Sweet Zombie Jesus I haven't written in a long time!!!!
I have to be honest I had almost given up on this whole blog thing, but thanks to the loud and constant protests of my family and friends I realized that was a bad idea. I said I would do it, and I will.
Well first off...
I can't believe that it almost been 5 months already! January 1st marks the halfway point of my exchange which brings about mixed feelings on this end. My return date is just creeping closer and closer and while I'm happy that I will be returning home sooner, I am also sad to think about leaving this crazy place.
I have to be honest, one of the reasons that I haven't updated this thing in such a long time is because I didn't know what to write about. I know, I know, I know that sounds silly, but when you live in a foreign counery for 5 months it doesn't seem so foreign anymore. And while Thailand and upstate New York have nothing but differences, (cultural differences make for excellent blog writing fodder), after living here fo almost half a year I've gotten used to all the "weird" things they do here. And I also didn't want to bore you guys. Nothing worse than a boring blog.... well except maybe bad seafood.
Alright, let's get started shall we?
First let me address a subject that resulted in my recieveing many a worried, nail-bitten e-mail...
POLITICAL TURMOIL... (dun dun duuuun)
As weird as this may be I actually am really glad that I was here to see all that go down. I mean, for the past 18 years or so, America hasn't really had any earth moving governmental changes. True there were scandals, shifting of power, and all that jazz, but controling the rioting masses with tear gas? Naw.
I'm used to living in a country with a stable government so it was really interesting to see what a bunch of people wearing yellow and flapping those plastic hand clappers around could get accomplished. It made me realize that if you put pressure in the right places a lot gets done.
Government was a concrete thing in my eyes, something that shifted slightly and slowly over time. After seeing the protests,riots, and general chaos here, now I realize that government is just as unstable and likely to change as everything else in the world. Maybe I'm just naive, but I think people in the States forget how much power a mass of people hold. The catch of course is you need guts to create change and those are hard to come by these days.
The other conclusion I drew from this whole experience is that is is impossible to get the true story on politics. Even though I was here to witness everythign (and some of it first hand too) I'm not clear on what happened to this country as nobody seems to have a straight answer. BBC is the best information source simply because it isn'tdirectly involved.
I live in a Pro Peoples Democratic Alliance (PAD) household and for a long while I only got one side of the story. Even now after doing some research and talking to people what they want remains unclear. Some people said that they wanted to take the corruption out of government, and that is why they insisted on the romoval of the last Prime Minister, but others say that the government was fine and that they are the welathy and corrupted ones. In case, y'all haven't heard they did manage to squeeze out the latest P.M. and put in their guy....but now the opposing People's Power Party is having a hissy.
Then there is the royal family of ocurse, who are practically deities. BUt I won't get into that. I will say that I am concerned for the King's helath. I believe he is one of the last things holding this country together.
But... enough with politics, what I really want to write about is 2008.
I just think it is strange that so many major events in my life and with the world in general managed to pile themselves into a 12 month period.
Let's make a list shall we?
-After nearly a decade, my mom and Ken decide to leave the quaint town of Rensselaerville for the greener pastures of Westerlo.
-After 12 years of toil I finally complete my basic education with an official piece of paper to prove it.
- Two Words: Presidential. Election.
- A small hippie school called Doane Stuart gets kicked out by the nuns that own it and is forced to move.
- Barack Obama.*
-and finally, the depressing stock market crash.... of the world basically.
*creepy sidenote: his slogan? Change. O_0
Ok so most things on the list are things that really only affect me and a handful of other people. But I realized a while ago that everything I have ever known back home will be different when I return from Thailand. My "home " will be different, I can't visit my high school as I remember it, and unfortunately even the people will be different. It's nothing personal of course, people move, most have been figuring out college, I've been living in Thailand; if things went back to the way they were before then we would have failed somehow in our different experiences.
This is the way it should be. I don't mind things changing, I'm grateful for it actually...what I find bizarre is the fact that my entire life changed in less than a year. Luckily the things that do matter haven't changed
Ok enough of that, let's zoom out. What else happened this year?
I wiki-ed 2008 just for the hell of it and as you can imagine the entry was hella long.
I edited it down and tried to keep the major events in, but hopefully there will be some things you didn't know about... : )
8 - (this one is for you Mike) An attempted assassination of Maldivian president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is thwarted after a Boy Scout grabbed the attacker's knife. The Boy Scout was injured, but after a scuffle ensued police arrested the attacker.
15 - Federal Court of Australia orders a Japanese whaling company to stop research whaling within their Exclusive Economic Zone.
21 - Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.
February:
4 - Iran opens its first space center and launches a rocket to space.
12 - Bridgestone, under investigation for an alleged price-fixing cartel, uncovers improper payments of at least 150 million Japanese yen to foreign governments and withdraws from the marine hose business.
20 - United States Navy destroys a spy satellite containing toxic fuel by shooting it down with a missile launched from USS Lake Erie in the Pacific Ocean. (wtf?)
March:
8 - The general election of Malaysia. It is historical as the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional won with a slight majority in the Parliament and with the wake of the active Opposition parties, never in the history of over 50 years in Malaysia that Barisan Nasional suffered such great losses on five states.
19 - An exploding star halfway across the visible universe becomes the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye.
25 - A 414 square kilometer (160 mi.2) chunk of Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegrates, leaving the entire shelf at risk.
April:
8 - Sark dismantles its feudal system to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Privy Council approved the Sark law reforms, and the first elections under the new law will be held in December 2008 and the new chamber will first convene in January 2009.
22 - Surgeons at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital perform the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into two blind patients.
3 - Over 133,000 in Burma/Myanmar are killed by Cyclone Nargis, the deadliest natural disaster since the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004.
12 - Over 69,000 are killed in central south-west China by the Chengdu quake, an earthquake measuring 8.0 Mw. The epicenter is 90 kilometers (55 miles) west-northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, Sichuan province.
23 - The International Court of Justice awards Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca to Singapore, ending a 29-year territorial dispute between the two countries.
25 - NASA's Phoenix spacecraft becomes the first spacecraft to land on the northern polar-region of Mars.
14 – September 14 - Expo 2008 was held in Zaragoza in Spain, with the topic of "Water and sustainable development".
22 - Typhoon Fengshen hits the Philippines and capsizes the ferry MV Princess of the Stars, leaving hundreds dead or missing.
27 - After three decades as the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates steps down from daily duties to concentrate on philanthropy.
21 - Radovan Karadžić, the first president of the Republika Srpska, is arrested in Belgrade, Serbia on allegations of war crimes, following a 12-year long manhunt.
3 - A stampede at a Hindu temple at Naina Devi in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, India kills 162 and injures 400.
4 - Two members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which had threatened to attack the Beijing Olympics, kill 16 and injure another 16 officers at a police station in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China.
7 - The 2008 South Ossetia war begins as Georgia and Russia launch a major offensive inside the separatist region of South Ossetia after days of border skirmishes between the two sides.
8–24 - The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China.
17 - Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Olympic Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, with 8 gold medals.
17 - Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Olympic Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, with 8 gold medals.
22 - Pirates hijack German, Iranian, and Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Somalia, seven of such attacks since June 20.
August 26 – September 1 - Hurricane Gustav makes landfall on Louisiana as Category 2 and kills 7 in the United States, after making landfall on western Cuba as Category 4, and killing 66 in Haiti, 8 in the Dominican Republic, and 11 in Jamaica.
August 28 – September 7 - Hurricane Hanna causes 7 deaths in the United States, and 529 in Haiti mostly due to floods and mudslides.
September:
September:
1–14 - Hurricane Ike makes landfall on Texas as Category 2 and kills 27 in the United States, after killing 4 in Cuba, 1 in the Dominican Republic, and 75 in Haiti.
2 - Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda of Japan resigns less than a year after taking office following Shinzo Abe's resignation.
2 - Political crisis in Thailand: Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej of Thailand declares a state of emergency in Bangkok.
6 - At least eight boulders dislodge from a cliff near Cairo, Egypt, killing at least 18 and burying an estimated 500 people.
9 - Political crisis in Thailand: The Constitutional Court of Thailand orders Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to resign after receiving payment for appearing on a television cooking show.
10 - The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator, located at CERN, near Geneva, under the Franco-Swiss border.
3 - Global financial crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets.
21 - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially inaugurated. It is a collaboration of over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.
21 - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially inaugurated. It is a collaboration of over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.
4 - In the United States presidential election, Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States and Joe Biden is elected the 47th Vice President. Barack Obama becomes the first African-American President-elect.
24 - 2008 Santa Catarina floods in Santa Catarina, Brazil cause at least 99 deaths and force the evacuation of over 78,000 people.
25 - Political crisis in Thailand: Protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy party storm into Suvarnabhumi Airport and block flights from taking off. More protesters seize control of Don Mueang Airport the following day.
25 - Political crisis in Thailand: Protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy party storm into Suvarnabhumi Airport and block flights from taking off. More protesters seize control of Don Mueang Airport the following day.
November 27- November 29 - A series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India kills 164, and injures at least 250.
1 - A triangular conjunction formed by a new Moon, Venus and Jupiter is a prominent object in the evening sky.
2 - Political crisis in Thailand: After weeks of opposition-led protests, the Constitutional Court of Thailand dissolved the governing People's Power Party and two coalition member parties and banned leaders of the parties, including Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, from politics for five years. As such, Wongsawat promptly resigned and was replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Chaovarat Chanweerakul as caretaker Prime Minister.
Feel free to add your own additions to the list!! ^^
Happy 2552!!!!
