Friday, July 2, 2010

Returning soon

I'll be returning to the US relatively soon, much to my dismay. I've been quite busy with work, thus the lack of updates. I apologize for that.

I continue to do stuff in Asia. I'll tell you about it later.

"Travel is only glamorous in retrospect."
-Paul Theroux

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mother's Day

My freshman year my mother suggested I look into the IRSEP scholarship at the university, I didn't. My sophomore year my mother suggested I look into the IRSEP scholarship, I didn't. My junior year my mother suggested I look into the IRSEP scholarship, I did. My senior year my mother asked me what to pack, I said "light stuff because Malaysia is pretty warm."

Just one of the countless examples that illustrates that "Mom knows best."

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

ps Everyone should become a member of the Minnesota International Center

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Places

I got back from the Perhentian Islands early this evening. I had a wonderful few days there swimming in crystal clear water and laying on white sandy beaches. To think a year ago I had never heard of the place.


One of the most important things I've learned here is that you can't pass judgment on a place without being there. I've been traveling alone most of the time and had been quick to assume how this place is going to be like that and etc. For example I thought Laos was going to be like North Korea. But hey! I went there and discovered a beautiful country filled with some of the kindest people I have ever met sans Pyongyang totalitarianism.

The next time someone/a book/the internet/TV tells you the French are rude or Prague is better than Vienna or all the food in India will make you sick or Alabama is full of rednecks or that there isn't much to see in Sarawak, don't take their word.

Go find out for yourself.

Monday, April 19, 2010

300 Days

Today, Tuesday April 20th, is the 300th day I've been in Malaysia. What to do to celebrate? Why buy an overpriced beer and an under priced ice cream treat of course.

To the next 100 Plus (ha) days in Malaysia!

I'll be home in August.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Obama and Medvedev Sign New START Treaty

My mother is visiting me in Malaysia, so I don't have as much time to write about this as I'd like to as I need/should/will make hanging out with her my top priority.

If you haven't heard, President Obama and President Medvedev have signed a new START treaty which will reduce respective nuclear arsenals* by one-third. Coupled with the release on Nuclear Posture Review on Monday, this has been a fantastic week for the nonproliferation regime and human beings in general.

That's all I've got for now. I'll be going to Langkawi on Saturday morning, then down to KL on Tuesday. I'm liking blogging again, so I'll write something once I get back to Penang from KL.

Ian

ps Twins are atop the AL Central Division after three games and will stay there indefinitely.


*long range nuclear weapons. more one that later.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Thoughts on the Nuclear Posture Review

For a long time I've wanted to write about foreign policy issues that have nothing to do with Malaysia, I do study Political Science as a minor after all. Well, today brought some news that I could not help writing about.

On Tuesday, President Obama released the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review. The report outlines what "the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security strategy should be."

The NYT article states:

"Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary... For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack."

I think this is a very positive step in the RIGHT direction for strengthening the international nonproliferation regime AND US national security.

I imagine that critics on the right will be quick to portray the move as "weak" and "inviting an attack on the US." I think these criticisms are made clearly by those stuck in a Cold War mindset. I was lucky enough to have been born at the end of the Cold War and thus "mutually assured destruction" is not part of my regular vocabulary. I'd argue it should be out of everyone's vocabulary and only come out of the mouths of IR scholars and appear in print in IR textbooks. MAD is obsolete. Completely.

Now let me get a bit wonky here for a moment.

I'd argue that Obama's plans for drawing down nuclear arsenals and redefining the situations when nuclear weapons would be employed is completely in sync with recent moves the military has taken in restructuring itself. In short, the military structure was designed most in part with an emphasis for conventional warfare between two opposing powers (ie US and USSR) on a battlefield etc etc. However, the conflicts that our military has been involved in lately (Afghanistan and Iraq) are unconventional. How does a conventional military fight an unconventional war (counterinsurgency being the big one)?

The military has begun to adapt itself in order to better handle unconventional conflicts. It's a measure that is being taken in response to the realities: no a war with China isn't imminent, but executing a population-centric counterinsurgency is something that is going on right now.

Obama's decisions reflect this same reality. Nuclear warfare is obsolete, thank God.

If you don't agree with my analysis, seriously consider threats to the security to the US that would call for the use of nuclear weapons in the year 2010. If you answer: Iran or North Korea, you didn't read the Times article close enough. If you answer: Al Qaeda and other terrorists, consider how a nuclear warhead would be guided to wherever the terrorists are. If you answer China, consider that our economic ties will never bring us further than arguing about Taiwan or the Dalai Lama.

Also, consider the implications this will have for the NPT, Iran, and North Korea.

Many seemed to be baffled as to why President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize. I wasn't.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Today in Bahasa Malaysia Class

Last semester I wrote about my beginning level Bahasa Malaysia class, LKM 100. I'm taking the second level course this semester, LKM 200. While LKM 200 isn't proving to be the enlightening "it's a small world afterall" experience that LKM 100 was, I'm still enjoying it nonetheless.

Today we learned about the prefix ter-.

Ter- can be used to:

a) describe an action done without intention or accidently
b) means "the most" when added to a noun
c) to show incapability of doing something when combined with the word "tidak," which means "no"

I'm the only native English speaker in the class and I find myself being constantly called on. My teacher has mistaken my first name as "Byrne" since the usual format of a name here is Family Name First name. I've figured it's just too late in the semester to correct him without embarrassing him or myself. When he calls on people, it sounds like the name of the person he's calling on erupts out of his mouth as if it were an escape of some sort. It's not, "Ian, could you please answer question number 3?" It's "BYRNE, answer question."

So, back to ter-

My teacher wrote the following two sentences on the board and called on me to translate them into English and distinguish the usage of ter-

1. Dolah terberak di dalam kelas.
2. Dolah berak di dalam kelas.

Teacher: BYRNE, translate the sentences.
Me: What does "Dolah" mean?
Teacher: It's a name.
Me: What does "berak" mean?
Teacher: You don't know berak? Somebody say what "berak" means.
Student sitting next to me: It means to shit.

Since English is everybody else's second or third language, it's common for people just use vernacular English without quite understanding what the meaning of the word carries. We all do that though. I myself throw vittua and perkele around like it's a greeting, no thanks to my Finnish roommates.

I continued.

Me: Dolah accidentally defecated in--
Teacher (interrupting): No! To shit.
Me: Dolah accidentally shit in the classroom.
Teacher: Very good. Next sentence.
Me: Dolah shit in the classroom.

Poor Dolah.

I had no choice but to laugh through each of the "in the class." It was a riot. I must say though, it was actually somewhat liberating speaking publicly about this fictional "Dolah" accidentally and purposefully shitting in the classroom. Nobody else seemed to find it funny though as the next student translated something about someone accidentally eating some cake as I continued to chuckle.

I guess today everyone learned how grown up their American peer is.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Chinese New Year Travels

I had a week off for Chinese New Year from March 15-19. On the morning of the 16th I hopped on a bus and went down to Kuala Lumpur. I had slept for about two hours the previous night since I had some business back home in the US to attend to via email and Skype. I slept the whole bus ride ride down there. I was in such a deep sleep that I woke up on an empty bus around noon, looked out the window and saw the ugly structure that is Pudaraya bus station and realized I was in Kuala Lumpur. I was having some sort of dream that I was in a cooking class. I was happy to have woken up and been in KL. Although waking up on an empty bus was a bit unnerving for a moment.

I stayed in a hostel near the Masjid Jamek metro station. There was a Burger King and a McDonalds facing each other across the street so I had all I needed. My hostel was pretty nice as it seemed to be brand new. In the dorm I stayed in was this Japanese guy who said he had been living there the past two weeks. He seemed like an all right guy up until he asked where I was from. Upon hearing I was American he started gushing out all these 9/11 conspiracy theories and etc. However, he wasn't as crazy as the guy who told me that the Titanic was sunk so the Federal Reserve Bank could be created.

I spent the remainder of the day walking around KLCC. It was my third time in KL, but this time I really, really enjoyed it. KLCC is a park right beside the Petronas Twin Towers. It's a nice place to unwind amidst the hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. Also, I could sit and admire the Petronas Towers for hours.

I went to the aquarium in the adjoining convention center. I like aquariums for the most part, plus it was a good excuse to get out of the KL heat. The aquarium was nice and had all sorts of crazy organisms from across the country. However, I did manage to pull off the feat of getting motion sickness on the moving walkway going through the tunnel through the tank. Something about the glass made everything terribly out of focus and I just suffered through the 90 meters that it lasted.

The next day I went to Merdeka Square. The Malaysian flag flies upon tallest flagpole in the world there. I asked this tourist couple, I think they were from Japan, if they could take a picture of me in front of the square. The husband then asked me if he could take a picture of me with his wife. I obliged, finding it to me one of the more hilarious "can I take a picture of you?" moments.

After that I went to the National Museum, which was pretty cool. It only cost RM 2 to get in and I learned a lot about the colonial era and more about the politics of Malaysia when the country first gained its independence from Britain. I also learned a lot about the Malacca Sultanate which I found to be quite interesting since I was heading there next.

All in all, KL was great.

On Thursday, I took a bus to Malacca. Malacca is a city that has Arab, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, British, and of course Malaysian roots. I hope I didn't forget anyone there... It was a trading hub back in the day and regarded as a strategic port because it was in between China and India.

Malacca was pretty hoppin' as it was jam packed with Chinese celebrating the New Year. I spent the day walking around the city checking out the old colonial buildings and watching kids set off firecrackers at every corner. I went to one museum that was the rebuilt palace of the Malacca Sultan. It was pretty cool and filled with terribly cheezy manikins reenacting this scene and that.

Some parts of Malacca were pretty tourist trappy. There were gift shops in every church, temple, restaurant, museum, you name it. There was a museum for everything as well. There was the "Malaysian Youth Art Museum" and the "Beauty Museum" and the "Kite Museum" and "The People's Museum" and etc.

I liked Malacca overall. Living in Penang for a little over eight months has made me accustomed to "Malaysian life in Penang," so seeing "Malaysian life in Malacca" was nice.

On Friday I took a bus further down to Singapore.

And that, my friends, will be another post for another time.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Keep Haiti in your hearts and minds

As the initial shock has subsided following the awful tragedy in Haiti, we cannot let the plight of the Haitians to begin to rebuild and recover their lives be forgotten.

I found this blog through the Foreign Policy Association's Facebook page:

http://julieinhaiti.tumblr.com/


It gives a heart-wrenching account of what people are going through there.

An excerpt:

"There’s a man that drives every day- away from his current [metal] sheet motel to his crushed home. He sits in front of the concrete pieces, as they lay there crumbled on top of each other. Haitian dreams reduced to rubble. Below the wreckage lie his wife and 5 children. Perhaps they are still alive whimpering. Perhaps they are dead and bloated. Regardless, at this point, they are part of the wreckage and statistics that makeup this faulted land. He has no idea what else to do… where do you start with a broken heart, a broken home, a broken country and soon a forgotten disaster not exciting enough to be covered on CNN or recent enough to receive donations. For him, the start is going back to where it ended and staring at ruins till nightfall prevents it."


Traveling around Asia, I've had experiences and seen things that make me feel so fortunate to have been born into the circumstances that I was. I am constantly reminded that I cannot take anything in life for granted. Realize that if you're reading this blog, you can afford to buy a computer (a luxury item), amongst many, many other things that a lot of people cannot afford or do not have access to. Be thankful for that.


I'm off to Kuala Lumpur in three hours. Bon voyage.

Ian

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Chinese New Year 恭喜发财

Sunday was the first day of the year of the Tiger. I wasn't so sure what to expect, but the Chinese sure know how to start off their year in style. It's been fireworks and firecrackers galore. All of the Chinese are taking the week off to go home and visit family and friends. The atmosphere is kind of like Hari Raya where half of everything is closed.

While I was in India I met Kaja, who is from Norway. We traveled a bit and became buds. Her friend, Linn, came to Penang so we spent yesterday walking around Georgetown seeing what the Chinese were up to. They were partying.

We went to this temple called Kek Lok Si, which is supposedly the largest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia. It looked really cool and had lights all over it. As any Buddhist temple, it had a very calm and soothing atmosphere. I took pictures, but haven't uploaded them yet. Here's some image I found on Google:

























On Tuesday morning I'm heading to Kuala Lumpur for a night or two, then onto Malacca, and finally Singapore for the weekend.


Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The OFFICIAL Malaysian Chinese New Year song

Chinese Lion Dance
, which is really cool.


I'll try my best to post once while I'm traveling.

Ian

Friday, February 12, 2010

An article worth reading

This is a fascinating article that I think anyone from the West studying in Asia (or just anyone in general) should read. I think it would also be worthwhile for my Malaysian and other Asian peers to have a look to see how "Asia's rise" is framed back in the US, or at least in the Boston Globe.

Joshua Kurlantzick's piece Dazzled by Asia


I'm Back

I woke up this morning and felt terrible for a) waking up at 1:30 in the afternoon and b) the fact I don't blog at all and I should. I was paging through GQ and it had a blurb from Stephen King on how to avoid procrastination and remain committed to things you love doing. I, like Stephen King, love writing, but I'm also a 21 year old college student who would much rather spend time customizing a C300 on Mercedes-Benz's website or figuring out how I get invited to get a Centurion Card, as opposed to doing actual things that somewhat actually benefit my existence.

Since I last wrote my life has consisted of: spending three weeks in India, Christmas in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; New Years Eve in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; going to the awesome temple structure Angkor Watt in Siem Reap, also in Cambodia; visiting the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia; making new friends from the new group of exchange students; going to class; being sunburnt on the way to class; and continuing to enjoy my life in Malaysia.

I don't have any class next week because it is Chinese New Year, or the Lunar New Year for everybody else. I should be going to Bali or something but instead I'm just going to cruise around Malaysia. I'm reading Kerouac's On the Road right now and am tempted to go to the bus station, pick out a city name I like, and go there. However, I think I'll pass on that strategy as I wouldn't want to end up near the Thai border to Yala. I think I'll head south to KL then Malacca early next week.

Stephen King said his goal for every day is to write five pages. That's it, write five pages and be done. Well, clearly I'm not going to be writing five pages, but I will make it a goal to try and put something on here every day even if it's just a minor thought or a link.

Also, I'm renaming the blog because I realized from 12:00 AM - 1:59 AM my time, my AM is your AM, which defeats the purpose of everything.

Things I'm thinking about/interested in right now:

How our justice system should treat terrorists: read this and this
Trying to sell Chip my waterboiler that is in no way approved for consumer usage in the US

andd


and hell, this picture too.


Ian