tisiwoota

Speaking of Sapa, here’s a clip of two young H’mong girls chatting with a little tourist (and helping her with the grass garland on her head, I think).

Another notable thing about Ho Chi Minh City was the proliferation of bats above every street after dusk. They are fairly plentiful in Hanoi as well, but not quite as many as in HCM. As a former card-carrying member of Bat Conservation International for over a decade, this sight was very pleasing to me. It also made me speculate whether the relative paucity of bats in US cities is reflective of a less robust ecosystem overall. (Besides bats and birds, I saw some sort of tawny owl at one point as well).

And in Sapa, I found a huge glut of dragonflies– just dozens and dozens hovering around and darting about. I imagine that’s what it was like in the dinosaur era– except with dragonflies twenty times the size. An amazing thing to picture…

BEETHOVEN ON THE BEAUFORT SCALE

sea like a mirror
scaly ripples, no
foam –

small wavelets, do not
break, crests have glassy appearance –
small waves, crests begin
to break, scattered
foam –

small waves becoming
larger, fairly frequent
foam crests –

moderate waves of pronounced
longer form, many
foam crests –

larger waves, breaking crests, cause
white crests of everywhere to be blown
into froth –
taller waves, white
foam –
of breaking crests along the direction of the wind

moderately high waves, crests of
waves form spindrift, well-marked
streaks of foam –
high waves, dense
streaks of foam –

along the direction of the wind, roller-forming, driving
foam –

very high waves with tumbling
wave-crests, sea takes on a
white appearance due to foam

exceptionally high waves, sea covered with
foam –
visibility strongly
reduced

air filled with foam
and driving
spray
sea completely
white

due to foam, practically
no visibility –

-Anneke Brassinga, trans. John Irons

(toting a sapling around for some reason…)

(pictures of the band that played at Lam Son Square)

Toddlers that had a lot of pictures taken of them… the moms even recruited me to join in
on a few shots in case exploiting cute kids wasn’t enough to get into the papers…

So, the other night in Saigon there was a massive motorbike rally after Vietnam’s soccer team advanced into the Asian cup for the first time ever. From teenage boys to families with babies, people were riding for hours in a loop of city blocks at the heart of downtown District 1, cheering and waving flags. Quite a spectacle– and people got so ridiculously excited by my merely taking pictures of them as they passed by, that when I walked by a woman selling small flags for less than a dollar, I figured hey, why not amuse the crowd even more?

At first I carried the flag in my hand and walked beside the motorbikes, but soon felt too self-conscious to actively wave the flag. So I pulled up my hair and stuck the flag in my ponytail instead. Much better. So I walked along for a while, and it seemed to make a lot of people’s nights– lots of cheers and laughing, a few people (including what seemed to be professional-photographers) asking to take my picture. So it’s very possible I’m in some random publication or other…

And better, a clip of the rally– which ends with a cute Vietnamese girl wearing a USA top.

And the thing I’m kicking myself for is that I accidentally deleted a clip a small band (drums, other instruments) who paused at a monument to strike up some patriotic song that got everyone into a(n even greater) fervor.

1. Magnetic Contact Lenses for Better Eyetracking “The system should work regardless of head orientation and movement, lighting conditions or “face furniture” such as goggles or glasses.” It’s being developed for military purposes, but should have some other cool applications– giving disabled people improved wheelchair control, surgical devices, video games (how popular would wii plus this be?), etc.

2. The Proteus Effect: Psychology of Avatars. Now this is a cool study, with interesting implications for real life. (For the unfamiliar, avatars are digital representations of people; golems that represent you in virtual worlds such as Second Life).

“In the first study, I found that participants in attractive avatars walked closer to and disclosed more information to a stranger than participants in unattractive avatars. In the second study, I found that participants in taller avatars negotiated more aggressively in a bargaining task than participants in shorter avatars. In the third study, I demonstrated that the Proteus Effect occurs in an actual online community. And in the final study, I showed that the Proteus Effect persists outside of the virtual environment. Placing someone in a taller avatar changes how they consequently negotiate in a face-to-face setting.”

3. Side by Side Comparison of Presidential Candidates’ Health Care Plans. Quite detailed! Covers both parties.

4. Technology Crutches Let Memory Deteriorate? Does relying on cellphones, Blackberrys, PDAs and other gadgets to recall information lower our memory skills? “Survey findings… show that the over-50s who grew up committing more to memory report better performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day-to-day aide memoir.”

5. The Intuitive Advantage from Collectivist Culture “In a new psychological experiment, Chinese students outperformed their US counterparts when ask to infer another person’s perspective.”

I just learned that last year there was some big debate on the intarweb about which is better (for expats), Hanoi or Saigon. Article here.

The clear answer; as I’ve implied before, is Hanoi– with the caveat that HCM has more higher-paying job opportunities for foreigners. Other than that, in terms of _living conditions_, Hanoi is far better. Sure, it lacks some fancy amenities (omg, the motorbikes are manual rather than automatic? Troglodytes) but it’s _beautiful_, whereas Saigon is… under construction. Constantly. Hanoi is charming even on many of the worn down streets, and the interactions with people on the street are far friendlier.

Thirty years after the end of the war between communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam, the two regions continue to have distinct accents, cuisines and customs - and many in each city centre tends to consider the other inferior.

Trendy Saigonese often consider Hanoians plodding oafs clinging to the past - as opposed to the southern city’s bright lights and bustling markets. Hanoians tend to see Saigonese as crass money-grubbers, lacking in culture - unlike the 1,000-year-old capital’s serene temples and lakes.

It makes me feel motivated to invent an appropriate hand gesture to express North Siiiide...

So the law firm I’m working with in Hanoi is paying for my stay at Memory Hotel as compensation. I don’t think it’s particularly interesting to see what it looks like, but apparently other people do. Here’s the outside:

The small lobby:

A shot from my room:

(on the opposite side, there’s a TV, mini-fridge, and bathroom. And there is one small window).

It’s a totally fine place for the price (A/C, and sometimes blessed with stolen wireless from across the street) but I’m definitely looking forward to staying in a nicer place the next few nights courtesy of the NGO. (And by the way, I’ve arranged to work remotely from the law firm while traveling to NGO meetings– basically lawyers there will email me documents as they need them reviewed.)

You can eat the seeds; which are supposed to be conducive to relaxation and sleep.

Preparing the seeds is a multi-step process; first you take off the overcoat:

Then you split open the white part and take out the green stem in the center; which apparently tastes too bitter.

The seed itself tastes a bit like sweet peas, but not quite as tasty. A decent snack, but probably more work than it’s worth!

These pictures were taken on the path back from the temples at Hoa Lu (I was only there for half a day several weekends ago; I’ve just been taking a long time to get around to posting these last few– things are quite busy for me now that my colleagues from the IP nonprofit are here and I am attending several meetings per day with them).

1. The Gregarious Brain. Fascinating article about Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes people to have no fear of social interaction– making them friendly, and gullible, to an extreme. Especially great for its discussion of the implications for understanding our evolutionary past.

2. Cut the Farm Bill Fat A short op-ed in the NY Times about the need to phase out farm subsidies, pointed out by a friend who works for Bread for the World.

3. Transplastics Exhibition: Natural Fibers as Immune Response. I like the premise of this installation: “…the collection tells the (fictional) story of a world made of synthetics that’s overgrown by natural fibers as an immunological response”.

4. Legally Sweet. An interesting article about interpreting Splenda’s claims that its product is “made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar” from the perspectives of chemistry and patent law.

5. Our Biotech Future. One of my favorite reads in a while. Freeman Dyson argues, among other things, that a future full of genetic engineering would not be a total departure from evolutionary history, but rather a renaissance of the horizontal gene transfer that typified early life. Talk about putting things in perspective! (Oh yes and as if that weren’t enough THEN he segues into a discussion of rural poverty and green technology).