New life in Japan

I received a Japanese Government Scholarship (MEXT) to become a Research Student at Tokyo Institute of Technology. I arrived to Japan on October 2, 2008. This is my second time to visit Tokyo. My first trip was in 2005, where I came here with my friend to see the Tokyo Motor show. One I place that I visited last time was Odaiba. I remembered the statue of liberty, Fuji TV bldg., Telecom Center, etc. Now I get to live there! My dormitory is called "Tokyo International Exchange Center". The place is very nice and modern.

My Room

TIEC Dormitory Corridor

Inside the dorm, there are many facilities, study room, kitchen, activity room, seminar room, convenience stores, etc. I was attracted by a smell of food so I ran to the kitchen and found out people who live in the same floor as mine. They were having a meal! I went in the room and greeted them. They welcomed me and invited me to join the meal. And so I tried out the food, which is very nice. People here are very friendly.

At the floor kitchen

After setting things up at the dorm, I went around the area just to get myself familiar with the place. I got to the train at Tokyo Teleport Station, the name is very interesting indeed. To go to the campus I need to change a train at Oimachi then go to Ookayama.

Kippu

I want to drive this thing!

Japan is a very interesting country indeed where everything are well-planned in a cute way. I really enjoy being here.

Taxi in Thailand, the service to whom?

Well, we all use taxi in time where we need to go somewhere without our own transportation. And of course taxi is a good option to take you from point A to B. Especially when you are drunk and you don't want to kill yourself, others and get in trouble with the police. It supposed to be a nice service for most cases. But, in Thailand the things work the opposite way.

In the normal way, we call the taxi and tell them where to go and simply the taxi get you to the desired destination at an expense that is measurable with standard metrics.   

In Thailand's way. Taxis get to choose their customers. Not you to choose where to go! They do not have a service mind unless you offer him extra money. They would reject you if your destination is not in their favors. And definitely they want farangs, or foreigners as they believed these farangs are easier to trick with an unfair game, and that they will get a lot of tips and that farangs would likely go to airports, and from their taxis would easily get another customer right away back and forth. Simply taxis want to optimize their own benefit at every possible ways. Their greedy algorithm is as follows:

1. Plan the circular path. He will travel along the path where he can get back to the origin. For example: Siam Paragon -> Central World -> Pratunam -> Pantip Plaza ->Phaya thai -> Siam -> Siam Paragon. 
2. Whenever the passenger call him, he will make a unwelcome look and deny you if your destination is not in his planed path. Their ways of denial are either by making a death face and drive away without saying anything (how rude!) or simply say "no" shortly and drive away. Some time they will look at you as if you had done something terribly wrong. In deed the taxi thought that you had waste his time as he is in search of a customer that would come on his planned path.
   
3. If possible, choose foreigners over local people for the reasons stated in the previous paragraph.
4. Get to the destination with attitude. Taxi might make comments regarding politics and want to get you in the conversation, this apply for Thai citizens of course. Sometime taxis listen to the radio channels belong to the extreme activists and protestors. In that case taxis would be quite aggressive. You can tell from the style of driving and his manner.
5. Drop you off anywhere near your destination. You would simply want to get out of this taxi and this torture.
6. Get the next customer along his planned path.

So try for yourself. Finding a taxi could be challenging, like finding your soulmate. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE WHAT I SAY, please go try calling them at the following places.

1. Taxi stand in front of Siam Paragon, here the taxi would be the one to choose his own passenger not you. 
2. RCA (Royal City Avenue, Rama IX), here most taxis would deny your offer. You have to ask where he wants to go and sometime you have to offer him more money!

The solution is to give them a lot of money. Money talks, bullshit walks. As Thais believe it is according to your karma, you are deserved to have this kind of "service" for your bad deeds in the past. Sometime you get a good taxi, that means you are lucky and so the karma paid off. 

Start do something good today. Next time your taxi might behave nice to you. 

Why we should not give seats to children

One of the discussion I found interesting and want to share with everyone is concerning the issue of seat priority in public transportation. It began when my Japanese teacher asked to whom do Thai people offer seat to. We answer her: to women, children, handicaps, monks. One of these options now bring a contrast view, the children. My Japanese teacher said in Japan, we do not give seats to children for the following reasons:

"They are younger than us and stronger than us. In the future they have to become adults, strong adults. So they should stand and be strong. Keep fighting."

Now she asked us what is the reason for giving seats to children. One of my friend said, because they are cute. I think her answer is more cute. No one was giving a good reason for this. For me I think because the loving and caring nature of Thais as part of the spoiling process were the answer.

Instead of having a future generation that is strong and can think for themselves we ended up having a generation that is strong, strongly need others to take care for them. In programming we would say that this piece of code is highly coupled, meaning that they have high dependencies of other codes. Should this be a sensible reason to stop spoiling the kids? Now think carefully, to whom you should offer seats to.

Toward less self-service

While the western people loves to do things by themselves, Thais on the other hand depends people to give them services for almost everything. This time I will justify this issue just from the way we eat.

A new dining concept

One of the new dining concept introduced in Thailand is the post-paid coupon card system. Perhaps not very new but different compare to others. Unlike most food centers where you first pay for a coupon before selecting your dish. FoodLoft managed by Central uses a card given on your entry to buy any food from various booths of various kinds, Japanese, Indian, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Koean, etc. After you finish the meal, the card is read for items you purchased and you pay for what you eat. This was the beginning of this concept.

Self service become less self service. The process of ordering food is self-service. You get to walk around and pick a dish from the booth you like. It used to be that you have to collect the food by yourself after order. Now FoodLoft has managed to upgrade their services with waiters that collect your order receipt and serve the order directly to you. Not only that you have to pay for the food first but also you can order as many food you like without having to carry them.

With this, it encourage people to buy more items with the illusion of not loosing money at the moment just like the credit card. More waiter on duty gives the place a more classy place to eat. Thais love services very much and would regard these as "hi-so", a word used by Thai that stands for High Society.

Fast food is adapted

Most famous fast food chain in Thailand ranging from McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Subway, etc. learned from Thai cultures that people love services very much. Originally, fast foods were designed to be fast and customers have to service themselves. But in Thailand, right from ordering, you get a waitress to deliver your meal. You can enjoy eating as if the place was your home. A tutorial session can even be conducted after a bottle of coke and french fries were ordered. You can observe this at fast food around Siam. You can make any mess you want because there will always be someone to clean up the table and take care the rest for you. You don't even have to trash anything.

Having others doing something for you and take care the stuff you should care instead of you perhaps shaped Thai people into a kind of people who are less confident, having to depend on others. Thais rather do something with friends, afraid of doing things alone. Foreigners sometime regard Thais as being too shy. In education, we can see people copying work of others without feeling guilty because they cannot do it by themselve. They blame teachers of not teaching them everything they needed to know in time where interests happen-- assignments, exams, and everything with score. In society, we depend on government to pour the money in and let us take care of spending.

In order to progress, we need to start doing something for ourselve instead of waiting for someone to come. Start from children, we need to let them help themselves more. God won't help you if you don't help yourself first.

Why people hate cherry

One thing I like to observe when people are eating is the stuff they love and the thing they hate. My friends, not limited to guys or girls, love to go for Ice-creme.  They crave for it. My favorite choice is iBerry, where I order Kraton almost every time. My friends' choice is Swensen's, pretty common favorite for most Thais. 

Most Swensen's ice-creme will come with cherry toppings. I found that many hated cherry badly. I personally like cherries and have no reasons to ignore it. While observed that cherries being disliked by friends over and over every time we go to Swensen's, I then stared to think of a good reason why they hated cherries.

My assumption is that cherry's flavor is associated with medicine. Perhaps a syrup kind of medicine when kids take at young age. We know how kids hate medication, such a painful process. So at first, from the fact that kids hate medicine doctors have to come with a solution to trick kids in taking them. The solution was to give a medicine a flavor, a flavor which is to be loved by children, something sweet, something fantasy. And there goes a cherry flavor. Till now every medicine for kids come with this lovely flavor. 

But, things won't forever work that way coz' we human can learn to evolve and mutate. What kids hate will forever be hated, it's unavoidable. The trick to give a lovely flavor to a medicine now back fires. Not only that kids hate medicine now they hate anything associated with it. And the lovely cherry is an unavoidable culprit. This hatred of cherry essence stemmed from a child through adult age. Now we can take pills without monkeying around coz' we had grown up, and afraid of dying but the fact that as a child we remember taking them was painful, and full of cherry essence, now haunt back the memory of the old day. 

So I concluded that, cherry is a victim for its good intention. Cherry, a good girl, is meant to give a nice taste for medicine which kids need to take to fight with diseases, the bad guy. Now it turned out sadly that people hate this good hearted girl, cherry. We disgusted her and ignore her without realizing the benefit she gives for the mankind.            

"We should give and forgive. Not to get and forget."

Inside Steve's Brain

Inside Steve's Brain is a book written by Leander Kahney. While some books like to portray the dark side of Steve especially how his "Reality Distortion Field" works. This book presents Steve in a business view, a more like management lessons. How he got everything right by doing everything in a radical approach, which some said wrong. How to control people and use them to their full potential. How the Apple culture works.

I recommend this book, especially for people who want to start doing something great. Lessons learned from Steve have been explain and listed systematically through series of events, from the making of Macintosh, Steve's departure, NeXT, Pixar, to iPods and iPhone. One of the interesting issue is how Steve's decisions had rescued Apple.

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

-- Steve Jobs

Apple become a very successful company thanks to Steve's return. Now many are worried about Steve's health and the future of Apple. His management style is unique, his charisma is strong. Every time I watch his keynote, I felt like he's a leader of a religion. A leader that loves to amuse the crowds. Steve is irreplaceable.   

Teaching in English

Currently I'm working as a teaching assistance (TA) in the Database lab at Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), the place where I was graduated. Roughly two years ago I attend this lab as a student. 

Now being a TA. This gives me the opportunity to see a different view, a teaching view. Teaching is both art and science. Not only that you have to understand the subject matter precisely and clearly but also you need the ability to express the message so that students will understand easily. 

Though many people said having a subject taught in English is a major challenging factor for them to understand. In my opinion, English should not made the subject difficult. A treatment to difficult subjects is proper English. English is undoubtedly universal, therefore expressing a message in English, gives senses of smoothness and purity in words.

Imagine explaining something in Thai language and you can't avoid English words. Flipping back and forth between Thai and English destroy the beauty of both languages. English terms are meant to be described in English. As you would dress your sushi with soy sauce not with fish sauce, tomato ketchup or anything else. I would called this approach a purist style.

But who knows, mixing two things could be more meaningful than using one alone, if we can understand perhaps 90% Thai and some 40 % English, by expressing 100 ideas using both maybe we might get more ideas understood than totally expressing them in one language. So this is a fusion approach. 

The lesson learned is that language should be made simple, since the subject itself should be the primary actor. Let the subject be the focus, make it big, so big such that one could not see that you are describing them in English or Thai. Make them understand the subject from the essence of itself.