Documentaries in previous years here.

A few days ago, the Czech Supreme Court banned the neo-Nazi party, citing their activities as a direct threat to democracy. One example the court used was that top members of the neo-Nazi party in their speech attributed the problems of their “beautiful country” to minorities and ethnic groups such as the gypsies, homosexuals and the Vietnamese. When I first relocated to Prague, one of my primary concerns was how to introduce myself to Czechs. Am I Vietnamese? Am I American? Am I Vietnamese American? Am I Asian American? Or am I just Cindyka? (My funny Czech name) Honza suggested “just say you are American.” It wasn’t me who tried to hide my identity by picking a “cooler” other. It was a Czech who thought it was better for me to ignore the “Vietnamese” tag when introducing myself to his countrymen unless asked. Living in America for a long time, I am no stranger to racism and prejudice. After all, American history is written by pioneer white men who took lands from the Native Indians and shoved them to the reservations. It wasn’t the same pioneer men but agricultural men with the same color nonetheless who later brought blacks to slave on the same land before forcing them to the back of the buses and into segregated quarters. Then the modern industrial capitalist white men siphoned Mexicans off the border to do dirty, menial jobs other white men don’t want to do while erecting a fence along the border and debating laws as how best to accommodate and evict them from the beautiful country. So you see, by being Vietnamese or Asian in America, I am partly immune to racism and discrimination, especially in California where the non-Hispanic white are the minority. I live in a city of immigrants from South Asia. My family buys grocery and dines in a city populated by Vietnamese. The coolest city in California, San Francisco, is inhabited by everybody from every where. I attended an university with almost half Asian student body. Asians are visible everywhere in California, yet invisible in America’s severe racial profiling. My race isn’t questionable. Discrimination is the problem of everyone else but mine, thanks to the Native Indians, Blacks and Mexicans. Asian Americans are good, model immigrants and citizens. They are known for their hard-working, education-obsessive, non-confronting and non-violent lifestyles. They integrate nicely into the society, moving into the middle-class. Their children excel in school, and if they don’t, they are not likely to form East-side/West-side gangs. They eat rice so they are not overweight which make them even less visible as another socially burdened group in America, the overweight and morbid obese. This alarming health disorder ravages the Native Indians, the Blacks and the Mexicans population. Being a typical Asian in America who is fit, non-confronting, does well in school and live in a nice neighborhood, you are anything but a problem.

Most of Europe are homogeneous, dominated by the white race except for multi-cultural, colonial-past United Kingdom and France and the new breed of immigrant countries like Germany and Italy. When I lived in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, I felt like I was the only Asian, the only colored person beside the Bosnian gypsies in the entire city. The only time I saw Asian faces was when I ventured to a barren China town in the suburbs. If it wasn’t for that trip, I would not believe the existence of Asians in Bosnia. Did I feel uneasy? Did I feel lost? Not a chance. I was an amusement to the Bosnians. One journalist friend of a Bosnian girl with whom I was practicing English, upon learning about me, asked for an interview for no other reason than my being there was interesting. My typical Asian face, my race, my story occupied two pages in a well-known Azra magazine. A couple of months later, out of the blue, one TV station called the school where I worked and asked for a TV interview. They carried cameras to film me in the classroom and invited me to come to the TV station for a follow-up segment where they asked about rice and had me demonstrate eating fruit with salt on live TV. Apparently, a teacher had told them about my unusual, Vietnamese habit atypical to all Europeans. Within a short time in Sarajevo, I had two 15-minutes of fame just because of one simple reason: I am Vietnamese; I am a typical Asian. “The kids find you amusing. They know Japanese and Chinese, but they don’t know anybody from down there, meaning Vietnam,” one Bosnian teacher told me.

I didn’t choose Bosnia; it chose me. I didn’t choose the Czech Republic; one of its citizen chose me. They are same different, different same. Similar to Bosnia, Czech is dominantly white. Its big difference, however, is the huge population of Vietnamese working and living on every street corner. After spending almost a year in Bosnia eating just cheese, cheap sausage, pasta and dried bread and only English, I was delirious to speak Vietnamese and eat bowl after plate of noodle soup and other delicious Vietnamese dishes in Prague. The liveliest party has it end, and so did my honey moon with the Czech Republic. I began to learn more about the social fabric of the Czech society, of the culture, maybe, not so homogeneously Czech. These fair-skinned Czechs, too, share and compete for resources with its former brother, the Slovaks; Eastern European immigrants; Western expats; its own colored people, the gypsies and the largest Asian minority, the Vietnamese. Unlike Asians in Sarajevo who live in the suburb where no one sees them, the Vietnamese’s presence here is omnipresent. You won’t be able to walk past a couple of street blocks without seeing a potraviny (vegetable/convenient) shop or a textile store run by Vietnamese. A typical street in Prague is filled with a typical potraviny run by typical Vietnamese.

And suddenly, I feel Mexican. I don’t think I have ever tried this hard to be cool and vain. When I don’t say that I am American, then I have to string whatever American attributes to my identity. The “I am Vietnamese” is usually correct and sufficient to the simple question of who I am, but the more “correct” reply often is: “I was born in Vietnam and moved to the US,” which later changes to “I was born in Vietnam but I used to lived in California,” which later changes to “I was from Vietnam, but I lived near San Francisco.” Fuck shit, if this goes on, it will be “…I lived in San Francisco.” America might not be as cool to Western Europeans, but it certainly is as a cool factor for Eastern Europeans, at least cooler than Vietnam for the Czechs. California is definitely cooler in comparison to let say Oklahoma and a dozen more nobody-knows states. Obviously San Francisco brings the coolness factor up 10 notches. Sometimes it annoys me, but I determine to milk my American association for what it’s worth. Am I lame? Do I overreact? I think not. I would like to get rid of the long introduction, but in this homogeneous, xenophobic Czech Republic where typical Czechs have a low opinion of Eastern Europeans, gypsies and the Vietnamese while holding positive view of Western Europe, North America and Australia, I then, have no other choice but to be lame and then some.

What’s wrong with being Vietnamese? The answer to that is exactly the same in response to “What’s wrong with being Mexican?” There is nothing wrong with being Vietnamese or Mexican. Vietnamese in Bosnia, no problem. Vietnamese in USA, no problem. Mexicans in Europe, do you salsa? The problem arises only when there are too many of them in the host country. It is then that the social fabric gets a bit more complicated. They are no longer Vietnamese or Mexicans; they are problematic immigrants. One group classifies another based on its typical features and activities: the dirty, lazy, stealing gypsies or the yellow-skinned, black-haired, vegetable/cloth selling, tax invading Vietnamese. Classification precedes stereotypes. Stereotypes breed prejudice. Prejudice lays the foundation for racism. Racism leads to discrimination. But how can I blame the Czech for profiling if the Vietnamese do the same profiling to themselves. Every Vietnamese I have met in the Czech Republic asks me the following questions.

-What do you sell?
-I don’t sell.
-So you work in the factory?
-No, I don’t work in a factory.
-So what do you do here? (Looking at me with disbelief) Vietnamese here either sell or work in factories.

The Vietnamese here are not at all integrated to the Czech society. The older generation speaks little or no Czech, same as the younger workers who either just arrive for a few years or work in a typical Vietnamese business whose interaction with Czechs is limited to basic greetings and the prices of their products. A typical Vietnamese could care less about the Czech culture, same as a typical Czech could care less about them. When Vietnamese make the Czech news, it’s often about their illegal activities: staying here illegally, working without a visa, selling fake goods or growing marijuana. This reinforces the typical Vietnamese image in the mind of typical Czechs. The only exception is one rare, famous Vietnamese female photographer whose portrait shots featured a Czech president, politicians and a world-known football goalie, Petr Czech. Unlike Vietnamese in America or in other Western countries who consider the new country their permanent home, the Vietnamese settle for a temporary life in the Czech Republic on rented time and rented property. Once they make enough money, they will return to Vietnam.

There is always an exception to every rule. Not all Czechs hold unfavorable views of the Vietnamese for example my Czech language teachers or the family of my ex-Czech boyfriend. Also, since I work in an international company with over 60 nationalities, most of the time I am removed from the typical setting where typical Czechs interact with typical Vietnamese.

It is fun to be multicultural, but it is a headache when these multi-cultures butt-head. I don’t know if it’s me, Vietnamese, Asian, Buddhist or Jung’s personality type which naturally makes me the awfully quiet, yielding, avoiding to be the center of attention type of person which puts me right into the Asian stereotype slot. But when I have to go for what I want or feel indignant, I rely on the cultural attributes of the Americans. I become over-selling, arrogant, demanding and rational. It does the job most of the time. Recently I was in a negotiation training provided by the company, being the only Asian among all the Czechs. Not only Asian, the only Vietnamese. Do I need to remind you how self-conscious I was? It was like, in a smaller scale, being black in the Deep South or being Mexican in the mid-west. Our British trainer happened to have much positive experience with the Vietnamese in Prague, thus kept bringing up Vietnamese grocery shop owners to reference the culture difference in negotiating styles. He put me in the spot light. “So Cindy, whenever I say something about Western or European culture that you don’t agree, please say so. Your opinion is very valuable.” There was some moment I wished I were Japanese, Korean, Chinese or any other Asian ethnic group but Vietnamese. Well, there is no going back, American here I am. I switched from my natural introversion to be this extravert who had to give her opinion on every single point the trainer presented. I tried to be this super intelligent person with my super obscure English words and super stories, topics nobody-knows-it-but-me-and-the-trainer. I flashed my 500W radiant smile to these serious looking Czechs. There must be at least one individual in the room who was put off by my showy behaviors as beside the trainer, the second lecturer was me. But who fucking cares? I didn’t know if those Czechs around me were typical or not. I didn’t know their opinions toward the Vietnamese. The only way to break this prejudice cycle is to have a reasonable amount of untypical Czechs interact with a reasonable amount of untypical Vietnamese.

I don’t sell groceries, made-in-china clothing and fake bags in a shop. I don’t work in a factory. I don’t plant marijuana. I don’t smuggle illegal workers into this country. I don’t sit in a work camp like an animal waiting to be shipped home with 500 mercy euros from the Czech government. I don’t stay here illegally. I am not uninterested in the Czechs. I don’t avoid their eye contact. I speak fluent English.

I am not a typical Vietnamese.

For 1000 long years from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Europe was shrouded in the dark Middle Ages, plagued by wars, crimes, diseases, mass death and ignorance.  The old continent turned into a no-man land, fragmented kingdoms carved out by the barbarians who took the opportunity of the decaying Roman empire.  The weak lived on the margin of the society ruled by lawlessness.   Reason and logic which were the cornerstone for Western Civilization some centuries before yielded to superstition and fatalism.  Church dogma restricted many facets of lives and stunted development.  Thousands of knights followed the call of the Church to join the Crusades to stop the expansion of the Moslems, the Slav and Pagans from the east and to reclaim the Holy Land of Palestine. The economy spiraled downward; banks collapsed in the first few decades of the 1300. The Hundred Years War began in 1337 between England and France to settle a dispute of who was best to inherit the French throne: a French king selected by the French noblemen or a distant English king.  Bad weather resulted in crop failures in the early 14th century brought about the great Famine which lasted for two years.  The Black Death, a plague carried by the fleas on rats, came from the Central East and killed at least one third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1352.  Enraged by the unfair tax raised to finance the war, peasant revolted in England and France.  It was bleak as it was hopeless.  The great Western civilization was on the brink of being lost forever.

Is it?

Shereen and I (Lana returned to Prague in the evening) left Rome at 8 in the morning on a slow regional train which took four hours to get to Florence.  We found our seats next to a friendly-looking Australian traveler, made sure that our luggages tightly fit on the overhead rack and our breakfast bags next to us and got ready to sleep.  Well, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.  In front of us was a group of high-school students on a field trip.  Behind us was a bigger group of teenagers. Do I hate kids? Nooooo! I truly think they are all adorable, but when you have to choose between a couple of hours between a moment of peace and the hope of the future, you will choose the former.  These coming-of-age Italian youngsters were all skillful speakers as they never seemed to be lost for words. After the high-school students left an hour later, we thought we could finally sleep, but by then the teenagers discovered another pleasure.  From then on, at every single stop, a bunch of them shuffled past us to get to the door and returned to their seats when the train started moving.  The ritual continued, and we didn’t know what it was until their fifth trip down the aisle that we saw a cigarette butt on one girl’s hand.  The teenagers were having their cigarette break. 

Not able to sleep, I looked out of the windows to catch a glimpse of the supposedly most beautiful region in Italy.  Prior to the trip to Florence, I had been trying to look up from the Internet and the travel guide to pick out a village in Tuscany between Rome and Florence for a layover in order to witness postcard images of yellow grass, green vineyard and winding country roads one often finds about Tuscany.  Since I already booked accommodation in Florence, stopping over any city would mean forfeiting the deposit and first night charge.  Also if I didn’t follow my schedule, I would not make to the border with Slovenia a day before New Year Eve.  Fortunately, I sighted with relief as our train moved closer to Florence as I saw only ugly, brown, muddy soils and barren vineyards beaten by the winter season and resered themselves until spring time.

Our Guest-house Locanda Latina located on Via de Sole, on the corner street leading out of the beautiful Santa Maria Novella square, located only 10-minute walk from the train station.  The location and price were perfect. The only discomfort was having no kitchen nor relaxing lounge.  There wasn’t a reception either.  You have to call a number and wait for someone to come to register and give you the keys.  Check-in time is fixed from 11 – 4 and 20-22.  So if you don’t arrive in the check-in slots, don’t even bother to call them as they won’t come.  Other than that, I recommend this guest-house.

The weather changed drastically from Rome where Lana, Shereen and I walked around in just a T-shirt two days ago.  Here, by the evening, Shereen and I froze our asses out and worried about the harsher weather when we later traveled to the border, 300 km up north.  The shape of Italy is long and thin like an ugly hiking boot, passing through different temperature zones with major cities and popular tourist destinations distributed evenly along the boot length: Venice, Milan (north), Rimini, Bologna, Tuscany (north-central), Rome (central), Naples (central-south), Sicily, Sardina (south). If you do a tour of the entire country in one zip, you will feel the obvious change in the weather.

…tbc…

When I ask for help from people I met in Lisbon, I thought I got full customer service.  In many European countries, people help you out of obligation and can not wait to get rid of you. But here, they do it with a smile–big while at it–and sometimes do the extra things you might not need.  Two elderly was standing in front of the theater examining the schedule for the musical “Edith Piaf” when I asked them to confirm the date and hours of the show.  They immediately stopped their conversation and spoke to me in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese.  They asked if they could write down the information for me which I was happily agreed.  One lady wrote the date and time for the show in my notebook.  When she returned the note, her friend chidingly said to her something like “Why don’t you write her the contact number as well?”  The lady took the notebook back and put down the phone number.  It’s not entirely true that people living in big cities are colder and annoyed than those who live in villages and smaller cities.  The Mediterraneans,  more than their Central/Northern European counterparts, will probably make you feel a bit less confused in a strange environment.  Another example is tipping.  It is not a norm in Europe as in America.  I agree that many Europeans I met are too picky and demanding at the waiters; they don’t tip even when given good services; they will only tip when the service is something out of the ordinary.  In Lisbon, the capital, tip or no tip, the people in the restaurants surround you with this aura of pleasantness.  Notice that I didn’t use the term “customer service” because unlike America who were trained to do it to be professional and to get more tip, people here do it because it’s their personality.

Compared to many if not all major European cities that I’ve been to, Lisbon has far more crazy people. True, crazy people exists everywhere, but at least they are more guarded and don’t bother people too much. Here staying true to their Mediterranean temperament, these crazy acted out.  I personally got these guys suddenly from nowhere jumped straight at me, touching me on the shoulder in a shopping mall and shouting at me in the metro. I saw one old guy with infection on his legs and hands just slap another local/tourist who walked past him and not even aware of his action.  There are more people with skin disease begging and roaming the street.  I wonder if Portugal have more serious immigration problem or the government doesn’t have a proper program to aid these people if it matters to them.

I took tram 15 to Belem neighborhood of white bleached limestone building to see the main attraction, the tower of Belem. There is ground map of Portugal’s marine expansion and conquer voyage around the world, reminding me how powerful this small country once was.  Christopher Columbus, though born Italian and expedition funded by Spain, lived in Lisbon. Made a quick trip to check out CCB but there was nothing to see except for some chairs and objects. Snacked at Pasteis de Belem to try one of the best cream custard of Lisbon. The store was found from 1837 and recommended by travel guide and surely it’s something you can’t miss. The creamy, light-sweet custard is served out from the oven, hot , soft and melted on your tongue unlike the crispy kind you might find in other shops. 90 cent for a very small delicacy is bit pricey, but remember you eat it for the experience.

On the tram to Belem, I sat next to a kid and his grandma from Spain. Being a typical grandma she looked at her guide and upon seeing anything new and interesting she shouted across from me to her grandson sitting across the aisle. “Jorge, look!”  Then “Jorge!” The boy turned around: “What?” “Oh no nothing.”  Said the grandma when she finished reading the book section and decided it wasn’t worth the shout to the boy.  They ‘jorge’ and ‘que’ the entire trip to Belem. 2 hours later, on the way back to the center, I sat across from them again by accident.  It is funny as the moment we got off the tram, we went off our separate way, doing and seeing various things.  Trams go every 15 minutes so to end up on the same one near each other is pretty weird.  This time around they stopped jorgeing and queing each other, tired after all the sight seeing probably.

Lisbon is splendid enough to make me think for a short while that it might be one of the few cities that one day I return though this violates my temporary travel principle “never return to the same place twice.”  It was lively all day long.  More so than their Mediterranean neighbors Spaniards, Italians, Maltese from big cities, Lisboans live on the street. When I walked around the Alfamra to find my way to  the castle, I had a feeling as if I had just revisited my childhood in a far-away place hidden in a poor, problematic neighborhood in an off-road street in the suburb of Saigon.  Both children and adults were sitting outside in front of shops, houses or at the squares talking and shouting.  It was probably too hot to stay inside, and it was not the norm to turn on the air conditioning–like they have any.  This reminds me that for the last five years on-and-off around and about in Europe, I’ve never been inside any flat or house which has air conditioning other than the usual winter heater.  When it’s hot, people get out.  Maybe to curb the rising weight issue in America, just uninstall air-conditioning to force people to leave their houses (other than to work, school, grocery) and head to nearest forest or lake.  Big houses, comfortable sofas, big-screen TVs and cheap fast food are going to get Americans fatter and fatter.  One of the thing I like about the Czechs is they are very outdoorsy and weather-organized. They make sure they do something (park, picnic, lake, bike, canoe) outside when the weather forecast a sunny day.  I’m still getting used to hearing Honza reminding me every so often, “It’s going to be a nice sunny weekend. Do you have any plan?”  “Well, uh no. Why?” At first I blamed my plan-resist nature for something as small as out-for-the-weekend, but I realized that having grown up in the tropical year-round-hot Saigon and then the mild, pleasant weather of California, I didn’t have to look out for any sunny forecast. It was just part of every day life.

Traveling in the Mediterranean is great because your mind is always occupied with the noisiness and messiness of every day life. It might not work for you if you prefer the calmness, structure and efficiency of countries like Germany, Switzerland or those in Scandinavia.

Fado

I met a French woman from Brittany who was standing on the street looking a bit confused. Either I asked her for time or the other way around, we decided to pull together travel resource which can pretty much sum up to “let just walk and screw the map.” The stereotypical rude French person probably can only be found in Paris as I have yet run into such type from every where else.  They are just as polite and friendly as anyone else. This lady already reserved a table in a restaurant in Alhambra where they performed the Fado, Portuguese traditional music. Thanks god I ran into her without whom I would surely skip the Fado show because it’s a bit awkward to have dinner in formal setting all by yourself, during lunch time yes but dinner no.  This is one of few disadvantages of traveling solo.  Sometimes I want to sample local pubs and restaurants but I feel odd to just even walk in there let alone sit down.  We had Portugal’s national fish dish, salted sardines with potatoes and grilled bell peppers and a small pitcher of sangria.  The highlight wasn’t the fish or the butt-comforting, it was listening to the heart-wrenching, soul-crying Fado.  The French lady commented on the similarity between the rendering of the songs by Fado singers and Edith Piaf.  It made perfect sense; she had just answered my question why there is a Portuguese musical called “Edith Piaf”. Portuguese understand Edith Piaf more so than other people.  I like when traveling in a foreign country is to be able to hear their traditional music, not the kind of traditional performance customized for tourists but the kind which the nation enjoys as well.  It doesn’t have to be ancient old, just need to be a bit folksy.  This is very rare with today music scene completely dominated by hip-hop, pop and rock.

It is said that Amalia Rodrigues was to Portugal what Edith Piaf was to Paris

Flight

Received the news from Honza about Skyeurope’s bankruptcy and flight cancel around 19:00, but I dismissed it as rumor and continued with the walk around Chido. Later on after comfortable sitting in my flat and cool down after spending two days extra in Lisbon and Madrid, two night bus ride to Barcelona and 90 EUR extra for the flight back to Prague, I had to face Honza’s interrogation. “What were you watiing for? That Skyeurope will miraculously fly again?” Yes actually I did.

It’s true that people don’t really change. They either take on new persona to adapt to new environment or they do change temporarily but the natural self will somehow emerge. Jung’s personality type or the variation MBTI (Myer-Brigg Type Indicator) uses four dichotomies to classify people:

1. Attitude: Extravert/Introvert – How you get your energy and how to direct it (inward or outward).
2. Information: Sensing/Intuition – How you gather your information.
3. Decision: Thinking/Feeling – How you make decision.
4. Lifestyle: Judging/Perceiving – You prefer thing to be decided or open-ended.

(Bing “MBTI” on the Internet if interested.  Bing is another search engine similar to Google. I should have used googling but opted for binging to broaden my vocabulary )

Anyway, my passive reaction to the news has a lot to do with dichotomy no. 2. Information slips through my head via the intuitive channel than the senses. I don’t see facts as just facts. I interpret to my own use and biased them to my benefits.  Instead of getting out of Lisbon fast the minute I got the news, I thought “oh well maybe this is flute. they will fly again. Or I will find some share-ride back to Prague. I will blah blah.” In this occasion, I should have done what I normally don’t: When you see all the signs and after some thoughts and calculation, maybe the best solution is to “jump ship.” That is the only thing I didn’t do while most of my friends did during the dotcom bust. They went back to school, applied for graduate school, changed major to medicine and so on. What did I do? I witnessed the whole thing as simply some events bound to happen rather than a dire survival matter. “You should have jumped ship you know! This kind of behavior might get you at the end.” An ex told me. He might be right. But jump to where? You can jump to some ship that gets you temporarily out of the mess but still leave you stuck in another once a new cycle begins.  The dotcom bust somehow worked for me, not in the way my family would have wanted because instead of following what my uncle often termed the right-track, I “jumped ship” from being a Confucian academic model to a neo-bum seeking refuge in some remote camp in a national park, shady bars dealing with shady characters in the Bay Area, walking in freezing-cold weather listening to the imam calling for prayer five times a day, drinking too much beer for the last three years, and these days bumming around Europe.

What’s the point? The point is sometimes it’s a good idea to drag around to explore options before jumping ship, but in this case, get the heck out of Lisbon.

Hihihi, that’s why I have Mister Excel sheet to plan my travel to the minute details, to force in a narrower track “go here, go there, do this, do that at which hour” so and so. Without that travel sheet to keep me in touch with time and reality like taking the night bus to Madrid at 2345 on Monday which then I could fly out on Tuesday night with Wizzair for 60 EUR. But noooooo, I waited to figure something out. Haven’t I been trying to figure some thing out for the last decade already?  I have to stop complicating the situation. The best solution maybe the clearest, first-thought idea. I took time to figure out the grandest escape, the coolest cheapest connection out of Lisbon, via Paris, Monaco, Luxembourg (hehe because these are the countries I haven’t been to. I guess if I had to spend extra money, why not going to some place new), Malaga, consulted many airlines and carshare options. By early morning the next day, that 60-euro flight became 80, and by late afternoon, it was sold out and the only option left was Thursday night from Madrid for 119 and then 149 EUR. Yup my grandest escape.

I stayed one extra night at Lisbon and took the night bus to Madrid where I wandered the city I had visited before, half-dead due to lack of sleep, met an old friend for quick tapas before taking another night bus to Barcelona for the morning flight.

…tbc…

• WP version: Check for newer WP version every 6 months or prompted by a message on the server to update, whichever happens last . On the other hand, if it’s working why fix. I don’t know the downside of this, but one thing I know for sure, the theme I’m using might not be compatible.  Theme => the look of the site is the first thing everybody recognizes so unless I fix the theme right away, I have to use an alternative one => losing all the customized work I’ve done.
• Upgrading method: Should I do it manuall or via my server? I don’t even know what’s the difference between these two: requirements and downside. 
• Backup blog: How often? Where to save the backup file? How to use this backup file anyway when the blog completely crashes? I backup my blog every once in a while and have these files either saved on the server or in the emails, but I have no idea on how to use them. 
• Export posts: How often? Where to save the file? This is essential if you don’t want to lose all of your work.
• Theme changes:  I would like change the look every few months, but first I need to understand the very basic of a WP  theme template how certain things affect it. Also I need to nail down the part of theme package that will have to change to accommodate my own customization. 
• Web design (HTML, CSS, PHP):  Good oh lord I have forgotten every thing.  Some tags were deprecated since the last decade and I just learned it yesterday.  I knew a tidbid of PHP to cut/copy/paste/moving other people’s code around without fatally ruin it, still having a deeper understand of it would have made my life simpler. Moreover, if I care a little bit more for CSS, I could have gotten the page look I want. 
• Publishing content:  At least this is the only department I’m most decent. I do update more regularly now in a very organized and efficient way. Thanks to Firefox’s Scribefire addon.  I keep posts online so I can access them from everywhere. Once finished, I use Scribefire and schedule publish to my blog. 
• What else?

I have been on a long-term technology/gadget fasting and try to minimize getting involved too much in the technical side of everything, so to do these kinds of things is problematic for me.

People who live in the same city will have to see me for lunch, coffee, tea, beer or whatever. 

Mountain on one side and lake Zurich on the other together with small wooden houses sharing with lazy cows. Green and grass are visually boring, but since this is Switzerland where everything looks perfectly clean and tidy–including mud–offering a nicer alternative to the noisy Zurich. After the train made it way past Sargaan and headed closer to Austria, the scenery became less and less interesting thus I resolved to close my eyes dreaming. Other than that, I would have to look at the old Indian lady slouching on the seat in front of me. 

Feldkirch

It was pretty cool to find out about Feldkirch given I had done only three hour last minute planning before going to the bus station snatching the last bus ticket departing two hours later. The city has a cozy feel of a mountainous city and a small, pretty old town typical of Europe. Sure it is nothing spectacular but it’s way more classier than industrial and expensive Schaan. On Saturday, there is a flea market at the end of the main square. Maybe Austrians have a thing for flea market as there is one 10 times larger in Vienna. It’s good to search for travel tips and tricks online beside gnawing at guide books. Guide books are useful but they can never be up-to-date and provide the precise information that we want.

Though it wasn’t Sunday, shops were either closed or closed early. After briefly touring the town, I decided to return to my hostel which I thought rather comfy and cool. The Youth Hostel “Hostel Feldkirch”, has been operated by the city for 10 years and located about 15 minute walk from the train/bus station as well as the down town. The building is of typical German Renaissance style seen a lot in Strasbourg, France. In the past, it was a leper society where sick people was kept in and isolated from the outside world.

Being called a youth hostel, there were hardly any youth there except for a handful of off-season travelers.  A few are  foreigners who reside there long-term. They either work in Feldkirch or in Liechtenstein.  There is this German guy from Stuggart who sits in the lounge every evening watching TV and volunteered every bit of information to me.  He found a job in Liechtenstein working as some kind of engineer after getting tired of paying heavy taxes in Germany.  He has been living in the hostel for six months while looking for a flat to move in with his new girl friend.  His current situation is financially paradise: living in cheap border city, getting salary in Liechtenstein standard (which is high), paying less than 1.5% tax and paying less than 500 EUR for rent.  Like Andorra, Liechtenstein is a tax haven with only 1.2 percent personal income tax. It’s dirt cheap compared to the hefty tax rate common in Europe, reach at high at 50% in Sweden.  For a German, he’s quite talkative though later I learn that his parents were from Italy and just recently returned to the country.  After two hours watching TV with him, I knew almost everything about him and his opinion about a lot of things like how he watches “Dirty Dancing” for 20 times and cries every single one of it, how he knows too much information about celebrities, how he dumped his Paris Hilton wannabe girl-friend, how he hates the Turks-therefore-Muslims.  “I can’t help it. I like what I like and hate what I hate. I don’t travel to Turkey because I just hate them.” He seems to have low opinion of almost everybody from his Polish dorm-mate, an alcoholic-recovered who now works with a group of recovering alcoholic, the Japanese traveler who only ate instant noodles every evening and spoke little English, the Chinese people at his work who for some strange reason keep laughing in group, to two young Asian tourists who had the ball to wake him up from his sleep by the loud noise from their luggage dragged across the wooden floor.  “I asked them to be quiet but they didn’t understand and roared into laughter.”  I can understand.  Young, cute Asian girls from Asia have a habit of giggling when they don’t understand or understand little what being said.  His friend once introduced him to good-looking Slovak women and as it turned out “They are pretty but their teeth are freaking black,” he said. Okay then what?  “Geez. It’s disgusting!  These Americans with the bellies sag to here (making a round belly gesture with his hands).  They come out of the supermarket carrying bags big as these (again using similar hand gestures).”  He follows me all the way from the lounge down to the kitchen to continue our conversation or rather his stream of consciousness or monologue or whatever you call it.  People probably don’t give a shit about his opinion, so once he finds someone who does, he won’t let go that easily.  One thing you ladies might find attractive about him is his disregard with typical Italian men’s behaviors.  “I have a German head. I can’t live in Italy anymore.” He told me.  “My Italian friends asked me who irons my shirts, does my laundry and cooks my meals. I said ‘me’ and they were like ‘Are you gay?’”  He rolls his lower lip. (The guy has very expressive face.)  “These men stay with their parents until they get married. I have a friend who wed his 10-year girlfriend. They never went on a trip for more han a month alone.  He did not kiss her when dropping her off at her house because ‘Are you crazy? Her father will to kill me.’  They divorced 6 months later.” 

Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked by Austria and Switzerland, small and rich so it’s probably understandable why Liechtensteiners are not wide-arm open to foreigners even to those Caucasian, German-speaking Germans or Austrians.  “My German friend has been living in Liechtenstein for 6 years, but every other weekend he drives back to Germany. He has no friend there. He can’t make friends with the Liechtensteiners.”  The opinionated, racist, contemptuous feminist German lets me on in a cultural secret which I am not, at this point, surprised.  We can carry on with our world-peace message, promote equality among people, instill the ideal “we are the citizen of the world” or that sort of thing.  But we should be level-headed to realize that there are a few things which probably won’t change.  Unless we adopt the nomadic lifestyle and immigrate every so often, we have to accept the inevitable discrimination and alienation of the host culture toward its immigrant/expat communities.  After all, what goes around comes around.  The Ukrainians subjected to discrimination from the richer Russia. The Russia suffers the same fate in richer Czech.  The Czechs experience the same fate in richer Germany.  One would think the bug stops here, but then the Germans get the cold shoulder from the Liechtensteiners.   Try this experiment and randomly pick a country X in the middle of the immigration/emigration chain and you’ll come up with the same X being both the subject and object source of the disdain.  Why pick a country in the middle? Because then you can guarantee people immigrate to and from that country. Countries in the bottom means they are dirt poor and don’t attract anybody.  Countries at the top have too many immigrants, but their citizens have no need to emigrate.  Let’s construct a simple chain.

The chain might be a bit silly since there are more levels lower than the bottom. USA might not be on the top of the chain given their economic situation, but I don’t know if Americans ever immigrate in mass waves from their countries.  Germany is at the 2nd level just because the Germans do migrate elsewhere beside having a huge immigration population of their own. Sweden is probably a surprising example to you, but my logic is that it has a large immigrant community and Swedes do migrate to Norway to do menial work Norwegians don’t want, though not the kind of “menial” other poorer immigrant groups have to do.   

Riding to Noeffel from the border to return the bike, I saw more of Feldkirch, the beautiful, winding canal and mountainous, countryside landscape of this border city.

9/2009

Naturalistic’ method
=> You should learn a foreign language as if you are a native speaker learning the first language, similar to the learning process of a child.

•     All classroom activity should be conducted in the target language.
•     An emphasis on everyday words and sentences.
•     Carefully graded question-answer exchanges between teachers (native speakers) and students in small classes.
•     Correct pronunciation important.
•     Use of objects, pictures and demonstration to teach vocabulary.
•     Grammar, if it was taught, to be taught inductively.

Army method
=> Behaviourist psychology (conditioning – habit formation – ‘tabula rasa’ – punishments/rewards). Language is just a learned habit.

•     Great use of tapes and language laboratories
•     A lot of drilling
•     Repetition and memorizing of phrases
•     An emphasis on structural patterns rather than on meaning
•     Little or no grammatical explanation
•     Positive reinforcement of correct responses
•     Great importance on correct pronunciation
•     Errors must not be tolerated

Seven Characteristics of Successful Language Learners

• They have insight into their own learning styles and preferences.
• They take an active approach to the learning task.
• They are willing to take risks.
• They are good guessers.
• They watch not only what words and sentences mean, but also how they are put together.
• They make the new language into a separate system, and try to think in it as soon as possible.
• They are tolerant and outgoing in their approach to the new language.

The Teacher’s Role

• to motivate; to support the growth of pupils’ self confidence
• to stress some ‘obvious’ points about language learning
• to create situations that will make each pupil as active as possible
• to give pupils plenty to do
• to encourage discussions of ‘how to learn’ and to set activities that will assist ‘learning awareness’
• to convey a genuine interest in learning X
• to ensure that X is the classroom language

I will try the Army boot-camp method and find a teacher who fits the aforementioned criteria or persuade him/her into one.  

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