Christmas Pageant in Bangkok

Megan brought me yesterday to Mater Dei the all-girls Catholic school she teaches at weekday mornings. They were having a "Christmas party", which actually turned out to be a Christmas pageant, followed by a Christmas ballet, no mingling or punch-drinking, or any of the things normal for an event you might refer to as a party. Still, it was interesting and festive. They had the school choir singing "O Holy Night" and "Let There Be Peace On Earth" and the pageant narration was all in Thai, but it wasn't too hard to follow, it being the nativity story and all. The ballet that followed was "Sleeping Beauty", we were told, although you wouldn't know it from the performance. They had brought in one guy to dance the part of (I assume) the charming prince. At one point during the nativity pageant, all the kindergarten girls Megan teaches hopped out on to the stage wearing bunny suits and did a little hopping dance to an instrumental version of "Let it Snow", if I'm not mistaken. See pictures below.

Merry Christmas, everyone! I'll post pictures of more festive stuff tonight or tomorrow.

Christmas in Bangkok 1

This Sunday evening, Dec 21st, Megan and I went out to the Anglican church in Bangkok to attend an evening hymn sing they were having. Neither of us is Anglican (Episcopalian, for you Americans), but the carols were lovely, and it was really great to have a Christmassy religious service to go to and a carol sing wrapped into one. On Christmas eve, we'll probably be attending that same church's midnight communion. I've done that a few times back in Saint Lambert with some of my brothers on Christmases past. One time everyone was called up for communion, but we were told that if we weren't baptised we could just put our hands palms-down when it came our turn, and the minister would just bless us instead. My brother Richard apparently missed the memo, though, because we all went back and sat down afterwards and was like "hey, that was a good wafer".

It was funny at the time. I do miss Christmas in Quebec, but Christmas in Bangkok is actually shaping up to be a pretty lovely substitute, so far. See my other blog for all the carols I've been singing lately.

Postcard from Richard

A Christmastime postcard from one of my brothers. Thanks, Richard!

Montreal

Je viens de Montréal. De la Rive Sud, c'est à dire. Des fois ça me manque. Ça, c'est la vue de mon ancien appartement sur Papineau. On peut même voir la Rive Sud. Aujourd'hui, l'hiver, ça me manque.

Noises in the Night (Protest at the Airport)

Monday, Nov 31, 3AM.
I just heard an explosion of some sort as I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. The PAD protesters have been occupying both airports in Bangkok for some days now, and pressure has been mounting for the government to clear them out, so while the noise could have been anything, my first thought was of the airport. And I realized as I thought of what might be happening right now (tomorrow's news will tell, but it doesn't change the point) that I need to embrace the protesters more in my thought. I've been thinking of them as, in a sense, spoiled: anti-universal-suffrage activists (authoritarian royalists) who have been running wild in the city with almost no police intervention, and now on the 4th or 5th day they've been holding the airport, as the country has been losing truckloads of money in tourist revenue every day because of them... well I'd been eager for the police to break it up. I felt like in any other country in the world they would have been evicted by force on the first day, and that at very least a little tear gas would be an extremely restrained and appropriate response. I realize now though, that what's important is that I be praying for the safety of the protesters and the police and the army all together. And to do that I need to let go of my feelings in any direction on the protesters' actions, and remember that not a hair on the head of a single person at that airport needs to be harmed for this to be resolved peacefully*.

Psalm 133:1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
הִנֵּה מַה טוֹב וּמַה נָּעִים שֶׁבֶת אָחִים גַּם יַחַד

*Also, I should remember that Thai politics is none of my business, but praying for humanity is mine and everone's.

Lime-aid

I know this picture is fuzzy, but I think the subject is clear. I'm making agua de limón just like back in Guadalajara in 2003. (I studied there. Host family. Lots of lime-aid.)
It's great to be living in a place with an abundance of limes. And papayas and mangoes and the nasty-looking custard apple and jackfruit, even though jackfruit is kind of gross, truth be told. Definitely edible, but just a little on the gross side if I have more than a piece.

The Great Divide: Rise Up Singing Gets Its Own Blog

Ok, I've decided that it's weird to be posting a song a day (so far so good!) from Rise Up Singing on my "None of your Business" blog. I mean, what if strangers come because they want to learn songs and then they see my heading and news about living in Thailand and stuff. They'll think "Am I in the right place? Who's this guy?"
So, to avoid people asking "Am I in the right place?", I've just made a new 'right place'. From now on, the right place to go for songs from Rise Up Singing and nothing else is here, at the brand new Rise Up Singing Project blog:

http://riseupsingingproject.blogspot.com/

Everything else in my life, you know, all the stuff that's "none of your business", you can still get right here. I've got a post about toilet paper in the works which I might hit you all with tomorrow.

R.U.S. Bonus: Follow Me

This bonus song isn't from Rise Up Singing, but I've written down the lyrics in my copy of Rise Up Singing because that's how much I like it.

Words by Dennis Lee
Music by Philip Balsam
Performed on Fraggle Rock by Gobo and Uncle Travelin' Matt

FOLLOW ME

Every day the world begins again
Sunny skies or rain
Come and follow me
C - F / C F / C G -

Every sunrise shows me more and more
So much to explore
Come and follow me

Chorus:
Every morning, every day
Every evening, calling me away
F C F C / F C Am G

While the sun goes 'round I'll still be found
Following the sound
Something's calling me

When the world goes drifting back to bed
Memories in my head
Wonders follow me

Chorus 2X

Rise Up Singing: Episode 6 - There but for Fortune

Words and music by Phil Ochs
Rise Up Singing chapter: Rich and Poor, p.186

Rise Up Singing has:
C Fm C Fm / C Am Dm G
C Am F Dm / Em C Dm G     C (Fm C -)

I use:
C Fm C Fm / C Am D(major!) G
C Am Dm G / C Am D(major!) G     C (Fm C -)

I've tried both, they both sound good. I feel like Phil Ochs does this pretty rocking, and I try to rock it when I do it too, because otherwise it just sounds soooo mouuuurnful.

I wrote to Annie Patterson (co-editor of Rise Up Singing) 3 days ago now to ask her if it was ok that I do this, posting chords and all, and she hasn't written back yet, so for now I assume everything's ok. And here's her daily plug:
If you want a serious learning resource, you can buy the complete Rise Up Singing teaching CDs at Annie's website: www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . So go check it out. Then, once you know all the songs, come back here to YouTube and help me learn them by posting your versions!

Rise Up Singing: Episode 5 - My Land is a Good Land

There'll be a new president in the United States soon, and even though I'm from Quebec and live in Thailand, that's meaningful to me. So here's a patriotic song. I'm pretty sure it's about the US, even though it doesn't name names, but I like that in the lyrics "my homeland" is nameless. It could be Canada, and if I don't feel comfortable with that, it could be just Quebec, or Thailand, or anywhere. That's an "I love China" T-shirt I'm wearing, by the way, and I really do. Love China.

(Can't see the movie? Click here. )

Words and music by Eric Andersen
Rise Up Singing chapter: America, p.3
F G C Am (2x)/ F G C Am / / F G C -
You'll notice that when I play the song I prefer leaving out some A minors, so it's more like this:
F G C - (2x)/ F G C Am / / F G C -
Also I say "rainbow blades" not "rainbow waves". I think that's what Pete Seeger says, although I my have just imagined it. Either way, I like the word contrast in "rainbow blades" more, so that's what I always go with.

This is day 5 and song 5 for me.
I'm trying to learn and record all 1200 songs in the Rise Up Singing songbook. If you're interested, you should help out and make your own video.
If you just want to know the songs a.s.a.p. though, Annie Patterson (co-editor Rise Up Singing) recorded and sells CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . So go check it out. You can buy the set, or individual CDs at 12$ each.

Rise Up Singing: Episode 4 - Pretty Saro

Arr. and adap Jean Ritchie
Rise Up Singing chapter: Mountain Voices, p.149
D Em D A ////
I like to switch the second D for a G:
D Em G A ////
On the video I play it in the key of G, so:
G Am C D ////
It all works.

This is song 4 for me. I'm trying to learn and record all 1200 songs in the Rise Up Singing songbook.
If you're interested, Annie Patterson (co-editor Rise Up Singing) recorded and sells CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . So go check it out. You can buy the set, or individual CDs at 12$ each. I'm going to keep trying to do it song by song though, free and easy (and slowww).

Rise Up Singing: Episode 3 - River

(If you're reading this on Facebook, you'll be wondering where the video is. That's Facebook's problem. You'll have to click on "view original post" and get over to my blog to see it.)

Words and music by Bill Staines
Rise Up Singing chapter: Time & Changes, p.226
Verse:
D - G D / - - A - / D - G D / - A D - ://
Chorus:
D Dmaj G A / / G - A D / G D G D / G A - G - D

My version (in G)
Verse: same as above, transposed to G
Chorus:
G - C D / / C - G - / C G Am Em / C D C↓ G

As you can see, there's a little difference between my version and the book's, but not too much. You can play the song with the same melody either way, so it's just a difference of taste. That, and Rise Up Singing seems to draw out the last line of the chorus more than I do. No big deal. Still, if someone else knows the song more precisely the way Bill Staines does it, please post it up too for comparison.

This is the third song I've recorded from the Rise Up Singing songbook, with the end goal of recording all of them. I'm most interested in the ones that aren't widely known these days, and the problem there is that in most of those cases, I don't know them either. So I'm simultaneously trying hard to dig up recordings, and learn the songs as quickly as I can.

For those who have a little bit of cash and want to bypass this process, Annie Patterson, who co-edited Rise Up Singing, sells her own lovingly-made CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . I hope if I direct you to her site, she won't feel like I'm trying to undercut her business, which, in all honesty, I wouldn't ever want to do. There you can also find out how you can help get Pete Seeger nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. So check it out. I'm still going on with the project, though. I have a high enough chance of failure and a low enough quality index that I don't think there's much danger of me cutting in on Annie's turf.

Rise Up Singing: Episode 2 - Hobo's Lullaby

Words and Music by Goebel Reeves
Rise Up Singing chapter: Lullabies, p.133
D G / A D ://
or, as played in the video:
G C / D G ://

This is the second episode in my project of recording all of the songs in the Rise Up Singing songbook, which was conceived, developed and edited by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, illustrated by Kore Loy McWhirter, and given a lovely introduction by Pete Seeger.
I have a well-cherished copy bought by my mother, and I'm a big fan, even though I occasionally find myself frustrated when the chords they give for a song I know don't seem to fit the way I expect them to. I can't really complain. I just switch them up and play them like I feel like. And so should you.

Also, if you know any songs in Rise Up Singing, you should record them yourself and put them on YouTube! It doesn't matter if you can't play an instrument. Rise Up Singing has the chords and lyrics, all you need to do is hum the tune. Or whistle, or anything. The more versions of good folk songs we get on up on the Internet, the richer the slice of musical culture we spread. Otherwise hard-to-find albums from a few decades ago are still not that hard to order online, but that might not be the case 20 years from now, and these songs shouldn't stop getting sung because no one wants to pay to publish them anymore.

ALTHOUGH....... here's an update:
I just found out that Annie Patterson, who co-edited Rise Up Singing, sells her own lovingly made CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . I hope if I direct you to her site, she won't feel like I'm trying to undercut her business.

Rise Up Singing: my project

Because All Men Are Brothers
Words by Tom Glazer
Melody by J.S. Bach ("Passion Chorale")
Rise Up Singing chapter: Unity, p.238

F Dm G C     Am E Am - /    /
F G F C     F Dm A - / G Am D G     F G C -

This is the first video in my project to learn and record all the songs in the "Rise Up Singing" songbook, so that everyone can learn the tunes and teach the songs. Priority will be given to hard-to-find songs over still popular songs, although exceptions will be made for songs I just happen to like best. I'm not sure if there's trouble with copyright law ahead. Let's hope not.

Update:
I just found out that Annie Patterson, who co-edited Rise Up Singing, recorded and sells CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . So go check it out. You can buy the set, or individual CDs at 12$ each. I'm going to keep trying to do it song by song though, so stay tuned.

The New Bangkok Digs (and mailing address!)

This is a photo from the new apartment. Megan and I totally sprung for a building with a pool. It just kind of screamed "quality of life", you know? Also, I had to remind myself when making the decision, that, unlike in Québec, in Bangkok you get 12 months a year of use out of a pool. It's endless summer, baby! I mean, there's a rainy season and a hot dry season and right now it's officially the cool dry season (winter) in Thailand, but as far as I'm concerned: it's all summer by any other name.

So far I've been in every day. The building has two residential towers, and the pool lies between them on the 4th floor. Our apartment is up on the 9th floor and we look down onto the pool.
It's right near the skytrain, which is Bangkok's modern and beautiful elevated train system and the quickest way to get around downtown in a city with probably the worst traffic I've ever seen. So all told: I'm pretty much living it up. Now I've just got to start paying for this place. Stay tuned for how that works out. In the meantime, anyone who wants to make me feel more at home by sending me some mail (only 58 days 'til Christmas!) might want to write this down:

1414/257 Floor 9 (Tower B) Sukhumvit Plus
1414 Sukhumvit Road
Prakanong, Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110
Thailand

Lunch with Tito

On Friday I had lunch with Tito, a Chilean friend I rarely see. We met in 2005 in Havana when we were both on vacation there, but we haven't gotten together since then, since he's been in Santiago and I've been in Chengdu. He travels a lot, and we had a missed connection in 2006 when he actually visited Quebec and I had already left for China. So this past month he was travelling through Japan and Southeast Asia, and I got the chance to have lunch with him here in Bangkok, to meet Álvaro, his boyfriend, and they both got to meet Megan. We ate at Mai Kaidee's, a vegetarian restaurant in Bangkok with 3 locations and Thai-owned, but frequented almost exclusively by foreigners. Vegetarian food is vegetarian food, though. I'd give an exclusively vegetarian restaurant my custom even if the food was mediocre (and have) but at Mai Kaidee's it's delicious.
It was good to see Tito, good to finally meet Álvaro, and wonderful to have lunch with a friend, since Megan and I have been too busy job-and-apartment hunting to make any new friends yet.

News Flash: protests in Bangkok continue (to not affect me)

Apparently the protests are continuing, although you wouldn't know it from where I'm sitting (in a hostel in kind of a quiet neighborhood by the river).

Still I thought I'd give a little update to those of you who, like me, like to feel like they can at least fake knowing what's up in the world.

News: Apparently, some tear gas was fired.
Then again, pepper spray was fired inside Concordia University to disperse rioters when Benjamin Netanyahu came to speak. It smelled bad, but I got out of there quickly through a corner stairwell. Take home message: pepper spray works on me, I guess.*

And here's your mini-briefing. The three most recent Prime Ministers of Thailand are:

• Thaksin Shinawatra (unseated in 2006 coup. The PAD** don't like him.)
• Samak Sundaravej (tied to Thaskin, the PAD don't like him.)
• Somchai Wongsawat (related to Thaskin, guess what: the PAD don't like him.)

Now you're informed. Go be know-it-alls.

*Not that I was rioting, but take home message # 2 is that pepper spray doesn't discriminate, I'm pretty sure.
**People's Alliance for Democracy. Google it.

Bangkok: some more protests

Background: There were widespread anti-government protests in Bangkok before I arrived. At one point a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency. All that was over about a week before I arrived, however.

Anyway, applying to an English school today, I picked up a newspaper and saw that negotiations between the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) and the Thai government had broken down, because two senior PAD leaders have been arrested. Taking the 72 bus back to the hostel tonight, I saw a protest happening on the royal plaza. (Outside the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, to be more specific.) A protest complete with riot cops. Peaceful, though. The riot cops weren't doing anything - they were just there. I assume it was PAD protesters, because that's what I expected given today's news, and because they had the same yellow headbands I saw on the news before coming to Thailand. But really, I don't know, do I? So, uh, I guess I'll keep an eye on that while I'm here. Updates to follow if this affects my life in any way. Otherwise, you can just read the paper like everyone else, I suppose.

News Articles:

• The basics
  
• An update

Elections in Bangkok: Metta Temchamnarn

It's election time for the governor of Bangkok.*
I was in the fairly quiet neighborhood of my hostel (Thewet) eating some fried corn balls on the street the other day when I got my hand shook by candidate #3: Metta Temchamnarn. He wasn't dressed in all those military whites up above, though. He was pretty much exactly as he looks in the bottom-right corner, complete with scarf, cap, and jazzman shades. The jazzman shades alone are almost enough to make me wish I could vote for him. Also wearing jazzman shades was his M.C., chatting up the passers-by, just hanging out the passenger side of the campaign ride, tryin to holla at me. For all I know, every candidate has an M.C. riding shotgun in their truck, but I seriously doubt that they're as cool as this one. His man is also clearly getting blessed by some kind of fairies (see above), and has a dragon over his shoulder where cartoon characters usually have the good angel whispering advice. So again, clearly, he's the candidate who gets advice from a dragon**. (Sweet). Unfortunately, after reading up a little on the elections in the Bangkok Post, it turns out that, sadly, he's still a minor candidate. I just don't get it. What's not to like?

*Bangkok Special Administrative Area has a governor, not a mayor. I know it's hard to accept, but apparently that's just how they roll around here.
**And a phoenix?

Bangkok, Thailand (day 7)

China is over for now. I miss it, and, I'll be back, and I'm still practicing my Chinese when I need to procrastinate on something, but there's no use hiding the fact: I've moved to Thailand. It's not much more than a puddle jump over Laos, really.
The earthquake happened in Chengdu. You'll remember me posting news about that. Then a summer vacation to XinJiang (see below). But after that: nothing. Under your radar, here's what I did:

-Left China (Got out just before the Olympics.)
-Visited my family in Montreal (also: Alexia, Brendan, Stephs)
-Went to Family Camp (...totally rocks; totally rules. Let's get serious.)
-Visited Laura in Brooklyn (late summer and culinary delights.)
-Visited Santa Barbara (my first time to California. There were dolphins!)
-Moved to Bangkok.

Now I'll be posting from Bangkok. If you know any super-useful Thai phrases, please let me know in the comments. I have some books, but I'm way behind the curve on actually studying them, since I also have "find a job" and "find an apartment" on my short term to-do list. For the moment, I'm in the Sawatdee Guesthouse on Si Ayutthaya at 400 baht/night. I'll let you know how things proceed.

Back in XinJiang on Vacation

Hi everyone, I'm in XinJiang again. The last time I was here was 2006, around this same time of year. I've taken a vacation from work down in Chengdu and I couldn't be happier to have done it. XinJiang is really pretty paradisaical in the summer. It's cold, and I'm sure beautiful in its arctic way (much like my own Montreal) in the winter, but in the summer it's all blue skies, hot deserts, vineyard oases, tall mountains, clear blue lakes, pine forests, tall minarets, dusty clay mosques, gleaming white mosques, sweet grapes, squashed-looking peaches and everyone speaking all sorts of languages you've never heard before like Uyghur and Kazakh and Mongolian. And a lot of Chinese, as always. The Chinese isn't what I'm here for, though, I get enough of that and love it back in Chengdu.

Here's an excerpt of an e-mail I just wrote to my mom, and then forwarded to the rest of my family because I figured it was a nice 'n' concise little update.
====

I'm in Turpan, a major grape-growing city in XinJiang, about 3 hours from the capital, Urumqi (Oo-room-chee). We spent the last 3 days at Tian Chi (Tee-en Chur) - Sky Pool, a high mountain lake north of Urumqi. We stayed in a yurt with a group of Kazakh families who run a little extra-rustic bed and breakfast type operation up there. Kazakh as in Kazakhstan, although they live in China, of course. I learned a few words of Kazakh, but that's it. Anyway, the mountains were beautiful. Megan and her parents said it reminded them a little of the Sierras in California. It was all open meadows and lines of pine trees running up and down the steep slopes. Lots of eagles and hawks. We saw some ibex too (ibexes?).
Now, in Turpan, I'm going to try to learn a little more Uyghur (wee-ger). I'm at 4 phrases so far. Unfortunately I lost my only Uyghur textbook over a month ago in ChongQing, just after I'd cracked it open to try to get a head start on the language for my trip up here.


P.S. A lot of people translate Tian Chi (天池) as "Heavenly Lake", but I think that's lame. I stand by "Sky Pool".

Disaster Intermission: Manicure

While I did volunteer and I did mourn and just couldn't have done otherwise than to take the last two weeks' events very seriously, I did engage in at least* one irreverent activity, which was to go get my nails painted with Megan (American) and Shirley and June (Chinese), three coworkers of mine. I've never had a manicure anywhere else, so I can't compare and contrast for you, but it was fun. Megan and June got plain old clear polish, Shirley went for bright red and I asked for rainbow. I had some discussion with the ladies working there about what exactly I meant, and in the end there was still confusion, because they gave me stripes and I had wanted solid colours. Oh well. They gave me the extra stripes underneath each main one as an afterthought, really. Next time I'll be more clear. For the moment, I'm fashion** enough for me.

*Uh, at very least

**fash·ion /ˈfæʃən/
-adjective [origin: Chinese English (Chinglish)]
1. Fashionable, stylish, attractive, in referring to clothes, accessories or the people wearing them.: Your new shirt, I think very fashion!

Aftershocks fizzle

There was a panic of sorts on Monday night because the provincial Seismological Bureau (rightly) issued a warning about expected strong aftershocks in the quake zone. That night I got call after call and text message after text message from worried Chinese friends (and one French friend) saying that I should sleep outside. I didn't. I was a little worried about it, though, since these were trustworthy friends telling me that it wasn't a rumor and they had heard it themselves on the news, repeatedly.
Anyway, they weren't lying, but they were wrong. The next day the Seismological Bureau had to issue a clarification to the people of Chengdu saying, once and for all "Chengdu is not in 'the quake zone'. Stay in your homes."

Anyway, I'm fine. I did have a pretty cool dream that night though, about the building swaying back and forth like one of those ducks or horses in playgrounds that are each on a really huge stiff spring, that then kids get on and rock back and forth. A lot of people are still sleeping outside. Far from a majority, I should say, but a lot. Tents are still up on almost every available patch of grass or empty lot in the city. There's really no more danger, so my theory is that since the weather's so beautiful, they just decided that since it was so fun sleeping outside, and they took so long setting up a little tent complex with tarps and mattresses and all, why not a few nights more?

From the Chengdu International Women's Club:
In an interview this morning on Sichuan television, an official of the
prediction office of the Sichuan Seismological Bureau said that the
warning last night was for the central earthquake zone and that
Chengdu does not lie in the aftershock danger zone. Any aftershock
that reaches Chengdu will be much weaker than the original quake.
Chengdu people, long as they are not living in a weak structure, have
nothing to worry about, said the seismologist. In fact people running
out in the streets might be hit by something that fell off a building,
he said. He showed a map of the aftershocks, adding that 4000
aftershocks have been detected since the May 12 quake. The map shown
on TV of the May 12 and aftershocks lie in a rectangular box running
from the southwest to the northeast with a centerline just west of the
western margin of the Chengdu plain. A similar map is on the USGS
website earthquake.usgs.gov at http://tinyurl.com/5loy9c

Volunteering at the airport

Donate to earthquake relief here: http://donate.ifrc.org/




On Saturday I went with Megan, Shirley (a Chinese coworker) and 闫小红, an ex-military friend of Shirley's, to volunteer in disaster relief. This isn't something special, by the way. Everyone in the city seems to want to volunteer. Of course, what the humanitarian agencies really want are volunteers with medical training, engineering expertise, or search and rescue experience. The high schools haven't resumed classes either, so a lot of older kids are volunteering to do whatever civilian work needs to be done. Anyway, 闫小红 being a former soldier, he took us to the airport, where Shirley knew there was help needed, and ask a police officer to drive us to the site, which he did cheerfully. We spent the rest of the day at a cargo bay, where we and a couple of hundred other volunteers were needed unloading incoming relief supplies shipments and packing them onto trucks bound for Wenchuan, Beichuan, Deyang, Dujiangyan, or other hard-hit towns.
It seemed as organized as you might expect, although we still ended up spending a lot of time waiting around between shipments. It was amazing to see the planes coming in close to us and know that many of them were loaded with supplies sent from all over China. Most of it was medicine, medical supplies and water, although one train of pallets was full of hurricane lanterns. Everyone was clearly happy to be helping, happy to be doing something small but concrete, making human conveyor belts just to get everything sent on its way as soon as possible. Together with the labels on the boxes showing they'd been sent with love from Tianjin or Shenzhen or Beijing (faraway cities) it all gave a really strong sense of solidarity and selflessness.

Saturday. Donate here: http://donate.ifrc.org/

Friday I went for a walk around town to go get some work done at an ice cream shop. Down on Hong Xing (Red Star) 红星 road in the Chunxilu 春熙路 shopping district there were volunteers collecting for the Red Cross 红十字会 and loading donated supplies onto trucks destined for the disaster zone. Everyone here, in the province, in the country, seems to have been pulling together really well. That includes the government, by the way. No haters. They've been really on the ball and are clearly making concerted efforts, maybe as much as could be expected of any government, to get help to those who need it and information out to the rest of us.
There's been a wonderful sense of community in the city since the earthquake. It started with everyone just sending text messages to everyone else (calls weren't going through) asking if they were ok, their familes, if they had a place to sleep, etc. and it's continued since then. The blood banks filled in two or three days, because people from here to Beijing were lining up to donate. There have been lots of other little closenesses too, like seeing friends again for the first time, volunteering together, being glad we're alive together. It's nice. The whole city feels very homey (and safe).

By the way, injured and homeless survivors are being brought here to Chengdu and Mianyang for treatment and shelter. If you can, please donate something to the Red Cross http://donate.ifrc.org/

Friday Aftershock

It's Friday afternoon in Chengdu now, the earthquake was Monday afternoon. So almost exactly 4 days later, we just got hit with another aftershock. It lasted maybe 15 seconds and it was small. Quite small but clear, and it probably felt stronger up here on the 17th floor. I really can't imagine this fairly new 19-storey apartment high-rise tumbling down now because it swayed a couple of inches, but it is a little stressful to still be feeling aftershocks days later.
Now be aware that I don't know anything about plate tectonics, but it's still worrisome to think that the aftershocks we feel here must be quite a bit stronger 62 miles away in Wenchuan 汶川, at the epicentre. I had thought that everybody was sleeping back inside by now, since the masses of people crowding out the streets and sidewalks on Monday night have long since dispersed. In talking with friends the past two days, however, it seems there's still a significant number of people here in the city (including a few of my friends) sleeping on sports fields and in the amusement park for fear of strong aftershocks.

Rumours and lies (earthquake)

Ok everybody, don't listen to a thing I say! I'm just spreading rumours, that's all. There is NO water shortage expected. Everyone did go and stock up like I said, and the stores were empty of water bottles and such, that's all true. The original water-shortage scare, however, was based on faulty information.
The real story, from the same Chinese friend who gave me the original story, is (appaaaaarently) this:
There was no chemical plant explosion that contaminated the water supply. There was a fire in a plastics factory, and people were worried that it might cause contamination, but that was ruled out as a possibility. Not ruled out quickly enough to stop the rumor mill, though, it seems.

Anyway, my apartment now has 12 bottles of grapefruit juice, 13 bottles of sweet jasmine tea, 6 packets of wet wipes (for water-free hygiene) and every available watertight container, including the blender, filled with tap water for the long and hard and , uh, arduous... uh... yeah, there's no water shortage. Everything's still fine. Goodnight.

(P.S.: Not everyone's ok. Still send money to the Red Cross.)

Wednesday Earthquake Update

The most recent news from my apartment here in Chengdu is the water should be going off sometime today for an indefinite period of time. I heard beforehand from two of my Chinese friends (who get a lot more news through the text message chain than me) that we should go stock up on water because it had been announced on television that a chemical plant exploded today (hearsay) and that that might cause water shortages in the next few days. Then it was announced outside my building. I have to admit, I didn't understand most of the message, though. It was garbled through a megaphone, my Chinese is still poor, and I was 17 floors up, but they said something about water. So there.
I went and dutifully stocked up, but the stores were already sold out of drinking water, so people were just buying drink boxes, Pepsi, milk, whatever they liked and was available. I went for bottles of sweet jasmine tea and grapefruit juice.
It's a beautiful sunny day. The water is still on, for now. I feel stocked up and calm - happy, really. Rescue efforts are continuing in the nearby counties. If you want to help (not me, obviously, the people in Beichuan 北川 and Wenchuan 汶川 counties) you should donate to the Red Cross, as they're the NGO leading the aid charge for the moment.

Love,
Matthew

Earthquake update 2

Ok, a further update on the aftermath of the earthquake this afternoon. At 2:28 it was big and very shaky up on the 8th floor in my office. The news says it was a 7.8. Some people ran for the stairs, many of us stood around shaking in the lobby area until the floor stopped moving (mostly), then made our way down the stairs. A lot of plaster had fallen, and there were some crack in the walls, mostly on the inside, though a few were visible on the exterior. The streets, unsurprisingly, were filled with people. We then saw that a man and a woman were stuck in the glass elevator up on the 4th floor. The man was waving at us and the woman was kneeling down and crying. Fortunately some employee managed to get the power to the elevator back on and they came down and out safely. Everybody I've been able to check in with is fine. Some people are spending the night camped out on the street, but boredom and fatigue got the better of me pretty quickly and so I went home and walked up the 17 flights of stairs to my apartment. The elevator, unsurprisingly, is still shut down. Water and electricity are on in my building, I'm happy to say, after being off for only a few hours. So I feel very blessed. Reading the news, you'll see that it's difficult to feel like some people have been blessed by this. I was happy to see a few minutes ago, though, that the hospital next to my apartment has the lights back on and patients and doctors are visible through the windows. At around 9pm the windows were still black and that didn't seem to bode well.
I'm going to bed now. I expect that things will be calm tomorrow and I'll have no need to update you for a while. Love to all of you.
Matthew

Earthquake

I'm ok! There was a big earthquake in Chengdu, but I'm fine, although that doesn't go for everyone in the city. Most people in the city are still out on the streets, but the power is back on, and I've made my way home and ventured inside to send some updates. I plan on sleeping inside tonight, too. I figure if the building hasn't fallen yet...
Seriously, though. No buildings have fallen.

Anyway, I'm fine, so for those of you to whom it might have occurred to worry: don't.
Lots of love,
Matthew

News Flash: Thailand

I've left the cold Chengdu winter temporarily to take a month's vacation in Thailand, where I'll be finding out whether real Thai ice teas are as delicious as New Haven Thai ice teas. I had one last night and it was ...only average. But I'm here for a month, so I'm withholding judgement for now.

I've also bought a number of learning Thai books, and that'll be a project to see how much Thai I can learn in a month. Readysetgo. The alphabet isn't easy, but then, it's no Chinese, either. This is day two and I'm floundering pitifully, but give me a break, I haven't even finished learning the alphabet.

So far Bangkok is beautiful, multicultural, civilized, hip (read that however you want, it'll probably still be true), fascinating and relatively clean, nothing to do with the backpackers' ghetto and cesspool of sex tourism we've all heard about. I mean, it IS the former, and I assume it's the latter also, but it's clearly so many other things too that I'm loving it much more than I thought I would.

The Bath House Video

Drew, Megan, Steph and I went to a bath house in town that has a number of different seaweed baths and hot baths and cold baths and oil massages and foot massages, etc. They're all sex-segregated, so Drew and I soaked in the men's baths and Megan and Steph in the women's. This is us afterwards in our house-issued pyjamas eating the free midnight buffet. We're talking about the best way to cool down a glass of hot water. They only served hot water and we were all still steamy and red from the baths and not in the mood for it, so Drew asked the waitress for some ice (it was a much more complicated process than it sounds, trust me).



Steph was visiting from Montreal. I have some pictures of her visit up on Flickr.

Walking home by the river

I just got back to my apartment on Jianshebei Street. It's 3:30 in the morning. I watched the movie Philadelphia at Drew and Megan's apartment on the 17th floor and then walked home alone along the river, which was very still and very dark. The picture on the right shows a portion of the river at night, but all those lights go off at around one o'clock, and the riverside road becomes dark and very peaceful. I sang some some hyms and camp songs and some kid's songs and then just walked in silence. It's a cold winter in Chengdu, the coldest in 10 years, one friend told me. Tonight, however, was a good night for walking. The air was dry and so it didn't seem to cut through like usual, and the occasional quiet water sounds from the dark river made it feel like spring. That portion of the river is bordered by overhanging willows which keep their leaves all winter, and they make it feel very cozy and very tranquil.

Consular services/Not going to Vietnam?

Sad news, sad news, come to where I sleep, turn, turn, turn again...
Vietnam may be a no-go. The Canadian Consulate in ChongQing were very responsive and sympathetic, but unfortunately they didn't have any good news for me.
=====
Mr. Vaughan,

Since January 2006, all Canadian passports are printed in Canada, and the processing time is 15 working days. Therefore, you may get your passport in 4 weeks including posting time.

Once the new passport has been issued, the old passport will be returned to you with one corner cut. The visa on the old passport will remain valid. You must use both passports together until the visa expires.

Regards,
Canadian Consulate in Chongqing
Suite 1705, Metropolitan Tower
Wu Yi Rd, Yu Zhong District 400010
Chongqing, China
86-23-6373-8007
=====
For more on Canadian passport renewal in China: http://geo.international.gc.ca/asia/china/consular/beijing/passport-services-en.asp

My passport's out of pages

Spring Festival (春节) is almost here in China, and I plan on travelling back to Vietnam (where they call it Tet, instead of 春节). Problem though: my passport is out of pages, and I don't have much time left. Here's the e-mail I just wrote to the nearest Canadian consulate, in Chongqing (重庆). I'll let you know how it turns out (or if you're travelling too, and looking for advice, just e-mail me).
=====
Hello.
My name's Matthew Vaughan, I'm a Canadian citizen, 27, living
temporarily in China (Chengdu) on a 1-year Z visa.
I plan on travelling abroad during Spring Festival, but have just
realized that I have only one remaining blank page in my passport, and
that won't be enough for the required exit-entry stamps.

I know you can't add pages to a passport anymore, so I'd like to know
what the quickest option is for renewing my passport. I can travel to
ChongQing in person in these next few days if necessary. Also, my visa
was just renewed by the PSB this week. If I renew my passport, can the
Chinese visa be switched over, or will it be invalidated along with my
current passport?

Thanks in advance for your advice,

Matthew Vaughan
Chengdu, Sichuan, China
=====

Birthday dinner

It was my birthday a couple of days ago, and Mark, Megan and Judy took me out for dinner along with our kung fu tutor, Sherry. Although... perhaps I should back up a little here to get you situated.

1. I've been taking beginner kung fu lessons along with Megan, Mark, Drew and Judy.
2. Megan, Mark, Drew and Judy are friends. All English-speaking foreigners (Mark and Judy of Chinese descent). All lovely people.
3. All but Drew appear in my recent video of my Christmas eve dinner party. Drew was over in Chong Qing playing a show with local rockers Proximity Butterfly.

There, now you're caught up. So they took me out to a sumptuous dinner at a place called "Vegetarian Lifestyle" (just the way I like my lifestyles) and gave me a number of sweet gifts, not least of which was an electric blanket! These past two nights have been CO-ZY. Cozy. Electric blankets are the cat's pyjamas (and ironically, allow me to finally ease up on the layers of pyjamas I've been donning every night). Sherry gave me a fan from her hometown in Henan province which I have yet to decipher but which depicts an apparently well-known scene in Chinese history. Afterwards we went roller skating. Roller skating! That was also the cat's pyjamas, pretty much. Sadly, no pictures. But oh, the memories (all alone in the moonlight).
Good night all you sports fans. It's electric blanket time again for me.

Pan Bo and me at Luo Dai on a Sunday

Here's a video uploaded to Facebook over a week ago. It's easier to upload to Facebook, so sadly I tend to get lazy about blogging here when it's already up on there. Anyway, it's a video of Pan Bo (see previous post) and me out at a town called Luo Dai. It was the fortuitous conjunction of payday followed by a day off for him, so he took me and his new girlfriend out there for the day. Hilarity ensued.
Chinese name: 潘波
Location: 四川，洛带

Pan Bo is gone

Pan Bo is gone. I just found out tonight. He's my friend, Yi minority, and works at the hot pot restaurant in front of my apartment block. Four days ago he called me while I was out, and asked me when I was coming home. He tried to say more stuff which I didn't understand because reception was bad and my Chinese is even worse. Anyway, in the end I had to hang up on him, vaguely annoyed because I really wasn't catching a thing and it seemed like he was just being nosy. The next evening he called again, and I was just like, "Chill out, man, I'm going to see you tonight when I get home anyway." And he told me "No, I'm going home, so I want to wait for you." I see him every day, or almost, because he works out front of the restaurant, so it's almost impossible for me to leave my home without seeing him. "So go home, I told him, I'll just see you tomorrow!" He protested for a minute, but again, I wasn't understanding a thing and finally I just hung up. I assumed he meant going home for the night, to sleep. But no. He meant he was going for good, back to his hometown in the countryside surrounding XiChang, the capital of the Yi Autonomous prefecture. So he's gone. I don't know why, he's turned off his phone and his (now ex-) girlfriend says he's not coming back.
Anyway, if I do see him again, I know what I'm going to say to him. "Cho bo, nga ni mo guo he ma ka ji ka"*. That's all I remember how to say in Yi language, although I'll probably add in Chinese that I'm sorry for ignoring him when he just wanted to see me once more before he left. Sadly, that's what I get for having poor comprehension skills.
The picture above is from the summer, when we would spend hot evenings sitting outside the restaurant talking bad Chinese together. I'd bring my guitar out and we'd take turns playing. He'd sing in Yi and I'd sing in French and we'd both laugh and say 听不懂 a lot. Now it's the winter, I'm cold, and I miss him.

*"Friend, it's good to see you."

Christmas Eve Dinner 2007 in Chengdu

Dinner was lovely on Christmas eve in my apartment with some friends. And stockings and hot chocolate and Christmas specials. And vegetarian chicken. Douglas is surprised at the low price I paid for the space heater you see working there in the corner (only on special occasions, of course). That's what he's talking about there at the end.

Hey also, let me know if you can't view the video and I'll try to fix it up.