Call me sentimental, but I like this idea: by taking a public health job, I’m contributing in a small way to things Jip had planned to do after getting her master’s degree in public health. She had always seen herself returning to work in the north, with the hill tribes. But early on in her studies, she was diagnosed with this disease and life took a different direction.
I was her editor back then. Papers she wrote about health statistics passed through my hands before they were turned in, as did applications she filled out before being allowed to do research on human subjects. Now all that vocabulary comes flooding back as I work on similar documents.
Another bonus: I stay current on all the latest threats. Take bird flu. Jip has been telling me for the past year that I should avoid eating chicken and eggs. I’ve been nodding in that way that husbands do, then going ahead and doing what I’ve always done.
I thought the problem was being hyped, especially here, because of the recent visit by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the heads of the CDC and WHO (in the photo below, they’re all in the front row, while I’m the guy in the back on the right, staring at the rising helium balloons). Then every day this week we get fresh reports about H5N1 being found in a new species or on a new continent. Maybe it can’t hurt to change my diet, following Jip’s lead yet again.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Job
My vacation ended voluntarily this month. Now I brave the Bangkok commute for about an hour each way, taking sky train, motorcycle taxi, van, bus, or boat.
I’m the writer/editor for the CDC’s Global AIDS Program. Over here the CDC collaborates with the Thai Ministry of Public Health on preventing, caring for, and monitoring a handful of infectious diseases. Mostly the focus is on HIV, TB, and lately, bird flu. About 15 Americans and 150 Thais share an office.
Most of the day I’m at a computer, dealing with reports and scientific abstracts. In the background I hear the sounds of Thai language floating between cubicles. I teach informally, about things like participles and passives and plurals. In time they may add “records manager” to my title.
It’s one of the few times in my life when I haven’t worked in formal education. My contract lasts one year. For the moment this work is fun and social. I miss having kids around, but I don’t miss some of the silliness that happens in schools among adults.
I’m the writer/editor for the CDC’s Global AIDS Program. Over here the CDC collaborates with the Thai Ministry of Public Health on preventing, caring for, and monitoring a handful of infectious diseases. Mostly the focus is on HIV, TB, and lately, bird flu. About 15 Americans and 150 Thais share an office.
Most of the day I’m at a computer, dealing with reports and scientific abstracts. In the background I hear the sounds of Thai language floating between cubicles. I teach informally, about things like participles and passives and plurals. In time they may add “records manager” to my title.
It’s one of the few times in my life when I haven’t worked in formal education. My contract lasts one year. For the moment this work is fun and social. I miss having kids around, but I don’t miss some of the silliness that happens in schools among adults.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Khao Yai National Park
In July Thailand’s best-known national park joined the list of the 800+ World Heritage sites. This honor, given by UNESCO, goes to “cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.” The U.S. claims about twenty World Heritage sites, including a dozen of the most famous national parks and the Statue of Liberty.
During Greg’s visit he and I figured we’d better have a look at Khao Yai to see why it was in the same league as Yellowstone and Olympic. We got there by sky train, motorcycle, bus, songthaew, and pickup truck, in that order.
All we knew before arriving was that hikers were encouraged to wear special socks to keep the leeches off. Nobody told us about the massive spiders that like to build their webs across the paths. Or about the pileated gibbons.
Luckily, we caught a ride on the last leg of our journey with a researcher who a) knew quite a lot about the pileated gibbons, b) was free to have dinner with us, and c) didn’t mind driving us to the trailhead the next morning.
Before the day was over we knew why Khao Yai is considered so special. We heard the songs of the gibbons as dawn broke. We trekked past some seriously big trees. Just as we thought the trail was taking us through yet another jungle habitat to the land of despair, we emerged at a gorgeous grassland, where the park has set up a wildlife watching tower.
Now that he is back in Seattle, Greg has posted pictures of this trip to the Internet. Click here to see how we looked on our travels, as well as several shots of our fancy apartment in Bangkok.
During Greg’s visit he and I figured we’d better have a look at Khao Yai to see why it was in the same league as Yellowstone and Olympic. We got there by sky train, motorcycle, bus, songthaew, and pickup truck, in that order.
All we knew before arriving was that hikers were encouraged to wear special socks to keep the leeches off. Nobody told us about the massive spiders that like to build their webs across the paths. Or about the pileated gibbons.
Luckily, we caught a ride on the last leg of our journey with a researcher who a) knew quite a lot about the pileated gibbons, b) was free to have dinner with us, and c) didn’t mind driving us to the trailhead the next morning.
Before the day was over we knew why Khao Yai is considered so special. We heard the songs of the gibbons as dawn broke. We trekked past some seriously big trees. Just as we thought the trail was taking us through yet another jungle habitat to the land of despair, we emerged at a gorgeous grassland, where the park has set up a wildlife watching tower.
Now that he is back in Seattle, Greg has posted pictures of this trip to the Internet. Click here to see how we looked on our travels, as well as several shots of our fancy apartment in Bangkok.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Sundays at Home
Sundays have become more social. We’ve started hosting a small meditation group in the morning (about the same time that Quaker Meeting for worship used to begin back in Seattle). Or somebody phones about dropping by in the afternoon.
Jip tolerates having the extra people around. At least, she appears to be enjoying herself while they’re here. Tonight one of her oldest friends, who has been away from Thailand during the time we’ve been here, came over and brought along her parents. Jip smiled throughout the entire visit, but as soon as they left she announced that she was through hosting for a while.
So we’ll see what happens this coming Sunday. It’s also a day when I learn more about the week gone by. Jip often tires before I get home from work, which means sometimes I don’t discover small changes in routine or little bits of news until it’s my turn to be caregiver.
She has mostly been in good spirits lately. It hasn’t seemed to bother her that I’m gone for longer each day than I was before this job started. But maybe the anti-visitor talk means she isn’t handling the change in routine as well as I first thought.
Jip tolerates having the extra people around. At least, she appears to be enjoying herself while they’re here. Tonight one of her oldest friends, who has been away from Thailand during the time we’ve been here, came over and brought along her parents. Jip smiled throughout the entire visit, but as soon as they left she announced that she was through hosting for a while.
So we’ll see what happens this coming Sunday. It’s also a day when I learn more about the week gone by. Jip often tires before I get home from work, which means sometimes I don’t discover small changes in routine or little bits of news until it’s my turn to be caregiver.
She has mostly been in good spirits lately. It hasn’t seemed to bother her that I’m gone for longer each day than I was before this job started. But maybe the anti-visitor talk means she isn’t handling the change in routine as well as I first thought.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Small Town
Of all the transitions Jip and I have made lately, the biggest is probably the switch from city to megacity. Bangkok is dense. It’s not Hong Kong, but compared to Seattle things are much more vertical and shoulder-to-shoulder. I feel it especially during commutes, when people spill in and out of the sky train, and on sidewalks, where everybody and everything is much closer to me than I’m used to.
Our food choices aren’t that different than they were before; we still speak lots of English; being surrounded by many cultures is nothing new. But being among many millions every day means things are a little more impersonal than we were used to.
That’s why one set of connections in Chiang Mai made a big impression on me. I had searched my college website before going, and discovered three other alumni, all from graduating classes in the 1950s. A few days before my visit, I emailed them, suggesting we chat.
I didn’t hear back right away. But someone else up there, the head of a local language school, suggested out of the blue that I “really should meet this older guy I know, name of Ed.” I said, “His last name wouldn’t be ‘Rose,’ by any chance?”
Of course it was. And of course his wife taught at that same language school. And of course the secretary had their phone number, and he was at home, and happy to have lunch with me, and would have never checked the old email address I had used to write him.
A few other people I spoke to that weekend also knew Ed, all for different reasons. He’s not especially famous -- Chiang Mai is just that kind of place. He does have one claim to fame, though. It turns out one of Ed’s interests was raising Siamese cats. After lunch, he pulled out of his wallet a set of Thai postage stamps. “These were my babies,” he said proudly.
Our food choices aren’t that different than they were before; we still speak lots of English; being surrounded by many cultures is nothing new. But being among many millions every day means things are a little more impersonal than we were used to.
That’s why one set of connections in Chiang Mai made a big impression on me. I had searched my college website before going, and discovered three other alumni, all from graduating classes in the 1950s. A few days before my visit, I emailed them, suggesting we chat.
I didn’t hear back right away. But someone else up there, the head of a local language school, suggested out of the blue that I “really should meet this older guy I know, name of Ed.” I said, “His last name wouldn’t be ‘Rose,’ by any chance?”
Of course it was. And of course his wife taught at that same language school. And of course the secretary had their phone number, and he was at home, and happy to have lunch with me, and would have never checked the old email address I had used to write him.
A few other people I spoke to that weekend also knew Ed, all for different reasons. He’s not especially famous -- Chiang Mai is just that kind of place. He does have one claim to fame, though. It turns out one of Ed’s interests was raising Siamese cats. After lunch, he pulled out of his wallet a set of Thai postage stamps. “These were my babies,” he said proudly.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Going North
Last month I spent a couple days in Chiang Mai, the northern Thai city where Jip has fond memories and we have several pals. The idea was to look for reasons to move there some day. I found several.
The top one is that despite being the second largest town in the kingdom, Chiang Mai’s population is literally fifty times smaller than Bangkok’s. Right away I found fewer degrees of separation between people. In a pattern familiar to me from living in Seattle, folks who have similar interests seem likely to know each other in Chiang Mai.
In forty-eight hours I had about a dozen good talks with old friends or friends of friends. Everyone was sold on our coming there – sometimes because they like us, but always because they like their lives there. Most people talked about quality of life: Chiang Mai offers sports, dining, friendship, and health care opportunities that compare favorably with Bangkok’s, but without the smog and traffic.
Making ends meet might be a bigger challenge up there, but with some creativity and lead time it wouldn’t be impossible. And there are non-financial perks: one can get anywhere in town on a bicycle. We could be in the mountains in minutes by car. I even went for a run outdoors for the first time in three months.
Jip supports my explorations. Going up there meant I was away from her for the longest period since we arrived in Thailand, but things went fine with her and the caregivers. Probably I’ll return to Chiang Mai every couple of months for a few days each trip, in order to expand the network and double check that the docs will be good enough. Perhaps we’ll become northerners in a year or so.
The top one is that despite being the second largest town in the kingdom, Chiang Mai’s population is literally fifty times smaller than Bangkok’s. Right away I found fewer degrees of separation between people. In a pattern familiar to me from living in Seattle, folks who have similar interests seem likely to know each other in Chiang Mai.
In forty-eight hours I had about a dozen good talks with old friends or friends of friends. Everyone was sold on our coming there – sometimes because they like us, but always because they like their lives there. Most people talked about quality of life: Chiang Mai offers sports, dining, friendship, and health care opportunities that compare favorably with Bangkok’s, but without the smog and traffic.
Making ends meet might be a bigger challenge up there, but with some creativity and lead time it wouldn’t be impossible. And there are non-financial perks: one can get anywhere in town on a bicycle. We could be in the mountains in minutes by car. I even went for a run outdoors for the first time in three months.
Jip supports my explorations. Going up there meant I was away from her for the longest period since we arrived in Thailand, but things went fine with her and the caregivers. Probably I’ll return to Chiang Mai every couple of months for a few days each trip, in order to expand the network and double check that the docs will be good enough. Perhaps we’ll become northerners in a year or so.
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