You Can’t Always Get What You Want… but if you try sometimes, you might find…
I just had a job interview. Yes… just like last year, I am in the Bay Area, where I want to be, and looking for work in the field I want to work in. Of course, this is unexpected [unexpected because I (clearly incorrectly!) thought that I would be returning to the school where I worked last year for this year - where I really wanted to work again]. But not totally unexpected in terms of the state of public education and budgets and the general state of affairs that I knew I would find in California on my return last year following more than five years over seas.
I am at a funny place in my life these days. I am in a place, geographically, where I would like to stay. I am in a place, physically, that is forcing me to acknowledge that I can no longer leap tall buildings in a single bound. I am in a place, emotionally, that is totally erratic – there is simply no other way to describe it. I am in a place, mentally, that is strangely calm.
As I was riding Bart under the Bay, from the city I am so happy to call home, to Berkeley, a place I would love to work, Mick (with the assistance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra) came symphonically onto my iPod apparently reminding me:
You can’t always get what you want…
You can’t always get what you want …
You can’t always get what you want…
But if you try sometimes, you’ll find…
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED.
I wondered if this song was going to be a good omen, or if I should skip to the next song, wanting all the luck I could account for in my corner. Then Mick said, “I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand. I knew she was gonna meet her connection, at her feet was her footloose man…”
You can’t always get what you want…
You can’t always get what you want …
You can’t always get what you want…
But if you try sometimes, you might find…
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED.
I let it play.
The interview was for a really good job at a good school with good people. It seemed like the briefest interview I have ever had (but on second thought, it was about the same length of every other interview I have ever had, so I am not sure what that means.) It seemed like real people were talking to me about real things and wanted real answers. At one point, in perusing my resume, the principal had said, “So, Sparks, to China. There ‘s a move everyone makes.” I laughed to myself. Yeah, how much more legitimate can a geography teacher be than one who actually pulls a freaking geographical? And on leaving the interview, the standard self-doubt and insecurities that go with the whole process came up. Did I say enough? Did I say too much? Did I sell my self? Did I look desperate? Did I seem enthusiastic? Did I demonstrate my experience? Did I highlight my talent?
As I walked out of the school and headed over to a sunny beer garden to contemplate the whole thing, Rehab’s song, ‘Sittin’ at a Bar’ came on. I smiled. I remembered hanging out of the back of a songthaew haphazardly bouncing along a pitted road between Thong Sala and Haad Rin on Koh Phanghan with a one-time soul brother as we belted out the lyrics to that song…
As I contemplated this memory in the hot (really hot – but a “dry” heat!) Berkeley sun five years later, I thought again about my situation. I am not the norm for my age group to be sure. I cannot imagine most of my friends in my current circumstances. I thought about a lot of the teachers I know who were surprised to hear I was in a situation where I had to look for another position, but really glad that they were not. I considered the disadvantage of starting at a new district, losing years of experience on the pay scale – again, starting all over – again. When you think about it like that it doesn’t sound so good.
But then, you can think about it another way, too. I don’t know too many people over here who have gotten to see and do the things that my unconventional decision-making has brought me. I may not have the security that a lot of people do, but I have navigated crazy back roads in Thailand, seen the sun come up over Angkor Wat, walked on the Great Wall of China, lived in an ashram in rural India, gone diving off the coast of Borneo in the Celebes Sea, met real geishas in Kyoto, shot automatic weapons in Vietnam, brought my preguntas to la junta with Par Par Lay in Burma, eaten buffalo at a family barbecue in northern Laos, crossed the Mekong in a longtail boat, given up my seat to a monk on a flight back to Hong Kong, been upgraded to Cathay Business class and traveled by night bus through the jungle, had Bamboo snakes in my house, fed monkeys on the beach, cursed cockatoos in my lychee tree, thrown Mexican fiestas in Hong Kong and had raging toga parties in my little house on the South China Sea. And those are just the adventures in Asia.
When I got up from lunch it suddenly seemed less terrible that I did not have a job. But I hoped I would get one anyhow.
When I got home an hour later the principal I had just interviewed with called me.
“We loved you, why don’t you come work here.”
Fuck. Yes.
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED.
When I began writing this post I was on the train coming back to the City from the East Bay, unemployed.
When I finished it, I was sitting on the couch in my apartment in the Mission drinking a beer, employed.
I realize that there are a bunch of you out there who are waiting to tell me you told me so.
I am totally fine with that… and I love you for your infinite and amazing support. xoxo
Living in your own private social network /= living in society
Do you remember when we used to dance
And incidents arose from circumstance
One thing led to another we were young
And we would scream together songs unsung
On October 24 a news item broke that suggested that Sony was going to stop producing its original Walkman. I had a little moment of actual nostalgia when I heard. It made me think back to the first Walkman I ever had… I had saved up my money from various tasks for which my stepmonster had underpaid me all summer. Macy’s was having a sale, and the object of my desire was there waiting for me for 100 USD. I was ready. I had the cash in a pile of neatly stacked 1s, 5s, 10s and even a few 20s. No coin, far too sophisticated to be carting around change; I had hit the big time by 1982.
And the Walkman, as promised, changed everything. I loved it. My parents hated it. They said I was “tuned out,” and that it was like having someone there who wasn’t there. [For the purposes of this post I will skip the irony of 'tuning out' morphing from good to bad from the 1960s to the 1980s... I imagine it is only one of many things of which the same could be said.] But I kept that thing on all the time. It was am/fm and cassette. My first cassettes were the eponymous album by Asia (thank you Uncle Paul) and the Go-Gos’ Vacation (thanks dad.) I remember getting Duran Duran’s Rio and The Fixx Reach the Beach fairly soon after that as well as a few other choice selections.
I never took the thing off. It was exactly as it had been posited by the British press on release of the personal stereos the year before:
As I sat contemplating what I loved about my first Walkman, I decided to go and see the new(ish) movie The Social Network. I grabbed my coat and my iPhone and stuck in my earphones and off I went. I waved at my neighbors who were also “plugged in.” We couldn’t hear a word we might have said to each other, but made appropriate head and hand gestures. It didn’t even strike me as unusual. I am not sure what the actual statistics are, but I am guessing that when I am out and about somewhere in the neighborhood of 75% of people are tuned *in* to their handheld devices. Whether or not this constitutes being tuned *out* of something greater or more significant remains to be seen. We walk around in our own little bubbles, aware of the people around us – sort of – but in very music video montage sort of way. I am sure that the reasons for being plugged in vary, and I don’t know if it is *anti* social, but it is certainly *nouveau* social. [Case in point: while at the Treasure Island Music Festival a few weeks ago, one of our favorite moments was the silent disco. Everyone has headphones on and jams to the beat... with the headphones on it seems totally normal, take them off and it is a total trip to witness. Is it anti-social? No way, but it is certainly a whole new kind of social.]
Anyhow, off I went to the Metreon to catch the flick.
WC2010: My second World Cup in Asia
Here we come
Walking down the street
We get the funniest looks from
Everyone we meet.
When the 2006 World Cup kicked off I was traipsing around Southeast Asia. That sounds a lot more idyllic than it was. True, I was in Southeast Asia enjoying a lot of what Thailand and Laos have to offer. That was nice. But I was also running from unpleasantness that I did not want to face in the States thereby making said unpleasantness a shit ton more unpleasant. [Duh.] I was also supporting a junkie on the road. To be fair, he wasn’t on the junk at that time, but he had enough hang ups with ex-girlfriends, lager and indigence that things were not looking really auspicious… and they don’t call it a monkey on your back for nothing. [DUH.] My professional soccer exposure was limited, but because I am American it was assumed that I was a total football ignoramus. Not true y’all. As a basketball coach for more years than I often care to admit, I learned a lot about soccer. That is not a semantic error. Coaching basketball is what taught me about soccer.
One of the hardest concepts to coach in sports is the skill of moving off the ball. It is interesting because the majority of the action in basketball and soccer is actually taking place away from the ball (it is another reason refs are so shitty have such a challenging job, they need to keep their eyes away from the ball too, and they forget to do this often occasionally.) The ball in both these sports works like a magnet; everyone is instinctively drawn to it. This seems to be innate. Don’t believe me? Watch a pee-wee soccer game some time, it is one giant moving cluster of bodies, and it is pretty much the same in basketball, just less bodies. Anyhow, knowing this, I spent a lot of time teaching how to move away from the ball and how to be sure that my girls understood spacing on the floor and how to create space. It is the essence of setting a good screen. Or running an effective press. Both of which my teams did exceptionally well… primarily because of the soccer players that hooped it up for me. Kids who play soccer, and who are good at it, understand these concepts because they are even more important when you are dealing with a playing field, (yeah, yeah, “pitch”) that is more than twenty times larger with only two times as many players. [Basketball courts are standardized 94' x 50' and a soccer field - non-bloody standard btw, averages about 90m x 119m.) So, yeah, I knew a little about the game, if not the European clubs and big money players. And anyhow, I am a sports fanatic, making me a quick study and I went to more soccer games than I can count to watch my kids play. [Superfan.]
So there I was, in Bangkok and the World Cup was kicking off. Soccer was everywhere in the news and I was on the road with a group composed of Aussies, Brits and an Irishman; at least half the group full-on football maniacal. And everyone was getting all nationalistic as the days went on.
“What team are you going to support?”
“The US.”
“No, but I mean after the groups.”
“The US.”
[Imagine the most condescending voice ever] “But, the US aren’t* going to make it out of the group stage, so then who?”
“Who do you support?”
“England.”
“Who do you hate?”
“Germany.”
“Germany it is, then.”
*Semantic fun fact: British English assigns plural verbs to collective nouns. In spite of my general aversion to B.E., I like this.
In the midst of all of this World Cup madness I was coerced into picking a Premiere League team because Ex#5 was definitely on the footie-fanatic roster. I told him I could not just “pick a team,” I was going to have to check out this whole “league” concept in soccer (which, by the way, is superceded in stupidity only by the fact that an official game can end in a tie/draw.) But he insisted. Wouldn’t bloody give it a rest.
“Come on, pick a team. Look, here is the listing.”
“That means nothing to me, I don’t even know where some of these places are.”
“Why does that matter?”
[Now imagine the look on my geographile face when he said that.] “It matters.”
“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun, we can each have a team to support.”
“Quit bugging me, it is not even the Premiere League season, I have months to choose.”
“What, are you going to study up?”
“Give me that god dammed newspaper.” I grabbed the sports section from him. There was a giant color picture of a fairly good-looking guy on the front page. “Fine, who does this guy play for? I’ll support them. That is now my team.”
The look on #5′s face was worth the entire breakfast argument as the Tottenham Hotspur loyalist took in the spectacle of the front page that showed Michael Ballack in all of his German glory – signing to play for Chelsea.
“What?!?! You are joking! You can’t pick like that!”
“Look, you made me do it and now I have done it and I am sticking with it. GO BLUES. Now let me have my coffee.”
A Yank choosing to support Chelsea based on the Ballack signing is somewhat akin to a Brit choosing to support the Yankees or the Red Sox based on some equally skeevy signing – think A-Rod or Derek Jeter or a Giambi or something. It was the best revenge. But the Premiere League was hardly the topic du jour. It was World Cup time and people were getting ready.
Myanmar as I see it… or saw it… And eight little lessons.
People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk. ~Ayn Rand
There are a lot of people who say one should not go to Myanmar, though more likely they say you should not go to Burma. They say this because of the repulsive military regime that has been criminally damaging and amazingly obtuse in the eyes of pretty much the entire world for at least the past two decades. Since the exit of the British in 1947 (to this subject the first – and tremendously fortuitous taxi driver we had said, “The British… they built many things,”) Burma has struggled to find its proverbial footing politically, economically and nationally. There was a brief period of union under Bogyoke Aung San and even the hill tribes and ethnic minorities seemed satisfied for a time. But it was short-lived and following Bogyoke’s assasination and the death of U Thant, who had not only represented Burma in the UN but had risen to become the first non-Western Secretary-General, General Ne Win took his opportunity to jump the line by way of military coup in 1962. Promoting what he called the Burmese way to Socialism, Ne Win served as the head of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, the only political party until 1988. It is during this period that Burma became one of the most impoverished nations on the planet. Currently the GNP per capita, adjusted to demonstrate purchasing power, is US$1,200/year and I can assure you that US$100 per month is NOT enough to live on in any way that is comfortable in Burma.
Under Ne Win lots of other really impressive things occurred; the assassination of 15 university students involved in protests at Rangoon (Yangon) University, persecution of resident aliens that could easily be described as ethnic cleansing, religious persecution of Muslims in what was called (no joke) the King Dragon Operation, hideous economic mismanagement…. [At this point I would ask you to consider if this sounds a lot different from how a history of the US since 1960 might read.]
But then there was a bloody coup in 1988 under General Saw Maung. Martial law was imposed, general elections were promised for 1989 and the State Law and Order Restoration Council (or SLORC as it was called, which I like better because it sounds like a Star Wars bad-guy) changed the name of the country from the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar. They held the first “free” elections in the country in May of 1990 and the National League for Democracy (the NLD, primarily famous in the West because of its main political identity, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the “Father of Burmese Independence,” Bogyoke Aung San) won 80% of the seats. The junta did not like the results so they ignored them. They had placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in 1989, though they graciously gave her the choice to end her period of confinement if she would just please leave the country. She refused and has since been under house arrest for more than 17 of the past 20 years.
Under the rule of Than Shwe since 1992, things have continued on basically the same road. In spite of renaming SLORC to the State Peace and Development Council (lulz) and drafting a “new” constitution (I couldn’t decide if I should put the “” around “new” or “constitution,” you can be the judge. The use of “” in Burmese signage gave us pause all the way through the country…) which was military produced and “overwhelmingly” approved, and would bar Aung San Suu Kyi specifically from holding political office. The Tatmadaw (the name of the Burmese military now synonymous with the government military junta) also moved the capital from Yangon and built a new one, at tremendous cost [Burma continues to suffer diminishing economic stability but spent more than US$250 million on this municipal relocation and Than Shwe's daughter's wedding cost a reported US$3000,000 with gifts in excess of US$50 million] near Pyinmana, renaming it Naypyidaw, which means City of Kings. Ummm. Yeah. Interestingly, the World Fact Book still lists the country as Burma and the capital as Yangon.
Currently, the US and the EU have sanctions against the country, several international organizations like the International Labor Organization, are endeavoring to pursue criminal prosecution of the junta for human rights violations, and there has been widespread and highly publicized international dissent since the fall of 2007 when the Burmese monks protest began. A documentary feature of the protests, Burma VJ, made up entirely of hand-held video footage that was smuggled out of the country has been nominated for an Academy Award this year.
Take that Tatmadaw.
But the question remains about how much the international efforts to eliminate the junta actually help, or hurt, the Burmese people. And so, we return to the original question, should one go to Burma… or not?
I chose to go.
Travel (Writing).
Every time I have the opportunity to take a trip – big, small, exotic, mundane, work-related, totally frivolous, near, far – I am grateful. I am grateful for the opportunity, the variety and the inherent surprises that come even when you think for sure they will not. And I am grateful for the chance to share my experiences with others. Whether or not they are grateful is something that apparently very few travelers actually consider, but I would like to consider it.
Since I have been living in Asia and traveling in Asia I have found, in sharing my experiences, I rely heavily on words like myriad and juxtaposition. But these words do so little to actually communicate what I mean. Or at least they seem ineffective in comparison to what I see around me. How can I really demonstrate what I mean when I say there are myriad subtleties in the art of multilingual (or non-lingual) communication in Asia, or that Asia is replete with the most incongruously wonderful juxtapositions I have ever seen? Just saying it seems limited.
And why would it matter? Because, of course, with traveling comes the requisite sharing of said experiences, either with other travelers, or maybe with those who would, but can’t and those who could, but don’t. Ihave a great audience in my classroom for sharing, though I was reluctant to share my trips with my students in the US at first, a result of scars from having to endure my own Freshman English teacher’s every vacation to Hawaii (Mark Reischling I know you loved it, but us? Not so much.) Eventually I did begin to share and whether or not it had the Reischling effect on the kids, it totally changed how I traveled. I began to look around the world in a wholly new way; trying to see everything through the eyes of my students gave my trips a completely new focus. I brought back Vegemite and didgeridoos and boomerangs from Australia and let my students try all of them when we studied the region in Geography. I shared my photo essay of the street people and permanent protesters from D.C. when we covered Civil Rights and Liberties in Government class. I brought in albums from Italy when we studied the Renaissance in World History and the photos for my graduate thesis on Area 51 when we covered the Cold War in US History. Photos of the Ancient Agora and the Theater of Dionysus were passed around when we covered mythology and Ancient Greece. From Russia to Alaska to the Baltic States to Mexico and Jamaica – I wondered: What would my students find interesting, or surprising or bizarre… what might shock them? How could I impart what it was like to be in all these places… How could I create the sense of place in a way that they could relate to and provide context for what they were studying?
I read somewhere recently that the abundance of travel writing was getting simply ridiculous. Something to the effect that people live under the misconception that everyone wants to read about their every trial and tribulation on the road and that somehow a well-inked passport makes one the next great… well, you know, travel writer. And I had to admit, it is kind of true. There are more travel blogs out there everyday, and in some ways, this might kind of be one. I do not read many of the travel blogs that profess to be the “key” to any sort of wisdom, and I love the idea that something one reads on the internet could in any way be “off the beaten track…” [Sorry Lonely Planet, I still love you and I turn to you often, but yo, you are way mainstream.]
Still, I have a certain love for travel literature.
Goddammit… it’s happening again.
Forget over-hyped H1N1… Lately I have been suffering from something far more severe. My need for travel has risen again, and it should be noted, we are talking to a degree of epic proportions. I am a chronic sufferer of this condition. I would say I have wanderlust mostly just for the opportunity to be subtly prurient and slip lust in here, but truthfully the etymology of the word doesn’t fit for me. It comes from the German, wandem, which means to hike; and lust, which means to desire. I do not actually desire to hike. More accurately described, I have fernweh – an ache for the distance. Semantics aside – I need to take a trip.
I am not sure what actually brought this on, but there have been a few things I know contributed. First, I have taken two completely, stupidly abbreviated trips home in the past few months. While a seemingly good idea at the time, both excursions only served to remind me that I have not had a real vacation in way too fucking long. Next, two very cool people that I have the good fortune to have in my orbit, recently embarked on two vastly different but equally inspiring journeys. One chose to move herself and her life to the other side of the world (and the other side of the HDI, frankly) for the opportunity to see something new and pursue a passion. The other, after losing his job, opted not to freak out, but instead to break out and headed for Europe with an open mind and an open heart. In both cases I feel tremendously proud to know these people, and benevolently envious.
Possibly even more influential than all of the above is that I have recently been exposed, through a multitude of situations, to a bunch of people suffering from Good Will Hunting Syndrome (GWHS). Not familiar with this malady? Let me explain it to you: This is mental condition whereby people of a generally pretentious nature (though as I have, on occasion, been accused of having a bit of attitude in this vein, we will not allow it to dominate the diagnostics) wax on (semi) poetically about why they want to travel and where. These people are undoubtedly well versed in the cultural nuances of places far and wide. They speak longingly of the cuisine, the music, the experience. To listen can be intoxicating. They cast aspersions at the more provincial people that surround them for being lowbrow and limited and unable to see the vastness of the world around them. Further, the sufferers of GWHS often accuse those around them of having no interest in the world beyond their daily experience. They pontificate on the features and benefits of different kinds of travel, they know all “the” places to go. They discuss all this in earnest over a cold PBR in designer denim and hipster t-shirts (or perhaps even an appropriate logo T like Beer Lao or Chang.) They are tortured by the limits of their circumstances, but man, they know what they would do – and so it goes. You can generally accurately diagnose a sufferer of GWHS from one of three main symptoms:
Malaysia… I never wrote of you… Sorry la.
I went to Malaysian Borneo for Christmas. I realize that it is now nearly May Day, but I never wrote about Malaysia, or posted many photos, or even did my typical mixed media/journal thing with it. I don’t know why, but somehow I was not moved to do it. Now I feel a little guilty about that and so I want to ameliorate the situation by writing about it.
First of all, I would not rank Malaysia very high on my list of favorite places visited. However, having said that, I do always love seeing new places and I enjoyed myself there. Most people tell me that Borneo is not really Malaysia and if I want to see Malaysia I need to go the peninsula and see KL. And then they all fuck off to Penang or the Perhentian Islands, neither of which seem to be a whole lot more Malaysian than Borneo. Regardless, I went to Borneo because I thought I might be able to convince the research outfit studying the rare and beautiful Clouded Leopards to take me out in the field with them. Apparently, I was not convincing enough so I decided to go diving in the Celebes Sea of the east coast of the island at Sipadan and Mabul Islands. This was exciting as well, since I would be ticking off another World Heritage Site on my travel dossier.
Another reason why I believe I have been so remiss in writing about Malaysia is that I was in my own weird head space at the time, totally bogged down with personal drama that I was not letting go of.
And I also thought the food was crap. I have an insane memory (in general) but for food especially. I recall family events and shared experiences most often by what and where we were eating. I am not sure if that is totally weird, totally useful, both or neither. Whichever it is, I was completely unimpressed with Malaysian food.
Then too, the Malaysian ringgit is substantially stronger than the Hong Kong dollar (now nearly 2.5 to 1) and so my money was halved (HK is making some serious noise about ditching the US dollar… might be a bit too late), but I really hate looking at the bank balance and it seems so… small. [Good thing I am staying out of Europe for a while.]
=ASIA=
Holy Shit! I just got my ticket to Hong Kong. It was the last available seat that I could use my frequent flyer miles on that would get me to Asia in time to start work on September 1, so I am (as usual) doing things out of order… I have a ticket but have not yet settled on a job. I am waiting to hear about the positions in Shanghai and have two other contracts waiting for me to sign… one in Hong Kong and one in Wuxi west of Shanghai.
I cannot believe I am actually doing this- my return ticket is for July 7, ’06.
I guess I have finally made some kind of commitment to something.
Best news of the night… the ticket cost $34.89. Nice.
So, I have 13 days to get all my shit together to leave the country for a year. That should be no problem, right? Right. People do this sort of thing all the time when they go through their first midlife crisis, don’t they?
Here’s to new adventures in far away places…….
Amanda
