Sarit's coup d'etat [which entailed McCarthyite mass arrests of hundreds of Thai intellectuals including Karuna] was, therefore,'a blessing in disguise'(but, let me point out, with regard to literary work only)."
Another constant trait of the man is his humility. Throughout his memoirs,Karuna would every now and then express his gratefulness to several individuals whose kindness, he says, has enabled him to become what he is, be they the Italian monk Venerable Lokanatha, his Hindi teacher Venerable Ananda Kausalyayana, HRH Prince Paribatra (who provided him a scholarship for a couple of years of his study in India),Professor Tan Yun-Shan of the Shantiniketan University, and so on.
But when it concerns his own conduct,Ajarn Karuna seems to adopt a somewhat less forgiving attitude. One episode in Life Without A Choice described how his over-diligence to do his journalism work inadvertently put his then pregnant wife in a dangerous childbirth situation.
"Every time I think of the events that took place on that day I cannot but censure myself with shame. I was really ashamed of myself. Even today, a husband and a father in the full sense,I can't forget this sin on my part."
If only the leaders of our country could be this honest and willing to make such amends! A few years ago, while walking along the bustling street of Prannok, I chanced upon a moving sight - that of Ajarn Karuna tenderly holding his wife's hand, guiding her to walk across the zebra crossing, step by step. Little did they realise how their act has sparked a warm flutter inside of me and made me smile the rest of the day.
One does not need much in order to be content. Toward the end of his autobiography, Karuna compares his life to a long marathon walk:
"My Dear Children, at this twilight of life which soon will turn into 'dark night'in accordance with the law of nature,you may like to ask me how I feel about my life that has gone by. In reply let me say that I am satisfied with all that have taken place and do not feel slighted in the least. If I were to be compared with a marathon race walker, despite all the disadvantages suffered by me from the very outset, I think I am justified to claim that I also reached the victory line like others. In any case, I have nothing to complain against life because life is struggle and none can choose his birth".
Last week, at his funeral held at Wat Kruawan on the Thon Buri side of the Chao Phraya River, I was told by the organisers that only "Ajarn's nails and hair" were placed as his symbolic presence throughout the service. Long before his recent demise, he had offered to donate his body to the medical school for further study. After all, his name,Karuna , does means compassion.
OBITUARY FOR KARUNA KUSALASAYA
(MAY 10,1920 TO AUGUST 13,2009)
THE SNAKEHEADS ON AMERICAN SHORES
Author Patrick Radden Keefe vividly outlines how close-knit Fujianese enclaves in the US could drift into crime in general,and human smuggling in particular By Janet Maslin
On Jan 8,1993, in an electronics store on Allen Street,in lower Manhattan, two factions of the Fuk Ching gang squared up in a showdown that resulted in a double homicide.
The shoot-out took place in broad daylight in a busy neighbourhood. And yet, according to Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The Snakehead , none of New York's major Englishlanguage newspapers even mentioned this violent crime. Although Keefe does not invoke the relevant movie dialogue, a "Forget it,Jake - it's Chinatown" attitude might have helped keep the press away.
But the Chinatown described in The Snakehead is such an impenetrable place that attitudes of resignation are understandable.Keefe's book focuses on a ghetto within a ghetto, the New York community of emigres from Fujian province of China who began arriving in the US in large numbers in the 1980s.
In a formidably well-researched book that is as much a paean to its author's industriousness as it is a chronicle of crime, Keefe outlines the way in which the Fujianese were forced out of China, driven to take desperately roundabout and dangerous travel routes and eventually arrived in the US courtesy of the lucrative human smuggling business."Snakehead" is the term for an entrepreneurial leader of that trade.
The stories told in The Snakehead are so long and convoluted that Keefe has had to go to astonishing lengths to follow them. He has contended with formidable language barriers, convoluted global trade routes,foreign governments that take an anythinggoes approach to issuing passports, corruption in the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), rivalry between that agency and the FBI, and rogue developments like the incarceration of a large group of illegal Chinese immigrants in York, Pennsylvania.
Keefe has also tackled a major player, a snakehead known as Sister Ping, who seems determined to stay out of public view. When Keefe, who wound up interviewing her in writing, initially approached her about his reporting, she gave an answer that validated everything his book would go on to say about her:"What's in it for me?"
That seems to have been Sister Ping's attitude from the start. She emigrated to the US, as her father had before her, and quickly established herself as a hard-working businesswoman operating a family-run shop in New York's Chinatown with her husband,Cheung Yick Tak, a man who shares little of his wife's remarkable ability to shrug off the law. On one of the first occasions Sister Ping was interrogated by an official, she flatly told INS investigator Joe Occhipinti:"You don't have the time to get me. Or the resources."Keefe says what impressed Mr Occhipinti about this exchange was that she was right.
Keefe has the wisdom to realise that Sister Ping, for all her flouting of US law enforcement,is not a sufficiently vivid or galvanising figure on whom to centre a book. So she becomes one of many, to the point that The Snakehead struggles to balance the many twisting story lines that fill its pages. Part of the book describes the conditions in Fujian province that prompted such a strong wave of chain migration (the kind in which one villager or family member follows another to the same overseas destination). It addresses the paradoxical way in which new prosperity in China drove away some of that country's most skilled - and most motivated - workers.
And Keefe outlines the way in which closeknit Fujianese enclaves in the US could drift into crime in general and human smuggling in particular.
In the process, he makes crucial distinctions between human smuggling (voluntary on both sides) and human trafficking (akin to slavery) while also demonstrating how US law has made the people-smuggling business so lucrative.
Crackdowns at borders, Keefe says, are only more apt to drive immigrants into the hands of skilled snakeheads. And when the Chinese are willing to pay US$30,000 each to enter the US illegally, it becomes both practical and profitable for smugglers to hire lowpaid local decoys to distract border patrols.Snakeheads also put themselves at relatively low legal risk compared with drug smugglers who face stiff sentences if arrested and convicted.
Although Keefe does an admirable job of navigating the minutiae of his story, the largerscale events and historical currents are what stand out.The Snakehead begins with the shipwreck of the Golden Venture , a vessel filled with illegal immigrants, near a New York beach in 1993.
It describes what a ticklish matter this became for the brand-new Clinton administration, which faced the challenge of reconciling sympathy for Chinese refugees after Tiananmen Square with resistance to illegal immigration.
And it illustrates beautifully how oddly politics can evolve. The story takes an unexpected turn once China's one-child policy - and propaganda-ready stories of forced abortions and sterilisations conducted there -made the immigrants' cause unexpectedly attractive to America's religious right.
The way political opponents converged in York, to form the immigrants-rights group called the People of the Golden Vision and usher Golden Venture survivors into their new American lives is inspiring, but it makes sense only in the full context of Keefe's many interconnected tales.
An all-American footnote: One Chineseborn immigrant emerged from prison, was hired by a Pennsylvania weaving company,went to live rent-free in a room at the mill's facilities and increased the company's output by 50% over his first three years. He became American enough to make fabric used in costumes for re-enactors of Civil War battles.NYT News Service
On Jan 8,1993, in an electronics store on Allen Street,in lower Manhattan, two factions of the Fuk Ching gang squared up in a showdown that resulted in a double homicide.
The shoot-out took place in broad daylight in a busy neighbourhood. And yet, according to Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The Snakehead , none of New York's major Englishlanguage newspapers even mentioned this violent crime. Although Keefe does not invoke the relevant movie dialogue, a "Forget it,Jake - it's Chinatown" attitude might have helped keep the press away.
But the Chinatown described in The Snakehead is such an impenetrable place that attitudes of resignation are understandable.Keefe's book focuses on a ghetto within a ghetto, the New York community of emigres from Fujian province of China who began arriving in the US in large numbers in the 1980s.
In a formidably well-researched book that is as much a paean to its author's industriousness as it is a chronicle of crime, Keefe outlines the way in which the Fujianese were forced out of China, driven to take desperately roundabout and dangerous travel routes and eventually arrived in the US courtesy of the lucrative human smuggling business."Snakehead" is the term for an entrepreneurial leader of that trade.
The stories told in The Snakehead are so long and convoluted that Keefe has had to go to astonishing lengths to follow them. He has contended with formidable language barriers, convoluted global trade routes,foreign governments that take an anythinggoes approach to issuing passports, corruption in the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), rivalry between that agency and the FBI, and rogue developments like the incarceration of a large group of illegal Chinese immigrants in York, Pennsylvania.
Keefe has also tackled a major player, a snakehead known as Sister Ping, who seems determined to stay out of public view. When Keefe, who wound up interviewing her in writing, initially approached her about his reporting, she gave an answer that validated everything his book would go on to say about her:"What's in it for me?"
That seems to have been Sister Ping's attitude from the start. She emigrated to the US, as her father had before her, and quickly established herself as a hard-working businesswoman operating a family-run shop in New York's Chinatown with her husband,Cheung Yick Tak, a man who shares little of his wife's remarkable ability to shrug off the law. On one of the first occasions Sister Ping was interrogated by an official, she flatly told INS investigator Joe Occhipinti:"You don't have the time to get me. Or the resources."Keefe says what impressed Mr Occhipinti about this exchange was that she was right.
Keefe has the wisdom to realise that Sister Ping, for all her flouting of US law enforcement,is not a sufficiently vivid or galvanising figure on whom to centre a book. So she becomes one of many, to the point that The Snakehead struggles to balance the many twisting story lines that fill its pages. Part of the book describes the conditions in Fujian province that prompted such a strong wave of chain migration (the kind in which one villager or family member follows another to the same overseas destination). It addresses the paradoxical way in which new prosperity in China drove away some of that country's most skilled - and most motivated - workers.
And Keefe outlines the way in which closeknit Fujianese enclaves in the US could drift into crime in general and human smuggling in particular.
In the process, he makes crucial distinctions between human smuggling (voluntary on both sides) and human trafficking (akin to slavery) while also demonstrating how US law has made the people-smuggling business so lucrative.
Crackdowns at borders, Keefe says, are only more apt to drive immigrants into the hands of skilled snakeheads. And when the Chinese are willing to pay US$30,000 each to enter the US illegally, it becomes both practical and profitable for smugglers to hire lowpaid local decoys to distract border patrols.Snakeheads also put themselves at relatively low legal risk compared with drug smugglers who face stiff sentences if arrested and convicted.
Although Keefe does an admirable job of navigating the minutiae of his story, the largerscale events and historical currents are what stand out.The Snakehead begins with the shipwreck of the Golden Venture , a vessel filled with illegal immigrants, near a New York beach in 1993.
It describes what a ticklish matter this became for the brand-new Clinton administration, which faced the challenge of reconciling sympathy for Chinese refugees after Tiananmen Square with resistance to illegal immigration.
And it illustrates beautifully how oddly politics can evolve. The story takes an unexpected turn once China's one-child policy - and propaganda-ready stories of forced abortions and sterilisations conducted there -made the immigrants' cause unexpectedly attractive to America's religious right.
The way political opponents converged in York, to form the immigrants-rights group called the People of the Golden Vision and usher Golden Venture survivors into their new American lives is inspiring, but it makes sense only in the full context of Keefe's many interconnected tales.
An all-American footnote: One Chineseborn immigrant emerged from prison, was hired by a Pennsylvania weaving company,went to live rent-free in a room at the mill's facilities and increased the company's output by 50% over his first three years. He became American enough to make fabric used in costumes for re-enactors of Civil War battles.NYT News Service
VIETNAM'S VITALITY, VIGOUR AND VIVACITY
If there is one country in Southeast Asia that everyone has heard about long before they discover the region,it's Vietnam. Of course, such infamy wasn't always for the right reasons,but this is the new Vietnam and it's one of the most intoxicating places on earth. It's a kaleidoscope of vivid colours and subtle shades, of exotic sights and curious sounds, of compelling history and contrasting cultures.
Nature has blessed Vietnam with a bountiful harvest. From the soaring mountains of the far north to the carpet of emerald-green rice paddies in the south,Vietnam is little short of stunning. The curvaceous coastline is defined by endless beaches, lovely lagoons and hidden coves.
Inland, peasant women in conical hats still tend to their fields, children ride buffalo along country paths, and minority people scratch out a living from impossible gradients.
If Vietnam has a soundtrack, it's the buzz of a million motorbikes, the cries of street hawkers plying their wares and the tinkle of pagodas drawing the faithful to prayer. Here, the modern and medieval collide. The big cities are strikingly sophisticated, with gourmet restaurants and designer boutiques, but turn a random corner and find yourself travelling back in time.
For culinary crusaders, Vietnam is a treasure trove of more than 500 different dishes. It's a wonderful world of pungent herbs and secret spices. Dip delicate spring rolls in nuoc mam , a fish sauce that, for the Vietnamese, is as compulsory as ketchup. Play down-in-one with ruou (pronounced xeo), the whisky of the mountains.Or embrace the street life with a bowl of pho at a pint-sized plastic table.Over the centuries locals have absorbed and adapted Chinese, Indian, French and even Japanese techniques and specialities to their own kitchens and palates, and,more recently, expatriates and those Vietnamese chefs who have spent time cooking overseas have breathed new life into whitetablecloth dining scenes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
But sadly the sorrows of war weigh heavily on the consciousness of all who can remember it, and the Vietnamese side of the story is told at poignant sites across the country. Although fiercely protective of their independence and sovereignty,the Vietnamese are graciously welcoming of foreigners who come as guests, not would-be conquerors.
Of course, the country's history did not begin and end with the American war and the country is littered with vestiges of empires past and battles fought, all of which are elements in piecing together the story of Vietnam today.
Politically, Vietnam remains a perplexing place. Vietnam's population hovers at about 85.5 million, ranking it the 13th most populous country in the world, and with its population growth rate it could soon hit the top 10.
Either way, there is no doubt the latest Asian dragon has awoken from its slumber.Tourism has had a huge impact on Vietnam in the past two decades, helping plug the Vietnamese back into the world.
It has spread into areas that other businesses cannot reach, and empowered a new generation of young Viets to a better life. Dynamic in commerce and dedicated to their families. They love to share a joke,a story, and getting to know some Vietnamese beyond the tourism industry can be the highlight of a visit.
The Vietnamese have vitality as tangible as the traffic on the street. Vietnam is in top gear. Try and catch it before it reinvents itself as another Malaysia or Thailand. For now, it remains one of the most enriching,enlivening and enticing countries on earth.
Nature has blessed Vietnam with a bountiful harvest. From the soaring mountains of the far north to the carpet of emerald-green rice paddies in the south,Vietnam is little short of stunning. The curvaceous coastline is defined by endless beaches, lovely lagoons and hidden coves.
Inland, peasant women in conical hats still tend to their fields, children ride buffalo along country paths, and minority people scratch out a living from impossible gradients.
If Vietnam has a soundtrack, it's the buzz of a million motorbikes, the cries of street hawkers plying their wares and the tinkle of pagodas drawing the faithful to prayer. Here, the modern and medieval collide. The big cities are strikingly sophisticated, with gourmet restaurants and designer boutiques, but turn a random corner and find yourself travelling back in time.
For culinary crusaders, Vietnam is a treasure trove of more than 500 different dishes. It's a wonderful world of pungent herbs and secret spices. Dip delicate spring rolls in nuoc mam , a fish sauce that, for the Vietnamese, is as compulsory as ketchup. Play down-in-one with ruou (pronounced xeo), the whisky of the mountains.Or embrace the street life with a bowl of pho at a pint-sized plastic table.Over the centuries locals have absorbed and adapted Chinese, Indian, French and even Japanese techniques and specialities to their own kitchens and palates, and,more recently, expatriates and those Vietnamese chefs who have spent time cooking overseas have breathed new life into whitetablecloth dining scenes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
But sadly the sorrows of war weigh heavily on the consciousness of all who can remember it, and the Vietnamese side of the story is told at poignant sites across the country. Although fiercely protective of their independence and sovereignty,the Vietnamese are graciously welcoming of foreigners who come as guests, not would-be conquerors.
Of course, the country's history did not begin and end with the American war and the country is littered with vestiges of empires past and battles fought, all of which are elements in piecing together the story of Vietnam today.
Politically, Vietnam remains a perplexing place. Vietnam's population hovers at about 85.5 million, ranking it the 13th most populous country in the world, and with its population growth rate it could soon hit the top 10.
Either way, there is no doubt the latest Asian dragon has awoken from its slumber.Tourism has had a huge impact on Vietnam in the past two decades, helping plug the Vietnamese back into the world.
It has spread into areas that other businesses cannot reach, and empowered a new generation of young Viets to a better life. Dynamic in commerce and dedicated to their families. They love to share a joke,a story, and getting to know some Vietnamese beyond the tourism industry can be the highlight of a visit.
The Vietnamese have vitality as tangible as the traffic on the street. Vietnam is in top gear. Try and catch it before it reinvents itself as another Malaysia or Thailand. For now, it remains one of the most enriching,enlivening and enticing countries on earth.
Friday, August 21, 2009
WoW jumps into print
The media group Future announced on Thursday that it had teamed up with the video game publisher Blizzard Entertainment to launch an official magazine about the hugely popular video game "World of Warcraft."
Future said the subscription-only World of Warcraft: The Magazine would be a quarterly publication and would launch simultaneously this weekend in English, French, German and Spanish.
Future, in a statement, said the magazine would "cover all aspects of 'World of Warcraft' through insider insights and player perspectives."The first issue will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the release of 'World of Warcraft' by showing how the game has evolved and taking a look into its future."
"We're bringing together an international team of player-writer experts to create in-depth articles about World of Warcraft's design, art, lore and community, as well as all aspects of its gameplay," said Julian Rignall, editorial director of the magazine.
World of Warcraft is the most popular multiplayer online role-playing game on the planet with more than 11 million subscribers.
Future said the magazine will be availablethroughworldofwarcraftthemagazine.com as a one- or two-year subscription.
It will cost $39.95 a year in the United States and 34.95 in Europe.
Future said the subscription-only World of Warcraft: The Magazine would be a quarterly publication and would launch simultaneously this weekend in English, French, German and Spanish.
Future, in a statement, said the magazine would "cover all aspects of 'World of Warcraft' through insider insights and player perspectives."The first issue will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the release of 'World of Warcraft' by showing how the game has evolved and taking a look into its future."
"We're bringing together an international team of player-writer experts to create in-depth articles about World of Warcraft's design, art, lore and community, as well as all aspects of its gameplay," said Julian Rignall, editorial director of the magazine.
World of Warcraft is the most popular multiplayer online role-playing game on the planet with more than 11 million subscribers.
Future said the magazine will be availablethroughworldofwarcraftthemagazine.com as a one- or two-year subscription.
It will cost $39.95 a year in the United States and 34.95 in Europe.
Free London tabloid folds
Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper arm plans to close its lossmaking afternoon freesheet thelondonpaper , bringing to an end a fierce threeyear battle for young commuters on the streets of the capital.
Murdoch's son James, the head of News Corporation in Europe and Asia,said the firm planned to close the afternoon tabloid after it posted an almost ฃ13 million pretax loss for the year, following an advertising slump.
The paper launched three years ago,covering sports, news, London events and celebrities, to compete in a fierce battle against the rival freesheet London Lite and the paid-for Evening Standard .The battle resulted in an army of young distributors jostling with each other and commuters to hand out papers on the busy capital streets, often thrusting them into the arms of Londoners as they made their way home.
"We have taken a tough decision that reflects our priorities as a business,"James Murdoch said in a statement."The team at thelondonpaper has made great strides in a short space of time with innovative design and a fresh approach but the performance of the business in a difficult free evening newspaper sector has fallen short of expectations."
He said the group would launch a consultation with around 60 staff and then focus on its core titles of The Times ,Sunday Times ,The Sun and News of the World .Enders media analyst Doug McCabe told Reuters even Rupert Murdoch had to make decisions based on commercial realities. The newspaper magnate who has titles all over the world has also talked recently about charging for online content.
"Advertising-based media is having a very difficult time in this recession,some of which is due to structural change,and the decision is all part of that context," he said."So it's not surprising but he won't have taken it lightly."
The group said the paper recorded a pretax loss of ฃ12.9 million in the year to June 29,2008.
Thelondonpaper launched in 2006 and was handing out over 500,000 copies a day according to data for July, compared with 400,000 for the London Lite , which is owned by Associated Newspapers.
Daily Mail & General Trust's Associated launched its London Lite at the same time as thelondonpaper in spite of also owning the Evening Standard . After a hit to sales, the Daily Mail sold the Standard earlier this year to Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev.
McCabe said he expected Associated to at least review the London Lite following thelondonpaper decision, as it is also likely to have been hit by the advertising slump.
The Daily Mail said they were watching the situation but would not comment any further at the moment.
Murdoch's son James, the head of News Corporation in Europe and Asia,said the firm planned to close the afternoon tabloid after it posted an almost ฃ13 million pretax loss for the year, following an advertising slump.
The paper launched three years ago,covering sports, news, London events and celebrities, to compete in a fierce battle against the rival freesheet London Lite and the paid-for Evening Standard .The battle resulted in an army of young distributors jostling with each other and commuters to hand out papers on the busy capital streets, often thrusting them into the arms of Londoners as they made their way home.
"We have taken a tough decision that reflects our priorities as a business,"James Murdoch said in a statement."The team at thelondonpaper has made great strides in a short space of time with innovative design and a fresh approach but the performance of the business in a difficult free evening newspaper sector has fallen short of expectations."
He said the group would launch a consultation with around 60 staff and then focus on its core titles of The Times ,Sunday Times ,The Sun and News of the World .Enders media analyst Doug McCabe told Reuters even Rupert Murdoch had to make decisions based on commercial realities. The newspaper magnate who has titles all over the world has also talked recently about charging for online content.
"Advertising-based media is having a very difficult time in this recession,some of which is due to structural change,and the decision is all part of that context," he said."So it's not surprising but he won't have taken it lightly."
The group said the paper recorded a pretax loss of ฃ12.9 million in the year to June 29,2008.
Thelondonpaper launched in 2006 and was handing out over 500,000 copies a day according to data for July, compared with 400,000 for the London Lite , which is owned by Associated Newspapers.
Daily Mail & General Trust's Associated launched its London Lite at the same time as thelondonpaper in spite of also owning the Evening Standard . After a hit to sales, the Daily Mail sold the Standard earlier this year to Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev.
McCabe said he expected Associated to at least review the London Lite following thelondonpaper decision, as it is also likely to have been hit by the advertising slump.
The Daily Mail said they were watching the situation but would not comment any further at the moment.
THE EL DORADO OF THE DUNES
Which country has 420,000 citizens with an average net worth of US$17 million apiece and plans to spend $354billion on infrastructure and development in the next five years?
The emirate of Abu Dhabi, as Jo Tatchell writes in "A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in the World's Richest City." This is a place we need to know more about, and Tatchell has come up with a smart, well informed and flavoursome guide.
Tatchell, the daughter of an expat British businessman, was brought up as a teenager in Abu Dhabi and went on to become a journalist in the Middle East. "Diamond in the Desert" is the best thing I've read on the Gulf Coast boomtown to date. Part history, part reporting, part autobiography, it leaves you feeling you have come to grips with the realities of a land steeped in fable. The contradictions of its Islamis culture emerge starkly.
More women than men now attend university in the country, she writes, yet fathers retain a veto over whether a girl gets even a secondary education. Women are allowed to drive and to work in the professions. Yet their jeans and sweatshirts are ofter covered by abayas, black cloaks that shroud the entire body. And if the ladies fancy a glass of wine at home, they have to buy it from bootleggers.
Then there s the questiion of wealth distribution. Broadly speaking, there isn't any. When Tatchell orders a chocolate milkshake sprinkled with edible gold in the hulking Emirates Palace Hotel, she's spending more than the daily wage of a construction worker. Most of the labour is imported, the majority from Southern Asia.
Rich men here can turn blase and degenerate. Rich women are pampered beyond the dreams of Californians. Physically and intellectually inert, they are bored as hell.
Abu Dhabians, Tatchell says, have reached the outer limits of concumption and found there is nothing left. Nothing, that is, except to import culture, as they did with their oil-drilling equipment, nightclubs, DJs and all the rest. Hence the outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim that will open here in 2013.
Art is all the rage, but the mantle of liberalism is worn like a new suit, the author writes. Repressiion persists. Everywhere you turn, there is a quiet strangulation of expressiion, she says.
I certainly felt a bit strangulated on my visit to the country last year. I was keen to see a much-touted exhibition of Islamic art but wasn't allowed in. It was women's day, so I was excluded, presumably for fear that I would ogle the veiled ladies in their bulky black robes rather than the displays.
Yet Abu Dhabi is evolving. Middle Islam, the version of the Muslim creed preferred by liberalminded folk in Abu Dhabi, is more modern, tolerant and pragmatic than what you see in the country s more hidebound authoritarian neighbours.
Could this be the harbinger of a new Islamic golden age? Tatchell would like it to be one, you sense, and the West has an interest in it happening. You only have to look at Iran and Saudi Arabia to see the dispiriting alternative.
Yet Tatchell's affection for the place is untainted by illusions. In the end, this is a small and vulnerable statelet wholly dependent on a single sector-oil and natural gas. It's also a de facto (albeit momentarilybenign) autocracy with weak democratic instincts.
This is no time to fudge, fake or offer half-baked freedoms, Tatchell writes, knowing only too well that the country s ruling family nurtures a deep ambivalence about personal liberties. How could it be otherwise? The country's modern history stretches back a mere 40 years.
This vivid yet balanced book leaves me with the impression that the country doesn't have much chance of developing a genuine modernity in which the elite devolve power, treat immigrant workers decently and allow freedom of thought and creativity in the arts.
Yet when we consider Iran and Saudi Arabia, I suppose we should be grateful that the place exists at all.
The emirate of Abu Dhabi, as Jo Tatchell writes in "A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in the World's Richest City." This is a place we need to know more about, and Tatchell has come up with a smart, well informed and flavoursome guide.
Tatchell, the daughter of an expat British businessman, was brought up as a teenager in Abu Dhabi and went on to become a journalist in the Middle East. "Diamond in the Desert" is the best thing I've read on the Gulf Coast boomtown to date. Part history, part reporting, part autobiography, it leaves you feeling you have come to grips with the realities of a land steeped in fable. The contradictions of its Islamis culture emerge starkly.
More women than men now attend university in the country, she writes, yet fathers retain a veto over whether a girl gets even a secondary education. Women are allowed to drive and to work in the professions. Yet their jeans and sweatshirts are ofter covered by abayas, black cloaks that shroud the entire body. And if the ladies fancy a glass of wine at home, they have to buy it from bootleggers.
Then there s the questiion of wealth distribution. Broadly speaking, there isn't any. When Tatchell orders a chocolate milkshake sprinkled with edible gold in the hulking Emirates Palace Hotel, she's spending more than the daily wage of a construction worker. Most of the labour is imported, the majority from Southern Asia.
Rich men here can turn blase and degenerate. Rich women are pampered beyond the dreams of Californians. Physically and intellectually inert, they are bored as hell.
Abu Dhabians, Tatchell says, have reached the outer limits of concumption and found there is nothing left. Nothing, that is, except to import culture, as they did with their oil-drilling equipment, nightclubs, DJs and all the rest. Hence the outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim that will open here in 2013.
Art is all the rage, but the mantle of liberalism is worn like a new suit, the author writes. Repressiion persists. Everywhere you turn, there is a quiet strangulation of expressiion, she says.
I certainly felt a bit strangulated on my visit to the country last year. I was keen to see a much-touted exhibition of Islamic art but wasn't allowed in. It was women's day, so I was excluded, presumably for fear that I would ogle the veiled ladies in their bulky black robes rather than the displays.
Yet Abu Dhabi is evolving. Middle Islam, the version of the Muslim creed preferred by liberalminded folk in Abu Dhabi, is more modern, tolerant and pragmatic than what you see in the country s more hidebound authoritarian neighbours.
Could this be the harbinger of a new Islamic golden age? Tatchell would like it to be one, you sense, and the West has an interest in it happening. You only have to look at Iran and Saudi Arabia to see the dispiriting alternative.
Yet Tatchell's affection for the place is untainted by illusions. In the end, this is a small and vulnerable statelet wholly dependent on a single sector-oil and natural gas. It's also a de facto (albeit momentarilybenign) autocracy with weak democratic instincts.
This is no time to fudge, fake or offer half-baked freedoms, Tatchell writes, knowing only too well that the country s ruling family nurtures a deep ambivalence about personal liberties. How could it be otherwise? The country's modern history stretches back a mere 40 years.
This vivid yet balanced book leaves me with the impression that the country doesn't have much chance of developing a genuine modernity in which the elite devolve power, treat immigrant workers decently and allow freedom of thought and creativity in the arts.
Yet when we consider Iran and Saudi Arabia, I suppose we should be grateful that the place exists at all.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Potter-style ads to get run in US magazine
The moving-picture newspapers out of the Harry Potter movies are being conjured up for real in the United States.
Thousands of readers in New York and Los Angeles are to be able to see a video ad in mid-September when they leaf through the magazine Entertainment Weekly .The US television network CBS Corp is paying to insert wafer-thin videoscreens into the entertainment publication to promote its new season of TV series launching in the autumn, its marketing chief George Schweitzer announced on Wednesday, reports said.
The 2.7-mm-thick screens have a diagonal width of 5cm and mini-speakers and were developed by Los-Angelesbased Americhip Inc.
They play when their page in the magazine is turned, much like greeting cards that play music when someone opens them.
They are to play clips of new and returning TV series and an advertisement for PepsiCo Inc, which is helping fund the promotion.
CBS refused to say how much the campaign would cost.
Thousands of readers in New York and Los Angeles are to be able to see a video ad in mid-September when they leaf through the magazine Entertainment Weekly .The US television network CBS Corp is paying to insert wafer-thin videoscreens into the entertainment publication to promote its new season of TV series launching in the autumn, its marketing chief George Schweitzer announced on Wednesday, reports said.
The 2.7-mm-thick screens have a diagonal width of 5cm and mini-speakers and were developed by Los-Angelesbased Americhip Inc.
They play when their page in the magazine is turned, much like greeting cards that play music when someone opens them.
They are to play clips of new and returning TV series and an advertisement for PepsiCo Inc, which is helping fund the promotion.
CBS refused to say how much the campaign would cost.
Merkel still tops most powerful women list
German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the fourth consecutive time topped the list of the world's 100 most powerful women, published by US magazine Forbes on Wednesday.Mrs Merkel,55, was lauded for her efforts in overhauling the German health and tax systems and strict line on curbing expanding European Union budgets.
Sheila Bair, chairman of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, who had to supervise the closure of 77 banks this year as a result of the global financial crisis, came second.
PepsiCo Inc head Indra Nooyi and Britain's Cynthia Carroll of mining company Anglo American Plc came third and fourth, respectively, followed by Singapore's first lady Ho Ching, who heads the city-state's Temasek sovereign wealth fund.
US first lady Michelle Obama entered the list at number 40, and newly confirmed US Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor at 54. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was listed at 36,preceded by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Oprah Winfrey was ranked at 41, ahead of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
Sheila Bair, chairman of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, who had to supervise the closure of 77 banks this year as a result of the global financial crisis, came second.
PepsiCo Inc head Indra Nooyi and Britain's Cynthia Carroll of mining company Anglo American Plc came third and fourth, respectively, followed by Singapore's first lady Ho Ching, who heads the city-state's Temasek sovereign wealth fund.
US first lady Michelle Obama entered the list at number 40, and newly confirmed US Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor at 54. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was listed at 36,preceded by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Oprah Winfrey was ranked at 41, ahead of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Women"s mags skirt culture clash
France-based women's mags Elle and Marie-Claire are continuing a push into the Arab market but say having to adapt content to local sensitivities without contradicting their own ideals is not easy.
Marie-Claire has editions in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and last week launched a monthly in Saudi Arabia,where competitor Elle magazine is already present, as well as in Dubai and Lebanon.
But the just-released 35,000 copies of the Saudi edition of Marie-Claire ran into immediate, if minor problems.
A story on Saudi women's football, in which players are clad in trousers, long sleeves and headscarves, was allowed in full in Jeddah but not Riyadh.
"Our problem is reconciling local culture with the Marie-Claire concept,which is no piece of cake," said Laurence Hembert Wermus, who heads international development for the magazine,a touch less glam than rival Elle ."Given the economic context, there's no point in launching new magazines in France, but publishers can develop editions internationally, and the Middle East is definitely a growth market," said Sophie Renaud, who runs the media consultancy Carat France.
"At home, developing internationally shows readers that the publication is dynamic, that it has ideas and convictions, that it's striving towards change for women," Renaud told AFP.
Yet in many of these new markets, it remains impossible to run photographs of naked women or stories on a gamut of sexual practices.
Last April, the French-language Africa newsweekly Jeune Afrique was banned in the UAE because of a cover picture showing a naked woman's back to illustrate a feature story on "Moslems and Sex".
So for magazines such as these, which over the decades have backed feminist causes, taking root in the Arab world without negating their ideals remains a tricky exercise.
"We are very careful not to provoke uselessly, we don't want to be banned.It would neither help social progress nor the status of women," said Jean de Boisdeffre, who heads the international media arm ofElle owner-company,Lagardere Active.
The magazine, for example, refrained from running a story on French President Nicolas Sarkozy's controversial call to ban the burqa.
"It would've been provocative and could've prompted readers to link the magazine with French policy," he said.
Publication of pictures varies from country to country, said Marie-Claire 'sinternational editorial manager Florence Duluard.
"In the Emirates we avoid pictures on the fashion pages of girls in very mini skirts or necklines that plunge to their navels. In Arabia it's even stricter - no necklines and no knees."
Both magazines have hired local journalists to provide content with a brief to highlight local designers and issues as well as the big-name fashion labels so popular in the Middle East.
"They know how to broach a subject,"said Elle 's de Boisdeffre, who added that 80 percent of the magazine was formulated in the region."And we have enough fashion stories produced elsewhere to be able to choose garments that will please the tastes of all readers,"he added.
Next month's Saudi edition of MarieClaire , distributed largely via partner Al Wataniya's subscriber base, is to run a story on women photographers in the kingdom.
"We do talk about problems in couples or women who are depressed," added its editorial manager Florence Duluard,"But we never tackle these issues headon, we take them on sideways, like asking 'How to take a positive approach to the couple?', instead of stating that a woman has problems because her husband doesn't satisfy her."
"We recently published a feature on hammams that enabled us to evoke a whole series of issues -relations between men and women, between parents and children, and sexuality,"said de Boisdeffre.
Marie-Claire has editions in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and last week launched a monthly in Saudi Arabia,where competitor Elle magazine is already present, as well as in Dubai and Lebanon.
But the just-released 35,000 copies of the Saudi edition of Marie-Claire ran into immediate, if minor problems.
A story on Saudi women's football, in which players are clad in trousers, long sleeves and headscarves, was allowed in full in Jeddah but not Riyadh.
"Our problem is reconciling local culture with the Marie-Claire concept,which is no piece of cake," said Laurence Hembert Wermus, who heads international development for the magazine,a touch less glam than rival Elle ."Given the economic context, there's no point in launching new magazines in France, but publishers can develop editions internationally, and the Middle East is definitely a growth market," said Sophie Renaud, who runs the media consultancy Carat France.
"At home, developing internationally shows readers that the publication is dynamic, that it has ideas and convictions, that it's striving towards change for women," Renaud told AFP.
Yet in many of these new markets, it remains impossible to run photographs of naked women or stories on a gamut of sexual practices.
Last April, the French-language Africa newsweekly Jeune Afrique was banned in the UAE because of a cover picture showing a naked woman's back to illustrate a feature story on "Moslems and Sex".
So for magazines such as these, which over the decades have backed feminist causes, taking root in the Arab world without negating their ideals remains a tricky exercise.
"We are very careful not to provoke uselessly, we don't want to be banned.It would neither help social progress nor the status of women," said Jean de Boisdeffre, who heads the international media arm ofElle owner-company,Lagardere Active.
The magazine, for example, refrained from running a story on French President Nicolas Sarkozy's controversial call to ban the burqa.
"It would've been provocative and could've prompted readers to link the magazine with French policy," he said.
Publication of pictures varies from country to country, said Marie-Claire 'sinternational editorial manager Florence Duluard.
"In the Emirates we avoid pictures on the fashion pages of girls in very mini skirts or necklines that plunge to their navels. In Arabia it's even stricter - no necklines and no knees."
Both magazines have hired local journalists to provide content with a brief to highlight local designers and issues as well as the big-name fashion labels so popular in the Middle East.
"They know how to broach a subject,"said Elle 's de Boisdeffre, who added that 80 percent of the magazine was formulated in the region."And we have enough fashion stories produced elsewhere to be able to choose garments that will please the tastes of all readers,"he added.
Next month's Saudi edition of MarieClaire , distributed largely via partner Al Wataniya's subscriber base, is to run a story on women photographers in the kingdom.
"We do talk about problems in couples or women who are depressed," added its editorial manager Florence Duluard,"But we never tackle these issues headon, we take them on sideways, like asking 'How to take a positive approach to the couple?', instead of stating that a woman has problems because her husband doesn't satisfy her."
"We recently published a feature on hammams that enabled us to evoke a whole series of issues -relations between men and women, between parents and children, and sexuality,"said de Boisdeffre.
Dharma direct
Cultivating mindfulness is still possible in a hectic urban lifestyle
Story by SIRINYA WATTANASUKCHAI
Find a place that puts your mind and body at peace, and practise
"Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni Assistant abbot of Wat Prayurawongse
" How could I completely change in just a few days? Patty Lerdwittayaskul Practitioner
Dressed in business attire, Patty Lerdwittayaskul entered her riverside hotel room on a Friday afternoon in February to find a room without a fluffy king-size bed as indicated in the hotel brochure. Surprisingly, Patty didn't complain, and even seemed satisfied with the odd arrangement.
After all, this wasn't her usual weekend break, a point underscored by her all-white outfits in her overnight bag, and absence of her usual cosmetic pack. Patty, a marketing communications manager for an international hotel management chain by profession, had been seeking a vipassana course to attend for the past year.
"I could never tolerate the shared bathroom with dozens of practitioners at the temple," says the young executive in her early thirties who's used to the city lifestyle and modern facilities at home and in her office surroundings. She applied for the course and requested the bed be removed to meet the eight precepts, which include refraining from sleeping on a comfortable bed, all forms of entertainment and wearing make-up.
A part of the Montien Tham project, the vipassana course is designed especially for people like Patty,urbanites who wish to practise vipassana without leaving their lifestyles behind. The programme features morning and evening prayers, walking meditation by the river and dharma talks by Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni, assistant abbot of Wat Prayurawongse - all held in a peaceful, air-conditioned function room of a hotel.
This is a new approach to dharma for urban people. In the past, Buddhist practitioners comprising mostly elderly people - learned dharma only from the monks in the temples. Instead of waiting until retirement, people are now absorbing dharma into their everyday lives as the content has not only been simplified but also become more easily accessible in the form of print and sound.
After the vipassana course, Patty listens to dharma talks from CDs in her car. Busakorn Onpradit,marketing director for Thai Edible Oil Co Ltd, studies it from books, while others turn on the TV, visit dharma websites, or download dharma talks onto their MP3 players or mobile phones to listen to during the day, or on the bus.
Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni says many Buddhists are too attached to the conventional way: Going to the temple wearing white - the symbol of purity - listening to dharma and practicing vipassana.The assistant abbot says people in ancient India enjoyed a sermon by the Buddha in the heart of Delhi.
The new approach of dharma is to cultivate mindfulness in order that practitioners can be mindful of their every thought and action. Studying dharma and practicing vipassana can be done elsewhere: A religious or non-religious institution, a hotel, an office or at home.
"Find a place that puts your mind and body at peace, and practise," says the assistant abbot. Practising vipassana in a hotel can put city people at ease and increases their willingness to learn things,he says. There's no point in forcing them to live in the simple confinements of a temple or surrounded by nature if they are used to the luxury of modern facilities."They will never learn a thing in a forced situation." People will eventually come back to the temple when they feel comfortable.
Dharma has therefore become more easily accessible for all, especially urban dwellers who are often viewed as loose religious practitioners.Excuses such as lack of time and bad traffic are not applicable. Dharma talks and evening prayers can be held in the heart of the city. Turn on the TV and a new generation of monks are communicating with simpler messages. Or just check your SMS:Dharma content is being delivered direct into mobile phones.
Busakorn started practicing vipassana 10 years ago out of curiosity. Since then, the mindfulness she learned from the different courses at religious institutions and temples has kept her sane in the secular world. She's been enjoying books and talks elsewhere, in and outside the temples.
Believers are opening to the fact that dharma can be discussed everywhere, not just in temples.Kalind Surawong Bunnag once discussed dharma with Christians and Muslims in a church."So why not in my hotel?" he queried.
The Tawantham project was launched three years ago at Tawana Hotel for people in the Surawong area to attend evening prayers, every first and third Monday without being stuck in the evening rush hour. Many hotels in the area have followed suit.
In the past decade, DMG CEO Danai Chanchaochai has held dharma talks in his Buddhakaya meeting room every Monday and Wednesday evening. All these talks cater to the urban demand, says Danai.
The urban craving for dharma has become visible during the past several years.
Half of the best-selling books in Thailand are basic and applied dharma. Having earned success with his business how-to books in 2003, Danai's best-seller turned out to be Sia-dai Khon Tai Mai Dai Arn (What a Shame the Dead Can't Read It) by Dungtrin, which topped the best-seller list for four years and is now in its 43rd edition. Amarin Dharma Books has released dozens of books on basic and applied dharma during the past five years.
The craving for dharma is the mixed result of a faster pace of life and stress from the declining global economy, says comparative religion lecturer Tavivat Puntarigvivat at Mahidol University.
Unlike people of the past generation, who sought nirvana through vipassana practice, people today are happy to seek moments of peace and serenity in their chaotic life.
Financial stress often forces people to seek moral support, and many of them are lured into black magic.
Tavivat points out dependency on the supernatural reaches a high only when the economy and spirit of the people falls low.
The Phra Suphan Kalaya phenomenon emerged during the Tom Yum Kung crisis, while the Jatukham Ramathep amulets became a hit a few years ago.
The new economic crisis is here, the lecturer says; fortune-tellers are making a fortune from people who are made to believe that their bad karma from past deeds in a previous life can be discontinued by certain rituals.
"People are willing to pay for any possible solutions when they come to a dead-end, although it's a science of the ignorant," says Tavivat. Karma is only a consequence of the previous deed.
Patty believes so. She does not expect to attain nirvana or become a nun after her three-day vipassana at the riverside hotel, but expects to cultivate mindfulness."How could I completely change in just a few days?"
But even before the second course at the same hotel begins next week, Patty has learned how to spend a few peaceful moments with herself something she never knew before - and how to let go of things. She has begun to visit temples and make donations.
The donations support the religion and the religion supports the people, keeping them balanced.
Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni is glad to hear this;his mission is complete.
His weekly trips to the hotels to preach to urbanites not only help keep them at peace but also brings them back to the temples.
Story by SIRINYA WATTANASUKCHAI
Find a place that puts your mind and body at peace, and practise
"Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni Assistant abbot of Wat Prayurawongse
" How could I completely change in just a few days? Patty Lerdwittayaskul Practitioner
Dressed in business attire, Patty Lerdwittayaskul entered her riverside hotel room on a Friday afternoon in February to find a room without a fluffy king-size bed as indicated in the hotel brochure. Surprisingly, Patty didn't complain, and even seemed satisfied with the odd arrangement.
After all, this wasn't her usual weekend break, a point underscored by her all-white outfits in her overnight bag, and absence of her usual cosmetic pack. Patty, a marketing communications manager for an international hotel management chain by profession, had been seeking a vipassana course to attend for the past year.
"I could never tolerate the shared bathroom with dozens of practitioners at the temple," says the young executive in her early thirties who's used to the city lifestyle and modern facilities at home and in her office surroundings. She applied for the course and requested the bed be removed to meet the eight precepts, which include refraining from sleeping on a comfortable bed, all forms of entertainment and wearing make-up.
A part of the Montien Tham project, the vipassana course is designed especially for people like Patty,urbanites who wish to practise vipassana without leaving their lifestyles behind. The programme features morning and evening prayers, walking meditation by the river and dharma talks by Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni, assistant abbot of Wat Prayurawongse - all held in a peaceful, air-conditioned function room of a hotel.
This is a new approach to dharma for urban people. In the past, Buddhist practitioners comprising mostly elderly people - learned dharma only from the monks in the temples. Instead of waiting until retirement, people are now absorbing dharma into their everyday lives as the content has not only been simplified but also become more easily accessible in the form of print and sound.
After the vipassana course, Patty listens to dharma talks from CDs in her car. Busakorn Onpradit,marketing director for Thai Edible Oil Co Ltd, studies it from books, while others turn on the TV, visit dharma websites, or download dharma talks onto their MP3 players or mobile phones to listen to during the day, or on the bus.
Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni says many Buddhists are too attached to the conventional way: Going to the temple wearing white - the symbol of purity - listening to dharma and practicing vipassana.The assistant abbot says people in ancient India enjoyed a sermon by the Buddha in the heart of Delhi.
The new approach of dharma is to cultivate mindfulness in order that practitioners can be mindful of their every thought and action. Studying dharma and practicing vipassana can be done elsewhere: A religious or non-religious institution, a hotel, an office or at home.
"Find a place that puts your mind and body at peace, and practise," says the assistant abbot. Practising vipassana in a hotel can put city people at ease and increases their willingness to learn things,he says. There's no point in forcing them to live in the simple confinements of a temple or surrounded by nature if they are used to the luxury of modern facilities."They will never learn a thing in a forced situation." People will eventually come back to the temple when they feel comfortable.
Dharma has therefore become more easily accessible for all, especially urban dwellers who are often viewed as loose religious practitioners.Excuses such as lack of time and bad traffic are not applicable. Dharma talks and evening prayers can be held in the heart of the city. Turn on the TV and a new generation of monks are communicating with simpler messages. Or just check your SMS:Dharma content is being delivered direct into mobile phones.
Busakorn started practicing vipassana 10 years ago out of curiosity. Since then, the mindfulness she learned from the different courses at religious institutions and temples has kept her sane in the secular world. She's been enjoying books and talks elsewhere, in and outside the temples.
Believers are opening to the fact that dharma can be discussed everywhere, not just in temples.Kalind Surawong Bunnag once discussed dharma with Christians and Muslims in a church."So why not in my hotel?" he queried.
The Tawantham project was launched three years ago at Tawana Hotel for people in the Surawong area to attend evening prayers, every first and third Monday without being stuck in the evening rush hour. Many hotels in the area have followed suit.
In the past decade, DMG CEO Danai Chanchaochai has held dharma talks in his Buddhakaya meeting room every Monday and Wednesday evening. All these talks cater to the urban demand, says Danai.
The urban craving for dharma has become visible during the past several years.
Half of the best-selling books in Thailand are basic and applied dharma. Having earned success with his business how-to books in 2003, Danai's best-seller turned out to be Sia-dai Khon Tai Mai Dai Arn (What a Shame the Dead Can't Read It) by Dungtrin, which topped the best-seller list for four years and is now in its 43rd edition. Amarin Dharma Books has released dozens of books on basic and applied dharma during the past five years.
The craving for dharma is the mixed result of a faster pace of life and stress from the declining global economy, says comparative religion lecturer Tavivat Puntarigvivat at Mahidol University.
Unlike people of the past generation, who sought nirvana through vipassana practice, people today are happy to seek moments of peace and serenity in their chaotic life.
Financial stress often forces people to seek moral support, and many of them are lured into black magic.
Tavivat points out dependency on the supernatural reaches a high only when the economy and spirit of the people falls low.
The Phra Suphan Kalaya phenomenon emerged during the Tom Yum Kung crisis, while the Jatukham Ramathep amulets became a hit a few years ago.
The new economic crisis is here, the lecturer says; fortune-tellers are making a fortune from people who are made to believe that their bad karma from past deeds in a previous life can be discontinued by certain rituals.
"People are willing to pay for any possible solutions when they come to a dead-end, although it's a science of the ignorant," says Tavivat. Karma is only a consequence of the previous deed.
Patty believes so. She does not expect to attain nirvana or become a nun after her three-day vipassana at the riverside hotel, but expects to cultivate mindfulness."How could I completely change in just a few days?"
But even before the second course at the same hotel begins next week, Patty has learned how to spend a few peaceful moments with herself something she never knew before - and how to let go of things. She has begun to visit temples and make donations.
The donations support the religion and the religion supports the people, keeping them balanced.
Phra Rajchapatiphanmuni is glad to hear this;his mission is complete.
His weekly trips to the hotels to preach to urbanites not only help keep them at peace but also brings them back to the temples.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)