:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

I’m working from home today and I’m glad. Just before lunch, I heard a chanting outside and looked out to find 5 monks in the carpark. It’s not unusual to see monks around as someone’s always having a ceremony to bless their house or the land. We used to come home to our old home to find rocks thrown all through the house in blessing. But today was different. A car was parked with all doors and even the bonnet open.

It was clear to me from the shiny exterior that the car was new and that the monks were here to bless it. I worried that they would throw rocks at it, but it seems that the monks know better. They used rice and holy water instead, scattering them through the interior and over the engine. Finally, they tied a white silk cloth around the rear vision mirror. It’s ironic to me that people let this silk obstruct their view when driving because to remove it would be to risk an accident.

The car was closed up again and the monks piled into their own vehicles and left.

Yesterday as Marie and I were cycling up to BBS Tower, a man walking down the other way waved at Marie. As he passed, I nodded and said ‘kuzu zangpo’, the usual greeting.

Marie stopped and looked a little flustered. ‘That was the prime minister.’ I looked back at the ordinary man. He was walking casually down the hill. ‘I hope you said la.’

‘La’ is the Bhutanese equivalent of ‘sir’ or ‘madam.’ I hadn’t said it. But he didn’t look annoyed. From what Marie had told me of him, he seems pretty down to earth and probably appreciates people who don’t grovel to him.

The Bhutanese Ministers each take a turn at being PM for a year and this year it’s the Minister for Agriculture’s turn, hence Marie’s passing aquaintance with him. He put the pressure on her bosses to process the renewal of her contract quickly last year. Unfortunately, he didn’t talk to the HR or foreign ministries.

I’ve finally finished commenting all the photos in the album, aside from a couple of albums that I don’t think need it. Take a look here. The more recent albums are at the beginning and contain some great photos. I’m still shooting most on automatic, but will get better as I learn more.

By day, the dogs in Thimphu generally slumber in docility. By night, they form gangs and hunt. I haven’t seen this, but I’ve known people that were bitten (and suffered months of rabies shots) and have heard the gang warfare. Yesterday, I came across a couple of dogs attacking a small boy, not much taller than them. In broad daylight, they’d come in from both sides, forcing him to swing a little stick he picked up in defence back and forth as far as he could twist. Even at about 6 years old, he had the presence of mind to stand his ground and scream at them rather than trying to run or curling up in a ball. I was stuck on the other side of the street, many cars away from being a hero. A young man walking down the hill behind me ‘sha’d’ at them, but the dogs paid him no mind. The boy had something they wanted. In the end, a taxi driver stopped next to him, stuck his arm out his window and started banging his door, sending the dogs scurrying.

It’s a strange life we live here. Bhutan is a developing country that pretends it’s developed. We have electricity and all the conveniences it brings – fridge, washing machine, kettle. We eat out at restaurants which serve a variety of international cuisines – local, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, even an attempt at Mexican. One of the banks has an ATM. People drive brand new Toyota Land Cruisers and have broadband internet at home.

But none of it is quite right. The one ATM doesn’t help much when it’s not linked to other banks or to international accounts, and visa cards don’t work. The food has something missing. The broadband internet is restricted by a low international link. We have to boil all our water. And the washing machine attachments don’t work.

At least in this house, we’ve managed to attach the washing machine input hose permanently to the tap, rather than using rubber bands each time as in the last house. But the hook on output hose is too small to hang onto the sink, so we have to weigh it down with a saucepan or other heavy kitchen item. And if we forget, as I did this morning, we have to wade through the kitchen to put it back in place. Luckily the kitchen has a marble floor with a marble lip at the door, or the wooden floor of the rest of the house would be rotting through by now. Then again, we’d be able to see what our neighbours do when they think no one’s watching.

When I was in Belgium, I found myself bumping into people on the footpath. It was the first time that I’d lived in a country that drove on the right, but I had no idea that traffic rules transfered themselves onto pedestrians too – aside from the idea that it’s safer to walk on the side of the road with oncoming traffic. For months, I habitually stepped to the left when approaching someone coming the other way. They habitually stepped right and we found ourselves doing the footpath tango. When I finally realised what was happening, I started stepping right. I took note when travelling and found that the rule holds in every country. People step to the same side as the traffic. Except in Bhutan.

Once again, here I find myself constantly doing the footpath tango and I didn’t get it. I’d be walking up stairs or down a footpath and I’d step to the left to match the official traffic direction only to find my dance partner has followed me. But that word ‘official’ is the giveaway. Bhutanese drivers don’t always drive on the left, even on the highway, so why should they always step to the left. Their walking actions match their driving habits exactly. And my faith in the predictability of the world is in tact.

The flu is mostly gone and with it, my philosophical delirium. I even finished the book on Buddhism and if I found any enlightenment, it disappeared when my head cleared. Today I go back to the mundaneness of daily life.

I barely slept last night because although the head is clear, the throat still tickles, trying to dispell the gunk that’s collected there over the past week. It was a surprise then, to be woken by the bup-bup-bup-bup of the garbage truck late this morning. It normally arrives in front of our house at around 8am, but this morning I heard the sounds about 20 minutes early. I jumped up, grabbed the bins and rushed downstairs, joining a groggy looking neighbour on the driveway.

We sat there, looking sheepishly at each other as we both realised that we’d been duped. The truck was still far down the hill and it was another 20 minutes before the full volume of the horn enticed the rest of the denizens of our building out of their flats. The truck beeps as it goes quickly down our street, then turns up the hill again to wake others up before coming back to make the slow collection run. It’s a strange sight in this traditional world. The Japanese government have donated two modern garbage collection trucks with the mechanical compressor to help with waste management.

Although they have a basket set aside for collecting PET and glass bottles and tins, I’ve seen them tip it in with the rest of the rubbish once it fills up, so either it’s being done for show (to get people into the habit before the full process is available) or perhaps it’s easier to sort out if it’s all compressed together. Either way, there’s little we can do about it. I joined the queue to wash the bucket at the outside tap, then tramped upstairs to where Marie and Pierre had breakfast waiting.

I’ve had a bad flu for the past week which has kept me from writing much, but the fever of the title isn’t mine. A young girl from Geliphu in the South of Bhutan just died from dengue fever.

She is the daughter of the animal shelter manager in Thimphu. I don’t know either of them, but our expat friends who created the animal shelter sent out urgent pleas on every medium to request the support of people with O+ blood type. For the first time in my life my medical ethics were put to the test. Some people have called me a facist or claim that I want everyone dead, but that’s unfair. I think everyone should be given the chance at life, but I believe in survival of the fittest. I believe that medicine as it is in western civilisation is destroying the human race. People don’t take care of themselves because they know that drugs or an operation can fix almost anything they break. We rely on drugs to keep us healthy, rather than using the body’s own recuperative power. If the immune system isn’t used, it will disappear and we’ll be permanently dependent on medicine to keep us alive. Biological defects such as one (name forgotten) that causes blood to thin to the point that a person will bleed to death from a minor cut used not to be an issue because the victims died before they could reproduce. Now medicine keeps them alive to pass on the genes to a new generation and the number of instances of this problem are increasing rapidly.

I know my views aren’t common or popular in society, so I never push them. I don’t try to convince others to change, even though I think it’s the destruction of our race as much as the greenhouse effect. But when it came to giving blood, I let others give and play no part in the game of life and death. Nature is my guide. Besides, I have my own abnormalities and I’m not sure that the Red Cross would take my blood.

But it seems that O+ is difficult to find in Bhutan and I was one of the rare people that have it. They urgently needed five people to give blood every day if this girl was to have a chance at survival. I don’t know the girl, but suddenly I had her life on my conscience. The test that I’d hoped would never come was finally here. My belief as far as viruses goes isn’t strong. I don’t know whether taking blood in such a case changes the ability of the next generation to fight the disease or not. After a few tortured hours, I gave in and offered my blood if they would have it. After all, I was still weak from the flu and my blood might just make her condition worse. The reply came yesterday, a day after the initial request. The girl had passed away. Could I have saved her? Or would my blood have quickened her death or made it more painful? I can’t say, but the reply had another line.

The girl’s sister has contracted dengue fever too.

I had a phone conference with the Chief Technology Officer of a major international development organisation last night after emailing her on Monday morning for the first time. I assumed that the quick response meant that they needed my help with their collaboration strategy and they knew it. Somehow, that didn’t come out in the meeting. I’ve had a bad cold for the last week so that may excuse my lack of control of the conversation, but only partially.

It started badly with 30 minutes of trying to catch them, which should have showed immediately that there was room for improvement. The late start meant that we jumped straight into business without building up any kind of rapore. I felt more like a hawker than someone trying to help them with their business. I knew another problem going in – that they have their own large IT organisation and would probably feel that they could take care of everything without my help. That gave me only a short time to find their need and convince them that I could help. In the half hour we talked, they gave me plenty of the kind of data I wanted (preplanned questions helped) but I wasn’t able to formulate that into a coherent argument for creating a strategy until a couple of hours after they’d dismissed me.

Worse, I gave them every reason to think that I was unprepared – unfocused introduction, forgot names of key products and listed all potential services rather than focusing on what they could use or saying that I’d come back to them.

Well, all is not lost. They think that it might be worth looking at Asia only at first and will pass my details on to the Asia contact, I can still send them my arguments written coherently, and most of all, I can learn from the experience.

Why do China and Korea have such a problem with Koizumi-san visiting a war memorial? Every year the Australian Prime Minister attends a war memorial on Anzac Day, yet I don’t hear the Turks complaining. In 2005, he even attended a memorial for Australian soldiers in Turkey itself. I assume that the Turkish leader does the same on some day meaningful to them, and I completely respect that right.

Some Japanese may have committed ‘war crimes’ according to our view of right, but they’re only considered war crimes because Japan lost the last war. Crimes are defined by the winners, just as history is written by the winners. I’m ignorant of such things, but if there is a global agreement to the ‘honourable’ conduct of war, I can’t imagine that the Japanese signed it before they invaded China or Korea. Their culture was different and they valued life in a different way.

Does China do better now in Tibet?

Does China forget that they tried to invade Japan in the past?

Aren’t Hiroshima and Nagasaki prime examples of war crimes made against the Japanese?

Japan as a nation has moved on. They embrace peace. They shout louder than anyone against nuclear weapons. Their people take to the streets to object to the visit themselves – not because they don’t respect their own war heroes, but because they don’t want to upset China and Korea. That more than anything shows how the Japanese have changed and I for one regret the loss of pride, even as I respect their courage.

I would call for Japan to update their history books to reflect their own actions in war truthfully, which I believe is already happening, but I don’t see how supressing memories of the war and their own losses amounts to anything other than further oppression.

Japanese leaders owe it to their own people to remember the people their predecessors sent to death.

Do the Chinese and Korean leaders not mourn their own losses in war? If not, aren’t they the real criminals?