Weirder Than Monkey Fondling (AKA If You Thought My Last Post Was A Doozy)

It occurred to me today that maybe when I left the US back on Nov 28, 2006, I never landed in Korea. Maybe, instead, I got sucked into some kind of Truman Show or into a random-pointless-life-experience-generator algorithm on a computer somewhere. That's just about the only way I can explain to myself the bizarrity which wrapped its greasy octopodian tentacles around me and dragged me along the streets of Kuala Lumpur today.

To start at the start: After buying a year's supply of biodegradable soap and toothpaste off of the welcoming team, I left Sadhana yesterday afternoon, unleashing, in my approximation, approximately 40 centiliters of tears as I said my goodbyes to everyone. I caught the (3.5 hour) bus to the airport, eating an organic guava or two along the way, and chucking the inedible parts out the window, as one is allowed/expected to do in India. The bus dropped me at a restaurant near the airport, where I dined on Rava Dosa (crepe-thickness pancake of fermented rice flour, cooked with onions and cilantro and black pepper) and Onion Uttapam (similar but thicker), served with wondrous sambar (thin sauce of water, dhal, tomatoes, and other veg), onion ginger chutney, and for the first and last time on my trip, some incredible mint chutney. Two other foreigners sat down to eat with me; it turns out they were German-speaking Italians who spoke even worse Italian than me. After some chatting and gifting them a guava for dessert (I left Sadhana with 6 of 'em in my bag), I moseyed on up to the airport, waited around till 23:30, boarded, slept for 3 hours, and woke up in Kuala Lumpur at 5:30 local time.

Now for the weirdness. Outside of the gate, some airport staff were waiting with names on pieces of paper, one of which was ROY/MICHAELANTHONYLINDE. They told me that because of my long layover (5:30AM until 11:30Pm) I had been selected to participate in the grand opening of the "Showcase KL" program, a new initiative by the City Council to draw tourists out of the airport and into the city for the day. I was skeptical, having been led around despite my better judgment many a time, and asked at least 10 times if everything was free and if they intended to take me to some pewter factory or silk shop and pester me to buy something. They backed up what their denials with lots of documentation, and there were hordes of them with badges and brochures and stuff, so I decided to roll with it.

They walked me in my groggy state to the ultra-lush CIP (Corporate Important Person) Lounge (by way of a private immigration checkpoint), where a continental breakfast of rice, peanuts, cukes, baked beans, fish sauce, eggs, french toast, pastries, OJ, coffee, and tea was laid out, allowed me to use a gigantic marble bathroom with a shower in it (didn't use that part), and then sat me down in a nice big arm chair to explain the day's schedule. I will quote directly from the sheet:

"6-8: Your arrival at KLIA where you will be greeted by the Welcoming Team. You will then be taken to the Corporate Important Person (CIP) Lounge for breakfast and Immigration clearance. As our invited guest, you will be given a Showcase KL Badge.

8:30: Arrival of The Mayor of Kuala Lumpur - Y. Bhg. Datuk Seri Ahmad Fuad Ismail at the CIP. All guests will be introduced to the Mayor. Casual talk over coffee before proceed to the Immigration Counter and Custom clearance.

9:30: You will board the ERL Express train to the KL Sentral together with the Mayor. Your journey will take 28 minutes.

10:00: You will arrive at KL Sentral. At the launch site ,the Minister of Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing and other invited guests will be greeting you. Enjoy a 5 minutes of KL Multi - Cultural Performance by Kuala Lumpur City Hall Cultural Troupe. Short Speech by the Minister and launch of the Showcase KL.

11:00: 5 minutes Lion Dance performance before joining KL Tour on KL Hop On Hop Off for free. During the tour you ca nhop off at any of the attractinos. Just show your tour badge aat our partner attractoins such as Aquaria, KL Tower, Bird Park, National Museum, and enjoy free entrance. At Pavilion besides shopping you can enjoy the variety of gastronomic delights at The Food Republic by using the RM30 coupon, courtesy of the Pavilion."

Thus, after a brief sleep in a cushy armchair and a breakfast of rice, peanuts, beans, and cukes, I had the good fortune of having a million publicity photos taken of me while shaking hands with the slimeball (deliberate overstatement) mayor of KL. I really wanted to ask him if he thought orchestrating and carrying out the 5-hour ambush of a pack of 25 unsuspecting tourists was a good use of his time, or if he thought the government should be using taxpayer money to purchase environmentally wasteful, suffering-intensive food products (eggs) for a bunch of white people, but he was mostly in the mood to talk about cricket and trout fishing. He chuckled constantly, called lots of things "fantastic," and made sure to outdo everyone, letting a New Zealander know about a nice little town and telling me that he had driven longer distances in the USA than I had.

After the little gathering, a gaggle of paparazzi surrounded us and we marched through the airport to the express train, taking pictures of us talking to each other and of the mayor and his consorts talking to us. I couldn't help but feel like I was being used, so I sabotaged every picture I could by making weird faces or holding my camera directly in front of my head.

We arrived at KL Sentral, the main transport hub for the city, to find the MoFTaUWb waiting for us. Two women in full flight-attendant style dress and makeup handed him gift eggs all wrapped up in lace, which he presented to each of us with a handshake. I accepted the shake and refused the egg, explaining to him that I didn't think it was a very kind gift to be offering. He ignored me, as expected, and we sat down to watch a nice if brief dance performance. Then he got up on stage and explained that the KL Showcase "Product" had been conceived in the spirit of Malaysian Hospitality* to help cure the "mind-numbing boredom" of guests in the airport. He didn't mention whether it was also an attempt to extract as much money as possible from people who otherwise wouldn't have ventured them into the city by cleverly leading them out of the airport and into the major shopping centers, conveniently located all along the bus route. (Oddly enough, as I was being all cynical, grumbling and gurgling and doing my best to take notes of all the sliminess, people continued taking pictures of me.)

The address culminated in a whole load of corny music, steam, and bubbles accompanying the cutting of the ribbon, and then yet another photo shoot, this time of the government officials in the middle of all us tourists. Then we got pushed onto the bus, were instructed to pretend to have conversations with the Mayor and Minister, and had more pictures taken. Then they left us alone to go about our day.

Weirdness over. For the rest of the day, I just took the bus to the bird park then to the old market, walked around for an hour or two, found the Petronas twin towers, ascended KL Menara (the big tower), rode again to the aquarium, then again to the giant megamall for dinner, and then back to the airport, where I'm preparing myself for the certain and immense shock my system will receive upon landing, due to 1)the freezing weather; 2)the fact that my veganism is about to undergo its first big test; and 3)the oh-shit-now-I-have-a-job-again factor.

*There's even a theme song, which includes gems like:
The soul of Asia [Ahem...I believe Seoul claimed this in 1988, if not before]
The essence of Asia
In this land where dreams come true
Malaysia
Malaysia...is truly Asia.

I feel like anyone and everyone who reads this blog has a serious interest in knowing that

the other day, outside of Muthunga National Forest and Wildlife Reserve, I saw some monkeys on the side of the road. 15 or 20 of 'em. Mostly they were just hanging out, eating banana peels and picking through plastic bags to see what goodies they could find. Walking around, hooting, suckling, climbing, dashing. Normal monkey stuff, ya know? AND THEN!

Monkey A is just chilling in walking position, with all 4 limbs on the ground. Monkey B walks up behind Monkey A, sticks his hand between A's rear legs, and grabs A's penis Everything goes slow-mo and I can't believe what I'm seeing. B pulls A's member down and backwards between his legs, and it seems to stretch like silly puddy. He relaxes his grip, it all goes back to normal, and then he gives it three or four more tugs. I stand in both awe and disgust at the elasticity of A's 6th appendage. B then scampers off hollering, and A, seemingly after contemplating whether or not the event was shameful enough to warrant retribution, plods off after him.

Unfortunately all four of us had already put our cameras away, figuring that we'd content ourselves with some photos of monkey moms and babies and a sweet tree squirrel the size of a cat. Just my luck.

The Future

No, this is not about the year 2012, when, because of the Mayan calendar, either the world is going to undergo numerous gigantoid natural disasters OR humans will undergo a radical change in consciousness. Depends who you ask (ooh, that could start an argument: I've decided to stop trying to use the word "whom").

Nor is this about the fact that some grammarians insist that English only has two tenses: the present and the past. What we normally consider the future tense they consider a sort of mood, with the word "will" indicating our feeling about the action, much like we use "might" to assess probability, "can" to assess possibility, or "should" to assess propriety or duty. ("Will," then, indicates that we are nearly certain about the event, since knowledge of the future is technically impossible.)

It is about my predicted employment status, which is: employed. Here's the rundown:

Actually, it's way too complicated for a good rundown. Let's just say I prepped the docs last year in April when I was applying for jobs, had to use some for a summer camp visa, had to get them replaced, had to drive around and wait around a lot, then took them to Korea, got a few job offers, accepted one, the school had some legal troubles (they were found innocent), my position got postponed, I left my docs with Chris when I went to India, they were turned in to immigration the day before they expired, they were all processed, I received a visa application number in my email, I took the number to Mumbai, got the visa after 1.5 days waiting and minimal hassle, and now have it in my possession.

About the job:
Decent pay, plus nice apartment very close to where I used to live.
Class 9-11 and, 1-3, and sometimes also 4-5.
No Fridays.
Several (3-5) months off. Paid.

Can't beat that, eh?

So I've been making some plans for my return. Here are a few things I'd like to do next year:

-Host vegan (or maybe just vegetarian) potlucks/movie nights.
-Start bicycling all over the country on the sweet bike Chris will hopefully sell me (so that I can be prepared for a future massive bike trip).
-Learn to play the harmonica, and maybe the guitar.
-Join political protests relating to stuff I'm not happy about.
-Learn some Chinese calligraphy (already have a teacher and a classmate lined up, along with knowledge of about 300 or 400 characters).
-Get a Chinese conversation partner to help me study (see above re: bike trip).
-Join some teaching organization and try to figure out how to run awesome, useful, conflict/stress-free lessons.
-Use tests for only 10% of the grading in my classes.
-Finish becoming fluent in Korean.
-Take a Vipassana meditation class and do some temple stays.
-Read a lot of stuff about linguistics, politics, and food from Kyungpook Univ's massive English library, which I am assuming exists but might not.

Anything else to add?

Mike and Dave's First "Date"

I have been awarded the dubious honour of being allowed to write a guest post for my long-time friend David's blog, Undeployed (see link at left.)

I originally was going to try to copy David's style somehow, but I realized after less than a paragraph that I was really just using the exercise as an excuse to let myself get a bit raunchier than usual.

Enjoy the article and the value-adding footnotes!

SPEE GMO Avoider

Jefe posted the following comment, in response to a response I had made to Dave's comment on my previous post:

"Please tell me you haven't jumped onto the anti-GMO train...I will grant that financially what some companies do with GMO's in terms of driving out local seeds/farmers isn't laudable, but that's as far as I'll go. It's just another type of business-for-profit. Which isn't to condone it, but if you want to be vehemently anti-GMO for that reason, you need to be vehemently anti-IBM, anti-Wall Street, anti-phone companies, anti-etc. Which is fine. But crazy and rather idiotic thinking.

To speak of GM crops as something "repulsive" is overboard. There's nothing inherently repulsive about modifying a plant to suit your needs. Are medicines and vaccines repulsive? Should we all just eat herbs instead, and hope our kids don't develop polio?

Shades of a larger argument here...which we can have if you want..."

I started writing a response in comment form, but it was kind of long, so I figured I might as well post it here. Please note that I have read neither deeply nor widely about this stuff. Most of what I know, I know from watching "Food, Inc." That said, I think some wariness re: GM food is justified. Because...

Jefe,

I haven't devoted a lot of thought to the GMO thing, but I'm pretty sure I'm against it. One reason, which you mention, is that companies copyright seeds and use money and the threat of litigation to force small farmers into submission, which decreases the variety of food on the market (bad for consumers) and may violate the freedom of the farmers to grow and sell what they want (bad for the farmers). I do also deplore it when Wal-mart, IBM, and other corporations use financial leverage as a tactic to undermine other companies and competitors. (The alternative is simply to provide a better service and let consumers and the market do the rest). You're right to point out that many businesses employ such methods and that that doesn't legitimize the act at all - to me, rather, it shows how powerful corporations have become and how willing we are to accept their often heinous behavior. I can see why opposing this kind of corporate behavior and dominance could be called idealistic, but it's certainly not "idiotic."

(Interlude: I don't actually understand what you mean by saying "It's just another type of business-for-profit." Prima facie, this looks like it's meant to legitimize the practice, but you immediately point out that the search for profits doesn't legitimize anything.)

I think this alone is grounds enough to avoid GM food, given that there is plenty of other stuff to eat. But I'll mention a few other possible qualms.

Genetics is hard, so nobody really knows how healthy GM food products are. Their safety is vouched for by the companies that create them, but few truly independent bodies exist to verify the claims. Not to mention that it may take years for results to show up. On the other hand, non-GM crops have co-evolved with humans (and other animals) over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years, over which time our bodies have evolved to make use of the plants and the plants have evolved to make use of our bodies (see Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" for more on this). So we have a pretty good idea of what in the "natural world"' is good for us and what isn't.

Of course, people should be free to accept the risk and eat GM food if they want. But the companies that produce GM food often fight governmental requests and laws making it mandatory to label the food as modified, on the grounds that maybe people will think it's dangerous (which may indeed be the case). If you don't like the thought of having unannounced and untested chemicals in your drinking water, then you should also be opposed to GM foods being masqueraded as natural ones.

There is no argument from necessity, either. We don't need GM food to save us from disease or starvation. As Michael Pollan says in In Defense of Food, "Eat Food. Not So Much. Mostly Plants." In other words, a whole-food diet with lots of plants matter and low in meat, dairy, sugar, and refined and processed food, will keep you healthy. As a bonus, it will leave enough food left over for the other 6 billion people on the planet. Nice, eh?

This is not even getting into the international politics of GM food and the effects it's having and going to have on third world countries, where I'm under the impression that it's portrayed as some sort of miracle cure, which it certainly isn't. Even if it is safe, increased food yields themselves often drive up birth rates, so that families are bigger, meaning that the number of calories per capita doesn't increase. So the GM food, under the guise of being a solution, may actually postpone more useful demographic and societal changes which could improve the lot of 3rd worlders more quickly. (Admission: this paragraph is pure speculation on my part.)

Another question is that of the motivations of the companies making GM products. As far as I know, many of them [the products] are not designed to make better crops for people, but rather to increase yield per acre on crops like corn and soy in order to increase the amount/lower the price of feed available for cattle and pigs in CAFOs. In addition to the health uncertainties, and the negative effects that high-yield monocoltural agriculture has on our topsoil, as a SPEEVegan, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my opposition to technologies that serve to push down the price of meat, thereby encouraging its consumption and perpetuating lots of needless animal suffering and contributing to other E n E problems.

None of these amount to an in-principle "it's wrong to modify nature" statement. But I don't think this sort of absolutist critique is really necessary. Judging from your comment, it seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong) that your attitude is "if there's no metaphysical reason not to do it, we should go ahead and do it." But my feeling is more like, "when there's no need, and some danger, why bother?"

Again, because I am getting the impression that you think I am some sort of Nazi who wants to ban everything he doesn't think is good enough, I will make it clear that if someone wants, he should be free to continue the research [as long as it doesn't hurt animals!], and he can go ahead and market the product, disclosing all the relevant info, once independent, not-for-profit organizations verify that it's safe. (Just like the official, if underenforced, policy for other food additives and for medicines would have it.) But don't force it on people and don't trick them into consuming it.

To recap: pros of GM food include possibly being able to feed more people, and possibly being able to feed them healthier food. As I've already mentioned, though, I think there are easier and safer and more certain ways to achieve both of these goals, as well as several costs and additional problems that give me pause.

Note 1) Phrase parsing: the adjective "repulsive" was being applied to several things. Admittedly, GM stuff isn't viscerally repulsive the way shit-brooding and chick-grinding are (to me). But just because one part of the process is somewhat clean doesn't mean the process as a whole can't be disgusting.

Note 2) Ad-homey attack: I don't see why it's ok to denigrate any anti-status-quo position by calling it a "train," as if its (supposed/imagined) popularity is supposed to mean it's wrong. Because the GMO stuff is not terribly close to my heart, I don't take it personally, but if you were to say that about my veganism or my love of travel or something, I'd be quite insulted and upset.

Note 3) Aside: And just a quick nod to what you wrote about medicines - I do actually think that many of them are misguided, though not repulsive, attempts at regaining health. Fair enough, polio might require some serious scientific intervention (note that I am conceding the straw man argument that you stuck in my proverbial mouth, one which was based around a conclusion that could not have been drawn from anything I wrote). But far more deaths and far more physical and psychological misery are/is due to easily avoidable or modifiable behavior, like dietary habits, drinking, smoking, speeding, and working too much. It seems to me that most of our medicine (again, I mean stuff at the supermarket and in the pharmacy, not at the hospital) is like the cortizone injections that football players get- intended to make us feel like things are alright, without addressing the causes of the problems. Which makes enough sense if all you need is to play through the 4th quarter, but certainly doesn't seem like a path to a healthy life.