Before I dive into this tail of seismic happenings, I feel I have to preface it with some zoological background (if you don't feel like reading this opinion piece on the virtues of certain birds and would rather get to the part of how I almost died (YES IT'S TRUE!!!) then skip ahead). It's become common knowledge among the people I'm with here that I'm an outspoken opponent of animals. That's right, I said it, I don't like animals. None of them. I can tolerate certain ones, and I am interested in them from afar, but as soon as the start interacting with me, affecting my life in anyway, I generally, without qualms, just dislike them. Cats, dogs, mice, birds, bats, you know, the usual suspects. But since coming to Thailand I have a new enemy, who has quickly climbed the list to the top: the rooster. I'm pretty confident that there's no animal more annoying, more purely, excrutiatingly bothersome in its general comportment than the rooster. In the States, where we don't typically live with roosters, we are privileged enough to maintain the romantic illusion that roosters are Nature's Kind Alarm Clock, that they crow once a day, at sunrise, of course. After living with roosters, I now understand that they are alarm clocks in a way, except instead of being able to be turned off, they are endlessly put into snooze mode. Thus, not only do they give a proud cockadoodledoo at sunrise, but they give the same, gut-wrenching, Lord-Take-Me-Now squeel consistently for the first few hours of the day (usually beginning around four or five AM), and then continue at irregular intervals for the rest of the entire day, in addition to the crows they frequently emit in conversation with the other local roosters. I had to deal with this at my host family, as our neighboors raised them. And then when I lived in the villages I witnessed it on a whole new scale, as everyone in the village raised them, so when morning came I was typically woken up by painfully loud and dischordant orchestra of crowing. With the move to my apartment, an eighth story number in the middle of downtown Chiang Mai, I thought I had seen the last of my rooster mornings. But no. There's one lousy bird that lives across the street, and nobly carries on the tradition of his forefathers. Amazingly enough, the crow is able to cross the street, rise hundreds of feet in the air, penetrate concrete and glass, and still be loud enough to wake me up in the morning. I hate it, naturally, but I've learned to deal with it in the morning. Last night, however, the rooster decided to start crowing at around midnight, issuing his screach every ten seconds or so for a good five minutes. So there I was, awake in bed, unable to fall asleep, and now on top of it all I had to deal with that rooster.

And then the room started to shake. I wasn't so sure at first, as I was a little in-and-out of it that night, but sure enough, yes, the room was shaking. My bed was shaking. The bed next to me was shaking. Well, not so much shaking as eerily swaying.

It was an earthquake.

We were having an earthquake.

We were having an earthquake and I was on the eight floor of a concrete building. Once the swaying stopped, which only took fifteen seconds or so, and I had my wits about me, I ran into the main room, looked out the window, didn't notice any widespread devastation / rivers of lava / mushroom clouds billowing in the background, and went through the catalogue of saturday morning public service announcements I keep in my brain. Despite growing up in Michigan, the "What to do in case of an earthquake" card came right up: a) stand in a doorway, bracing yourself, or b) get under a table. I did neither, but I was proud that I had that sort of trivial capacity. Instead I threw some clothes on and went in the hall, where I found the other students. We all double checked to make sure the others felt the building shake too, and of course we all did. So we talked a bit, calmed down, theorized the possible large scale sources of such a tiny tremor, and of course joked about it. For the record, we have now joked our way successfully out of 1) a coup d'etat, and 2) an earthquake. So long story short, I've asked around and looked on the internet and it seems it was no big deal at all. It was an undersea earthquake in Indonesia, but was too far below to cause a tsunami. So all is well.

So what do roosters have to do with all of this? Why did you waste time reading about them when you could have been reading about my lived experience with complex tectonic processes? Well I was just thinking that the rooster was probably predicting the earthquake (you know how animals can do that, right?), and so thought it should go in the story. I also really do just hate roosters.

GEOLOGY LIVES!!!!!!!!

It's been a while, no? Sorry, I've been busy activating. As in, that which is done by an activist. Work has been great. Great and mundane. But delightfully mundane. As this is my last week, I'm working on compiling all the research I've done over the past three weeks into (what will eventually become) a hefty ten page (single-space) memo, for use by the staff here. It's really satisfying putting it together, though writing a paper on "The Processes and Related Environmental Effects of Mining [confidential]" sounds like one of those absurdly hyperbolized papers that teachers on television shows assign kids for screwing up. One of those "you owe me ten thousand words on [mundane topic of your choice] by next week" / "but it's the weekend of the big game!!!" sort of deals. For all you teachers out there, I openly endorse such assignments. They students will hate you, but come on, it's really funny.

But I have been doing other things as well. As far as work has gone, I got to attend a conference and workshop type event for a current campaign. It was very interesting, seeing how all these different activists came together and started hammering out a cohesive plan. And then when it was all over we all went out to dinner and I got to split a bottle of brandy with [identities and ethnicities withheld for confidentiality] (Prize awarded to the person who can come up with the best joke. Points will be determined based on the degree of clever and incendiary social commentary, not on shallow, colonialistic maintenence of stereotypes surrounding marginalized and ethnic peoples [this is gonna be a lot harder now huh without me saying what the were]). But I won't suffocate you with details because: a) I don't want to bore you (even though you shouldn't be bored and if you are you're a touch on the cold-hearted side), and b) I'm kind of unsure about how much it's safe to divulge, given the sensitive nature of the people involved. This last part goes to a lot of my work here. And I'm really not trying to build it up as some sort of espionage adventure, I just don't really know what's kosher as far as writing things in a public space. That's all.

Aside from work, though, it's pretty much been anotherday-anotherdollar sort of life for me. I don't have a whole lot of time and energy to go out and explore, and I don't even really want to that much anyway. I don't really have any Thai friends or anyone to help me get into the culture here a little more, which is unfortunate. It also means my Thai is really starting to suffer, going unpracticed save for the rare time when a salesperson engages me in Thai rather than broken English.

This week also saw the official passing of the "90 days left" point. My program will end in less than sixty days, but I will be staying in Chiang Mai for a month extra, probably doing some work back at my organization. It's weird though, seeing myself pretty neatly in the middle of my time here. I'm sure I've written it before, and even if I haven't I'm sure you can all assume, that it's passed remarkably fast (see the December 1 entry of juliainecuador.blogspot.com for a terrific account of how repetition and routine have affected the passing of time abroad).

And then there's the upcoming holidays. From the look of things, you'd think Thai people love Christmas. But really it's probably just another case of them being all about some fragmented and diffused concept from Western culture without really having a damn clue what it means. And can you blame them? It's also an issue of a lot of the businesses decking the halls (read: malls piping out the Christmas tunes to get shoppers in the spirit for something completely irrelevant), while everyone else doesn't really pay attention, except for the loads of tourists here on their holiday vacation. It's kind of frustrating, but it's really cool in a sick sort of way. Just seeing how such a vapid and senseless holiday can be seen for all its vapid-senseless-ness once its taken out of the normal cultural context. That being said, I look forward to having the loneliest, most prototypically pathetic Christmas imaginable, hopefully spending it in an empty restaraunt eating a too-small portion of noodles. I only wish that I could walk past the warmly lit homes with the views of the families reveling in love and holiday cheer inside, and then listen to the faint echoes of carollers down the street as I chew my food and mull over the painful alienation from it all. But unfortunately that won't be here, so I'll have to make it up. Regardless, I say that because, even though I know you'll now pity me, I think the whole thing will be very funny. After all, how often could something that splendidly pathetic and cliche happen to me? I know! It's hilarious. But I'm jumping the gun a little bit on the holiday writing. I should have saved it for the Very Merry Christmas edition of the blog.

And with that I've effectively killed the last hour of work and it's time to go home.

I need to make an important correction. I had previously captioned one of my photos as "Ninja from the future" in reference to my Halloween costume. I actually was an Indian from The Future, and should have labeled the picture so. Apologies for any confusion/disappointment.

This week I started my internship at an organization in Chiang Mai. So far it has just been an amazing experience. I'm working on a research project by myself on the environmental effects of mining to be used in a possible advocacy campaign in the future. It might not be the most interesting or engaging material, but it is really great getting the chance to do something like this, to be working in a place like this with such amazing people. Working there has definitely helped give me some guidance as far as what I want to do in the future, career-wise. I feel like someone who grew up loving medicine and the human body, and then found out after twenty years that "doctor" is an actual occupation. I'm just amazed that this is what people can actually do. I'm pretty excited right now. Also, I spent today, Saturday, playing soccer with the staff from the office as well as the students that are currently attending the activist school that they run. It was fun, though I obviously have nothing on willey Burmese fellas when it comes to football. The funny thing about the whole affair is how seriously they take it. Today was the first day of the yearly tournament-type thing (kind of like offices have softball leagues in the States), and it's apparently a big enough deal to warrent a referee and professional uniforms, shirts and shorts. My team donned the uniform of Chelsea Football Club and our opponents went as Liverpool. It was quite goofy.

Apart from that, not much is going on. I've just been taking the lack of school work as an opportunity to take things easy. Last night we went to a very very very good Thai restaraunt, managing a delicious dinner and drinks for under ten dollars, which is expensive. It did help me put my unease about Thai food to rest, as I realized that good Thai food is AMAZING, and it's the other stuff that just ain't so hot.

So I'm set to be in Chiang Mai for the next month and a half or so, first working at my internship and then break and then going to the island course in January.

I posted my mailing address for a reason...

I've just added a wealth of photos the my photos site, from both this trip and the last one. It's too difficult right now to put captions on all of them (I already did a few) so you'll have to interpret them yourselves. It took me a solid three hours in front of an iMac at a coffee shop to do it, so you better enjoy. There's hundreds more where these came from.